116: Missing 14 Year Old Girl Lured By Online Predator | Ella Jones
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Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. I am your true crime bestie today because I am breaking down everything that has been going on in the world of true crime this week. And when I say it is batshit crazy, guys, it is batshit crazy.

Every single week, it is without fail. Somehow, a case that has been long since put to bed reemerges. And I end up talking about it because there are new updates or new details or a new unbelievable twist. And so that's happening again today. In addition to that, we have a lot more new cases that we are going to be talking about. And there is one particular that I do want to share. I'm going to just give you a little bit.

of a, not like a preview, but a heads up now. I guess that's the best way to describe it. But anyways, it's a case about a 14-year-old girl who was talking to an older man online, and she's now gone missing. This happened in Washington, and her name is Ella Jones. So hopefully more people will hear about it because, like we always say, you never know who might know something, who may have heard something, seen something, and maybe...

she can be rescued, found, and reunited with her family, which we'll get into all of the details about that case because it's a really heartbreaking one.

But I want to start with the Slenderman stabbing case, and I'm sure so many of you are already familiar with this, but let me give you a little bit of a backstory before we go into the update. In 2014, Morgan and Anissa, who were just 12 years old at the time, stabbed their friend 12-year-old Peyton after they lured her into a park after a sleepover.

Now, as a side note, it's called a park, the place that she was lured to, but it is an extremely wooded area with remote trails, and it just looks more like a forest. So the girls lured Peyton there and said that they wanted to play a game of hide-and-seek. Innocent enough, right? But that was a lie. Instead, Morgan stabbed Peyton repeatedly while Anissa was egging her on.

The girls left Peyton in the park to die, but she crawled onto a bike path and then was later found by a bicyclist, and she was just clinging to life, holding on for dear God. So police found Morgan and Anissa later that day, and they were walking on a highway nearby. They said that they were going to Slenderman's Mansion in northern Wisconsin. They

They told the investigators that they stabbed Peyton so that they could earn the right to become Slenderman's servants and to protect their families and protect themselves from Slenderman. I mean, sounds crazy, doesn't it? Well, it gets crazier.

So Slender Man is an online horror character that abducts people, mostly children. This case and the circumstances around it were extremely disturbing, not only because of the girl's bizarre reasoning behind it, but also because it involved 12-year-old girls in the first place, and it was then later dubbed as The Slender Man Stabbing.

Luckily, Peyton did survive this, but Morgan and Anissa were charged with attempted murder, and they were also charged as adults. Morgan pled guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors, and then a judge sent her to a psychiatric institute after determining that she had a mental illness. She was diagnosed with early-onset childhood schizophrenia.

Anissa also pled guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, and she too was sent to the psychiatric facility. This was after a jury found that she was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the attack. So three mental health experts said that at the time of the stabbing, Anissa suffered from a shared delusional disorder.

The condition is a mental health disorder when a delusional belief is held by one person and shared with at least one other person. Mental health experts said that Anissa's friendship with Morgan with her schizophrenia diagnosis really created the perfect storm of events to lead up to this crime. In 2017, Anissa was sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric facility.

At her sentencing, prosecutors mentioned in a report that Anissa had been talking about making a Ouija board at the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center and also had been talking about unleashing spirits. Now, I'm sure you know what a Ouija board is, but in case you don't, it's one of those boards that has all of the letters on it. You have the little triangle plastic figure and it moves letter to letter to spell something out. So that is what was being described.

Well, four years later after that, in 2021, at the age of 19, she was released. Her attorneys said that she had displayed great behavior, that she had benefited from treatment, and that she was no longer a threat to society.

Part of her release included no contact with Peyton until the year 2039, and also that she wear a GPS ankle monitor. However, in 2023, she got that ankle monitor removed, and she is now still under a supervised release program.

Now Morgan, on the other hand, who was originally sentenced to 40 years in a psychiatric facility, she has now been in the news again recently because now she's 21 years old and she doesn't want to be at the psychiatric facility at all anymore. And she feels like she too has benefited from treatment.

Morgan signed a petition for conditional release earlier this January, and just this past Monday, she had a hearing on Zoom for a court hearing on her request. She also filed a petition to be released last year, but then later withdrew it. So her attorney said that she has attained the maximum amount of privileges that she can, and that that is a sign that she is ready to leave.

During her hearing this week, the judge appointed three psychiatric experts, one on behalf of Morgan, one on behalf of the prosecutors, and the third as a court appointee, all to examine her and then produce reports on her current mental health, and they have to have this report back by March 1st. Her next hearing is set for April 10th to consider the reports and possibly rule on the release request.

