What was Mom doing when you left on your road trip?
She was somewhere else. She was somewhere else.
How do you know she was somewhere else?
Because Mom wasn't in the car with us.
This is Rowan Jonathan Ali and Elizabeth Farrell's five year
old daughter. Her innocent comment about a big
adventure seemed meaningless at 1st until detectives realized it
held the one clue they needed to uncover her mother's killer.
What started as a missing persons case spiraled into one
of Louisiana's darkest homicide investigations, revealing a
trail of lies, obsession, and a twisted family secret no one saw
coming. It all began on the morning of
April 23rd, 2016 when a fisherman in Whiskey Bay,
Louisiana noticed something floating in the water and made
this 911 call. 911 Where's your emergency?
Ma'am, I'm fishing in Whiskey Bay and I just find a dead body
the West side of Whiskey Bay. OK, see where you are on my map?
You're in Iberville Parish. OK, but you're actually fishing
in the water. Right.
Yes, ma'am, I'm by the body now. At first he thought it was
debris, but as he got closer to it, his stomach twisted.
It wasn't debris, it was the lifeless body of a woman.
So that someone had a lot of rage and it just looked to me to
be something personal. This was brutal.
To anybody do that, that's that's an animal.
Little did he know, this chilling discovery was only the
beginning. What lay beneath the surface of
this mystery was far darker than the murky waters of Whiskey Bay.
Within minutes of the 911 call, detectives from the Eberville
Parish Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene.
Their first priority was to recover the body from the water.
That looked like spot. Right.
There, as the detectives carefully pulled her from the
Bay, a disturbing detail emerged.
The woman was completely unclothed.
This meant that she hadn't ended up there by accident.
Someone had thrown her from the Atchafalaya Basin bridge above.
When I rolled about it, I could see her face and neck.
It was unbelievably bruised, black, blue, Greek.
And I knew that's uh oh, This is not a classical drowning.
The body was dead before it hit the water.
It definitely indicated that she did not put herself in that body
of water and we were looking at a homicide.
She had been the victim of somebody else's devilish ways.
Who was this woman and how did she end up there?
What tragic chain of events LED her to this fate?
With no personal belongings, no ID and no immediate clues at the
scene, the detectives had no way of identifying her all.
We know is we found a new female with trauma to the neck, head
and back, but I knew her fingers were good and I was hoping and
praying she had a criminal record.
If she had a criminal record, it was that good chance that she
had been fingerprinted somewhere before or her DNA wouldn't take
it. So they collected her
fingerprints and DNA samples and sent them to the Louisiana State
Police crime lab, hoping for a match.
And luckily, they got one. So we got lucky.
It was late that night. I won't say it's about 11:00
that night. I think the Louisiana State
Police crime lab called and said hey, we got an ID on her.
Her name is Elizabeth Ann Perrell, looked her.
Up on Facebook. And I will send you her name on
Facebook, OK. And her shoulder tattoo.
You can see it in one of the pictures.
Michelle, you got a date of birth on the back.
Yes, May 31st of 1987, it's a huge sigh of relief when we get
a fingerprint match for her because then we're really able
to start our investigation. She can be from Texas.
How had Elizabeth traveled over 300 miles from Humble, TX to
that lonely stretch of Louisiana?
Was it an innocent road trip that took a deadly turn, or had
someone forcefully brought her there?
That was the $1,000,000 question, and the answer would
expose A sinister truth no one dared to imagine.
Affectionately known as Liz, Elizabeth had learned from an
early age that life wasn't always kind.
Raised without a father and by a mother battling a her childhood
was far from happy, but she learned to navigate life's
challenges with resilience and determination.
When she was 18, Elizabeth lost her mother to severe kidney
disease. With no family members around,
she was completely on her own. Determined to survive, she found
work as a server at a local restaurant.
It was there that she met Jonathan Alley, a charming and
witty Co worker who quickly caught her attention.
He was intelligent, he played guitar, he was just a very
imaginative person. She told me she had a big crush
on Jonathan and I could see why. Any time that they talked, she
would just light up and it's just like, Oh my God, chess
already. Jonathan was a hard.
Worker he took her out to. Eat.
He would give her flowers. Nobody's given her flowers
before. Jonathan was really appreciative
of Liz. It looked absolutely adorable
and wholesome. This might be a beautiful batch.
