MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Alyssa Romine-Olson

Crime Junkie

The podcast episode explores the mysterious death of Alyssa Romine Olson, a 30-year-old woman found floating naked and face down in a pond a

Key takeaways

• The media and police quickly concluded Alyssa's death was self-inflicted based on her mental health struggles and recent separation from her husband, but this story lacks substantial evidence.
• Alyssa had a deeply religious lifestyle that became increasingly radical after meeting Brayden at the International House of Prayer; their relationship was intense and nomadic, centered around faith.

Main topics

• Alyssa Romine Olson's mysterious death
• Suicide vs. foul play debate

Notable quotes

'Don't believe the headlines.' This is the story of Alyssa Romine Olson.

Conclusion

The case remains unresolved over ten years later, with strong indications that the official narrative may be flawed. The podcast

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) What if finding the missing person didn't answer the mystery? What if it only made it stranger? In a new Audiochuck limited series, The Truth About Natalie, host Sean Kipe investigates the disappearance and death of 27-year-old Natalie Jones. What starts as a missing person's case uncovers allegations of abuse, hidden secrets, conflicting evidence, and one haunting question. Was Natalie the victim of a tragic accident? Or did someone? Have a reason to silence her. Listen to The Truth About Natalie now, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:37) Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And guess what, Gilbert PD? We're back. We saw the responses all you Crime Junkies had to our episodes out of Gilbert, Arizona. Rachel Hansen, Nick Cordova, Laura Sweetman. And we heard your call to tell more of their cases, the lesser known ones, the ones that you really need to dig into to get to the bottom of. Well, little did you know. We were already waist deep and we're about to fill you in. The case I have for you today is one that has been spun every which way by the police and the media. And that's meant that for over 10 years, one family has been forced to bury their grief. But today we're telling you the real story of a woman who was found floating naked and face down in the pond of a local nature preserve in 2016. And the headline is, don't believe the headlines. This is the story of Alyssa Romine Olson. Speaker 2 (2:16) It's June 10th, 2016, when Alyssa Romine Olson's body is found floating in a pond at the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert, Arizona. And almost as quickly as she is removed from the water, authorities start crafting a story. One about a 30-year-old woman who was depressed, who was suffering due to recent health problems, who just separated from her husband of nearly four years and moved back in with her parents. In local news articles, the word is never used. But to Alyssa's family and friends, the Gilbert community, the insinuation is clear. Whatever happened to Alyssa, she did it to herself. So no foul play involved, no threat to the public. And therefore, those who heard the story in the local community felt no need to put pressure on the Gilbert Police Department to rush their death investigation. In all honesty, when our reporter, Nicole, started looking into this case, that was her first impression, too. She actually called me from Arizona and she was like, hey, you know, like, based on what I'm seeing, what's out there, like, I'm not really sure that there's a mystery here. And she was like, so I know I told you we might cover this, but like, I don't think so. But then we got the case file and that. combined with conversations that we've had with Alyssa's family and friends or anyone she went to church with, and the media's story began to crumble under its own weight. Now, to unravel this thread, we have to start at the beginning so that you can understand who Alyssa was before her body was pulled from that pond and the days, weeks, and months leading up to that moment. So Alyssa was one of 12 children in the Romine household and her parents' only biological daughter. According to her younger sister Chelsea, she had a quiet way of connecting with people. She was innately nurturing, regularly babysitting younger siblings and neighborhood kids. But she wasn't someone who constantly sought the spotlight. Alyssa was just as content spending time on her own, journaling or listening to music in her room. Now, importantly, religion was always a part of Alyssa's life. She grew up in a non-denominational Christian family, but in her late 20s, Alyssa underwent a kind of spiritual awakening, and her faith became the guiding force in nearly every aspect of her life. She joined a new church and threw herself into a level of religious devotion that even her family hadn't practiced. Like, even for the two of us who grew up in, like, a borderline evangelical world, like, Alyssa was next level. She relied on God to tell her, like, even what clothes to wear or what to eat. She didn't like material things and she rid herself of most of her personal belongings. So her life became about her religion and evangelizing. And it was around this time, which would have been like mid-2012, that Alyssa met her future husband, Brayden, at the International House of Prayer. The two were immediately drawn to each other. They had similar beliefs and specifically valued an evangelical form of Christianity. And their relationship moved really fast. Like, within a couple of months, Chelsea told us that the couple went on a road trip together, and then they got back, and boom, Alyssa told her family that Jesus wanted her to marry Brayden, and they had a wedding that winter. Speaker 1 (5:42) And they were cool with that? Speaker 2 (5:43) Well, her family wasn't, like, against it. Like, Brayden seemed nice enough. Alyssa seemed happy. But the truth was, they really didn't even know Brayden. I mean, the siblings that we spoke to said that he was very outgoing and a people person to, like, the max. But they didn't really get to spend much time with him, partly because the relationship progressed so quickly, but also because after getting married, Alyssa and Brayden began to live a nomadic life. They were traveling around the country together to preach and minister to anyone who would listen. And did they Speaker 1 (6:15) work? Speaker 2 (6:15) They didn't, right? Like, so they didn't need much. And for around three years, the two of them kind of just couch surfed or crashed with friends. And Alyssa's parents would help them out sometimes financially. And by all accounts, they were attached at the hip. I mean, like they shared social media accounts, they shared a cell phone, which they rarely even answered. And speaking to a lot of people who knew Alyssa, it seems like she kind of distanced herself from the rest of her relationships. Like her whole world became about her husband and her faith, which kept becoming more and more radical. And they likely would have continued down this path. But