Body in the Swamp | Case Files: Dark Waters | Forensic Files

[theme music] NARRATOR: In Louisiana lies an area of desolate swampland known as Whiskey Bay.
Midway between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, it belongs to the Atchafalaya River Basin,
the largest swamp in the United States, covering more than a million acres. LESLIE BRADFORD: It's a very rural location, very swampy,
a lot of open land. It's not developed. NARRATOR: Across Whiskey Bay runs the Atchafalaya Basin bridge, carrying
the Interstate 10 Highway. It's America's third longest bridge. But this area is infamous for another reason.
RONNIE HEBERT: During the daytime and nighttime, it is known to be a lot of traffic on the interstate.
But once you leave that interstate, it's total darkness. It's a very secluded area, and at nighttime,
you can't see your hand in front of your face. It's just that dark out in that area.
LESLIE BRADFORD: Because of how dark it can be, it's easy for people to travel this area
and sometimes try to conceal evidence, or bodies. [tense music] It was around 11 o'clock AM, I was notified through dispatch
and was informed that there was a body in Whiskey Bay. And once I got that call, I just
stepped up, went into duty, and proceeded to the body. RONNIE HEBERT: I get a phone call.
It's a female called in by a fisherman. Lo and behold, I head out to the Whiskey Bay Area.
NARRATOR: The body was floating in the middle of the swampland, so the only way detectives could access it was by boat.
- When I made it here, the boat was already here. The fire department boat was here.
And the chief of the fire department, who's also a coroner investigator, was the one rowing the boat.
[tense music] This is where we launched the boat at for the fire department. This is where we deployed it.
NARRATOR: It was a race against time. Investigators needed to find the body before vital evidence
was destroyed. [water splashes] SARAH MORMINO: Swampy areas like this tend to be high bacteria environments,
usually warm, full of different aquatic animals. RONNIE HEBERT: You got alligators, you got snakes.
You got everything. You got fish, you got crawfish. So the quicker we get to that body, the better off for us
because it can change a scene real quick. SARAH MORMINO: They are likely to eat or at least
nibble on the evidence. What trauma did this environment now cause to the body. NARRATOR: The shallow depth of the swamp also meant much
warmer water temperatures. RONNIE HEBERT: During that time of the year, April is starting to warm, a terrible factor for a body.
Decomposition can start immediately. JIM CARUSO: One of the more common things that
happens with postmortem decomposition and is enhanced often in the water environment,
is the sloughing of the skin. Since we identify a lot of bodies by fingerprints, if the skin of the hands
is sloughing off and decomposing, it's very challenging to get appropriate fingerprints
that are usable for identifying a body. RONNIE HEBERT: On the interstate, there's a mile marker for each section of the interstate.
And we were told it was around the 130 to 132-mile marker area. So we head West and lo and behold, around the 131-132
is where we located the body. LESLIE BRADFORD: It was a young Caucasian female that was partially submerged in the water.
RONNIE HEBERT: When we pull up to the body, we slow down. We go slow because we don't want
to make any wave because that will create a wave. And it will also affect the crime
scene as well if there's anything laying next to the body. So we ease up on it. And the body was submerged partially,
but it was face down. As we pulled up to the body. I noticed there was a cluster of trees,
like little young trees that were growing up in that water right there. SARAH MORMINO: The decedent was observed to be caught up
in several of the cypress trees, the stumps and branches that were present within this body
of water. Areas such as these are not easily accessible to most people, which leads investigators
to think there is no way she could have naturally gotten to that position. - I'm looking around.
I'm trying to figure out, where did she come from? How did she get here? I'm looking for another boat.
Is there a boat wreck? You know, there's a boat capsized? I don't see any of that.
NARRATOR: But investigators noticed something strange about one of the trees. RONNIE HEBERT: On that tree, I remember specifically
seeing branches were broken. So I look up, and there's the Interstate. And at that particular point in time where she's at, when
I'm looking up, it's probably a 20 to 25-foot drop from the top of that bridge. Automatically, I thought she was thrown
over the top of the bridge. Initially, I thought it could have been a possible car accident and somebody
got ejected over the edge. NARRATOR: What they discovered next raised more questions about this theory.
