via GoFundMe campaign
A 63-year-old New York woman who vanished during a trip to Las Vegas earlier this month was found dead last week, ending a nearly two-week search in which her family says scammers used her phone to demand money.
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Alisa Goods, a grandmother of five, was last seen on Saturday, Aug. 8. She was staying with a friend in Las Vegas and told her she was going to a CVS. She never came back.Goods had been living on the Upper East Side, according to ABC7, which identified her as an Upper East Side woman throughout its coverage of the search. NBC New York reported the same, describing her as a Newark native who had been living on the Upper East Side, and attributing that to a cousin.
Her body was found on Thursday, Aug. 20, in a drainage ditch near a parking structure close to Harry Reid International Airport, after someone called to report a body in the area.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says surveillance footage from Aug. 8 shows Goods falling down an embankment, getting back to her feet, and then collapsing in a spot that could not be seen from Wayne Newton Boulevard, the road running alongside it. She was not visible to passing traffic.
Her niece, Alana Calloway, confirmed the identification on Friday, Aug. 21, in a written statement. “Our hearts are broken. We were notified that my aunt was found — unfortunately, not the way we wanted her to be,” Calloway wrote. “This is an unimaginable time. We are still trying to learn the details surrounding her death. We ask for continued prayers and privacy as we grieve.”
While Goods was missing, her family was fielding messages that made them fear something worse. Texts came from her phone demanding money and bitcoin, NBC New York reported. Her son received a phone call from someone identifying herself as Alisa, asking whether the money was being sent; he recorded part of it. The family says the voice on the call was not hers.
Asked earlier in the search whether she feared a kidnapping-for-ransom, Goods’ sister, Mielle Stone, told NBC New York: “Yes. But we don’t have any money.”
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Police concluded the messages came from scammers using spoofing technology — software that lets a caller disguise the number a message or call appears to come from — and said they did not believe Goods was in danger at the time. The department treated the case as a missing-persons investigation and did not classify her disappearance as suspicious.The friend Goods was staying with filed the missing-persons report in Las Vegas two days after she disappeared, according to a cousin who spoke to NBC New York.
Cause and manner of death had not been released as of Friday. ABC7 reported the family was still waiting on answers from Las Vegas authorities.
Goods’ family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover funeral and burial costs.
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