Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
Man Dumps Murdered Wife’s Body in Louisiana Waterway While Their Kids Were in Car: "Their Mother’s Dead in the Trunk"
After Elizabeth Ferrell's naked, bruised and battered body was discovered in a Louisiana Waterway, her husband Jonathan Allee "didn’t seem too upset," a detective said.
A five-year-old girl ended up being a crucial witness for police as they tried to piece together what happened to 28-year-old Elizabeth Ferrell, whose naked, bruised and battered body was discovered by a fisherman in Iberville Parish, Louisiana on the morning of April 23, 2016.
An autopsy showed that she’d been strangled to death, and that she'd also suffered chest and head injuries. When officers told Ferrell’s husband, Jonathan Allee, about her murder, they were surprised by his reaction.
“He just didn’t seem too upset about it,” Leslie Bradford, a detective with the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, airing Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen. “Not anything that I would expect. Not a reaction to where he’d broken down or was surprised about the situation.”
His daughter’s interview with police further led to his undoing.
“Daddy thinks that mommy always wants to spend more time with her boyfriend,” the 5-year-old said to police, as heard in the "Body in the Bayou" episode of Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “I would hear, ‘You just play with your boyfriend all the time, so much that you never want to play with me!’”
As it turned out, Ferrell and Allee’s seemingly perfect marriage was unraveling in the months before her death, and police discovered a web of deceit, affairs and abuse — all leading up to Allee killing his wife in a jealous rage.
Jonathan Allee and Elizabeth Ferrell's marriage falls apart
Allee and Ferrell first met as co-workers at a restaurant in Humble, Texas, when she was 18.
“Anytime that they talked, she would just light up,” Liz Whitney, Ferrell’s friend, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “It was just like, ‘Oh my god! Kiss already!’ Jonathan was really appreciative of Liz. It looked really adorable and wholesome. This might be a beautiful match.”
In 2009, the pair, by then a couple, moved together to New Orleans, Louisiana. Within six months, Ferrell, then 22, was pregnant — prompting them to move back to Humble and in with Allee’s grandmother. In August of 2010, Ferrell gave birth to their first daughter.
“When Jonathan came out holding the baby, he was just absolutely glowing,” Whitney said. “You’ve never seen someone happier.”
Years later, the couple had a second daughter. But soon after, the happy family began to fall apart.
“I know they were strained 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,” Whitney said. “She didn’t seem to want Liz there anyway.”
Ferrell began playing video games as a way to escape.
“I told detectives, at that point, neither one of them was really happy in the marriage, but they wanted to stay together for the kids,” Shannon Pharis, Elizabeth’s friend and co-worker, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.
Ferrell's friends told police that as Allee began sleeping on the couch, his wife began meeting up with gaming buddies in person — including a man she met up with at a motel.
“She did say that day they were together, she was intimate with him,” Pharis told police in an interview.
Ferrell also confessed to her friends that she was in an abusive marriage.
“What I gathered from her, Jonathan tended to have a very volatile temper,” Pharis said. “She always came in with bruises and marks and cuts and stuff like that. She wouldn’t let us call the police for her. She begged us not to do any of that kind of stuff.”
Ferrell's 5-year-old daughter gives police chilling details
As police looked for evidence to connect Allee to his wife’s murder, they spoke to his five-year-old daughter. She described to police how on the weekend her mother disappeared, she, her little sister and their father went on a car trip for eight hours without her mother, and that her father pulled the car over.
“Dad got a few things out of the back of the car... I didn’t see what he did with it,” the girl told police.
But officers had a theory.
“She couldn’t see what it was. I can tell you what it was,” Ronnie Hebert, a major with the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “My opinion: he was throwing Elizabeth Ferrell’s body over the edge of that bridge. And the rotten bastard had the nerve to bring the 5-year-old and a 1-year-old child that’s in the back seat. And unbeknownst to them, their mother’s dead in the trunk. They had no clue.”
RELATED: Where Is Scott Peterson Now, and Will He Ever Be Released? (We Have Answers)
To prove their theory, officers scoured through surveillance footage of more than 10,000 vehicles along I-10 in the area where Ferrell’s body was discovered. They captured Allee’s vehicle, which they believed traveled the 250 miles from Texas to Louisiana, at around 7:38 p.m. in the area on the day she was likely killed. He was spotted just outside Whiskey Bay, where Ferrell’s body was found. At around 9:15 p.m., the same vehicle was captured on video driving back in the opposite direction, towards Texas. Allee was charged with Ferrell’s murder on April 29, 2016.
Jonathan Allee makes shocking confession to another inmate
On May 18, 2016, police learned that another Harris County, Texas, jail inmate had important information about Ferrell’s murder. The informant claimed that Allee told him how he killed his wife.
The inmate said that Allee confessed that while Ferrell was in the shower, he looked through her phone and her messages and discovered her affair with another man. “And the messages were very explicit or raunchy, he called it, and those messages enraged Jonathan,” Aubrey St. Angelo, a detective with the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.
RELATED: Pennsylvania State Trooper Fatally Slashes Throat of Girlfriend's Estranged Husband
Allee then attacked Ferrell in a jealous rage as she came out of the shower, the inmate told police.
“He put her in a chokehold and he began to strangle her until she fell to the floor,” St. Angelo said. The inmate added during a police interview: “He said, ‘I squeezed so tight. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until there was no more.’”
That wasn’t enough to kill Ferrell, and the informant said that Allee also confessed to stomping on her throat until she was dead, adding, “He said he had sex with this body after he killed her.”
“Anybody who does that — they’re an animal,” Hebert said. “They don’t deserve to breathe.”
Allee pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. His grandmother was granted full custody of his children.
“All I have to say is there’s a special place in hell for S.O.B.s like him,” Pharis said.
Watch all-new episodes of Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins on Saturdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
