He came off as a tough guy. We would fool around a little bit. Sibling teasing i guess youd call it. He threatened to take out my whole family to get custody of our kids. A chilling story of danger and duplicity. We were trying to figure out who did this. He knew the whole time. This is the ultimate betrayal. Hello and welcome to date line. She was a hard working single mom that doted on her little boy and kept her loved ones close. Then one morning she was found dead in the house she shared with her son. Detectives would soon discover someone close to jessica was living a lie. Heres Keith Morrison with evil intent. It was 9 00 in the morning on the 25th of june 2015 omaha, nebraska. Missy nelsons morning ritual was interrupted by a phone call. It was the bank where her daughter jessica worked. She was an hour late. I said what . What do you mean . They said shes not here. We have been calling her and shes not answering. The thing was jessica was never late. Missy tried calling her. No answer. Panicked now she ran to her car, was jessica at home sick. So i was calling her all the way over there and i was thinking, i dont know where she is at and then i started to think really bad things. Maybe she was in a ditch somewhere passed out. Maybe she was in a bad car accident. Did you know it was something bad . I felt something was wrong. So i get over there and her car is in the drive way so im relieved. I said okay shes here. Shes not in an accident so why isnt he answering the phone . The door was locked to missy used her key to let herself in. I walked in and her house is dark. I cant find her. Everything is dark so i dont know where im going and the bathroom was like the first door on the left and the door was close d but i hear watering run. I opened up the door and i turned on the light and she was in the bathroom and the water was running and the water was up to her nose. She was laying there like this. She had something in her hand. It was a phone cord and i didnt understand. I started screaming. I had my cell phone so i called 911. Do you need police fire or rescue. My daughter is dead in the bathtub. I dont understand a word youre saying. I just found my daughter. I just found my daughter dead in the bathroom. And it looks like she slipped and i dont know i drained the water thinking they could help her but she was already gone. You could tell. I could tell. The pattern on her face looked checkered but her body was still the normal color. I dont imagine this. It was horrible. Its like a nightmare. I still see it. Its one of the worst feelings in the world that you cant help your daughter because she is gone. By the time jessicas father harry got there. There was a policeman in the driveway. Not far away he found missy a wreck, a mess. I hugged her. Whats going on . What do we know . We dont know anything. I just didnt think it sounded right that she shouldnt have had her phone charger there. Her phone wasnt there. You didnt know what to think. I didnt know what to think. I was devastated. I wasnt even thinking at that point. First responders trained to keep an open mind arent sure what to think either. It wasnt an obvious homicide. They didnt know if it was a medical emergency because we find people like that that suffered a stroke or a heart attack or something in a similar kind of situation so they didnt know what they had. The homicide detectives. I do a walk through the residence. They show me where jessica was at. Shes in the bathtub and oddly enough her clothes were in the bathtub with her but not on her. Not on her. They were laying near her feet. The couch in the living room had blood all over it so my official reaction was maybe there was a medical emergency that occurred on the couch. She had gone to the bathroom to maybe clean herself off and had collapsed and secgiven in to whatever medical emergency was happening. There was a small bruise on her neck. But there was something off too that didnt quite look right. They decided to treat it like a homicide. You only get one chance at this. So if you go in and you go guns blazing and you try to rush through things, youre going to miss things. The csi people arrived and used a laser scanner so quickly take billions of measurements and create this virtual representation of jessicas house, 3d, so more accurate than any photo and then they removed jessicas body and yes, detectives could see homicide was the right call. When we were able to actually look it was evident there had been a strangulation or asphyxiation at the least that took place. One of the things we noted right away is she had longer fingernails and one of those fingernails was quite evidently bent back and we knew there was a chance then that she had fought back against her attacker theres potentially dna there. The next day the autopsy confirmed that jessica had indeed been strangeled to death. There was a slight ligament tour mark around her neck but it was disrupted and it also appeared there was possibly a hand. Possibly her hand trying to pull. So the marks were intermittent. And one more thing the autopsy revealed is she had been sexually assaulted. The first thing that goes through your head is why . How . Who . Everybody is a suspect and nobody is a suspect. Who could have done this. Why . Did she have any enemies . None that we knew of. Coming up, the man in jessicas life and their volatile relationship. She would call us like every other week. Can you come and get me . We had a fight. Then did a Facebook Post put her in danger. She just put out there that she was alope and did it without even realizing. So if anybody was following her, they would know. Yeah. When date line continues. Kno yeah. When date line continues. Fight for piggyback rides fight for 7 am makeouts. Every year, walgreens helps millions of people fight the flu. Fight to protect the ones you love. 