← I Wish You Were Here
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She had already picked out the crib sheets, pink princess print. She was buying clothing, socks, blankets, baby bottles. 22 year old Lisa Dodd had filled out a baby registry, organized her small apartment on Bolivar street in Alton, Illinois, and she was counting down the days. Her daughter, the baby the family had taken to calling Baby Bean, was due on July 27, 2022. The family was in the final stages of planning a baby shower scheduled for the end of the month in June. All while Lisa had attended college and pursued her dream of a career in the medical field. She was, by every account that exists, a bright, happy young woman with a big heart and a future full of possibility. And she had no idea that she had less than two weeks to live. When I first came across this case, you guys, I was horrified, as I'm sure so many of you guys will be. It has been said time and time again that this case is way too disturbing to make it to Netflix. It is not easy to listen to, it is heartbreaking, it is graphic, and it's just again, another reminder of how scary people in this world can be. So welcome to this episode of I wish you were here. This is the case of Lisa Dodd. Alton is a small old river city right above the Mississippi river in southwestern Illinois, about 25 miles north of St. Louis. It is the kind of place where neighbors know each other's business, where people helped each other out where they could, and where news traveled fast. In the spring of 2022, Lisa had recently moved into an apartment in the 3400 block of Oliver Street. It was a pretty quiet street, which was great given that she was nesting as new mothers do at eight months pregnant, doing everything that she could to prepare a safe and a warm world for the daughter that she was about to bring into it. Lisa Ann Dodd was born on August 14th of 1999 in Alton, Illinois. She grew up in Jerseyville, which is a small town about 20 miles southeast of Alton, where she graduated with the Class of 2017 from Jersey Community High School. She was raised by her mother, Heidi, a nurse, and by Lisa's own account, her role model. She also had an older sister named Shelby. After high school, Lisa attended college and she had begun seriously considering a career in medicine for following in her mother's footsteps. All in all, she was in every verifiable sense, exactly the kind of person that the world could not afford to lose. But everything good that she had going on, through all of the optimism of those final weeks, there was a shadow. A shadow that Lisa's mother, Heidi Noel, knew well, because for the last two years, Lisa had maintained an on again, off again relationship with, with a man by the name of DeAndre Holloway Jr. And it was very much a toxic relationship. It was not an uncommon thing for Lisa to show up to work with two black eyes or with bruises all over her body. Her boss told authorities that she once witnessed herself with her own two eyes. Lisa getting punched in the face when the two of them were arguing in the car in the parking lot of her job. Their relationship was the slow, painful kind, full of the same repeating cycles of intensity, conflict and violence. But then, of course, on the other hand, you had apologies and return. He would apologize, she would apologize, even at times when she had nothing to apologize for. And the cycle would just repeat itself all over again. Heidi, her mom, knew that their relationship was troubled. And Lisa's boss also knew it because she would call off work if DeAndre had kicked her out of the house the night before or if she couldn't make it in because she had to go to the ER to get her injuries looked at. It was terrible. And of course, it didn't only affect Lisa, but it affected those around her who saw and had to witness firsthand the toll the relationship took on her. DeAndre's family members also knew that there was a side of him that was unstable and aggressive and. And scary at times. He struggled with many, many things, one of those things being his mental health. And it is unclear if he ever did anything to try and help himself, although I doubt that he did, given that his own mother had a protection order against him, if that tells you anything about the kind of person that he was. What is also certain is that by the summer of 2022, Lisa Dodd was eight months pregnant. She had recently moved into a new home. She was trying to build a new chapter. And DeAndre Holloway remained somewhere in that orbit of her life. The place that Lisa moved into on Bolivar street was for her. But when the two of them were on in their on and off cycle, DeAndre would stay there as well. And the neighbors around them, they were not a big fan of when that happened because it meant constant yelling, matches and fights and things being pushed around. And the neighbors would hear it. And they were so used to it that it was almost weirder if DeAndre was there, but they hadn't heard them arguing. It was like they knew to expect it. However, DeAndre Holloway had not always been the person that his family feared that he was becoming. His stepfather, Christopher Hawk would later describe a young man who was once A high school sports star. The kind of guy with a future, a smile in the team photo. But somewhere in those post adolescent years, something had began to fracture inside of him. Two months before he was due to graduate high school, he. He dropped out. It was the