A woman who strangled her boyfriend and was featured in Netflix’s “I Am A Killer” series for the 2015 crime walked back a chilling confession that was included on the show, as she asked a Montana parole board for clemency Wednesday.
Lindsay Haugen, 41, pleaded guilty to strangling her 25-year-old boyfriend, Robert Mast, while the two of them sat in a car in a Walmart parking lot in 2015. She has been serving a 60-year sentence for deliberate homicide since 2016.
On the second season of “I Am A Killer,” a true-crime series on Netflix that spotlights convicted murderers, Haugen said she killed Mast — whom she had known for less than a month — out of love after she said he insisted he wanted to die.
Mindy Pendleton, and his nieces and nephews in 2014.Courtesy Mindy Pendleton
But in an interview with police, which was recorded and included in the episode, she told a detective that she also “kinda just wanted to kill somebody with my bare hands, honestly,” the footage shows.
“I saw my opportunity, I guess,” Haugen told the detective, according to the video.
Police say Mast was drunk and could not fight back.
On Wednesday, Haugen told a three-member panel that she is “haunted” by that “outrageous” statement, claiming she said it to stop a detective’s line of questioning.
“I wish I had not said it, and of course, I didn’t mean it,” Haugen said at the hearing, appearing virtually from the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings, Montana.
Haugen, who said she was “drunk and in shock” during the interrogation, said a prior history of abuse from men caused her to lie.
“I said what I felt the man wanted to hear in order to make the accusations stop,” she said. “I was not looking for an opportunity. I would never purposefully inflict harm on another human being.”
In her prepared, 10-minute statement, Haugen said she was guilty of the crime and expressed regret and remorse for it. But she asked for a shorter sentence, saying she is a better person, who is treating her alcohol addiction.
“I appear before you now guilty of homicide, a statement which chills me to the bone,” she said. “I know that I don’t deserve this, but I am hoping for a chance to live in a way that is deserving of this opportunity.”
In his remarks Wednesday, Steve Hallam, the Billings Police Department detective who interrogated Haugen, told the board that Haugen had made other callous confessions other than the one referring to her bare hands.
Hallam said Haugen also revealed in the recorded interrogation that she planned on burying Mast’s body in a scarce area before leaving for Washington state. Haugen also said she would not have gone to police to report the crime, the detective said.
“Lindsay Haugen does not deserve clemency,” Hallam said.
In emotional pleas, Mast’s family members begged the board to keep Haugen behind bars.
Mast’s stepmother, Mindy Pendleton, who helped raise him from when he was a toddler, said her family lives in “loss and grief daily as she must live with the consequences of her actions.”
“Anything less diminished Robby’s existence and the people that love him,” she added.
Pendleton also said Haugen exploited her stepson’s murder when she participated on the Netflix show, which aired in 2020, and should not be “rewarded” for any notoriety she may have received from the series.
Pendleton urged the board to remember the crime. “Envision your child, your loved one. Envision the chokehold, strangling, the suffocation,” she said.
The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole has 30 days to make its recommendation to Gov. Greg Gianforte, who has the sole authority to grant or deny Haugen’s request.
A spokesperson for Gianforte did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The governor does not have a statutory timeline to respond, the board said.
Without the clemency, Haugen would be eligible for parole in September 2030, according to the board.
The parole board said it received at least six letters supporting her early release and about three dozen letters opposing it.
Clemency is an extraordinary form of relief from a sentence and is not granted in most cases, Brad Newman, a parole board member on Haugen’s hearing panel, told NBC News.
The board did not have to grant Haugen a public hearing, but it did because there was “sufficient cause” to hear her explanation, he said.
Newman said the Netflix episode did not come up as the board reviewed her application.
“I didn’t know her case had ever been discussed on Netflix. I’m not a customer subscriber. That’s news to me,” he said. “I guess it’s conceivable that a board member has seen or heard about this case.”