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Always wanted to have fun but the older we got the more she was like another mom to us. She would always be there even if we were fighting and we needed her she was there. Big sister. Her cousins and Close Friends that were more like siblings. Her siblings Close Friends that were more like relatives. She was nice to everybody. She had been a friend since grade school. She just wanted to have a good time. She was just, i wouldnt say crazy but she was goofy and did whatever she wanted to do. That held true with her choice of men. Her first serious boyfriend was him. With his tattoos and stuff, it seemed to be something she would have been into because she had a few tattoos as well. His name was John Mcdowell. He and jessica were good together and sometimes not. She would call us like what, every other week. Can you come and get me. We had a fight and im not staying out here so we would drive out there and a couple of weeks later she is back out there again. A year in it was still no wedding but there was a baby. Dominic, dom. I just remember, you know, everyone was so excited and wanted to meet him. She loved him. It was just an instinct she had. She wanted to do the best she could. And then one day dom was still quite small it all seemed to come apart. They were doing okay until he left her a voice mail. By accident. And an unintentional voice mail and the message that was left was bad. Very bad. Talking to friends. He didnt know he left her a voicemail telling her he slept with another girl and that was it. He was done. Whoa. So i helped her move that day. She must have been so upset. She was. She was devastated. To get an accidental voice mail from the father of your baby i slept with another woman. Bragging about it. Well, you should have seen the one i was with. And thats why jessica elected to be a single mom. Better she decided to concentrate on her little boy, the center of her life, dominic. She did everything that she could for her son. Just to try to do it right. I have things i want him to have so i need to pay for those things. So she worked. Two to three jobs sometimes. She worked at the First National bank. She liked that job. She loved it. That was her dream job. And then jessica and dominic lived in the little house on the northside of town. He had the big room. She said he has a slide. Well he needed a slide. Sure he needed a slide. I am such a mess when dom is gone. She had lost the remote and thought it was the worst 15 minutes of her life. She was lost without dominic because he could find the remote. She just put out there that she was alone and she did it without realizing. So if anybody was following her they would know. Well of course someone was following her on facebook. Maybe quite a few some ones. But finding the one with evil intent was not so easy. They start the search with jessicas ex and hear troubling stories. If she is around another guy even if they were just friends, you could tell he was like who is that. Her sister ashleys ex raises eyebrows too. He threatened to take out my whole entire family to get custody of our kids. Wow. When dateline continues. Kid. Wow. When dateline continues in the storied tradition of his greatgreatgrandmother, goldi knows to never compromise. Too shabby too much too perfect i can rent this . For that price . Absolutely. What is this, some kind of fairy tale . Its just right book your just right rental at thrifty. Com. Oh baby bear welcome back. Who would want to harm Jessica Nelson . That question baffled her grieving family when the vibrant young mom was found sexually assaulted and strangled to death in her bathtub. Her family wondered if a Facebook Post alerted her killer that she was home alone that night. Now theyre going to drill down on her personal relationship and at least one of them is complicated. Once again, heres Keith Morrison with evil intent. Word of Jessica Nelsons death spread quickly if incoherently among her friends in omaha. I got a phone call from a mutual friend of ours and she was so hysterical i couldnt understand what she was saying and i thought she said that dom had been killed so i got off the phone with her and i called john and he said they found jess real. It was unreal. You couldnt believe that. Lauras friendship with jessica drifted a bit after high school but by 2015, it was a little unusual. Laura and jessica both had babies with john. Laura dated him first but it was after she broke up with john that her son christopher was born and that was not long before jessica got pregnant. I found out when i was 6 months pregnant with her our so that him and jessica just started dating. Two women, two children, one man. I wanted to be mad at her and i couldnt because she was just too nice. Anyway, pretty soon john was no longer in the picture for either of them. Then as single mothers, laura and jessica reconnected so their sons, half brothers could bond. Our kids met each other and they got to play together. Now her friend was dead and the father of both of their sons was sitting in the Police Station answering questions. When was the last time you were at the house. I cant tell you for sure. Ballpark. Probably been three months. So when did you actually last see jessica. When she dropped my son off last night. Which meant john was the last known person to see jessica alive except for the killer, unless he was the killer. Detectives brought