photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Chloe Colby is pictured at her plea hearing on July 3, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

A Lawrence woman who used the dark web to acquire illegal drugs agreed in her plea deal Wednesday to serve prison time in connection with the fentanyl overdose death of her boyfriend.

The woman, Chloe Lyn Colby, 23, was originally charged with one count of distribution of a controlled substance causing death. The charge relates to an incident on April 17, 2021, when she is alleged to have provided counterfeit oxycodone to her boyfriend, Kendall Royce Stiffler, 21, of Lawrence. Royce, after taking the drugs, died of fentanyl intoxication with probable methamphetamine intoxication as a contributory factor, according to his autopsy report.

As part of her deal with the state, Colby pleaded no contest on Wednesday in Douglas County District Court to one felony count of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald said that Colby had agreed to serve any time she is sentenced to in prison and will not ask for probation or less prison time. He said that the defense could argue whether her sentences should be served concurrently or consecutively.

Judge Sally Pokorny accepted Colby’s plea and said that for the manslaughter charge she faces a minimum of 31 months and for the drug charge a minimum of 14 months. She said that Colby has no prior criminal history that would affect her sentence. Pokorny then ordered Colby to register as a violent offender for 15 years.

Colby has been free on a $250,000 own-recognizance bond since her arrest, meaning she was not required to pay any money to be released from jail. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 4.

As the Journal-World previously reported, Colby received the pills in the mail after ordering them on the “dark net,” according to an affidavit in support of her arrest. She told police in an interview on April 30, 2021, that her boyfriend, Stiffler, had shown her how to access the “dark net” using a proxy program that hid her computer’s location identification. The dark net is an encrypted portion of the internet not visible to the general public via a traditional search engine.

At Colby and Stiffler’s shared apartment, police found more than 700 pills of Xanax and 12 oxycodone, according to the arrest affidavit. Police conducted a search on her and Stiffler’s cellphones and found messages that indicated Colby was responsible for ordering and paying for the pills.