'Homewrecker' Kyrsten Sinema Gets Taste of Own Medicine as Ex-Bodyguard Boyfriend Wrecked Her Home, Destroyed $120k of Art, Alcohol: Cops
Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is named in a North Carolina “homewrecker” lawsuit. Police in Arizona now say the man at the center of that case wrecked her actual home.
Matthew Ammel, 39, Sinema’s former bodyguard and, in court papers, her “former boyfriend,” is charged with felony criminal damage after deputies say he tore through her Cave Creek home while she was out of town, according to KNPX-TV .
When Maricopa County deputies were called on Sept. 3, Sinema told them the rampage happened on Aug. 30. She said Ammel got inside, demanded she post a video to her X account, and threatened to ruin a painting every 10 minutes if she refused.
She did not post the video. Deputies said he pulled about 22 paintings off the walls and threw them in the backyard pool. One more painting near the front door had been hit with black spray paint.
Sinema also accused him of smashing expensive liquor bottles, scattering glass through the house and into the water, and hurling a bottle at a large wall mirror until it shattered. Investigators found paintings on the bottom of the pool and floating on top.
EXCLUSIVE: The former bodyguard accused of having an affair with former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is facing felony charges for allegedly destroying over $200,000 worth of property at her home. @azfamily
https://t.co/S9cbu5VL3c https://t.co/ANS8ykPiwY
— Micaela Marshall (@MMarshallTV) September 24, 2026
Court paperwork put the value of the art at $123,015. With the mirror, glass, pool, and the rest of the mess, deputies estimated more than $200,000 in damage.
Sinema turned over texts, recordings, and surveillance video. Deputies said the cameras showed Ammel doing the damage.
He was taken into custody last week as he left a behavioral health center after a petition for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation, KNPX reported.
At his first court date, deputies said he was combative in the hallway and he did not stand before the judge, according to KNPK-TV. No bond was set. He has since been released with an electronic monitor and is due back in court.
The criminal case sits on top of a civil one that already made Sinema’s name a punch line in two states.
Heather Ammel, Matthew’s ex-wife, sued Sinema under North Carolina’s alienation-of-affection statute, known as the “homewrecker” law, according to the Associated Press. She said Sinema pursued her then-husband while he was still married, during his time on Sinema’s security detail.
Sinema has admitted the relationship became sexual. In a July deposition cited by Fox News, she said it started May 27, 2024, in Napa and continued in New York, Washington, Colorado, and Arizona — but not, she insisted, in North Carolina. For that reason, she argued, she cannot be sued in North Carolina.
A federal judge this month let the suit go forward anyway, citing texts Sinema sent Ammel while he was in the state.
So the former senator is fighting a homewrecker claim in Carolina while Arizona cops inventory a wrecked home in Cave Creek. One is a legal theory, and the other is wet canvas and broken glass.
People who treat other people’s marriages as optional usually assume the bill will never come due, but it does. Reality has a way of collecting, and it is rarely gentle when it does.
Sinema brought this man into her life as security. Deputies now say he is the one who destroyed the house. This is the consequence of her own actions, written up in a sheriff’s report.
Nobody forced Sinema to turn a married bodyguard into a boyfriend. She made that choice, admitted the affair under oath, and is still fighting the North Carolina suit that followed.
The Cave Creek mess is a separate criminal case, but it grew out of the same relationship she chose to start.
People tell themselves they can rewrite the rules around marriage and loyalty and never pay the price. Then the cameras catch the paintings in the water.
That is how this works. You do not get to bend reality forever. It snaps back, and when it does, it hurts.
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