RONNIE HEBERT: Once myself and the guy from the fire department turned her body over,
we realized she was completely nude. Just a nude deceased body. There's no way this person can just
pop up there out of the blue. Something had to happen. NARRATOR: They removed the body from the water
to investigate further. RONNIE HEBERT: I grabbed her ankles and the coroner grabbed her up under their arms.
And we lifted her up and we placed her in a body bag inside of the boat with us.
This is where we returned and brought her body up, where the coroner pronounced her dead.
From there, we took her to the morgue. LESLIE BRADFORD: The next thing that we need to do
is try to identify who this young lady is. She's naked in the middle of nowhere, no identification.
So we have to identify her so we can start trying to work back and try to see and figure out what has
happened to this young lady. She did have some tattoos that we were able to look at and try to see if we could add anything
in the database for tattoos or anything like that, skin markings. However, there was nothing that would have identified her.
NARRATOR: Then pathologists provided a breakthrough. MICHELLE DUPRE: In this case, the fingerprints
were relatively preserved. Had she been in the water longer than that, they may have been obliterated.
And oftentimes, bodies in water get something we call washerwoman fingers. And it's like when you are in the bathtub too long
and your skin begins to wrinkle up, then it may be impossible to get fingerprints until we're
able to puff up those ridges. We will do that by taking a hypodermic needle and putting saline very lightly under the skin,
just to make that rich detail in the skin more accessible to doing fingerprints.
- Thank God we found her when we did, because have she been in there a couple more days or longer, decomposition sets in,
it might have been impossible other than dental record. We actually got lucky with it because we got
fingerprints off that body. NARRATOR: While fingerprint databases were searched,
the team uncovered something else. LESLIE BRADFORD: We learned about a traffic accident that had also occurred on the bridge
in the general area. And we had to rule that out because you never know if that crash had something to do with this body.
NARRATOR: One of the occupants had a criminal history. RONNIE HEBERT: One of them was known
to be arrested for transportation and prostitution. So, you know, was she kidnapped and was she
a victim of sex trafficking? Everything started going through our head. You know, human trafficking make your hair on the back
of your neck stand up. JONI JOHNSTON: Human trafficking is something that's been a huge problem in the United States
as well as abroad. And it essentially involves forcing often young women into having sex for money.
It can involve kidnapping victims and then trafficking them and taking them from state to state.
But from a trafficker perspective, the commodity, of course, is the victim. And so you don't tend to see murders in human trafficking
situations, unless it's a drug overdose, or it's a bad date that's gone too far,
or there's been some kind of conflict between the pimp and the victim. NARRATOR: But when the fingerprint results came back,
they revealed the victim was 28-year-old mother of two Elizabeth Ferrell, a store assistant
with no known connections to sex trafficking or prostitution. Blood found in the suspicious accident vehicle
also raised doubts. RONNIE HEBERT: The DNA was not for Ms. Ferrell. Absolutely nothing to do with that crash.
NARRATOR: But Elizabeth Ferrell's identification raised another major question. - When it first came back, and we
realized she was from Humble, Texas, I was like, why she's here from Humble, Texas?
The city of Humble, Texas lies 230 miles West of where Elizabeth was found. LESLIE BRADFORD: Our next step is
trying to figure out how did she get from Texas to here. - Why is she here? And we're missing a few pieces here,
and we need to put those pieces together to complete this puzzle. NARRATOR: In Whiskey Bay, Louisiana,
detectives are investigating after the naked body of a woman was found in a swamp beneath Interstate Highway 10.
Fingerprints reveal the woman is 28-year-old mother of two, Elizabeth Ferrell, who lived 230 miles away in Texas.
So how did she get here? RONNIE HEBERT: I'm looking on the bank, I don't see anything disturbed on the banks.
So I get my detective out, and I had him scour that bank to look for anything that stood out
that possibly could have been telling us why this body is in this water. Because all we had was a body in the water
laying near a bunch of branches, and there was nothing near it. There's absolutely zero.
NARRATOR: As the crime scene offered no more clues, police had to rule out other options.
Could the current of the river have brought Elizabeth's body here from further upstream?
[water splashes] SIMON BOXALL: Trying to determine exactly the path of a body in this region is difficult.
