A 63-year-old Brooklyn grandmother who vanished during a Las Vegas visit was found dead near the city's main airport almost two weeks later, and police have yet to explain how she got there or what killed her.
Las Vegas police responded around 1:45 a.m. on a Thursday to the area near Terminal 1 at Harry Reid International Airport, where they discovered the body of Alisa Goods, a mother of five who had been missing since August 8. The New York Post reported the grim discovery, citing local Las Vegas station KTNV.
Goods had traveled to Las Vegas to visit Roger John, a friend of 20 years who lives in an apartment near the Strip. She was last seen leaving his apartment on August 8, headed to a nearby CVS pharmacy to go shopping. She never came back.
Her family spent the days that followed in agony, flying across the country, checking hospitals and morgues, and pleading publicly for help. Instead of answers, they got something worse: strange text messages from Goods' disconnected phone asking for money, and eventually for Bitcoin.
Investigators reviewing surveillance cameras found footage from the afternoon of August 8 showing a woman believed to be Goods near Harry Reid International Airport, the same day she left John's apartment. Police have not said publicly why she would have gone to the airport or how she ended up there, and they have not released a cause of death.
Roger John, who aided in the search by posting flyers with Goods' face around the area where she was last seen, has been cleared by police. He is not a suspect. John called Goods "the nicest person you would meet."
Goods had recently undergone several surgical procedures on her legs, a detail her family shared during the search. Whether her limited mobility played any role in her disappearance or death remains unknown.
The case carries echoes of other missing-person investigations where families have been left waiting for answers from law enforcement. A former FBI official recently raised pointed questions about the handling of the Nancy Guthrie disappearance, another case that has drawn scrutiny over how authorities manage high-profile searches for missing individuals.
One of the most disturbing details to surface during the search was the activity on Goods' cell phone. After she disappeared, her phone, which the family described as disconnected, began sending messages asking for money. The requests eventually escalated to demands for Bitcoin.
Who sent those messages, and how they were transmitted from a phone that was supposedly out of service, has not been explained by police. The family has said they are still trying to learn the details surrounding Goods' death.
Her daughter Kristin flew to Las Vegas from New Jersey hoping to find her mother alive. She checked hospitals and morgues across the city. That search ended with the worst possible news.
Alana Calloway, Goods' niece and the family's spokesperson, released a statement after the body was identified:
"Our hearts are broken. We were notified that my aunt was found, unfortunately, not the way we wanted her to be. This is an unimaginable time. Words cannot describe the pain our family is experiencing right now."
Calloway continued, thanking the public and the media for helping bring attention to the case:
"We just want to thank the public for the outpouring of love, support, and prayers. We also want to thank the media for helping bring attention to this situation. This hurts so deeply. We are still trying to learn the details surrounding her death. We ask for continued prayers and privacy as we grieve."
What stands out about this case is how little Las Vegas police have disclosed. They have not named a cause of death. They have not explained how a 63-year-old woman recovering from leg surgeries ended up near an airport terminal. They have not addressed the Bitcoin messages. They have cleared one person, Roger John, and said nothing about whether any other suspects or persons of interest exist.
Families in cases like these are often left in a painful information vacuum. The Guthrie disappearance has drawn similar frustration, with the case attracting so much public attention that YouTubers were arrested near the missing woman's home after neighbors reported disruptive behavior from amateur investigators.
Las Vegas itself has been the setting for other unresolved or delayed-justice cases. A suspect in a cold-case killing died in a Las Vegas jail before his court hearing earlier this year, a reminder that the clock does not always cooperate with the pursuit of accountability.
For the Goods family, every day without answers deepens the wound. A woman left a friend's apartment to walk to a drugstore. Nearly two weeks later, her body turned up at an airport in the middle of the night. Between those two facts lies a gap that police have not filled, and a family that deserves to know what happened.
Alisa Goods was a mother of five and a grandmother from Brooklyn. She went to visit a longtime friend. She should have come home.
When a 63-year-old woman walks out of an apartment and turns up dead at an airport two weeks later, the public has a right to expect more than silence from the people paid to find out why.
