Jealous killer found guilty of murdering animal lover girlfriend with ice axe
Whenever Kathryn Pham smiled, she revealed two deep dimples in her cheeks – and she smiled a lot. The 20-year-old, who was known as Katie by her friends, had a big heart and a positive nature. At high school she was a cheerleader. She loved horse riding, swimming and going to the beach. Kathryn also adored animals and would spend hours playing with the cats and dogs at the local animal shelter.
Kathryn lived in Ridgecrest, California, and in 2021, she caught the attention of Daniel Gunnarsson, then also 20. Even though they’d only been dating around a month, it was clear that Gunnarsson was smitten with Kathryn. But she didn’t feel the same way.
Friends noticed that Gunnarsson was displaying hostile behaviour despite usually being an introverted character. He’d lost his mother – a professional cellist – the year before, and his messages could be calm and kind, but he could also quickly get angry with Kathryn.
On one occasion, he picked Kathryn up from Las Vegas and because she was on the phone and not giving him her full attention, he started driving fast and erratically. Another time, a friend overhead him verbally insulting Kathryn when she didn’t want to go to his home. There were two different characters to Gunnarsson and very quickly more problems in the relationship began to emerge.
On 17 May, they’d been arguing. Kathryn said things weren’t working. Gunnarsson called her names and accused her of being unfaithful. Kathryn said she was walking away from the relationship and moving on. With Kathryn’s outgoing personality, she would have known she wasn’t a match for someone who was showing such possessive traits weeks into their relationship.
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Kathryn spend hours playing with the cats and dogs at the local animal shelter
Gunnarsson will serve 25 years to life in prisonThe following morning, Gunnarsson went to his stepfather’s home. His stepdad could see Gunnarsson was upset over the break-up and encouraged him to apologise to Kathryn. So he phoned her, begging her to give him another chance. He said sorry for his outburst and Kathryn agreed that he could drive to her apartment and pick her up.
A horrifying attack
Kathryn had no idea that the day before, following their argument, Gunnarsson had been acting so out of character that it had concerned his friends. They worried he might have been considering harming himself. Had Kathryn’s compassion played a part in her agreeing to go to the home of Gunnarsson’s stepfather?
That morning, on 18 May, there were painters at the Ridgecrest property. They were using machinery but thought they heard screaming coming from the RV garage. About an hour later, they entered the garage to continue their work and came across a shocking scene.
They were horrified to find the dead body of Kathryn, face down on a mattress topper. Her clothes were partially removed, and she’d been viciously attacked. Gunnarsson was there too, alive but covered in her blood. It soaked his trousers and hands. At the scene was
a 24in-long ice axe – a winter tool used to get a grip on ice and snow. With a jagged blade and long handle, it had proved to be a most brutal weapon.
The police were called and Gunnarsson was arrested. When asked what had happened, he allegedly told authorities, “I killed her.” When he was asked about Kathryn’s injuries to the head, he responded, “I don’t know, I must have bashed it in.”
Investigators believed he’d lured Kathryn into the garage and put on gloves that were found at the scene. Then he’d picked up the ice axe and struck her at least 10 times in the head, neck and face. As the blood evidence revealed, he’d touched her corpse in a sexual manner.
Hundreds of people turned up to Kathryn’s memorial, devastated by her violent death. Gunnarsson was assessed and declared mentally capable to face a jury. In September 2023, he went to trial. His defence said he was innocent – but suggested that if the jury did believe he was guilty, it was because he wasn’t in “a good state of mind” at the time.
His lawyer said the gloves at the scene could have been left by emergency services, and that Gunnarsson hadn’t sexually assaulted Kathryn. His DNA wasn’t on the handle of the axe and it was claimed that he could have entered the garage on hearing screams and discovered the body. They questioned why Gunnarsson would attack Kathryn when the painters were right outside.
But the prosecution said the argument that someone else had killed Kathryn was “absurd” and Gunnarsson had acted out of jealous anger. They said Gunnarsson had been upset over the break-up and had become fixated on a man who apparently left Kathryn’s home, despite their relationship being over. He was also angry about Facebook messages she had exchanged with a man. It had all come to a head the day before the killing, which the prosecution said was fuelled by jealousy.
A former cellmate of Gunnarsson said that while he was waiting for trial, he’d spoken to the accused, who’d admitted the relationship hadn’t been going well and that on the day of the murder he’d “lost control of his emotions”. The court heard that Kathryn’s “only mistake was dating the wrong guy”.
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The sentencing
After deliberating for less than 24 hours, the jury found Gunnarsson guilty of first-degree murder, the use of a deadly weapon and the mutilation of a corpse. As the verdict was read out, several jurors cried. In October, Gunnarsson, now 23, was sentenced.
“Only a monster would do such a thing,” Kathryn’s grandmother Sheila Rockwell said in court, adding that she wished he could be given the death penalty. Kathryn’s father, Thomas Pham, asked, “What kind of animal would find it entertaining to butcher a girl with an ice axe and then toy with her body?” He described being haunted by his daughter’s murder.
The judge ordered Gunnarsson to serve 25 years to life in prison. Donations after Kathryn’s death were given to the animal shelter where she’d spent so many hours caring for abandoned animals. Her death in the sunny state of California, with a murder weapon that was synonymous with the snow, made headlines across America. And for her grieving family, Kathryn’s murder is a wound that won’t ever heal. She was a young woman with so much potential and her death was truly ugly.
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