In this region, the flow is steady, and that can transport a body quite a long distance
and certainly put it into various inlets and creeks and leave it stranded there for some time.
RONNIE HEBERT: If there goes any current in the water at all, it's going to move that body from where
it was originally dumped at. So it makes finding the original drop site a little more difficult.
- You've also got mangroves, you've got islands, you've got levees. These are all obstructions.
These are all issues that would cause a body to get stuck. It's a bit like a sort of a random walk effect.
Certainly tracking a body in this area is difficult because it is so complex. - The area where the body was located,
the tides and the water level can also affect how things stay, how they float, how they move.
However, at that time, the water was very calm so you could tell that she had not moved.
NARRATOR: Investigators look to Elizabeth's postmortem for answers. MICHELLE DUPRE: In Elizabeth's case,
when the body was examined, there were injuries to Elizabeth's body around the head
and around the chest. There was blunt force trauma, and what that means is that Elizabeth was hit with some type of a blunt object,
causing damage and bruises. This was a violent attack. There were bruises along the neck in particular.
This leads us to think that maybe there was some type of strangulation, where the hands are placed around the person's neck
and the neck is squeezed. Then that person will become unconscious and eventually die.
RONNIE HEBERT: The pathologist ruled the cause of death would have been asphyxiation by strangulation.
NARRATOR: The pathologist made another intriguing discovery. MICHELLE DUPRE: Lividity is basically
the pooling of the blood. When we lay in a certain fashion, blood pools to the lowest point of gravity.
In Elizabeth's case, there was a lividity pattern that showed she had not been killed
and then dumped immediately. Because the lividity had set or been fixed, once she's moved,
that lividity doesn't change. She was kept someplace on her back in order to allow that lividity to be set.
In this case, likely the trunk of a car for several hours before she was actually dumped where she was found.
RONNIE HEBERT: The pathologist determination was that she was murdered before she
was placed in the water. NARRATOR: Investigators were now convinced Elizabeth had been murdered
and her body dumped off the interstate highway bridge. [sinister music] LESLIE BRADFORD: We were able to go forward with the fact
that it was definitely ruled a homicide, and there was definitely foul play. MICHELLE DUPRE: This type of strangulation
is a type of death that is very up close and personal. That gives us an indication for what direction
to take the investigation. It's very likely that she knew her killer and perhaps knew them well.
NARRATOR: Detectives put Elizabeth's life under the microscope, speaking to those
who knew her, including best friend, Shannon. SHANNON PHARIS: I received a phone call and
he left a message, and so I immediately called him back and I just said, hi, my name is Shannon.
You just called me about Liz. Is she OK? And his response was, no, ma'am, she's dead.
My first reaction, of course, is tears started streaming down my face. I want to scream bloody murder.
And I was ready to go pull on my dad's hunting rifles out of his safe and go hunt this bleep-bleep down.
NARRATOR: To find out who the killer was, investigators needed to dig into Elizabeth's past.
SHANNON PHARIS: She was actually probably my first, what I would guess you could call
best friend in my adult life. She was so petite. She was just-- she looked like a little living walking doll.
But she was just always upbeat and chipper. She never really had a bad thing to say about anybody.
NARRATOR: Life hadn't been easy for Elizabeth. Her mother died when she was 18. - Her mother was deceased.
Her father was not in the picture. And we learned that she had a tough upbringing.
But she was-- she was a fighter. She fought. - I think that's what she was so resilient.
She was so resilient because of her tougher upbringing that she did have. She had to be.
NARRATOR: In 2005, she met Jonathan Allee. SHANNON PHARIS: They had met at a restaurant,
and actually when they first met, he was really sweet and really gentle, really kind to her.
And that's where she fell in love with him. NARRATOR: The couple got married and moved to New Orleans to set up a bar.
JONI JOHNSTON: It seemed like it was a fairly decent relationship. However, she finds out she's pregnant
and this puts a hold on all their plans in New Orleans and they feel like they need some financial support.
It may be emotional support as well, at least from Jonathan's perspective. So they decide to move back to Humble, Texas.
SHANNON PHARIS: He really wasn't able to hold a steady job very often. The best job he had, he was welding somewhere
and he wound up breaking his arm and couldn't work. So he lost the job. And then they wound up losing where they were living.