Elizabeth had always been fascinated by supernatural
things, especially vampires. She dreamt of opening a vampire
themed bar on the legendary Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
When she shared her ambitions with Jonathan, he quickly got on
board with the idea. So in February 2000, 1009,
Elizabeth and Jonathan packed up their lives in Humble and set
out for a fresh start in New Orleans.
It wasn't going to be easy. Money was tight and the road
ahead was uncertain. But for the first time in a long
time, Elizabeth was happy. She was building a future with
someone who believed in her. However, their New Orleans dream
didn't last long. Just six months after their
move, Elizabeth discovered she was pregnant.
As priority shifted, their dream of a vampire themed bar was put
on hold. With limited options and little
money, they made the difficult decision to return to Humble,
where they moved in with Jonathan's grandmother, GAIL
Ali. In August 2010, Elizabeth gave
birth to a baby girl, whom they named Rowan.
When Jonathan came out holding up the baby, he was just
absolutely glowing. You've never seen someone
happier. Was one of the highlights of my
entire life. Liz just loved being a mother.
Having her family was everything.
I think all of us want to be the parent that we didn't have.
Three years later, their little family grew once again.
In fall of 2014, their second daughter, Autumn, was born.
From the outside, the Ali family looked picture perfect, a young
couple with two beautiful daughters building a life
together. But beneath the surface, cracks
were forming. The financial strain of raising
two young children made it nearly impossible for Elizabeth
and Jonathan to get ahead in terms of money.
For the next three years, they remain trapped in the cramped
confines of Gail's house. What was supposed to be a
temporary arrangement slowly became permanent.
Tensions began to rise, especially between Elizabeth and
GAIL. I know that there was strain
because one of the last times I got to hang out with Liz, she
spent time complaining about the way his grandmother was treating
her. She didn't seem to want Liz
there anyway. I could definitely tell you that
Louis felt trapped. She lived with Jonathan, the
babies and GAIL. GAIL had never truly liked
Elizabeth, and over time, their tense relationship only grew
worse. To make matters even more
difficult, her relationship with Jonathan had begun to crumble.
The stress of money problems, crowded living conditions, and
constant tension drove a wedge between them.
Desperate for an escape, Elizabeth found one in the world
of online gaming. When the girls were asleep and
didn't need her, she would turn on her Xbox, slip on her
headset, and lose herself in the virtual world.
As time went on, Elizabeth started spending more and more
time connecting with the people she met online.
She built friendships, confided in strangers, and even arranged
to meet some of them in real life.
But that life was cut short. Someone had brutally killed her,
and the detectives were determined to find out who it
was. The remote, swampy area of
Eberville Parish where Elizabeth's body was found, has
a notorious reputation as a dumping ground for the dead, and
Interstate 10, which passes directly through the area, is a
major corridor for human trafficking since victims can be
moved across state lines unnoticed.
This chilling reality LED detectives to consider a
disturbing possibility. Had Elizabeth fallen into the
hands of traffickers. Just as they were exploring this
theory, a new lead emerged. I come to find out in the night
pry but it was a three car accident within two to three
miles from where she was located.
We found out that one of them individuals who was involved in
the crash has a background that dealt with crimes against women
or prostitution. So that compounded what we were
looking at because now we have this crash in this individual in
the same area of the body. Looking at that vehicle, it was
obvious that blood transfer and blood was present.
On the door parade, passenger side blood.
So I'm thinking and you know, that's got to be her.
That's going to be her blood. Had Elizabeth Farrell been in
the car with him? Was it her blood?
Had she been this man's victim? Determined to find the truth,
detectives wasted no time. They obtained a search warrant
for his vehicle, hoping it would hold the evidence they needed.
They collected DNA evidence from the scene, carefully swabbing
the blood stains found in the vehicle.
The samples were then sent off to the crime lab for further
analysis. As they waited for the results,
detectives turned their focus to finding Elizabeth's next of kin
and delivering the news no family ever wants to hear.
Scrolling through her Facebook profile, detectives found out
that she worked at a popular HomeGoods store in Humboldt.
Wasting no time, they reached out to the store and spoke with
an employee who supplied the detectives with Elizabeth's
emergency contact details. It was a phone number and an
address for her husband, Jonathan Alley.
Detectives dialed Jonathan Alley's cell phone, but there
was no answer. Next, they tried the number
listed for the homeowner. This time, someone picked up.