first visible sign that something was very, very wrong. What followed, according to the stepdad, was a slow, painful unraveling. DeAndre became unstable. He became aggressive, almost as if he was always on edge, drifting in and out of his mother's house in Litchfield, Illinois, about 45 miles northeast of all 10. He became unreliable and he fell in with what his stepdad referred to be a tough crew. He couldn't hold down a job. At one point he was working in a drive through at a fast food restaurant. But even that proved impossible for him to sustain. No aspect of his life was going well. And according to his stepfather, the reason was the voices. DeAndre Holloway heard three distinct voices inside of his head. Presences that spoke to him constantly shaping his perception of reality. One of them had a Ruth. Ruth was a bad one. Ruth told DeAndre when he could and couldn't do things. Ruth told him who he could and couldn't trust. She told him bad things. She told him that customers at the drive thru window were sending him coded messages. She infected his sense of the world with nothing else but paranoia. DeAndre's parents tried to get him help. When they noticed that he needed it, they took him to a clinic. After the voices became too severe to ignore, he stayed there for a couple of days. But he didn't want to take the medication. He didn't want to do what they were telling him to do because he didn't want to feel like he was there against his will. He didn't want to feel like he was caged in. So what did he do? He walked out. And the clinic could not legally hold him against his will because he was an adult. And in Illinois, as in most states, you cannot be forcibly committed for mental health treatment unless you have already done something proven to be dangerous. But despite his parents concerns, they, they nor anyone else in his life, no one else that knew him could have ever imagined just how bad things would get. We knew he was capable of violence, but we never saw this. DeAndre had had one prior brush with the law before the horrific events of today's case. It was a robbery of a friend in a nearby county three years earlier. But no convictions for assault or violence or anything of sorts of was was on his record. He existed in that terrible gray zone of being disturbed enough to worry those who loved him, but not dangerous enough on paper to warrant any kind of intervention. By the spring of 2022, he and Lisa Dodd had been cycling in and out of each other's lives for approximately two years. The relationship had its tenderness at times really, really short spurts of happiness, but it also had so much darkness. And then one day in early June, Deandre Holloway came to the apartment on Bolivar street for the last time. The morning of June 9 passed without any drama. For most of Alton, it was a Thursday. Ordinary in every sense of the word. Warm humidity, the Mississippi river glittering in the distance as it always does. And inside the apartment on Bolivar Street, 22 year old Lisa Dodd, eight months pregnant, was home. And she was not alone. Taking a very quick break to thank today's sponsor, Mint Mobile. I don't know about you guys, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately my old carrier also liked keeping my money and there was always mysterious fees and bills that kept creeping up year after year. Sound familiar? So I switched to Mint Mobile and my bill dropped to $15 a month. You are hearing that correctly. $15 a month. I am saving so much money a year and the service just as good. Same high speed data, same unlimited talk and text, all running on the nation's largest 5G network. I have never dropped a call, I have never lost service and I have not missed my old carrier for a single second to be so honest with you. Here's the thing. Mint Mobile exists to fix the problem of overpriced wireless issues. No long term contracts, no nonsense. You bring your own phone, you keep your same phone number, you act, you can activate your E SIM card in minutes and you're done. I did it and I genuinely wish that I would have done it sooner and I have no doubt that you guys would wish the same. Right now you can get three months of premium wireless from Mint Mobile for just $15 a month. I use Mint Mobile myself. And if you're tired of handing your hard earned money to a carrier that doesn't deserve it, quite frankly, you should do it too. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mint mobile.com wish that's mint mobile.com wish upfront payment of $45 for three months. Five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for the first three months only. Then full price plans, options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you so much Mint Mobile for sponsoring this video. What happened inside of that apartment has never fully been narrated in full public detail because DeAndre is the only person alive who knows what really happened. And he said almost nothing when it came time for him to face justice. What is known from court records, police statements, and the evidence gathered at the scene is this. Two days before Lisa's murder, she had been with DeAndre, her boyfriend. The two of them had a really bad argument that ended up with him leaving. So she went to work and then returned home after her shift. But because of his mental health and because despite how horrible he was to Lisa, because she loved him, she still found a way to care for him. When she couldn't get a hold of him after their