They were living in a trailer home at the time and they moved in with his grandmother.
JONI JOHNSTON: It creates a huge strain in the relationship between Liz and Jonathan
for a number of different reasons. She gives birth to her first child in 2010, and I think that Liz really feels incredibly alone and
lonely in the sense that Jonathan's grandmother is doting, is an understatement I think in terms
of her relationship with him. No woman is good enough for her precious Jonathan,
and I think Liz really feels Jonathan's grandmother doesn't like her and that she's not welcome there.
SHANNON PHARIS: I think it mainly was kind of she's taking my son away kind of thing.
She did not like Liz for anything. NARRATOR: Despite the tensions, in 2015, the couple had a second daughter.
RONNIE HEBERT: According to the people we spoke to over there, they said that she always told them that the grandmother
said she was a bad mother. She just felt like she had no life there. She was very isolated from the rest of the family.
She did a lot of gaming, and that's what I think was her way out. SHANNON PHARIS: She was always talking about her games and
the people that she was meeting on there, and she seemed to make friends right and left.
It didn't really matter who they were or where they were from or anything like that.
She could just make friends. JONI JOHNSTON: She increasingly is turning to gaming,
I think, as a way to escape the environment that she's living in. And I think increasingly she finds
that that's her only outlet at home, a way for her to feel pleasure and to have fun and not to feel all
of this dislike and stress. She's beginning to have conversations. She's revealing more about herself and her situation.
She's becoming flirtatious with a couple of guys online. SHANNON PHARIS: When I found out
that she was actually starting to meet people outside that she had met online, I actually got kind of worried
about her because you never know what you're going to actually come across. They can be one thing online and completely different
in person, and I didn't feel comfortable with that. And so I made a point to make sure
it's like if you have any problems, if you don't feel safe, if you don't feel comfortable,
call me. I'll be there in a heartbeat. JONI JOHNSTON: This can be very, very risky.
At the same time, you know, I wonder how much the situation that Liz was in, in terms of feeling so isolated and so unhappy and so lonely,
that for her, it was worth it. NARRATOR: Could Elizabeth's killer be a gamer she'd met online?
Or was it someone closer to home? [sinister music] [tense music] In Whiskey Bay, Louisiana, investigators now
know murdered mother of two, Elizabeth Ferrell, was strangled before being dumped in swampland.
They reach out to her husband and father of her children, Jonathan Allee. RONNIE HEBERT: I asked him if he knew Elizabeth Ferrell.
He said, "yes, I do." I said, "well, unfortunately, I hate to do this over a telephone, but we have located
her here in Louisiana." And I told him, I said, "it's not good." I said, "she's deceased."
And his reaction to me on the phone was like, kind of blew me away. He was like, "really?
Louisiana? Why is she over there?" And I thought that was strange. JONI JOHNSTON: It's extremely odd
and not something that I think most investigators see as the first reaction to hearing that your loved one has
been found deceased, out of state, unclothed, in a body of water. When investigators find somebody
who is so out of the norm, it's always a red flag. RONNIE HEBERT: I say, "how did she get here?"
He said, "I don't know. She left here a week ago and she just came up missing." - He did not give us any indication
as to why Elizabeth would be in Louisiana, how Elizabeth would have been in Louisiana, or how long Elizabeth
would have been in Louisiana. - I'm like, this just don't sound right. So there was actually a police officer
from Texas that went to that house at the time I called him. He stepped outside and I said, "between me and you,
the reaction I'm hearing over the telephone--" before I could finish my comment,
he said, "I'm seeing the same thing you're hearing, zero remorse." [tense music]
LESLIE BRADFORD: Some of the things that he did tell us was concerning the fact that his wife had not
been seen by him, by his own admission, in a week, and she has two young children.
If, as a parent, you go missing with two young children, the other parent is most times concerned about where
that parent may or may not be. We expect to have some sort of missing persons report
by a family member. However, that was not done. NARRATOR: Detectives uncovered something else concerning
about the couple's marriage. RONNIE HEBERT: They learned through friends and co-workers
that she was in a very volatile relationship. She came to work with a scratches and bruises on her
from time to time, and she would tell them that the person she was living with was very violent toward her.
