True Crime with Rachel Shannon
SOLVED: The Murder of Alexa Cannon: Killed by her Best Friend
Thu, 08 May 2025
In this chilling case, 20-year-old college student Alexa Cannon was brutally murdered by her best friend and roommate, Luisa Cutting, during a drug-fueled psychotic break. What led to this horrifying betrayal? Was it mental illness, substance abuse—or something darker?Today, we dive into the tragic story behind the murder that shocked Radford University.Go watch my other episodes on Spotify: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie ParzeShe Tried to Warn Them About her Son, Then he was MURDERED. THE CASE OF GUNNAR SCHUMACHER7 Year old’s Strange Death Reveals Mom’s DISGUSTING Secret: Did She Starve her for Attention?!
Chapter 1: What is the background of Alexa Cannon?
She played volleyball and loved photography. A friend described her as being a very sweet person with an uplifting personality and a gentle smile. She has two sisters, Emmy and Chloe, who she absolutely adored. Her mother went on to tell this story about how when Alexa was younger, she gave her mother a blue handkerchief and told her to use it when she got scared.
Blue was her favorite color and this was just something so small and sweet that she remembered about Alexa when she was little. Alexa went to Radford University to study psychology and wanted to do whatever she could to help others. In addition to this, she loved everything about music and art and especially interior design. She had a talent for organizing just about anything.
On her first day of school, she had sent her dad a photo of her coordinated outfit, saying that she's so excited to get ready to go for her first day of school. Alexa was also a devout Christian attending Second Presbyterian Church. She went to different service trips with her church and those who attended those trips with her said that she just brought tons of energy.
She went on two missions trips to the Dominican Republic and was looking forward to a study abroad experience in Spain so that she could learn and practice her Spanish. Her pastor said, quote, quote, she overcame a good number of challenges in her own life. Alexa was diagnosed with epilepsy at a young age, and she dealt with that issue her whole life.
Her condition made school very challenging in so many ways. There was times where she would have seizures during class, which obviously can greatly disrupt your learning. But to add to that, other students in the school would bully her because of her condition. But she moved forward and she lived her life in such a positive way and she didn't let anything get in the way.
While she was attending Radford University, those around her said that she was very involved in campus organizations and was committed to making Radford an even better university. She was always smiling and encouraging others and putting others above herself.
she truly just seemed like such an amazing woman who could absolutely lighten up anybody's life one of alexa's favorite quotes was life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass it's about dancing in the rain and now her family loves that quote because they hold alexa up and in light and love now 20 year old alexa was best friends with a 21 year old girl named louisa cutting
whose full name is actually Louisa Einz Tudela Harris Cutting. Louisa is originally from Dallas, Texas before moving to Culpeper, Virginia and attending Culpeper County High School. She also then attended Radford University. She was also known to be a smart and involved student at her school.
She spoke fluently in both English and Spanish and was named president of the Radford Latino Student Alliance. Alexa was always so supportive of Louisa and was always posting about her and especially about this accomplishment of her becoming the president. She once wrote on Facebook, So incredibly proud of my best friend Louisa Cutting for becoming Latino Student Alliance president.
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Chapter 2: How did the friendship between Alexa and Louisa evolve?
But now let's talk about another huge aspect in this case. which is the culture around doing drugs and alcohol on college campuses. Alexa was known to sometimes partake in drinking and going to parties at school, and so was Louisa. I think it's safe to say that many people who are in college or graduated from college or went to college in the past
maybe found themselves involved in using substances that weren't legal even if they just weren't legal for your age whether it be underage drinking or smoking weed things that are relatively harmless for college students for the most part obviously they can be harmful I don't want anyone to
comment saying that i'm encouraging that but some students will find themselves using much more dangerous and illicit drugs whether it be ecstasy molly adderall is a really big one or even harder drugs like cocaine louisa for one found herself drinking a lot and was tweeting all the time about how often she drinks i don't know exactly how much she was drinking or doing drugs
But some reports say that she was getting to the point where she was smoking pot so often and started using cocaine. It got to the point where it was becoming more of a habit and some of her tweets started to become concerning as well. She wrote in one tweet, who else had some weird visions in their dreams last night?
We don't know exactly what she was referring to, but knowing what we know now, this could be a little bit concerning. I'm someone that also has some pretty wild dreams, and sometimes they can be completely out of the blue and really confuse me and And I'm like, how did my brain even come up with that? And I'm not a drug user. But for knowing what we know now, this is a little bit concerning.
Then she tweeted, my roommate forgot to pay the gas bill and they won't come and turn it on until Monday. And now there's a snowstorm on the way. Well, thank God I'll be drunk all day. Again, knowing what we know now, this can be a concerning tweet given that she's tweeting about being drunk and tweeting about having issues with her roommate.
But just to play devil's advocate here and look on both sides, this might just seem like a concerning tweet knowing what we know, but it also might have just been normal frustration and normal teen bragging about drinking. Again, I know a lot of people who started in college and all they ever want to talk about is drinking and doing drugs.
