Kristen Goods has described what surveillance cameras recorded in the minutes before her mother tumbled down a Las Vegas embankment and vanished for nearly two weeks.
The daughter of Alisa Goods, 63, watched the footage Monday with local police and said affiliate KSNV that the video left her family shaken. “She kind of looked like she had a heat exhaustion look to her and that she sat down and she then threw her bag that she was carrying over that embankment and proceeded to take herself over the embankment,” she said. “We were a little bit taken aback by that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qt_JWhRn4c
The New York grandmother’s body was discovered Aug. 20 in a drainage ditch near Harry Reid International Airport, twelve days after she was last seen leaving a longtime friend’s apartment to run an errand. A homeless man spotted the remains. Las Vegas police said video showed Goods “falling down an embankment, getting back up and then collapsing,” though her cause of death has not yet been released.
Kristen Goods said her mother was found with a fanny pack still on her body.
The Manhattan resident had been visiting Las Vegas when she disappeared, and her family spent nearly two weeks pressing for answers and searching for her whereabouts. The case drew attention in part because of mysterious text messages sent from Goods’ phone mentioning Bitcoin, which her relatives said were uncharacteristic and raised suspicions that someone else may have had access to the device.
Kristen Goods has continued to push for a fuller accounting of what happened in the hours before her mother’s death, telling KSNV that walking alone in the desert heat was out of character for the mother of five. The family has not publicly identified the longtime friend whose apartment Goods left on the day she vanished.
The Aug. 8 fall occurred in an area near the airport where terrain drops sharply into drainage channels, and summer temperatures in Las Vegas that week climbed well above 100 degrees. Goods’ remains were not visible from nearby roads, explaining in part why they went undetected for nearly two weeks despite the busy location.
The Bitcoin texts remain unexplained, and Kristen Goods has not indicated whether police have traced their origin. She emphasized to KSNV that her mother was not someone who would typically venture out on foot in extreme heat, adding another layer of mystery to the circumstances that placed Goods near the airport embankment.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has not announced any suspects or persons of interest in connection with the death. Kristen Goods told the station her family is awaiting the results of the ongoing investigation and the official cause of death determination.
Goods is survived by her five children and grandchildren in New York, where she had lived on the Upper East Side. Her daughter has been the family’s primary spokesperson since the discovery of the body, giving interviews to multiple outlets while coordinating memorial arrangements from across the country.