Now, this has brought up a lot of controversy and differing opinions because although they were just 12 years old at the time and now nearly a decade has passed, they were charged as adults. Does this really mean that they should stay in prison because they were charged as adults? Do you believe in rehabilitation?

I understand mental health was at play, but I think that that is pretty diabolical for two girls to meet, develop this relationship, and come up with a sinister plan to stab to death their 12-year-old friend. I'm not going to even pretend to know the inner workings of mental health, but...

There appears for me at least to be a red flag here, and I don't know that I would feel safe knowing that these girls were back out on the street unless there was some huge plethora of testing that was done that indicated that they are in fact no longer a threat and that they are on medication that has them under control, that the mental illness is no longer a factor in making them dangerous. I don't know. Again, I'm trying to...

understand and reconcile in my mind that they were 12 at the time, sentenced as adults and charged as adults, but there's just something with the true level of depravity in this case that makes me feel as though they should not be allowed back on the streets this quickly. But let me know what you think.

Moving into another case that we have covered in depth over on my YouTube channel, it's the case of Courtney Clunney. She is the OnlyFans model who is accused of murdering her boyfriend after a long history of domestic disputes, domestic violence, things that had been recorded. I mean, the list goes on and on. I'll give you kind of a brief summary, and then we're going to go into the updates because her parents have now been arrested in connection with this murder.

So Courtney Clunney, the OnlyFans model who went by the name Courtney Taylor and had more than 2 million Instagram followers, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for killing her boyfriend Christian Amensali. This was back in April of 2022.

Courtney and Christian were living together in this beautiful penthouse in Miami when Courtney stabbed Christian. Prosecutors in this case have said that Courtney and Christian had a very tumultuous, volatile, and combative relationship, and also that Christian was the victim of domestic violence, while Courtney's attorney have all said that she was the victim of being in this abusive relationship, and that she stabbed her boyfriend in self-defense.

Since her arrest, there have been many damning videos released, which I've shared some of them on my channel, and they're from the surveillance of the elevator in her building, they're from cell phone footage that was captured inside her apartment, and in this footage, it clearly indicates that Courtney is clearly the aggressor, as well as several other videos and audio recordings that Christian himself took when he tried to document her outrageous behavior.

I mean, the videos are truly appalling and sick.

As I mentioned, we covered this story in an episode on the podcast right when we first launched, and I had covered it extensively over on my YouTube channel, so what I'll do is I'll link the episode in the show notes so you can get fully caught up on that because the podcast one really was a full comprehensive start-to-finish overview of the case. But this case is pretty crazy, and in my opinion, it also shows that her self-defense claim is completely made up.

Well, now talking about these new updates, Courtney's parents, Kim and Deborah, were recently arrested at their house in Austin, Texas. And before anybody's like, wait, Kim and Deborah, her dad's name is Kim. So they were recently arrested, and it's been reported that they were arrested for felony charges of unauthorized access to a computer or electronic device, specifically Christian's laptop that was left in the penthouse after he died.

Allegedly, Courtney's dad went back to their apartment to clear all of her stuff out in the aftermath of everything. And in the process, he stumbled across the laptop and he took it. And that was before police came back to the crime scene and began taking evidence. So in their arrest warrant, it says...

Authorities who were investigating sought access to Courtney Clunney's cell phone along with her iCloud account and the iCloud accounts of her parents, which gave investigators access to messages that included a group chat between Courtney Clunney's attorneys and her parents.

So the chat had discussions about Christian's laptop and how to access it. This included a reference to accessing the laptop using guessed passwords. They were going to just try to guess a bunch of different ones and figure it out. And in one message, Courtney's dad says, are there any pins or passwords that we can try before you see her tomorrow? And well, he guessed the password. And then the very next day he wrote, hell yeah, that pin worked.

One of Courtney's attorneys responded and said, Kim, hold off on going through the computer, please. I don't want to turn you into a witness just yet if you find something useful. When it comes to potential evidence, we always have to consider chain of custody issues and don't necessarily want to take the risk that something gets lost in the mail.

Also, I'm sure you guessed by my prior text, we don't want you accessing files because the state attorneys could request their own independent analysis of the hard drive and then accuse you of creating or modifying the files. That's why I want to put a quick pause on all of that. Obviously, I know you would not do that, but we want to maintain the credibility.