It was GAIL Alley, Jonathan's grandmother.
So I expressed my condolences. I told her that Elizabeth was
murdered here in our parish in Louisiana.
And I can't see her over the telephone, but I'm expecting a
scream. I'm expecting a loud shout.
Oh, my God, something like that. And she said, well, what's she
doing in Louisiana? And she's like, well, she's
always talked about going to Louisiana.
And I'm like, that's strange. I would think she'd ask me well
what happened, but she didn't sound real upset.
When detectives asked GAIL where she had been at the time of
Elizabeth's murder, she had a quick answer.
She claimed she had been in Groesbeck, Texas, attending an
event with a significant other. They had been gone all weekend.
It sounded solid, but detectives knew better than to take anyone
at their word. They had to verify her alibi and
find out more about her. In the meantime, the results of
Elizabeth Farrell's autopsy also came back.
Hey, Ronnie. They didn't finish autopsy.
Yet. Yeah, we finished autopsy.
We're on the road heading back now.
We have a cause of death. It's asphyxiation due to
strangulation. No assault in the form of.
But she did have some old bruising on her body, which
could have been a sign of past physical assault.
She also had some blunt force trauma to the head.
They had a lot of blood on the scalp due to the trauma.
Yeah, we believe so. To see that much blood on her
skull and beneath her scalp, it was shocking even 4 seasoned
detectives. But what stood out even more was
the method of the murder. Strangulation is an intimate
crime. It's personal.
It takes force and rage. Detectives concluded that this
wasn't the work of a stranger in the dark.
Elizabeth Farrell was killed by someone who knew her, someone
who had been close to her, and most importantly, someone who
had a reason to want her dead. The Coronas report placed
Elizabeths time of death between 28 to 48 hours before her body
was discovered. That meant that she had been
killed elsewhere and then dumped in the Bay.
The detectives also received the DNA results from the blood found
in the car on Atchafalaya Basin Bridge.
Blood was cross referenced through DNA and it was
determined that that blood did not match the DNA of Elizabeth
Farrell. Absolutely not her blood.
Nothing to do with that vehicle at all.
Couldn't put her in that vehicle.
That blood was from one of the gentleman that was involved in
the crash, so we knew for a fact that she was not a part of that
crash. Or was there one of them cars?
With one suspect ruled out, the detectives decided to take a
closer look at Elizabeth's immediate family.
So they tried Jonathan Alley's cell phone again.
This time, he answered. I don't like doing death
notification, but I've done numerous in my career.
Mr. Ali, do you know what Elizabeth Farrell said?
That's the mother of my children.
So, well, look, we have found her here in our parish in
Louisiana. And I hate to tell you, but she
is deceased. I think his words for me was
where I say in Louisiana or what is she doing over there?
And I'm like, that's why I'm calling you.
He just didn't seem too upset about it.
Not anything that I would expect, not a reaction to where
he had broken down, but he was surprised about the situation.
Everyone reacts differently when they hear about the death of a
loved one. But when detectives in Louisiana
informed Jonathan Ali and his grandmother GAIL that Elizabeth
was dead, something felt off. There were no urgent questions,
no immediate panic, no desperate pleas for answers.
Instead, their responses felt controlled, almost calculated.
Like they were processing something they already knew.
It was enough to make the detective suspect one thing
Jonathan and his grandmother knew more than they were letting
on. That caught the investigator's
attention. It did set up a red flag.
That was a loose end that had to be followed up.
Jonathan, my bookie probably become suspect #1.
Jonathan was either rattled or he was lying, but over the phone
it was impossible to tell. Detectives needed to question
him face to face and observe his body language to uncover the
truth. So Detective Aubrey Saint Angelo
was dispatched 250 miles away to Humble, TX to talk to Jonathan
and other people who knew Elizabeth best.
Family, friends, coworkers, anyone who could shed light on
her final days. Detectives decided to start at
Jonathan and Elizabeth's house. They wanted to see Jonathan's
reaction, hear what he had to say say, and most importantly,
find any clues that might explain how Elizabeth ended up
dead in Whiskey Bar. But when they arrived, Jonathan
wasn't there. Only his grandmother, GAIL, was
home. GAIL was a little taken back by
the fact that homicide detectives were knocking on her
door. She was very stonewallish and
dry about describing Elizabeth to us.