SHANNON PHARIS: He really started getting physical, and there was one time she came in.
She had a black eye. Both lips were busted and she almost lost her two front teeth.
He hit her with a casted hand and that's when he really started getting really bad.
We all tried to get her to call the police on him, because at least it would get him away from her, or maybe her
and the girls to a safer point. But she just wouldn't do it because she did still care about him and he would apologize
profusely afterwards. And, the same old rigmarole. JONI JOHNSTON: Where we had this kind vicious cycle
of violence followed by remorse, we oftentimes can see this progression of violence
over time, being less and less sorry, more and more blaming on the victim that they somehow caused this to happen.
One of the things that we've discovered in the recent years is just what a marker that in a predictor that is for danger.
- We did want to look at Jonathan Allee a little bit harder and making sure that we cooperate
everything that he said. NARRATOR: Jonathan was brought in for questioning. - Two of my detectives went over there
and they spoke to him. - When they got to meet Mr. Allee for the first time in person, it wasn't the exact same story he
was telling me over the phone. So there was a lot of inconsistencies. - Initially, he told us that he hadn't seen her a week.
And then it turned to, well, he saw her on Thursday, and it went from there. - He said that he heard the baby crying.
The young one crying. He went in there and learned that Elizabeth wasn't there anymore.
And he hadn't seen her since. NARRATOR: This was the first time Jonathan revealed
his marriage was on the rocks. RONNIE HEBERT: During that phone call with him, he didn't mention anything about like the relationship
or anything like that. The two detectives that did speak to him, he told them that they hadn't been intimate in a few years,
and they had some problems in the marital situation. - You could tell that he was a little
uneasy in talking to the detectives about the situation. NARRATOR: With no hard evidence against him,
Elizabeth's husband was free to go. But then there was a development that would turn
the investigation on its head. - She was actually meeting people online and trying to find somebody to help her escape,
get her to another state even. And she actually did go on a couple of dates with some people she met online.
RONNIE HEBERT: Well, she was gaming with one online from Oklahoma. And this guy actually came in from Oklahoma to Texas
to Humble and met her, and they spent a night at a hotel. So here we go. Was it domestic or was it something else?
Was it this guy came down who's a serial killer from God knows where that preyed upon this young lady and killed her.
So it back to square one again. We know we got a murder. Now we got to figure out who is the murderer.
JONI JOHNSTON: It is risky to meet somebody that we don't know, that we've never met in person online,
less so in a public place. But to meet somebody in a hotel or a place where you're going to be intimate for the first time,
I think, can be seen as risky. This guy could be a stalker. He could be a predator.
There have been plenty of cases of people who've been catfished, and they think they're getting one person,
and then somebody turns up who's nothing like they said they were going to, or even worse.
But she is willing to take a risk. LESLIE BRADFORD: We were able to determine who that person was.
We were able to make contact with that person via telephone. RONNIE HEBERT: When he heard that we had found Elizabeth
here in Louisiana deceased, his reaction to us was 100 times more emotional than her actual husband.
And we knew immediately upon speaking to him he could prove where he was at. He had an alibi.
We knew for a fact he had never came anywhere near the state of Louisiana. - And we were able to eliminate him
as a suspect in this homicide. NARRATOR: Investigators once again zeroed-in on Jonathan Allee.
They needed to place him on the interstate highway bridge over Whiskey Bay and work out
his motive for coming here. [water splashes] SARAH MORMINO: The body of water, along with the bridge,
is a pretty isolated area, with only two exits on an 18-mile road leading to that location.
Given the remote location of Whiskey Bay, it's not uncommon for investigators to see body dumps.
RONNIE HEBERT: We've got calls in that area before them. Years ago, there was a serial killer
working that area, dumping bodies off in that area. NARRATOR: What could draw a killer to these waters
230 miles from Texas? LESLIE BRADFORD: During the time of this homicide, there was a TV show that we were
featured on that aired early 2016, that talked about our geography. And, you know, how people discard
bodies and things in our area based on the geography of our area. - It featured bodies being dumped at Whiskey Bay
here in Louisiana, in our parish. Possibly he may have watched that show. NARRATOR: Further findings from the autopsy
confirmed the police's theory that Elizabeth was dropped over the side of the bridge.
