While an OnlyFans creator was focused on filming a BDSM fetish session for her followers — gluing women’s boots onto a man’s feet and binding him in Saran Wrap — he was suffocating to death.
Michael Dale lay in his Escondido home with a plastic bag wrapped around his head and sealed with duct tape for at least eight minutes as Michaela Rylaarsdam, vibrator in hand, kept the cameras rolling, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in San Diego Superior Court.
She only called 911 when he started turning blue. By then, it was too late to save him.
The “Black Mirror”-esque killing sent shock waves through the suburban community of Escondido, raising questions about the extreme lengths creators will go to in the name of captivating content.
Rylaarsdam, 32, was arrested in February 2025 and charged with murder. Last week, she took a plea deal to the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, meaning that she acted with disregard for human life but not with the intent to kill, according to a spokesperson for the San Diego County district attorney’s office.
She is expected to receive the maximum sentence of four years in state prison at a June 8 hearing, the spokesperson said.
Rylaarsdam is currently in custody at the Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego County, where she has been held without bail since her arrest, according to inmate records.
Dale died at age 56 in April 2023. He had met Rylaarsdam the prior month on Eros.com, a website often used for escort and stripping services, according to the affidavit.
Over the course of several weeks, he paid her more than $11,000 to engage in conversations with him, come to his home and perform acts of bondage, according to the affidavit.
The requests he had for her veered into the downright dangerous. He asked Rylaarsdam “wrap him up in saran wrap like a mummy,” the affidavit states. He also wanted her to pour Gorilla Glue into his eyes and glue a dildo into his mouth.
After lengthy online discussions about his fetish desires, she arrived to his Escondido home around 6 p.m on April 17, 2023. While there, she extracted at least $1,000 more from Dale, following the encouragement of her husband, who urged her via text to continue getting money from him by engaging in fetish behavior, according to the affidavit.
Dale appeared intoxicated, but the 29-year-old OnlyFans creator proceeded to film several hours of BDSM-focused content.
When detectives examined her phone, they found “several troubling videos of Dale with a plastic bag over his head and duct tape around his face and head, which was clearly obstructing his breathing,” according to the affidavit. One video of her masturbating next to his wrapped body was taken “just a few minutes” before she called 911 at 10:10 p.m.
When Escondido police officers arrived, Rylaarsdam was performing CPR on Dale. He was unresponsive and not breathing.
Paramedics with the Escondido Fire Department took him to Palomar hospital. There, he was declared brain dead and, a few days later, taken off of life support.
The San Diego County medical examiner’s office ruled his cause of death to be asphyxia and classified the manner as a homicide.