The vibe that I got was that they all tolerated each other in
the house. They were just cohabitating, not
real family oriented or anything like that.
When we first talked to GAIL, we asked her where she was in the
last three days. GAIL told us that she was at a
campground. We found the name of this place
and I spoke to management over there and they said yes, she was
there. So we didn't think that she had
anything to do with Elizabeth's death.
As the legal owner of the property, GAIL signed a
voluntary consent to allow detectives to search the house
and land. Detectives knew they had only
one shot to search the house. If evidence was hidden inside,
this was their last chance to find it.
Anything that could tie Jonathan to Elizabeth's death had to be
uncovered now. There wouldn't be a second
opportunity. You look for evidence, you look
for disturbance, look for stuff that's been cleaned.
I'm looking for anything that linked her to Louisiana.
One last one, Nelson. Yes.
Did you ask who these computers were?
Far? Those are her work computers.
That's my Dell laptop that died. Yes, ma'am.
That both of them are trying to. Work she ever use any of them?
No, I did not get any indication that there was any signs of a
struggle in the house. I didn't find any evidence of
where Elizabeth cell phone was or where Elizabeths gaming
device was or anything. Just as detectives were wrapping
up their search, Jonathan came home.
Detectives asked him if he'd be willing to come down to the
Harris County Sheriff's Office to give a statement.
Jonathan agreed. They decided to go in soft,
keeping the conversation casual, and give Jonathan a chance to
tell his side of the story. The strategy was to let him talk
and lock him into his statements because once his version of
events was officially recorded, they could compare it to the
evidence. If the details didn't add up and
the inconsistencies started piling up, they would tighten
the screws. Hey.
Jonathan, can you be right, man? He's not in the lace.
My first impression of Jonathan, he looked like he hadn't slept
in days. Nothing out of the ordinary from
what someone who would lose a loved one should look like, but
he appeared to be very disheveled.
Right now, we're investigating a very serious event.
OK? You know, we need to find out
what's going on with the whole situation.
Tell her what happened Thursday. She was upset with me because
the phone bill was due and they were going to cut it off over
the last few years, you know, she got one in her games and the
Internet's type of the phone. Without the Internet, there's no
video game. What did she say to you?
She said I needed to figure it out.
When was the last time you saw her?
Thursday For what? All you did Thursday.
Thursday. Well, I got her the money she
wanted, went to the smoke shop, came home about, I'm going to
say about 3330, this one there. What did you do?
Well, I kind of stood there for a minute, like, OK.
And I just went about my day. There was no hint of shock in
Jonathan's voice, none of the concern or panic you would
expect from someone whose partner had suddenly vanished
without explanation. Instead, he was detached and
calm. What else would you do Friday?
Friday. I feel like that because I was
cleaning out the room and sitting there going, Oh, well,
this is where this is where I'm going to put the baby's crib.
Cleaning out what room? Her room, But you was cleaning
it out, talking about where you was going to put the baby's crib
because she left. I mean, she was just going for
one day at that point. It's not the first time she's
left before back the day before, the day before.
I told her that I was the only reason she was there, that
nobody wanted her there. Mm hmm.
There was a lot of a lot of tension in the house.
Jonathan had already started moving her things out before
anyone had even confirmed Elizabeth was dead.
To detectives, that detail was chilling.
It was almost like he knew she wasn't coming back long before
anyone else did. Detectives found it strange that
Jonathan didn't get angry when confronted about Elizabeth's
death. There was no outrage, no
defensiveness, not even a hint of an emotional reaction.
This only deepened their suspicions.
So they took the next logical step and asked him to take a
polygraph test. You'd be willing to take a
polygraph test real quick? Sure.
OK, I'm tight. We'll go get that guideline.
Though all right, I haven't. Slept in about two days.
I'm not taking a polygraph today.
He could only do more harm than he could.
Jonathan's refusal to take a polygraph test raised numerous
red flags. Was he hiding something?
What was he afraid of? If he was truly innocent, taking
the test would have helped clear his name and and given the
detectives one last reason to doubt him.
Instead, his refusal did the opposite.
It made him the prime suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Farrell.
Jonathan, however, continued to deny that he had anything to do
with Elizabeth's death. The facts remain.
I didn't do it. I didn't do this.
Don't get it. I don't know.