MICHELLE DUPRE: Elizabeth had puncture wounds that were from the branches of trees,
indicating she was pushed off or thrown off the bridge. Her body hit those and they would
cause postmortem injuries, which we can determine were not the actual cause of death.
We know that because through the autopsy, when we find bruises or damage to a body,
we can actually make a small incision in those bruises to determine if there is something we call vital force.
If there is vital force, then that person was alive when those injuries occurred.
That's bleeding into the tissue. When we incise those wounds and we find out that there is no vital force, then we know that those
are postmortem injuries. NARRATOR: But investigators still had to prove Jonathan
had come to Whiskey Bay. RONNIE HEBERT: We found out Elizabeth did not drive. She had no driver's license.
She had no vehicle. We learned from co-workers that he brought her to work and picked her up from work.
While my two detectives over there, Jonathan Allee, pulls up in a car. On the back window, there was a small American flag
about the middle part of the window. Detectives made note of it. We started looking for surveillance cameras.
- It took hours of surveilling through video, not only by me, but by multiple detectives.
- During this time, it's 2:00-ish, 3:00-ish in the morning, I'm in my office and
my detective runs in there and, quote, "I got that son of a bitch." And I'm like, "got what?"
He said, "I got the car from Humble, Texas, here right near Whiskey Bay." LESLIE BRADFORD: He was able to locate that
in these hours worth of video footage and camera footage that we saw that even had the American flag
sticker on the back that we were able to corroborate Jonathan Allee's car had as well.
- I said, "you got to be kidding me." I think it was like 7:58 PM the night before we found the body.
That vehicle is eastbound and at 9:00-something, it's back westbound. And like, OK, who's driving that car?
LESLIE BRADFORD: That vehicle was registered to his grandmother. RONNIE HEBERT: So I found a phone number for her.
Come to find out, she says she was at a campground in another part of Texas. I find this campground that she was in.
I actually speak to the manager. Manager says, confirm. In fact, she was here during the time
we think this body was dumped. NARRATOR: The only other person who had access to the car
was Jonathan's uncle. RONNIE HEBERT: So now we're down to two. We're down to Jonathan Allee or the other gentleman
living in the residence, the uncle. We can verify where he was at. We could-- we knew he had an alibi, a solid alibi.
He even told us that when he came home, Jonathan wasn't there. The car wasn't there.
The grandmother wasn't there because she was at this campground in Groesbeck, Texas.
So he had went to bed. [sinister music] I think it's at around 12:45-ish or something
like that that morning, he got up to go get something to drink. And that's when he noticed Jonathan had just came in.
So where was Jonathan at that whole time? NARRATOR: The answer would come from a surprising source.
LESLIE BRADFORD: He had a five-year-old daughter, who had to be interviewed about what may or may
not have happened that day, what she saw, what she didn't see. Because children are very observant, and even
though they don't know that they are seeing something that may be pertinent to the investigation,
they only know what they see. - It's very, very important that if you're going to interview a child witness that they're
done with somebody who's been trained very specifically in how to interview children.
And that involves things like, maybe playing games with this child, putting this child at ease,
having toys in the room, asking open-ended questions. Because the last thing you want to do is lead a child.
Children are naturally compliant with adults. And so it is important to have a trained forensic interviewer.
And they did. RONNIE HEBERT: I don't think any adult could have been a better witness to this child was.
She told the whole story that her dad said he was going-- they were going on an adventure.
It's been a long ride. They leave in the daytime and they come back late at night.
And her dad said it's going to take a while. She said, I'm sitting in the back with my other little sister and my dad is driving her.
And he asked, where's mom? Mom didn't come. This is the lane he stopped in and the little girl told
the forensic interviewer, she said he parked in the middle of the road, which she thinks
is the middle of the lane. It kind of similar to a lane, but it's very-- this is the shoulder, very narrow.
NARRATOR: The description matched the exact point on the highway where her mother's body was dumped.
RONNIE HEBERT: She said in the interview she'd remember her dad getting out of the car.