So Courtney's dad responded to this, saying, "I had barely opened it and was starting to poke around, but we started a video call so I stopped, never opened a file, so I didn't see anything." And then a few days later he said, "I'd also like for you to have the laptop soon so you can see if there's anything of use for us to use." Later on, the laptop was turned in to Courtney's defense attorneys.

But Florida law says that accessing a person's computer without their permission or the permission of their estate is illegal. Courtney Clunney's attorney is calling the charges against the parents a power play by prosecutors, all to control the narrative, saying,

This could be an example of prosecutors' overreaching and even misconduct, and that it appears excessive that the family is now confined in jail awaiting an extradition hearing on what may be an attempt to manipulate media headlines and then discredit them before Thursday's scheduled hearing on a gag order in the case. They further said that we believe that the Clunney family has been targeted with some trumped-up charges all to discredit them in the press and make their lives miserable.

But one of the attorneys representing Christian's side of everything said that they believe that it is incriminating evidence and that it just goes to the cover-up, saying that they have always believed that Christian was the victim in this case and that this was never self-defense. They also said that the family is very happy that the state attorney's office continued to pursue justice in this case.

This case has just become, over the last two years, extremely, extremely messy. And as I mentioned, we did that full deep dive, but it really is unsettling when you see all of the audio, the video. It just, it clearly illustrates domestic violence, in my opinion. And it's really sad that it resulted in somebody losing their life because it appeared that it was a very toxic relationship. They were constantly breaking up, arguing, and

unfortunately had they just stayed apart maybe they would both still be alive I mean at least he would still be alive hopefully life is full of adventures do you take this man to be your husband I do welcome home we did it he has your eyes he's perfect

So now I want to talk with you guys about Ella Jones. On January 6th in Mount Vernon, Washington, 14-year-old Ella Jones was reported as missing by her parents.

Authorities have said that she is 5'5", weighs about 135 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. Now, I'm going to leave a link in the show notes for the official missing persons report on this case so that you can see her picture and get all of the details, as well as see the contact numbers for anyone who may have information on this case.

So Ella's mom, Sarah, said that on the night before, on January 5th, it was a normal evening. Nothing was out of the ordinary. And Ella even laid in bed with her for a little bit before saying goodnight and then going to sleep in her room around 9 o'clock.

The next morning, her mom woke up, got some coffee, was just relaxing before making breakfast, thinking it was just a normal Saturday morning. But that changed when she realized it was now 11 a.m., and she hadn't seen Ella up. She hadn't even heard any noise coming from her room like she usually did. So her mom went into Ella's room to give her an omelet, and that's when she realized that Ella was not in her room at all.

She was gone, and nobody has seen or heard from her since. There was no evidence of a break-in or anything like that, so Ella's mom believes that she may have left the house on her own, either the night before or sometime in the early morning hours. Her mom said that on the night before, she woke up around 1 a.m. and didn't know if maybe she heard something or not, but she just fell back asleep.

When she was asked about this in more detail, her mom said that she doesn't think that she heard a noise and more so just woke up, which was unusual for her. And that's why she decided to bring it up. Although now, in hindsight, she says maybe she did hear something, but it wasn't registering to her at the time what it was. But maybe something did alert her to wake up.

So Ella left a note and took some clothing with her. But her mom said that the note didn't really fit into what you would expect from a runaway note. Just basically saying, I love you all and I don't want to hurt you guys. And her note doesn't really fit like the typical runaway note. It was, I love you very much, including all of her family and siblings. And that she didn't want to hurt us. And she was just gone.

She also said that the stuff she noticed Ella packed was enough clothing and other items to be gone for quite a while. It wasn't like she just walked out of the house empty-handed. She said that she took a large backpack, her blow dryer, her hair straightener. I mean, things like that. Things that you would use for a while. Her mom said that she believes that it was Ella's handwriting on the note, but she mentioned that it was uncharacteristically neat.

When she was asked if she believes those were Ella's words or something somebody else maybe told her to say, her mom said that she believes somebody told her that writing the note was a good idea and that it was not Ella's idea. She says that Ella has never done anything like this before or even threatened that she was going to leave. Like, she had skipped school. She always came home. Like, nothing where she left. We have a close relationship, and...

She's close with her family friends. She doesn't, she's really involved with her siblings. It just doesn't make sense that she would not have any contact with anyone.

So after she had seen the note, seeing that Ella clearly packed a bag and left on her own, her mom immediately went over to one of Ella's friends' houses to talk with the friend's parents and with the friend to see if they could help reach out to some of their other friends to then go help and look for her.

