Brae Hansen, now 37, has been found suitable for parole nearly two decades after she and her sibling killed her stepfather, longtime San Diego attorney Timothy MacNeil, who was shot four times inside his Rolando home in July 2007. Hansen was 17 at the time of the killing, and the parole board's decision yesterday reopens a case that San Diego prosecutors have long described as a coldly premeditated murder for money.
According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Hansen called 911 on July 19, 2007, and initially told police that she and MacNeil had been surprised by a masked intruder dressed in black. Police found her with her wrists zip-tied behind her back. She later said the gunman shot MacNeil after he refused to give up the combination to his safe, but prosecutors said the true story was far different: her own sibling, now known as Aerith Asora, was the one who pulled the trigger, and the two had staged the scene to look like a home-invasion robbery.
Prosecutors identified Hansen as the mastermind of the plot, arguing that she and Asora conspired to kill MacNeil for financial gain. Court evidence, detailed by the San Diego County District Attorney's Office, showed Asora bought black clothing at a Goodwill store in Phoenix on July 18, 2007, the day before the killing, then drove to San Diego and hid inside MacNeil's home while he made plans to take Hansen to dinner. Prosecutors said Asora had Hansen zip-tie MacNeil's hands before Hansen herself was restrained, and that Asora shot MacNeil after he freed himself.
A Split Verdict for Siblings Tried Together
Hansen and Asora were tried together in San Diego Superior Court in 2009 but before two separate juries, and the two panels reached different conclusions about the crime. Hansen's jury found true a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, while Asora's jury rejected that same allegation. Both siblings were convicted of first-degree murder; Hansen was sentenced to life without parole, while Asora received 25 years to life.
Hansen's sentence did not stay at life without parole. In July 2015, San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederic Link resentenced her to 25 years to life, citing U.S. Supreme Court rulings that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional, as reported by the Times of San Diego. The judge pointed to defense testimony describing childhood physical abuse by Hansen and Asora's mother, who died by suicide in 2006, the year before the murder.
Youth Offender Law Opened the Door to Parole
Hansen's path to parole ran through California Penal Code § 3051, which the state expanded in 2017 to require the Board of Parole Hearings to give great weight to the hallmark features of youth — including brain development, immaturity, and capacity for rehabilitation — when reviewing parole for people who committed their crimes before age 26, as Hoodline has previously reported. Both Hansen and Asora had their first parole hearings in 2025 under those youthful offender provisions, and both were denied.
Hansen was told after her January 7, 2025 hearing that she could try again in three years. Instead, she successfully petitioned the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for an administrative advancement, and corrections officials agreed to move her hearing forward, according to the district attorney's office. That led to her Friday hearing, less than 19 months after her initial denial, where the board found her suitable for release. Hansen has a transitional housing placement lined up outside San Diego County if she is released.
Asora's outcome went the other way. At a July 30, 2025 parole suitability hearing, commissioners denied Asora parole for a full five-year period under the youth offender rules, with the next eligibility review not set until 2030, per The Coast News. Asora separately lost a post-conviction legal fight in March 2022, when California's Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled in Gann v. Acosta that stepfathers qualify as immediate family under prison regulations barring overnight conjugal visits for violent offenders, rejecting Asora's argument that the stepparent bond had ended when the siblings' mother died before the murder.
DA's Office Says It Stands With MacNeil's Family
District Attorney Summer Stephan called the killing a callous, premeditated murder motivated by greed and said her office was deeply disappointed by the decision to grant Hansen parole, standing with MacNeil's family in opposing her release. MacNeil was admitted to the California State Bar in 1970 and worked for the district attorney's office for six years before entering private practice as a defense attorney, a biography the DA's office highlighted in underscoring the case's resonance within the local legal community.
The district attorney's office said it has not yet decided whether it will continue fighting Hansen's release. The parole grant now faces a 120-day review by the California parole board, and the Governor's office has a separate 30-day window in which it may revoke the decision. The office noted that nearly 70% of the parole hearings handled by its Lifer Team stem directly from California's expanded youth offender and elder parole laws, a trend it says has reshaped its caseload in recent years.
The numbers underscore how rare Hansen's outcome remains. Of 571 parole hearings scheduled for life-sentenced inmates in San Diego County in 2025, only 49 resulted in parole grants, while the remaining 522 ended in denial, postponement, or stipulation to denial, according to the district attorney's office.