He would be very careful not to get run over, and he removed something from the back,
but I couldn't tell what it was and proceeded back to Humble, Texas, and told the little girl
he couldn't find the magic road they were looking for. - She could be a very powerful witness, and she is certainly,
in this case, turned it on its head. [tense music] NARRATOR: Detectives are investigating
the murder of Elizabeth Ferrell from Texas, found strangled in a Louisiana swamp.
Their prime suspect is Elizabeth's violent husband, Jonathan. Despite claiming he hadn't been to Louisiana for years,
he was picked up on highway cameras near the Whiskey Bay dump site, and his daughter
confirmed they'd gone there. LESLIE BRADFORD: In listening to the child's forensic interview and then Jonathan's interview,
the inconsistencies were vast. Jonathan advised that he was at the home for the majority
of the day, and the child definitely stated something different. The fact that they had all left the home on a big adventure.
RONNIE HEBERT: To watch that interview was heartbreaking. This little girl was so articulate
and she even told us, sometimes my daddy gets mad at my mommy. And she said my daddy would fuss
saying that you spend more time online with your friends than you do with me. You always gaming.
LESLIE BRADFORD: Based on the investigation and everything that we were able to learn, we were
able to get enough probable cause and reach that level to make sure that we were able to obtain an arrest warrant.
- It was enough to get a judge to sign a warrant for second degree murder of Elizabeth Ferrell.
The arrest in Longview, Texas, has what they call a fugitive from state of Louisiana.
SHANNON PHARIS: When I finally heard that they had arrested him, I was ecstatic.
What he did to Elizabeth, it made me incredibly angry. All I wanted to do was walk up to that SOB
and slap him across the face. But I let justice do its thing. NARRATOR: Then the investigation
took another unexpected turn. RONNIE HEBERT: So while in jail in Texas waiting to come here,
he got a little diarrhea of the mouth. He befriended another gentleman that was in his jail.
And the gentleman asked him, what are you in here for? And he said, "murder." And he goes into detail about how he murdered Elizabeth.
NARRATOR: After interviewing his cellmate, detectives could finally piece together the final hours
of Elizabeth's life. JONI JOHNSTON: He is clearly somebody who is treating her as a possession and somebody
he can abuse, he can control. So it doesn't surprise me that the incident that leads to her death is when he goes through her phone, which
of course, is an invasion of privacy, and finds these messages that are enraging
to him, that he thinks are a violation of his ownership of her. RONNIE HEBERT: And we learned through the investigation
that on her phone, he possibly located some information that showed she was possibly being
intimate with somebody else. NARRATOR: Elizabeth had been exchanging messages with her online romance.
JONI JOHNSTON: He feels that because she is his possession, she can't leave him unless he says it's OK.
So I think he's got in so many respects, the classic personality and thought processes of a domestic violence perpetrator.
SHANNON PHARIS: He had threatened her a hundred times if she ever tried to leave and take the girls,
he would kill her. And I think she was getting ready to start trying to leave. And that's when the worst that he could do happened.
RONNIE HEBERT: When she comes out of the bathroom, he comes in behind her and he grabs her and he chokes her.
LESLIE BRADFORD: Jonathan did tell the jailhouse cellmate that he put her in a chokehold until she stopped breathing
or what he thought. RONNIE HEBERT: And he said she was dead. He laid her down. He let her go.
He said then she like, she gasped for air. He said, I panicked, and that's when I started stomping on her neck, kicking her throat.
JONI JOHNSTON: What do we think, somebody's been injured, our first thought is we need to get help for them.
And so there is something about that stomping it, just that annihilation that is just particularly chilling.
LESLIE BRADFORD: Once hearing the statements that Jonathan Allee made to the jailhouse cellmate,
it all corroborated with autopsy had found about the blunt force trauma, everything to her chest
and to her upper body. MICHELLE DUPRE: When we looked at this case, we found some anomalies.
And those anomalies were the injuries and the bruising around the head and neck.
And so he actually admitted that he stomped on her neck. We find this again through the autopsy
because the very delicate bones and the cartilage in that area may be crushed. - And then the sick part about it all, he
told his gentlemen that once he did kill her, he had sex with her body, and that he ejaculated on her face.
And then once we got hold of some phones he had, we found some stuff in the phone where he had pictures of
and was googling of sex with dead bodies. So he was a sick person. He had some sick thoughts.