And while she was there, a lot of Ella's friends were saying that she had been talking to a man online. And as time passed, more and more people started coming to her mom with more information, all about knowing that Ella was talking to this friend that she had online, who was a man in his 30s.

Now, other than that, her mom doesn't know much more because she said that there has been a lot of conflicting information, which really does make sense since she's getting all of this information from multiple teenagers, right? For example, one friend said that the man was from Connecticut. Another said from Arizona, and somebody else said he was from Louisiana.

She also said that more teens have come forward anonymously with even more information, but there was some confusion and conflict with someone else the kids had been associating with online. After Ella was gone, she also went to neighbors' homes to see if their ring camera footage caught anything, and unfortunately, none of those efforts were successful.

Before this happened, her mom said that she hadn't been happy in the past about Ella being sneaky with what she was doing online, and that she even had Apple parental controls on her phone. But somehow, Ella was able to still download an app called TexNow.

And this is basically a text messaging app that allows you to text from there, and then the text messages are protected by a passcode. This is so teens can talk to other people, talk to whoever they want, really, and their parents can't see it from their regular messaging app.

Her mom says that she has no idea how she downloaded it, and that she could see it in Ella's settings but couldn't find the actual app on her phone whatsoever, and she says that she was only able to access it once she undid all of the parental settings, so she's not sure at all how this happened because Ella didn't have an app store on her phone or even Safari.

Other than that phone, she also had a school-issued computer, which her mom said was kind of like a loose cannon. In December, I had gone to the school and the principal and asked them to lock down an entire page full of lists of possible apps that I wouldn't want her to access, which they helped facilitate. And I had been...

I didn't know what was going on. I did not know the extent of it, but I was alarmed with things enough that I was trying to lock everything down even tighter, was bringing her to work with me, just trying to keep like a real close eye

eye on all of the internet stuff. I've repeatedly talked with her about the dangers of social media and strangers and you know when they're little you start with stranger danger as they get older you start talking about the internet and that's always been a constant presence. You hear about the kids that get taken from grocery stores or all of that. We've had numerous conversations about it

It's unclear what exactly the problems were that Ella and her mom were having over Ella's internet activities, but she said that she has talked to Ella in depth about the dangers of strangers on the internet.

However, since Ella's been gone, she has been pretty disturbed to learn all of the things going on with Ella that she wasn't aware of before. She doesn't know what app she was using to communicate with this man online and said that there's been conflicting stories from Ella's friends.

But one friend mentioned Omegle, which was actually shut down in November of 2023. See, Omegle is a website where you video chat with strangers, almost like in a Russian roulette style. You can click hit next to switch to another person, all of these things, or you can just stay chatting with one person. But it just randomly pairs you up with somebody else online.

So a lot of teens would do this, and there are actually a ton of videos where adults would pretend that they were 13 years old, almost playing like to catch a predator, and then the videos are pretty disturbing. The adults would even say things like, hey, I'm 13, is that okay with you? And some of these creeps would even say yes and ask them to take their shirts off or to touch themselves. I mean, it's really, really sick, and luckily the site is no longer active. I

I remember hearing reports too where some people, like gross guys, would literally just sit there with their genitals on the screen, their penis just hanging out naked, so that when somebody would click into their box, whoever the young kid was playing on this thing would see their dick. It's fucking foul.

So now, even though the app is shut down, which is great, sometimes people would match, and if they matched with somebody they liked, they would take the conversation offline or take it to another app like Telegram, Discord, or TextNow, the one that Ella was using.

I had found the text now and then wiped her phone because I didn't want her to have access to it. And with the parental controls already being set up and having been bypassed, I did do that, which I'm now kicking myself for because by wiping, factory resetting her phone, it...

has limited what I've been able to access. Police came to pick up Ella's phone and laptop sometime during the week following Ella's disappearance so that they could try to figure out if they can find a digital footprint or some sort of clue that would lead them to where she could be. Additionally, there were two separate teens who didn't know each other that saw Ella on a video with a man in his 30s. They both gave similar descriptions of this man, saying that he was white and had dark hair.

Ella's mom also talked about some frustrations that she has had with the police since they were initially treating this as a runaway case and not as a missing or abducted person's case, which is unfortunately all too common. But the police pointed to the note, to the fact that she had packed, and the fact that it felt like she had obviously left on her own.

