Airport surveillance showed the missing New York grandmother fall down an embankment, rise and later collapse, police said.
LAS VEGAS, NV — Police say surveillance video shows missing New York grandmother Alisa Goods falling down an embankment and collapsing near Harry Reid International Airport on Aug. 8, nearly two weeks before her body was discovered in a drainage area.
Goods, 63, had been the subject of a widely publicized missing-person search after disappearing during a visit to Las Vegas. Her family reported her missing Aug. 10 and later received unusual messages from her phone asking for money and Bitcoin. Police said her body was found early Aug. 20 near the airport’s Terminal 1 parking garage. The Clark County coroner had not publicly released a cause or manner of death as of Aug. 25, leaving important questions about her death unresolved.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said dispatchers received a call at about 1:45 a.m. Aug. 20 reporting a deceased woman in a drainage ditch area near Wayne Newton Boulevard and the Terminal 1 parking garage. Officers went to the location and found a woman who was later identified as Goods. Investigators then reviewed airport surveillance from Aug. 8, the date Goods disappeared.
Police said the footage showed Goods falling down an embankment, getting back up and then collapsing. “There was no further movement observed after that,” police said. Authorities said the place where Goods collapsed could not be seen from the street, offering an explanation for why she may have remained undiscovered despite traffic and activity around the airport.
Police have not publicly said what caused Goods to fall or whether injuries from the fall caused her death.
Goods had traveled from New York to Las Vegas and was staying with a longtime friend. Her family said she left the friend’s home Aug. 8 to take a bus to a nearby CVS pharmacy and did not return. A missing-person report said she was last known to be in the area of Maryland Parkway and Tropicana Avenue before heading toward a CVS near Paradise Road and Harmon Avenue.
Her relatives said public transportation was familiar to her during Las Vegas visits. Goods’ daughter, Kristen Goods, later said her mother had undergone several surgeries that made walking more difficult during this trip. Authorities have not publicly explained her complete route from the area where she was staying to the airport property or established how long she was near the airport before the fall captured on video.
The family reported Goods missing two days after she disappeared. As the search continued, relatives contacted hospitals, jails and the coroner’s office while family members traveled to Las Vegas and distributed missing-person flyers.
The case gained national attention after relatives said messages began arriving from Goods’ phone on Aug. 12. The sender asked for help, gas money and eventually Bitcoin. Goods’ niece, Alana Calloway, said the gas request immediately seemed wrong because her aunt did not drive.
Relatives also said Goods’ son received a phone call from someone claiming to be her, but they did not believe the voice belonged to Goods. The messages raised fears within the family that someone else had her phone or that she might have been abducted. Investigators, however, did not publicly classify her disappearance as a kidnapping case.
Police later said they believed the unusual messages could have come from scammers using technology that made communications appear to come from Goods’ number. Authorities said they did not believe the messages were tied to her disappearance.
That assessment shifted attention back to Goods’ movements on Aug. 8 and the newly reviewed airport video. No criminal charges have been announced, and police have not identified a suspect in connection with her death. Officials also have not publicly reported evidence that another person caused her fall.
The surveillance footage establishes a sequence in which Goods fell, stood again and then collapsed, but the video alone does not establish why she fell, whether she had suffered an injury or medical problem, or what ultimately caused her death. Those medical questions remain for the coroner’s investigation.
Goods’ disappearance had alarmed relatives because they described her as someone who regularly stayed in contact with her family. She was a grandmother of five and had ties to New York City and Newark, New Jersey. Family members said she had visited Las Vegas before, making her failure to return especially concerning.
Her daughter traveled west as the search stretched into a second week, while relatives continued making public appeals for information. The airport became a focus only after Goods was found near the Terminal 1 parking structure.
Harry Reid International Airport sits immediately south of the Las Vegas resort corridor and includes roadways, parking structures and sloped desert landscaping around its passenger terminals. Police said the drainage location where Goods was found was shielded from street view, a detail that became central to understanding how she could have remained there unnoticed.
The discovery ended the missing-person search but opened a new phase centered on determining Goods’ cause and manner of death. The Clark County coroner’s office is responsible for making those findings. As of Aug. 25, authorities had not announced a final determination or a timetable for releasing one.
Police also have not publicly released the airport surveillance footage or a detailed account of Goods’ movements between leaving her friend’s residence and appearing near the airport. Investigators have not announced arrests or charges, and available police statements do not establish that another person was involved in her death.
The unanswered points include what brought Goods to the airport area, what caused the initial fall and whether heat, an injury, an underlying medical issue or another factor contributed. Officials have not publicly attributed her death to any of those possibilities.
For Goods’ family, the confirmation of her death brought an end to nearly two weeks of searching but not to their questions. Calloway said the family was devastated after being told Goods had been found. “Our hearts are broken,” she said in a family statement.
Relatives thanked members of the public and news organizations that had shared information during the search and asked for privacy while they grieved. The family also established a fundraiser to help cover funeral and related expenses.
Before Goods was found, relatives had described increasingly desperate efforts to locate her, including checking institutions around Las Vegas and traveling across the country to join the search. Police have not said whether additional video from surrounding roads, businesses or transit systems is part of the continuing review.
Goods’ body was found Aug. 20, 12 days after the airport footage recorded her fall and collapse. The missing-person search has ended, but the official cause and manner of her death remain pending, with the coroner’s findings representing the next major public milestone in the case.
Author note: Last updated August 25, 2026.