in jessicas family and friends and questioned them all about john. I think everybody had their own impression of john. And some of those impressions were not flattering. He would post pictures of us, you know, just out with friends and if shes around just another guy even though theyre just friends, john, you could tell he was like who is that . Jealous. Yeah. Did jessica trust john . No. I know she was big on filing for sole custody of dominic. She was tired of it because half the time it was johns time to take him he refused. They have these fights over dom, over custody, over money. Dom seemed to be trying to minimize the issues. Issues we were at each others throats. The biggest thing that we might fight about is shorts i bought him two weeks ago i sent them to your house and you need to find them. Okay. After two hours after questioning they let john go with a warning. He was suspect number one and they kept an eye on him as they investigated other men that crossed paths with jessica. We were interested in any male party she had recently been introduced to. Anybody at all that could have been showing interest in her, communicating that with her via social media or any other means that maybe seemed unwanted. Can you tell me is there anybody that shes seeing right now or she has been seeing up until recently . And im talking about, even casual hook ups . Anything at all . I know her last hookup was with a Old High School crush that had came back to town. He doesnt live here. He was a high school crush and hes in the military so when he was home she would hook up with him for a few days but then that was it. He was gone again. She stayed over there once. Detectives locked sbo hoked whereabouts the night jessica was killed. He was nowhere around. It couldnt have been him. It had to be someone close. Someone she knew and trusted. Someone with a key maybe. After all there was no forced entry but the door was locked when jessicas mother arrived in the morning and then her family told police about someplace that had been violent toward jessicas sister ashley a few days before the murder. I was going through a divorce and my ex was not so nice. He threatened to take out my whole entire family and then myself just to get custody of our kids. Wow. And the week before that he physically assaulted me. He had pinned her on the floor and left bruises on her arm. He had been arrested and was facing charges for domestic assault. A man that had been violent and threatened the family. Detectives checked out his alibi for the night of jessicas murder but they also went looking for anyone else that might have had access to jessicas home, like maybe a spurned lover but apparently there werent any. Spurned or otherwise. Everybody wanted to ask that question they would say that jessica often referred to the only man in her life as dominic and her others was her job and thats all she wanted to concentrate on was her work and providing for dominic. But sometimes jessica had friends over for saturday night gatherings when dom was at johns. And the last one was maybe ten days before she was killed and came with trouble. Jessicas freaking out next to me. Shes like are they doing a drug deal in the house . Coming up. You find all kinds of stuff on peoples cell phones, dont you . Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Investigators discover odd Text Messages on jessicas phone. There was just Something Weird about it. Maybe we need to figure out who this person is. When dateline continues. This when dateline continues here i go again on my you realize your vows are a whitesnake song . I do. If you ride, you get it. Geico motorcycle. 15 minutes could save you 15 or more. Have a skincare routine. But what about a lip care routine . Pay your lips some attention. The chapstick total hydration collection. Exfoliate nourish naturally enhance your lips. Chapstick. Put your lips first. Here, hello starts with hi mple. How can i help . A data plan for everyone. Everyone . Everyone. Lets send to everyone [ camera clicking ] wifi up there . Ahhh. Sure, why not . Howd he get out . a camera might figure it out. That was easy glad i could help. At xfinity, were here to make life simple. Easy. Awesome. So come ask, shop, discover at your xfinity store today. Police are using tear gas on protestors in the subway stations and set fire to a bank branch. Protestors beefing up the protests. The latest at the top of the hour on msnbc live. Welcome back to dateline. Im natalie morales. Jessica nelson had been murdered in her home. Her exboyfriend John Mcdowell was a prime suspect and then investigators discovered there was a party at jessicas house before she was killed and the list of potential suspects was about to grow. Meanwhile, jessicas friends and family were galvanized by their grief but could her killer be among them . Here again is Keith Morrison with evil intent. It was a week before they could have a funeral for jessica. A small sad service for family and friends is what they expected, but it wasnt small. Not at all. It was overwhelming just to see that many people knew her or at some point had cared enough to show up and say hey, were sorry. And some of the young men vowed revenge as they wore that are justice for jessica bracelets. Her brother, matt. Her Brothers Best friend also named matt that once lived with them that knew jessica like a sister. He was with us. Like another son. Like another son. What do you need help with . People would bring over food. Hes there helping us carry it in. That kind of thing. And there as well helping out and grieving was John Mcdowell jessicas ex. He may have looked the part of a