fight, she got really worried. She confided in her mom that she was concerned that she couldn't get a hold of him and that he had not come back to the apartment. And her mom was trying to get her to look at the situation in a different way, in a different perspective, telling her that maybe this was a blessing in disguise, that he had left and not come back. But Lisa, no matter what she did, she just could not help but worry about him. She couldn't even fall asleep because she had so many different thoughts going in and out of her mind. She ended up going for a drive that night in the middle of the night to try and help clear her head. By the next morning, June 8, she still couldn't get a hold of him. So she ended up texting the landlord of the apartment building saying, quote, my boyfriend didn't come home last night and he left his phone. I was wondering if you could watch the cameras and tell me if you see him leave and what he was wearing. His family and I are really worried. Later that same day, his uncle reached out to Lisa to let her know that he was with DeAndre and that he was planning on dropping him off. And later that night, around 8pm he did. DeAndre got dropped off at Lisa's place of work, and he hung out there waiting for her shift to end. Then the two of them together drove back to the apartment. On their ride home, Lisa texted her mom, saying that he was dropped off at her job and that they were driving home together and that they were going to try and figure things out. Her last text to her mom ever was, I'm trying to figure it out. They're seen walking into the apartment building together. And shortly after, the neighbors, as was pretty much routine by that point, heard them start arguing. And when the neighbor was describing the argument and what it sounded like, at least from their Perspective from the floor below. She said it sounded like a muffled scream and then the sound of someone chopping wood. Remember that Heidi Texted Lisa at 10:49pm saying are you okay? Lisa never responded to that message. Inside of their apartment that night, DeAndre Holloway killed Lisa Dodd. He then decapitated her and then placed her head in a large dumpster outside of the apartment building, leaving her body inside. The sound that the neighbors thought sounded like somebody chopping wood was the sound of him cutting his girlfriend's head off. The act was so extreme, so far beyond the threshold of comprehensible violence that even well seasoned law enforcement officers struggle to describe it. It was not a crime of impulse alone. The act of concealing her head outside by disposing of it in a dumpster suggested a deliberate deranged attempt to dispose of evidence. Baby Bean, eight months developed and less than seven weeks from her due date, died that night with her mother. After leaving the apartment, DeAndre got into Lisa's car and drove away. He headed to his mom's house, this was now around 2:30 in the morning, and began knocking on the door very, very loudly. Apparently not surprisingly, he was acting really weird. He was really on edge and he was pacing around the house, couldn't sit still. So he had driven to his mom's house in Lisa's car. And with him he even had some of her belongings, like her driver's license, other bank cards and two random keys. And he gave those to his grandmother for her to hold on to. The following morning, he asked his mother for a clean pair of clothes. He threw his away and put a for sale sign outside of Lisa's car and left on foot. Just walked away. So now it is Thursday, June 9th of 2022 at approximately 12:30 30, 12:40pm Heidi Noel, Lisa's mother, had been trying to reach her daughter that morning. She hadn't heard from her since the night prior and Lisa was not picking up her phone. The silence was wrong. It was off. It was unlike her and Heidi's mother's instinct could not rationalize it away. By the late morning of June 9, she decided to go to the apartment herself. Alton Police department received a call within minutes of Heidi walking inside of Lisa's apartment. What she saw would haunt her, would haunt anyone for the rest of their life. She ran out. There's CCTV footage of this. It is heartbreaking. She runs out. She calls 911 in clear, pure and utter distress. You can see the neighbors also in the same CCTV recording, about to walk into the building as Heidi is walking out. And they're immediately concerned just by taking one look at her face. She was struggling to breathe. She could hardly form a complete sentence on the phone. Trying to explain to the 911 operator what happened.
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My daughter's boyfriend killed her. He chopped her head off. Are you outside the apartment right now?
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Yes.
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Yes. What kind of a weapon does he have? He's not here. He took her car. Okay. Pharma says are coming. So you haven't heard? You haven't heard from her boyfriend or talked to him at all? No, I haven't. What time did you last hear from her? It was like nine or five or so. I had sent her a text and she said they were talking. And then I tried again at 10 and she didn't answer. And then I tried this morning two times, and she didn't answer. And so then I can't answer because I. She usually answers. Okay. The last time we talked to her was last night when she sent you a text message. Right. Okay. Novices are coming. They'll be there. Okay. Okay.