They want everybody to know that they're going to get drunk and that they're going to be high or do whatever because they think that others will think that they're cool. And I also just wanted to go ahead and say that, yeah, I would be pretty upset if my roommate forgot to pay the gas bill and I had to sit in a freezing cold apartment with a snowstorm coming.
Her being frustrated about this is very normal for roommates and it doesn't mean that they had any bad blood between them. Again, I am just trying to be fair in this case and not sensationalize anything because I don't want to point to one specific thing that said there. There was a red flag. That was her problem. planning something.
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Chapter 3: What were the signs of trouble in Louisa's life?
Then going back to when they found Alexa's body, they also found her cell phone underneath her left hand. Now, I saw that in the warrants obtained for Alexa and Louisa's cell phone, Alexa had been in contact with others regarding problems that they were having with Louisa in the days leading up to her death.
However, I haven't seen stated anywhere who she spoke to, what she complained about, or literally anything else that expands on this. Warrants also showed that Alexa did call 911 on the morning that she was killed. The warrant states that they received a 911 call where they heard someone yelling,
but officers couldn't really make out what was happening in the call and the person wasn't really actually speaking to them. However, as Alexa's call was made, they received other phone calls from other people reporting the same incident at the same location. So what I gather from this is they're just trying to say that Alexa called 911 at the same time that those neighbors were calling 911.
They also tried figuring out Louisa's communication leading to Alexa's death,
However, all they really saw, or at least what I saw reported, was that she was in contact with others in the days leading up to the death, but I didn't see anywhere else like what they found, who she spoke to, or if she had complained about Alexa or anything else or said anything that could give them an indication as to why this happened.
I also saw that they were never able to find Louisa's cell phone. When she was arrested, Louisa told investigators that she had been, quote, doing cocaine with the devil. She also told them that she had taken numerous other drugs as well. She had consumed alcohol, mushrooms, Adderall, weed, and Xanax in the hours before the murder.
She had told investigators that she also had not slept in days at that point. During the interrogation, police say that she was acting very, very strangely. She was making rambling statements about the apocalypse and was reciting the Hail Mary prayer in Spanish over and over and over again. She had also tried several times to fit her entire hand in her mouth.
Investigators who interviewed her said that she admitted to this murder several times throughout the interview but she never gave an explanation for why. There were some parts of the interview where she was acting completely incoherent, but then there were other parts where she was totally with it. She told police that she couldn't even recall parts of the murder or the hours leading up to it.
But I will note that investigators said that she did express regrets and remorse for what she had done. Because of all of this, Louisa was charged with second-degree murder.
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Chapter 4: What happened on the morning of January 24th, 2019?
She knew that she deserved to be in jail for this and she knows that she's the reason that her friend is dead. Again, I don't want to give Louisa too much credit. She viciously murdered Alexa. I do just want to take a moment to point out how horrendous this attack was. It wasn't just that she stabbed her or shot her.
She literally stabbed her 30 to 40 times and the reason it's an estimate is probably because they couldn't tell how many times just based on how much she was stabbed and the fact that it was found in her mouth. That is absolutely horrific. That is terrifying. I can't even imagine someone doing that to somebody else. So I don't want to give Louisa any credit, really.
I don't want to give her any credit at all because she's a murderer. but I'm really glad to at least know that she took responsibility for her actions. I personally have no idea what I think could have caused her to have such an intense psychotic break that she kills her roommate like this, but I will say I do agree.
I do think that it is because of the drugs that she was on in addition to the lack of sleep. I think this caused her to act out of character and do this crime. I think maybe she had some
severe paranoia or maybe she thought that alexa was after her or maybe she had some really really pent-up anger issues against alexa and for some reason it all came out that one night and was taken out against her maybe there were other things going on in her life that caused her to break and do this it honestly could have been any number of things drugs can do really really weird things to your brain which is why obviously you shouldn't do them
But if you do, you shouldn't mix them like this and you need to make sure that you're sleeping and that you're being responsible with them. I don't honestly know if I think Louisa is a violent person at her core. I don't know if this is something that she wanted to do. I know, again, that she had some weird behaviors leading up a couple years.
Things in her personality seemed to be changing, but I think that could also be attributed to the drugs that she was taking. I do think that the girls had a lot of love for each other, and I think that something happened that just caused this entire thing to spiral the way it did.
Honestly, trying to figure out a reason for all of this seems pretty useless because even Luisa does not know why she did what she did. So beyond that, drugs are bad, obviously. Don't mix them. Do them responsibly. But other than that, that is where I'm going to leave this. So that's pretty much where the case lies. I'm so, so heartbroken for Alexa and her family.
This crime was so random, so horrific, so pointless. The fact that someone can lose their life like this with absolutely no reason and no explanation and nothing causing it really is just So very, very frustrating. Truly. I know we say this about a lot of victims, but truly, Alexa seemed like such a genuine person who just wanted to help others and who truly put others above herself.
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