To find cracks in Jonathan's story, detectives knew they had
to verify his alibi. Jonathan had told them on the
day Elizabeth vanished. He had left home to pawn an item
and cash a check, hoping to scrape together enough money to
pay the phone bill, and when he returned, Elizabeth was gone.
Detectives followed the trail, verifying that Jonathan had
indeed visited a pawn shop and cashed a check.
So far, everything he told them checked out.
But was that the whole story or was he just giving detectives
enough truth to make the lies harder to spot?
As detectives continue to piece together the final day of
Elizabeth's life, the devastating news began to
spread. Friends and Co workers started
to learn the shocking truth that Elizabeth had been murdered.
The disbelief quickly turned to grief and then suspicion.
A friend that I went to high school with asked me if I had
heard, like, heard what? Liz is dead.
They just found her and I broke down crying my eyes out for
about 2 1/2 hours. I felt like I just lost a part
of me. You know she.
Was my friend, she was my family.
She accepted me and now she's gone.
While Elizabeth's friends struggled to come to terms with
her devastating loss, detectives stayed focused on their next
move, which was to talk to her Co workers at the HomeGoods
store. They hoped her Co workers could
fill in the blanks about Elizabeth's final days and her
relationship with Jonathan. What Elizabeth's Co workers
revealed shocked detectives. How did Jonathan treat her?
Let's start that. Not very nice.
I know of two occasions where he has hit her.
How recent? The last one I think I heard was
three or four months ago. She.
Told you about this. She did.
I saw the bruises when she came into work.
Where were the bruises? On her face they were in the car
driving jump 494 which is kind of like a dark 2 lane Rd.
Not a lot of light, not a lot of cars.
And he was inebriated on something, I'm not sure if it
was drugs or alcohol, and he was speeding with their child in the
back seat yelling at her. And he had a cast on his arm and
he backhanded her with the cast while driving.
Elizabeth and Jonathan's marriage had become abusive, and
Elizabeth had confided in her friends that she wanted to leave
him. They were no longer intimate
with each other and had started sleeping in separate rooms.
Did they have an open relationship?
Like it was OK if she met other men and it was OK that she.
Well, as far as she was concerned, the marriage was
over. I think he wanted to hang on to
her. I don't think he wanted to try.
And I think in some ways he met in his mind he wanted to try and
reconcile on some level. But after he hit her, she was
done. I mean, he had, I mean, after he
hit her with the cast specifically, she was, he was
done. She very much wanted to leave
Jonathan. She felt very stuck.
I know that she wanted to take Autumn, the youngest child, and
move back to New Orleans within a year's time, I believe without
Jonathan or Roman, the older child.
Any idea why she wanted to take the older?
Child. I I believe that she she
wouldn't be financially stable to take care of both, but she
know that they would take care. Of Rowan When Jonathan started
using drugs and drinking excessively, everything changed.
The man who once seemed charming and easygoing became volatile,
unpredictable and increasingly violent.
He alternates between using alcohol and synthetic marijuana
and. How do you know that?
She's told us she's even found him from the synthetic marijuana
on occasion, 11 occasion. She told me specifically she
found him on the floor, you know, convulsing I guess, and
she stopped it. Shannon Farris, Phyllis's best
friend at work, proved to be an invaluable source of information
for the detectives. Actually, she had been meeting a
few people on her online gaming. There was one from Oklahoma, one
from Louisiana, and the most recent one was actually up in
New Jersey. She pretty much met, she met the
one from Oklahoma here in Houston, Humble.
He didn't go to her house. They met.
They were in a hotel and she did say they had one that Monday
that they were together. It was a wonderful day.
And yes, she was intimate with them because she was feeling
much relief at her. And then the one from New
Jersey, she'd been talking on the phone a lot with him, Maria
Lily. And at one point he actually, I
don't know how he sent it to her without her husband finding out
about. He actually sent her a Michael
Kor watch. What about Louisiana meet?
Any idea? I don't know who she met in
Louisiana. As far as I know she met the guy
in Louisiana. I don't know.
The only one I know is she was just talking to him at this
point. The revelation that Elizabeth
Farrell had recently met a mysterious man at a hotel,
someone she had only ever talked to through her Xbox, raised a
whole new set of questions for detectives.
Had this secret meeting been a turning point?
Did Jonathan find out about Elizabeth's meeting with this
man and snap in a jealous rage? Given his history of drug use
and angry outbursts, it was a real possibility.
But there was another theory, one just as disturbing.