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Heidi looked at the neighbors and all she could manage to say was, quote, he killed her. Officers responded to the 3400 block of Bolivar street at approximately 12:59pm what they found inside was among one of the most disturbing crime scenes in the city's history. Officers came to tell residents what happened in the careful, spare language of law enforcement. Someone had been found dead next door, but the details were just too brutal for anyone to say out loud. Heidi Noel did not need to be told who he was. She already knew. In one terrible moment, standing outside of the apartment she had entered, hoping to find her daughter sleeping or sitting or scrolling on her phone. She had lost her child, her grandchild, and whatever future she had imagined for them both. Officers found Lisa's head in the dumpster outside of the building. They needed to look there. After a witness had noticed a bloody knife in the dumpster, the Madison county coroner's office was called. The Illinois state police subdivision of forensic services arrived to process the scene. The investigation from the very first hours was never a case of whodunit. The evidence, the stolen car, the prior relationship, the nature and location of the crime, everything pointed swiftly toward DeAndre Holloway. The only question was where he was. Luckily, that answer came quickly. In Gillapsy, about 40 miles away, local police had encountered Deandre Holloway in connection with a bicycle theft, a mundane, unrelated offense. He looked different because he had cut his dreads off. But when they ran his information, the connection to the Alton homicide Case lit up, up. He was taken into custody the same day that Lisa's body was found. Four days after the murder, Alton police chief Marcos Pulito stood before cameras and made a statement that would reverberate across the country. The department had formally charged DeAndre Holloway, now 22 years old, with two counts of first degree murder, two counts of intentional homicide of an unborn child, dismembering of a human body, concealment of a homicidal death, and offenses relating to a motor vehicle. Quote. Every murder is absolutely terrible. I will never take that away. But what happened to 22 year old Lisa Dodd, who had just moved to Alton, is beyond reprehensible. It is completely terrible what happened to her. End quote. In a video posted to the Alton police department's Facebook page, Polito described the scene. He said Lisa had been savagely, savagely killed. He referred to DeAndre as a savage monster. He also mentioned the baby shower, the one that was supposed to happen at the end of the month in June. And he reminded people of who Lisa was. Not only a daughter, not only a sister, but also a mother to be. Videos of that press conference were quickly posted on social media, and within days, this story had spread beyond Illinois, beyond the Midwest, into national and international news coverage. Deandre Holloway was held at the Madison county jail on a Bond set at $2 million. He was at this point, 22 years old, but so was Lisa. They had both been the same age, had moved through the same world, had known each other for only two years, but she was dead. And he was now facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. Meanwhile, Lisa's family was just trying to survive. The baby shower planning became funeral planning. The pink princess crib on the registry, never purchased, Never Used, a GoFundMe page, was launched for the family and would eventually raise nearly $16,000. In a later update, the family announced that they had used the donations to cover funeral expenses and then donated $5,000 to the Oasis Women's center in Alton, an organization supporting domestic violence survivors, and $2,000 to the Riverbend Humane Society. It is incredible that in grief, Lisa's family still found a way to give back. Deandre Holloway was formally indicted in late June of 2022 on all charges. Madison county prosecutors were preparing what they believed would be a natural life sentence case. After all, they charged him with two counts of first degree murder. The facts that they had seemed pretty straightforward. Two victims, two life sentences. But the legal road ahead was anything but easy. From the very first hearings DeAndre's public defenders raised questions about their clients mental fitness to stand trial. This is a distinct legal standard from the question of sanity at the time of the crime. Fitness to stand trial asks whether a defendant currently understands the proceedings against him and can assist in their own defense. Given what his own family had said about his history of the voices in his head and psychosis, auditory hallucinations and refusal of treatment, the concerns that they had were not coming out of nowhere. In September of 2022, after court ordered psychological evaluations, Associate judge Neil Schroeder made a determination. DeAndre Holloway was not mentally fit to stand trial. Instead, he was remanded to a state facility, an Illinois department of human Services institution, for psychiatric treatment. Meaning that the case was effectively put on pause. Basically, for Lisa's family, it was only the first of many grinding delays that would stretch what might have been a swift prosecution into a years long ordeal. Heidi, Noel and those who loved Lisa were left to wait. And as much as we wish that it would, grief does not pause for legal proceedings. They were left mourning simultaneously a daughter, a granddaughter, and the version of justice that they were hoping would have come quickly. Instead, the only