MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Alyssa Romine-Olson

**Brit Prawat** (0:00)
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is a frequent topic on this show, but let's talk about why people love it. You can check it out yourself too at betterhelp.com/reviews. The reviews are updated every day with hundreds of people saying how much they love BetterHelp and how helpful it's been to them. More than 6 million people globally trust BetterHelp, and with an average live session rating of 4.9 out of five stars, based on over 1.7 million client reviews, the data speaks for itself. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com/crimejunkie. That's betterhelp.com/crimejunkie.

**Ashley Flowers** (0:35)
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 persons 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.
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

**Brit Prawat** (1:15)
And I'm Brit.

**Ashley Flowers** (1:16)
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.
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 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, Alyssa was next level. She relied on God to tell her 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. 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.