Left inset: Margot Lewis (Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Liara Tsai (Instagram). Background: The 700 block of E. 16th Street in Minneapolis, where Margot Lewis killed Liara Tsai inside her studio apartment (Google Maps).
A Minnesota woman has been found guilty of murder in connection with a bizarre car accident in which two good Samaritans stopped to assist her after she crashed a sedan. While helping, the pair found the body of a woman in the back seat wrapped in bedding, a futon-like mattress and a tarp — with only her head visible — while the female suspect was sitting in a lawn chair in the median.
The deceased individual was Margot Lewis’ ex-girlfriend, Liara Tsai, 35, who had been fatally stabbed in the neck by Lewis, 33, before the 2024 crash unfolded.
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors in Hennepin County accused Lewis of stabbing Tsai while the two were inside Tsai’s studio apartment in Minneapolis. A jury convicted Lewis of second-degree murder on Monday and found aggravating factors in the case that will give the judge overseeing it the option of going beyond the sentencing guidelines proposed for Lewis, according to MPR News.
Court documents describe Lewis as displaying “unpredictable behavior” that requires high observation while she’s behind bars. Prosecutors reportedly said during Lewis’ trial that she stabbed Tsai, a well-known local DJ, in her bed and let her bleed out. They described the pair’s relationship as “tense” and “painful,” per MPR News.
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A former romantic partner of Tsai’s told police that the relationship Tsai had with Lewis was “sordid and emotionally challenging.”
The crash that ultimately uncovered what Lewis did to her ex happened on June 22, 2024, on Interstate 90 near Highway 42 in Eyota. Lewis was driving Tsai’s vehicle.
“In checking to see if anyone else was in the vehicle, a deceased individual, a 35-year-old female, was located in the back seat,” police said in a statement on Facebook. “The condition of the deceased was suspicious, and it was immediately apparent that the death was not a result of the motor vehicle accident.”
According to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime, tire tracks indicated to police that Lewis was moving at a high rate of speed before the accident and when they searched her vehicle, officers found the body of Tsai in “suspicious” condition with dried blood on the blanket and mattress she was wrapped in. She was positioned in the back seat so that her head was aimed toward the passenger seat and her feet toward the driver’s seat.
KROC reported that the Minneapolis Police Department executed a search warrant of Tsai’s home and found a disturbing, bloody scene indicating violence. A bloody plastic and metal object was found on a bed; there was antifreeze and a small shovel in the home; and a knife was missing from a butcher’s block in Tsai’s kitchen.
The Star Tribune reported that Steven Seuling, who occasionally hired Tsai to work as a DJ for events he coordinated, said that before her death, Tsai mentioned a friend was coming to stay with her at her house.
The friend was someone Tsai had known for six years, he said, and the person was moving to Minneapolis from Iowa — Lewis is from Iowa.
Seuling told the Tribune that Tsai was a “community and trans activist” and she was “very, very much more than just a DJ.”
He said when she didn’t show up for a gig this past Sunday, he became worried because it was “very unlike her not to be there.”
Lewis is due to face additional charges in Olmsted County for concealing Tsai’s body. She is scheduled to appear in court for her sentencing on Nov. 18.