option that they had was to wait. By February of 2023, state institution doctors determined that DeAndre had regained the fitness necessary to stand trial, and he was returned back to Madison county custody. Finally, the case resumed. Prosecutors began to rebuild their approach. And then they encountered their second major legal obstacle, this one not from the defense, but from the Illinois Supreme Court itself. In a ruling that would directly impact the prosecution, the Illinois Supreme Court determined that an unborn child cannot be construed as a second murder victim for the purposes of seeking a sentence of natural life in prison, the ruling was legally significant. It meant that even though DeAndre had been charged with the intentional homicide of an unborn child, baby bean, that charge could not be used to stack toward a life sentence in the same way that a second murder charge could. Madison county state's attorney Tom Haines spoke out about this. Quote, the Illinois supreme court ruled that the innocent life in the womb in this case was not a victim for the purposes of sentencing, end quote. The he explained, explaining that it really removed their ability to secure that natural life sentence they were wanting to get. It was a devastating blow to the prosecution's original goal and by extension to Lisa's family, who had hoped that the man who killed their daughter and granddaughter would never see daylight again. Then, in May of 2024, the defense again raised fitness concerns. The judge ordered a fresh round of psychological evaluation. And the trial, which had been tentatively set, set for October 7, 2024, was once again thrown into uncertainty. And in a strange and unsettling legal turn that summer, DeAndre Holloway was evaluated, found fit, and then, perhaps most shockingly of all, granted the right to present himself in court. The judge determined that he met legal threshold for self representation. And. And so the man who had decapitated his pregnant girlfriend Was preparing to serve as his own attorney in a murder trial. The trial, scheduled for October of 2024 did not happen. Instead, in December of 2024, a quieter legal event unfolded in Edwardsville. DeAndre Holloway, after more than two years of delays, mental health findings in supreme court ruling, and his own brief attempt at self representation, entered a guilty plea. He pleaded guilty to three charges. First degree murder in the death of Lisa Dodd, Intentional homicide of an unborn child in the death of baby Bean, and concealment of a homicidal death. It was a plea deal that was supported by Heidi Noel herself. Quote, this is a tragic outcome of a two year on and off again domestic violence relationship. This did not have to end this way. My daughter should be here raising a toddler. Friday, January 17th of 2025 was sentencing day at Madison County Circuit Court. The courtroom was quiet in a particular way. Courtrooms are quiet on sentencing days. Not peaceful, but just still. Outside, it was the middle of January. It was gray, it was cold. Inside, Heidi Noel sat with a statement she had written for a man who had taken everything from her. A photograph of Lisa was projected on a screen near the table where DeAndre Holloway sat. And when it was Heidi's turn to speak, she stood and delivered one of the most quietly devastating victim impact statements. She did not scream. She did not rage. She measured out her grief in precise, heartbreaking sentences. On that night, I received a life sentence to live the remainder of my life without my beautiful, loving, sassy daughter. A life without knowing the joy of watching Lisa raise my granddaughter. She addressed DeAndre directly. She told him that he had been sentenced to 60 years, but that Lisa and baby Bean had been sentenced to death. She told him that the rest of her family and friends had been sentenced to a life without them. She told him that his own family had been sentenced to be the relatives of a convicted murderer. She said that she did not hate him, but she said that she was disappointed that he had thought his mental health history would give him a pass on accountability. She also told him something else, Something that speaks to who Lisa was and who DeAndre might have been in her eyes. Before the end, she said that Lisa wanted to. All Lisa wanted to do was love him, that she was a light sent to your dark world. DeAndre said nothing. He was let out of the courtroom without speaking. 60 years total is what he was sentenced to, structured across three 30 years for first degree murder of Lisa Dodd, 20 years for the intentional homicide of her unborn child, and 10 years for the concealment of a homicidal death. All three sentences were to run consecutively, one after another. A state attorney saying, I don't believe he'll be seeing the light of day as a free man. So I want to end this video by reminding you of who Lisa dawn was. A young woman who had attended college, who had dreams of working in medicine, who had filled out a baby registry with care, who had planned a future not only for her, but her daughter. Her mother described her to be a bright light that cared for everyone. Someone who had a big heart and would go out of her way to help people. She was the best version of what a person could be at 22, imperfect, alive, and full of love. So heartbreaking. But yeah, that is all for me today. Thank you guys for listening to this episode and for listening to Lisa's story. I hope you guys are having the best day. If don't go do something to make it the best day, make somebody happy and I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you.