something happened that altered it around January of 2016. That's when Alyssa suffered an ectopic pregnancy and had to be hospitalized because of significant blood loss. That medical event forced her to move back to Gilbert to live with her parents so she could have like a home base to rest and to recover. Brayden had moved back to Arizona with her initially, but two months in, they decided to separate. Because Speaker 1 (7:22) of her pregnancy? Speaker 2 (7:23) No, not because of her pregnancy. Actually, the very thing that brought them together is what made them separate. Their intense commitment to their faith. That became the primary reason, or the thing that drove them apart. Like, as much as he wanted to, Brayden said that he struggled to live up to the strict religious standards which Alyssa held so dear. He said that he couldn't follow the Lord's ways as closely as Alyssa did. Speaker 1 (7:48) Like, What does that mean? Like how? For Speaker 2 (7:50) him, it was like watching porn, thinking about other women, wanting to drink and smoke, wanting material things like a house and a job so that he could pay for said house. So the pair decided to separate and Brayden moved back to Washington to live with his mom. Now, this is all around April of 2016. Now, without Brayden, Alyssa's life. honestly didn't change much. She was a woman of routine and she didn't stray from it. According to her parents, every morning, bright and early, she woke up, had her coffee, drove to the public library in her dad's car, walked through this nature preserve area right behind the library called the Riparian, and she would find a spot to journal and read her Bible. She would be there a while, like from like 7 a.m. to noon, every single day like clockwork. except on June 9th, 2016. On this day, Alyssa leaves for the riparian in the morning. But then the clock stops. She never came home, not at noon or by 7, which is when her parents start to get worried. I mean, they try calling her, but it's going straight to voicemail. And we know that Alyssa is pretty unplugged. So, like, you know, this isn't necessarily weird immediately. But when 10 p.m. rolls around and there is still no word from her, Alyssa's parents, Barbara and Ed, they decide to drive over to the library themselves. And right away, they find Ed's blue 2002 Dodge Caravan parked in the lot. It's locked, so Ed opens it up with his spare key, but nothing is amiss, which does really nothing to calm them. In fact, when they call another daughter of theirs, Michelle, who comes rushing over in her pajamas, her first thought is that Alyssa must have been kidnapped. So not knowing what else to do, her and her parents just start running through the riparian in the dark, screaming Alyssa's name, continuing to call the phone that she isn't answering. And Speaker 1 (9:55) how big is this area, like this park? Speaker 2 (9:57) Huge. So it's 110 acres with seven different ponds along like hiking trails and a fishing lake. So Alyssa's family quickly realizes that they might be in over their heads. And that's when Ed calls the police. It's Gilbert PD who takes the report. And according to Michelle, they sort of like cordon off some entrances of the park, but they don't really start searching right away. I don't know if it's because it's too dark or what the reasoning is, but it isn't until the next day that a real search ensues. They contact hospitals, churches, jails. They search her room at home to see if maybe she left anything behind saying where she might be going. She didn't, obviously. And when they ping her phone via T-Mobile, they see that it's been turned off since 10 a.m. the day of her disappearance, which means they can't get a location or apparently even like a location history. Speaker 1 (10:51) Well, and now they're a full day behind. Right. So their best bet is just to put all their Speaker 2 (10:57) resources Speaker 1 (10:57) into searching the preserve and the area Speaker 2 (11:00) around the library. Now, the public library has a surveillance camera facing the south parking lot where Alyssa parked her dad's car. But according to the police file, the specific spot that Alyssa parked in is, of course, out of view. And the park itself has no cameras. So investigators have to rely on their own searches of the area to try and understand how Alyssa's last movements may have played out. They bring in tracking dogs. They bring in helicopters with thermal imaging. And at 2.42 p.m., the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office air unit finds her. And her body is sort of hidden by brush. But from an aerial view, there is no mistaking what they're looking at. It is a nude body floating face down in one of the ponds. And actually, while we know Alyssa was found in a pond, I'm honestly more inclined to call the exact spot that she was in like a puddle. Like she must be on the water's edge or something, because according to the file, the water next to her left ankle was 5.5 inches deep. And next to her right ankle, it wasn't even like an inch. Speaker 1 (12:08) She's naked, though. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:10) And her clothing, by the way, like all of her belongings, actually, like nothing is around her. It's not there. It's not in her car. Nothing. So while they work to remove Alyssa's body from the preserve and send it for autopsy, they go looking for her things, right? Like, where are her clothes? Not even just her clothes. Where's her journal? Where's her cell phone? Where are her keys? None of those things are ever found. What is found in and around this area are other clothes, some in the dumpster of the library parking lot, some under nearby bushes. There's one sock that they find in the pond. But they end up DNA testing all of this and none of it is Alyssa's. And Speaker 1 (12:52) interestingly, they also find Speaker 2 (12:54) a full latex glove on a dirt path. And there's something else that seems to suggest Alyssa wasn't alone out there when she died. In the mud, there is this set of footprints and a set of prints that show a shoe tread. So now the question is, if someone else was out there, who? Speaker 1 (13:18) And Speaker 2 (13:19) are Speaker 1 (13:19) they still out there? Speaker 2 (13:21) Right. Gilbert PD has an important opportunity here to use the media and the Gilbert community to their advantage, like to put out a press release to canvas for people who had been in or near the park, anyone who had seen or heard anything. But you've probably figured out by now that is not what is about to happen. Speaker 2 (13:47) Summer breaks should be fun, but it is also important to keep young minds active. Even though my daughter's out of preschool, we are helping her all summer continue to learn and study and just not give up building that muscle. And IXL is a great way to help kids stay engaged and avoid losing progress between school years. 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Rather, the story is spun up for the media, twisted in such a way to assure the Gilbert community that there is nothing to worry about at