Prosecutors say husband hired spellcasters to control missing San Diego mother

A South Bay jury convicted Larry Millete, 44, of first-degree murder after hearing that he hired spellcasters and searched for poison hemlock before his wife vanished. The jury reached its verdict after less than a day of deliberation in a no-body murder case built on circumstantial and digital evidence because Maya “May” Millete’s remains have never been found.

Millete began using Fiverr in October 2020 to contact self-described spellcasters and exchanged more than 500 pages of messages with Frank Peavey, who goes by “Mystic Lunar” and “Tess.” In one message, Millete wrote, “Please punish May and incapacitate her enough so she can’t leave the house.” He asked for spells tied to control, intimacy, isolation, punishment and incapacitation.

Maya Millete, a Filipino American mother of three and a civilian contract specialist at the Naval Information Warfare Center, was last seen alive at the family’s home in Chula Vista’s San Miguel Ranch neighborhood near Eastlake on Jan. 7, 2021. Her family also last heard from her that day, and her last recorded phone call was to a divorce attorney. At the time of Larry Millete’s arrest in October 2021, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said investigators believed Maya had wanted a divorce starting in 2020 and had set up an appointment to meet a lawyer on Jan. 12, 2021.

Investigators found hemlock in the family home, and Millete had researched poison hemlock. Millete was jailed from October 2021 until the verdict. Maya’s sister, Maricris Drouaillet, said after the decision, “Justice probably has been served today, but we still have my sister out there.”