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Ex-porn star is sentenced for beheading a former boyfriend after beating him with a stick
A former adult film star who decapitated her ex-boyfriend and discarded his head in the trash, was ordered to spend decades behind bars for the gruesome killing.
Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones sentenced Devyn Michaels, 47, on Thursday, to 28 years to life in a Nevada prison for the murder of 46-year-old Johnathan Willette.
“I cannot deliver what the family is hoping for,” Michaels said briefly before the judge handed down the sentence, according to 8 News Now.
After a two-week trial in November, a jury convicted Michaels of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors said Michaels beat Willette with a stick before decapitating him inside his Henderson home on the night of August 6, 2023.
Police found Willette’s body wrapped in blankets, doused with chemicals and missing his head. They believe Michaels threw Willette’s head into the trash in her northwest Las Vegas neighborhood. It was never recovered.
During the trial, jurors watched video of Michaels telling police she was massaging Willette in his bedroom when she struck him with what she described as a “candlestick-like” object.
Michaels, who has also used the names Nikki Fairchild and Tracee Tavarez and last worked as a realtor, married Willette in 2012. They divorced in 2018.
She later married his 29-year-old son, Deviere Willette. In her testimony, she described both relationships as marriages of convenience.
On the night of the killing, Willette was at the Henderson home he shared with his mother. She did not see him that evening, but Michaels told her he had been drinking and smoking marijuana before going to bed early so they could register their children for school the next day.
When his mother went looking for her son, whose truck was still parked outside, she found him dead in a downstairs bedroom, “wrapped in blankets and bloody.”
Following an investigation, police arrested Michaels on August 15, 2023, and charged her with murder.
According to the arrest report, she admitted to striking Willette in the head with a wooden stick while rubbing his back on the bed. She said Willette’s arms “went limp” after she hit him but insisted she did not intend to kill him.
She said she wanted to hurt him badly enough to send him to the hospital so she could “figure out what to do with her children.” She also claimed Willette had “tried to get her to perform a sexual act on him” moments before the attack.
In 2024, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a deal that would have made her eligible for parole after 15 years. She later attempted to withdraw that plea but the judge determined she had “voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently” entered the plea.
During an initial sentencing hearing in July 2025, Michaels apologized and then immediately proclaimed her innocence, sending the case to trial. Jurors were never told about the prior plea agreement.
Willette, who founded JW Marketing and The Vegas Moving Guy, according to Newsweek, was known for helping others find work.
After he was murdered, his father and stepmother took custody of his two children.
“We cannot bring Johnathan back,” said Valerie Willette, his stepmother. “God has gained an angel in heaven. We believe he is watching over us and the girls.”