Could Elizabeth have been tricked by someone she met
online? Someone who pretended to be
friendly while gaming, only to hurt her once they met face to
face. Meeting with individuals who you
meet online in person is risky behavior.
You don't know who the other individual is.
And that could be a very dangerous thing.
Gaming could be a very dangerous thing.
And you know, you see it in the news every day.
You know these predators. She's gaming.
She's only Internet people. She has no clue who they are.
He could have been a serial killer from New York, could have
been anybody. Detectives, we're now looking at
2 very different but equally troubling paths.
Was Elizabeth killed by a jealous partner or targeted by a
stranger hiding behind a screen? While digging into Elizabeth's
online activity, detectives discovered that she had formed a
relationship with a man named Jason Sweat.
The two had connected through online gaming, and their
conversations eventually moved beyond just games.
Things got personal and serious enough that Jason traveled
across state lines to meet her in person.
That immediately raised a red flag.
Did Sweat have something to do with Elizabeth's death?
Could he have been hiding something?
For three days, Eberville Parish detectives searched for Jason
Sweat, trying to track down the man.
But before they could find him, Jason beat them to it and called
them first. They transferred him into my
cell phone. He'd said that he heard about
Elizabeth's body being found. I asked him what could you tell
me about her and what was your relationship to her?
What is your tie to Elizabeth? Well, I was very careful when I
was talking to him. I can't give him too much
information because if he's the suspect, I need to be able to
use that information against him.
Mrs. Sweat told investigators that yes, he had a romantic
relationship with her, started off gaming and he actually came
into Humble, TX and they spent a night together in a hotel and
had sexual relations. That was very interesting to say
the least. Mr. Sweat identified that he had
not spoken to Elizabeth in a few days.
She had mentioned that her phone was going to be cut off and she
wasn't sure when she was going to have service again.
That was the last time he had heard.
From her. When detectives asked Jason
where he was on the day Elizabeth was murdered, he
claimed he was back home in Oklahoma, nearly 8 hours away
and hundreds of miles from Whiskey Bay.
But detectives quickly realized they couldn't tell if he was
being truthful. If they wanted real answers,
they couldn't rely on just his words.
They needed to confirm his alibi.
Even though Jason was forthcoming about the
information and wanting to help us with Elizabeth, we still had
to find out if he was where he should have been through the
timetable of Elizabeth's death. So we had to backtrack his
information. We did phone records everything,
you know, all GPS coordinates, and everything he told us was
exactly the way he said it happened.
Based on the time frame of Elizabeth Farrell's death, there
was no way that Jason Sweat could have been involved.
He was in Oklahoma. With Jason Sweats alibi
confirmed, detectives were able to rule him out as a suspect.
That left them with one name that remained at the center of
it all, Jonathan Alley. From what Elizabeth's friends
had told detectives, it was clear that her marriage was
falling apart. Elizabeth had already started
seeing other people desperately looking for a way out.
Maybe Jonathan found out about the affair and snapped.
Fueled by jealousy and anger, he did the unthinkable.
Detectives couldn't ignore that possibility, so they revisited
Jonathan Ali's interview from just two days earlier, looking
for anything they might have missed.
One comment stood out. When the detectives first
interviewed Jonathan, they had asked him a crucial question.
Have you ever been to Louisiana before?
Yeah. When's the last time you met in
Louisiana? Three years ago, Yeah.
Not in recent, no. Detectives now needed to lock
him into that answer. If evidence showed that Jonathan
had been anywhere near that area in the last few days, then it
would directly implicate him in Elizabeth's murder.
During his interrogation, Jonathan claimed the last time
he saw Elizabeth was on April 21st, 2 days before her body was
discovered in Whiskey Bay. According to him, she left the
house that day without much explanation, leaving him alone
to care for their two young daughters.
But was that what really happened?
Detectives weren't so sure. The timeline felt too clean, too
convenient. So the detectives made a bold
and risky decision. They decided to talk to
Elizabeth and Jonathans 5 year old daughter, Rowan.
It was a delicate situation. Rowan was young, and the trauma
of losing her mother was still fresh.
But detectives believed she might be old enough to remember
something important, something that could either back up
Jonathan's story or tear it apart.
So they brought in a pediatric psychologist, someone trained to
speak with children in a safe, gentle way.
You could just sit right there. You like my room?