JONI JOHNSTON: This last act of having sex with her is a way to degrade her further.
It is his last act of domination and control over her. I can't think of anything that would be more dehumanizing and
more humiliating and to turn somebody into such an object there in a situation obviously
now where they have absolutely no control over anything. It's just-- it's horrifying.
NARRATOR: Detectives uncovered more clues about why Jonathan Allee chose Whiskey Bay
to dump his wife's body. RONNIE HEBERT: He also made a comment to the inmate at the jail in Texas that he thought
if he threw her in the swamps here in Louisiana, the alligators would eat her. [water splashes]
SARAH MORMINO: When you have bodies of water that are high in alligator population,
many offenders think that this is a great place to get rid of their evidence, as the alligators
will scavenge on the remains. However, in most cases, alligators are predators. They are not scavengers.
Meaning that unless they have live prey, they're usually not interested in what's in the water.
RONNIE HEBERT: I'm 66 years old, born and raised here, and I have yet to find one person
that's ever been eaten by an alligator in state of Louisiana. I mean, within 40 feet, I got alligators in my house,
and they've never attacked me. Again, going back to his sick mind, an alligator is going to be a perfect scenario.
They'll eat the body, and we're never going to discover her. And they never know where she went.
And he figured it'd be a good spot to go because nobody would catch him. Well, he found out it was a Parish Sheriff's Office knows
a little something about that. NARRATOR: Jonathan Allee was finally extradited to the state of Louisiana, where investigators
attempted to interview him. RONNIE HEBERT: And he immediately lawyered up on us then.
He said, "not talking." And that was the last conversation we had with him, was that night.
NARRATOR: Allee returned to the jurisdiction of his home state, Texas, where he pleaded guilty to the second degree
murder of his wife, Elizabeth. He struck a plea deal and was jailed for 35 years.
RONNIE HEBERT: The one time he told the truth is to save his ass. To say, hey, I don't want to die in Louisiana prison.
I can go over there in Texas and get a better deal, which turns out to be 35 years there versus life here.
He thought of just himself and nobody else. LESLIE BRADFORD: For me personally, it
can be kind of frustrating when pleas are given. However, in this case, it was the best case scenario,
him taking the plea and saving his children from having to go through a trial. SHANNON PHARIS: As far as I'm concerned, it's an injustice.
He is not serving what he should serve for what he did. He is evil incarnate as far as I'm concerned.
RONNIE HEBERT: You look around, water, woods. What kind of death is that? A water grave.
You don't do animals that, but he treated her like garbage. Threw her out in the swamp.
That tells you right there what kind of person he is. And this is the burial he gave her.
Mr. Allee thought that he could just throw her off this bridge and just wash his sins away.
He washed his ass straight to prison. And that's where his final destination should be.
SHANNON PHARIS: I do miss her every single day. I wish I could talk to her every day.
And that I wish she was still here. And Jonathan was gone. It's really that simple.
Because you don't find people like that very often. A friend like that is completely priceless.
[theme music]

A murdered woman is found 230 miles from home, dumped from a bridge into swampland.

In this chilling true crime series, detectives, pathologists and police divers work together to decode complex crime scenes where victims' bodies are discovered in water.

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Brief Summary

Elizabeth Ferrell's murder investigation reveals domestic violence and leads to her husband's arrest and plea deal.

Key points

Body Found in Whiskey Bay. A body is discovered floating in the swamp, raising immediate questions about its origins.
Elizabeth Ferrell Identified. The victim is identified as Elizabeth Ferrell, a mother of two from Texas, raising further questions about her presence in Louisiana.
The Cycle of Violence. Elizabeth was trapped in a cycle of violence and remorse, unable to escape her abusive relationship.
Inconsistencies in Jonathan's Story. Jonathan's story about his whereabouts changed during questioning, raising suspicions.
The Child's Testimony. A forensic interview with Jonathan's daughter provided crucial details about the night of the murder.
The Shocking Confession. In jail, Jonathan revealed details about Elizabeth's murder to a fellow inmate.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's total darkness. You can't see your hand in front of your face.

Description of Whiskey Bay's darkness

1:37WatchMar 31, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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