However, she's still a 14-year-old girl, and her mom feels like as time has passed, it's become more and more obvious that Ella isn't just hiding out at a friend's house or sleeping on somebody's couch. Her mom fully believes that she is with this unknown older man in his 30s that Ella had been communicating with, who more than likely, I mean not more than likely, he is a predator. If he is in his 30s and he's talking to a 14-year-old girl, whether he's with her now or not, he is a predator.

I'm hoping at this point that a lot of it's just behind the scenes and I don't know what's going on. I was frustrated by the lack of immediate response that those first few days are so critical to finding someone in a nefarious situation, which I believe she's in. My gut from day one was something's really wrong at this point.

it was frustrating to have it treated like a typical runaway they have pursued different tips they have tried to pull buses over they have gotten warning screens across public transport they've gone into several apartment buildings based on tips that she might be in apartments they are following through with the tips i just feel at this point

There's no substantiated proof is essentially what they are telling us. So there's no proof of a crime. To me, a 14 year old vanishing with no clues and no sightings is a proof enough of a crime. PenFed free checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. PenFed Access America checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small. Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money.

Learn more at PenFed.org. Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. Now this case reminds me a lot of Alicia Navarro. She was also 14 when she left home on her own, and she was missing for about four years until she was 18, and she herself then went to the police department to try to get her name off of the missing persons list.

It turns out that she had been with a disgusting creep that she too had met online, who was much, much older than her. This guy was 32 years old when she was 14 years old. When news broke about her being alive and being okay, she told the police that she was not harmed in any way, and that she was with the guy all by her own free will.

However, not long after she walked into that police department and everybody learned that she was alive, the man that she was with was charged with child pornography charges for images of children engaged in sexual acts under the age of 12, and also images of sexual abuse of children under 16.

So going back to Ella, I truly, truly hope that she is okay and hasn't been harmed and is not currently being harmed. It is so scary and I can't imagine what her mother is going through right now. It is every parent's worst nightmare. Knowing her 14-year-old is somewhere unknown and is most likely with this man in his 30s that she met online, a predator. I mean,

It is just, it gives me the chills and it makes me want to cry. It is every parent's absolute biggest fear.

So please share this episode or even share the missing persons link that I'm going to put in the show notes and hopefully we can get the word out. And if she is seen somewhere, maybe there is a parking lot camera, maybe police can get a license plate. I mean, you never know how something small can go such a long way in helping solve cases like this one. Whether somebody saw something, maybe they were at a rest stop, a restaurant, anything like that. I mean, any tips, any leads will help.

But the longer that this 14-year-old is missing, unfortunately, the scarier the situation becomes in terms of the reality of it setting in. So please just take a quick second, copy the link to this episode, share it on your social media, share it in your group chat, wherever you can, and let's hopefully just get the word out about Ella. And I pray that she is reunited with her mom soon.

Lastly, in case you missed the Monday episode, I did a full deep dive on Scott Peterson and the LA Innocence Project and what that all means, all of the new evidence, why people think that he's innocent and why people think he's really not guilty at all and somebody else is responsible. So I break it all down for you start to finish. Why he was convicted, what appeared to prove that he was guilty, even though it was a lot of circumstantial evidence. I'm not saying I think he's innocent, but it was circumstantial evidence.

at best, still filthy dirtbag sleazeball. But then we also talk about all of the things that indicate he's innocent, according to some people. And,

And I gotta say guys, I'm pretty surprised because I put a poll over on Spotify asking after people listened to that episode if they thought that he was guilty, if they thought that he was innocent, if they were unsure. And let me look at what this is right now. Okay, so 49% people say that they do think Scott is guilty, but 33% say they think that he could possibly be innocent. And then the balance of the 17% say that they're unsure.

So that kind of swung in a direction that I didn't see coming. I thought everybody 100% was certain that he was guilty. So listen to the episode if you haven't yet and decide for yourself and cast your vote.

Other than that, guys, I will see you bright and early Monday with another deep dive. Also, if you want an added true crime fix because you just can't get enough and you need more stuff to listen to, I am always dropping ad-free bonus episodes every single Friday. You can get access to that either through the Apple Podcast app or through Patreon, which I will link in the show notes below. And if you do it through Patreon, there's also a bunch of other stuff you get access to, like our private podcast.

group chat, merch discounts, one-on-one content with me. I mean, all sorts of stuff. So check that out. Other than that, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Serialistly and I will be back on the mic with you very, very soon. All right. Take care, guys. Bye. PenFed free checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. PenFed Access America checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small. Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money.

Learn more at PenFed.org. Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. PenFed's got great rates for everyone.