Yes. Here in Harris County we have
the Children's Assessment Center.
It is a great resource with professionals who are highly
trained in this field in speaking with children in very
sensitive situations as this one.
The psychologist began carefully easing Rowan into the
conversation with questions about her parents relationship.
What was life like at home? How did Liz and Jonathan treat
each other? Did they fight?
Did they seem happy? Tell me more about your mommy,
what you would see happening to mommy?
They would just sometimes argue about a boyfriend that daddy
thought it was fake. About a boyfriend that daddy
thought was fake. What made Daddy think the
boyfriend was fake? Well you see, Daddy thinks
thought that mommy always want to spend more time with her
boyfriend named Brad and he thought he mommy never wanted to
play to spend time with him. So tell me, like, what would
Daddy do when he found out about Brad?
Well, he would just fight with mommy.
He would just. Fight with mommy, OK, Have you
ever seen someone getting angry at mom?
It was Dad who sometimes did that.
Tell me everything he would do when he'd get angry.
I would hear you just play with your boyfriend all the time, so
much that you never want to play with me.
After a few gentle questions about her parents, the
psychologist shifted gears and asked her about any recent trips
she had taken with her dad. Have you ever been on any like
long like road trip in a car? One time we were in the car for
three hours. Who was with?
You, dad, and we were in the cars and we were in the car for
three hours. And where was your sister when
you were in that long 3 hour trip?
Autumn was with me and I was with me and I was with her.
I was sitting next to her in the back seat.
OK. And what did you do in the car
while you were in the car? What we did was we just drove
around for three hours and he was joking that we were in the
car for 8 hours. You're joking that you were in
the car for 8 hours. OK.
And tell me, could you see out the window when you were in the
car? What did you see when you were
driving in the car while you were in the trip?
A little while later when I was looking on about it was starting
to get a little dark. Starting to get dark?
It was starting to get. Dark Rowan told the pediatric
psychologist that her father had put her and her little sister
into a car and told them they were going on a big adventure.
They left their home when it was still light outside.
But as Rowan shared her story, one thing stood out.
She never mentioned her mother. The psychologist picked up on
that immediately, so she asked her gently if her mom had come
along on that trip. Well, what was mom doing when
you left on your road trip? She was somewhere.
Else she was somewhere else. How do you know she was
somewhere else? Because Mom wasn't in the car
with us. OK.
Whenever you went on that trip, did anybody get anything out of
the car or out of the back of the car?
I think dad got a few things out on the back of the car.
Yeah, tell me, when you got things out of the back of the
car, where were you? I was still still in my car
seat. There's me an.
Item was still. Our car seats.
And where was the car parked at? At the middle of the road.
At the middle of the road, OK. He didn't run over because Dad's
very careful. So when he stopped in the middle
of the road, did you see what he got out of the car?
No. No.
What did he do with the thing he got out of the car?
Well, I don't even, I didn't even see what he did with.
It OK. Did you see like what it looked
like? No, no.
OK. And when he gets out of the car,
was it lighter? Dark out?
It was dark. It was dark, OK.
While Rowan couldn't see exactly what was happening, detectives
believed she had unknowingly witnessed a crucial moment.
Based on the timeline, her statements, and the location,
they were fully convinced that Jonathan Alley had grown
Elizabeth Farrell's body over the edge of the Atchafalaya
Basin Bridge. A rotten bastard had the nerve
to bring the five year old and a one year old child that's in the
backseat and. And unbeknownst to them, their
mother's dead in his room. They had no clue.
To find out that he used his kids to transport Elizabeth,
it's, it's, it's inhumane. The detectives had now no doubt
in their minds Jonathan Ali had killed Elizabeth and disposed of
her body 250 miles from home. But they still needed solid
proof that Jonathan was in Whiskey Bar the night
Elizabeth's body was thrown off the bridge.
Something concrete that would place him at that exact location
at the exact time. We know that Elizabeth's body
was found in Ebervo Parish, which is about four hours away
from where she lived. Law enforcement began canvassing
videos and cameras in that area to see if there was any evidence
that could help with the investigation.
Jonathan's vehicle was identified as a small grey 2015
Nissan Versa. It had a small American flag
attached to the rear window. It was a small detail, but it
made the car stand out. Detectives now knew exactly what
they were looking for, they just didn't know exactly when.
