When 63-year-old Alisa Goods left a friend’s apartment near Maryland Parkway and Tropicana Avenue on August 8, 2026, she intended to do something entirely routine. The New York grandmother walked out to catch a bus to a nearby CVS to pick up iron pills.
Authorities and family members confirmed that Goods was found dead in a drainage ditch near Wayne Newton Boulevard and the Terminal 1 parking garage. Yet, despite the recovery of her body, the circumstances surrounding her final hours leave her grieving family with an agonizing deficit of answers.
The Final Moments Captured on Airport Surveillance
According to investigations detailed by FOX5 Vegas, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department pieced together Goods’ movements through airport surveillance video. Investigators stated that surveillance video shows Goods falling down an embankment near the airport property on August 8. The footage reportedly shows her getting back up after the fall, only to collapse shortly afterward.
Police noted that no further movement was observed after that initial collapse. Because her physical location in the drainage ditch could not be seen from the surrounding street level, she remained hidden from view for days while friends, family, and law enforcement combed Southern Nevada in a frantic search.
Roger John, a longtime friend she was staying with during her Las Vegas vacation, recounted the last time he saw her to Fox News. “Last I saw her, she was going down the stairs. And I said, ‘OK, see you later,’ And that’s the last time I saw her,” John said. When she failed to return from her brief errand, John initially assumed she was simply taking her time shopping, a habit he noted she sometimes practiced.
A Desperate Search and Disturbing Digital Footprints
As the days stretched on without contact, Goods’ family grew deeply alarmed, particularly when she missed her scheduled flight back to New York. Her relatives flew to Las Vegas to spearhead ground searches, distributing flyers and checking local hospitals and morgues. Alisa Goods was a dedicated grandmother of five, and her loved ones maintained that vanishing without a word was entirely out of character.
The mystery took an even more unsettling turn on August 12—four days after she was last seen—when her family began receiving strange text messages from her mobile phone. According to family statements reported by Fox News, the sender of these messages asked for gas money and Bitcoin. These digital requests immediately heightened suspicions, as Goods did not drive and owned no vehicle in Nevada.
Dispatch received a call for service regarding a body in the drainage ditch early Thursday morning at 1:45 a.m., prompting an immediate response from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Responding officers located the woman, who was subsequently identified as Goods.
A Family Left Searching for Closure
“Our hearts are broken. We were notified that my aunt was found—unfortunately, not the way we wanted her to be,” Goods’ niece, Alana Calloway, said in a public statement shared with local media outlets. “This is an unimaginable time. Words cannot describe the pain our family is experiencing right now.”
While the initial discovery answers the most pressing question of where Goods went, the formal cause and manner of her death remain pending as of late August 2026, with medical examiners continuing their evaluation. The family has established an online fundraiser to help cover burial costs as they prepare to bring her back to New York.
As investigators work to untangle the digital anomalies surrounding the text messages sent from her phone and the exact medical timeline following her fall at the embankment, a community mourns a vibrant grandmother whose vacation ended in unimaginable sorrow. What began as a simple errand for everyday medication has transformed into a heartbreaking investigation, leaving loved ones waiting for the definitive medical and forensic answers they so desperately deserve.
