Anchorage man sentenced to 100 years for 2019 murder of wife and teen daughter; Family gets to ‘turn the page now’
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - On Friday, an Anchorage superior court judge sentenced Tylan Lee-Kaulana Fely, 40, for the murders of his wife and 13-year-old daughter in November 2019.
Content Warning: This article contains information that some readers might find disturbing.
On Nov. 30, 2019, prosecutors say Fely shot and killed his wife, Cecilia Tuuaga, 30, at their home in front of his daughter, Nevaeh Tuuaga.
He then drove Nevaeh around with Cecilia’s body in the car. They stopped at a gas station where Fely stayed on the phone with Nevaeh while she purchased a gas can and filled it up.
Fely then shot and killed his daughter in a vacant lot before setting the car on fire with both bodies inside, as previously stated by prosecutors.
In October 2024, Fely pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.
On Friday, a plea agreement was reached and resulted in Fely being sentenced to serve 100 years in prison and will not be eligible for parole until he serves a minimum of 55 years.
According to the district attorney’s office, reaching a plea agreement avoided the testimony of one of Fely’s surviving children.
The sentencing was described as “highly emotional” by the attorney’s office as many family members of Cecilia and Navaeh spoke about how loved they both were. Their family members were quoted by the attorney’s office saying that Cecilia and Nevaeh’s lives “will be a memory that lives on forever within us all.”
Cecilia’s older brother, Loto Lealaimatafao, was one of several family members who spoke during Friday’s hearing. In an interview with Alaska’s News Source, he said that while there are ultimately no winners in a situation like this, he and his family are grateful for the closure.
“We’re still healing, but we can look forward now with this part of the journey is done,” Lealaimatafao said. “We get to turn the page now, and now we get to write a whole new chapter in our family, and I thank God because we hold the pen.”
Both of Fely’s surviving daughters also spoke on Friday, sharing how they’ve had to manage the loss of their mother and sister. Lealaimatafao described the moment when he saw his oldest niece reclaim her strength in the courtroom.
“I’m so grateful because I realized in that moment this girl’s life is not going to be defined by what she lost, not going to be defined by our loved ones that passed,” Lealaimatafao said. “No, it’s going to be defined by the things that she was taught by her momma, things that were taught by her sister, and that’s love, and that’s family, and that’s forgiveness, that’s grace, that’s mercy.”
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna said that the hearing “emphasized the humanity of the criminal justice process and the strength of the victim’s family,” as stated by the district attorney’s office in a press release.
Judge McKenna had told the surviving children at the hearing that they “will find light and joy again, it will come, it will be different but you will find that.”
Editor’s note: The original video aired in this story showed the wrong defendant. The video has been updated to correctly identify Tylan Fely.
See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com
Copyright 2025 KTUU. All rights reserved.