That meant combing through thousands of hours of
surveillance footage from countless traffic and security
cameras. We had an officer named
Detective Jeremy Sanchez and he deals with a lot of our video
surveillance and things like that.
He'd come to work at 8:00 in the morning and he'd just watch
video and without exaggerating, I think he probably went through
10,000 cars. After scanning the footage of
nearly three days, Detective Sanchez finally found what he
was looking for. I heard him holler.
I got that son of a bitch. Bingo.
I got the car. He was able to see a sticker of
American flag on the rear window.
The license plate matches also it comes back to the address in
Humble, TX, so that vehicle just didn't pop up on that camera
without being driven there. That one American flag sticker
helped us put our case together. At 7:38, PMA traffic camera
positioned at the Breaux Bridge Way station just outside of
Whiskey Bay captured A crucial image.
It showed Jonathan's Nissan Versa heading east along I-10
towards the remote swampy stretch where Elizabeth
Farrell's body was later discovered.
The time stamp placed his car in Louisiana during the exact time
window. Detectives believed Elizabeth's
body was dumped. And then at 9:15 PM, just under
2 hours later, the same Nissan Versa was captured again, this
time heading West back toward Texas.
With the surveillance images and the statements from Rowan
contradicting Jonathan's version of events, detectives finally
had what they needed. There was now enough probable
cause to move forward. On April 29, 2016, Jonathan
Alley was taken into custody and formally charged with the murder
of Elizabeth Farrell. The right to remain silent.
Anything you say. Can we schedule a law?
You understand that? Yes.
And ready to explain to you please.
I see where you checked off here that you do not want to speak to
us, OK? Not.
Without having a lawyer. I understand.
I understand what we'll do now. We'll just go ahead and book you
on the affidavit or second degree murder.
Yes Sir, the Long Road brother, the Long Rd.
A decision was made to prosecute Jonathan Ali in Harris County,
Texas, where the investigation had begun and where Elizabeth
had lived. Despite the mounting evidence
against him, Jonathan continued to maintain his innocence.
But then, just one week after his arrest, a new lead surfaced,
and with it, the entire momentum of the case shifted.
On May 18th, 2016, the District Attorney's Office received a tip
that an inmate in the Harris County Jail claimed to have
information related to Jonathan's case.
The inmate had been assigned to the same day room as him.
According to the tip, Jonathan had slipped up behind bars and
said more than he should have. If it was true, then this
jailhouse conversation could be the final piece of the puzzle.
Talking to him and asking me. Why are you there?
He said. Yeah, I'll tell him.
He's real soft spoken, He's a real.
Soft, calm, quiet. Kid.
So he sits down and he takes from the top man.
During a casual conversation with the inmate, Jonathan opened
up about what really happened the day Elizabeth was killed.
He shared details that had never been released to the public.
He was very detailed and he like.
It was a storyline to him. It's like this is how he.
Made it out to me. Jonathan told him that Elizabeth
was in the shower, the kids were home and Jonathan had began
looking in Elizabeth's phone and he found some messages that
Elizabeth had been texting another guy.
That the message was very explicit, raunchy he called it,
and that those messages enraged Jonathan.
Jonathan told the informant that when Elizabeth came out of the
shower, he put her in a chokehold and he began to
strangle her until she fell to the floor.
And she said I. Squeezed so tight.
I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until there was no
more. And he thinks she's already
killed her. OK, he said.
Then this woman was she's trying to come back.
She's got the road, he said. He runs over there and he takes
his foot and he jumps up and he's stomping on her throat.
He don't know if so he's stopping on her throat.
Try to kill her. The inmate's account of what
Jonathan shared with him lined up almost perfectly with the
autopsy findings, especially the detail about significant trauma
to Elizabeth's upper body. That finding had never been
released publicly. It wasn't something a random
inmate could have guessed or overheard.
It was information only the killer could have known.
He said he had. Sex with his body after he
killed him. Oh my God, to anybody do that,
that's that's an animal don't deserve to breathe.
After learning that the inmate had told the detectives
everything Jonathan Alley knew the walls were closing in.
Faced with overwhelming evidence, a damning timeline,
witness statements, and now a jailhouse confession, Jonathan
agreed to a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to 2nd degree
murder in the death of Elizabeth Farrell and was sentenced to 35
years in prison. Following Jonathan's conviction,
full custody of the children was granted to their great
grandmother, GAIL Ali.