SPRING, TX — On April 26, 2010, 16-year-old Alexandria “Ali” Lowitzer got off the school bus three houses down from her home in Spring, Texas — and vanished.
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Ali had just left Spring High School, where she was a sophomore. Before leaving campus, the teen spoke to her mother, Jo Ann Lowitzer. At around 2:30, Ali told her mom that she planned to walk the quarter mile to the Burger Barn, where she had recently begun working, to pick up her paycheck. But Ali never came home.
Initially, police treated Ali as a runaway — though she vanished with just the clothes she wore to school, her backpack, and her cell phone.
Ali was an avid texter and used her phone constantly, yet all communication including pinging cell towers stopped at about 3 P.M.
Photo of Ali with her parents Jo Ann and John [Investigation Discovery]
“Art was her favorite subject… I know that she had dreams of furthering her art by going to college,” her mother, Jo Ann Lowitzer said.
Ally had a large group of friends who her family says she was constantly texting — and a budding romance with a 16-year-old fellow student named D.J.
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On the day she went missing, Jo Ann said that Ali left home for school at around 7:30 A.M., and that nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
Ali’s brother Mason [Investigation Discovery]
Her mother said that she called Ali’s half-brother Mason, who was 18 at the time and still lived at home.
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Jo Ann said that she asked Mason to leave the door open when he left the house to meet a friend.
Ali told her mother that she wanted to stop at the Burger Barn to get her paycheck and to see if she could pick up a shift that afternoon.
Jo Ann told her daughter that she did not want her to walk to work. Though it was only a 10-minute walk, it ran along a road with no shoulder. Finally,Jo Ann said she relented and allowed her daughter to make the short trip.
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She asked Ali to text her to let her know her plans, but when she got home, she found no sign of Ali.
Surveillance video showing Ali on the bus [Investigation Discovery]
“All the lights were out, the chairs were on the tables and there was nobody there,” she said. “At that point, the hairs on my neck stood up.”
Jo Ann and John called police, and say that they were frustrated when officers seemed to believe that Ali was a runaway.
Her mother pointed out that Ali’s cell phone charger, money, makeup, and other personal items were still in the home — and insisted that nothing about her daughter’s behavior indicated that she planned to leave home.
Frustrated, John and Jo Ann began their own investigation. They enlisted the help of the Laura Project, offered a $25,000 reward, and began to paper the neighborhood with flyers and put Ali’s story on social media.
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John tracked down the school bus company, and requested that he be allowed to review the video footage. Ali appeared in the footage, and John was able to confirm that Ali had been on the bus the entire time.
On the video, John saw that two young men got off the bus at the same time Ali did. The Lowitzers recognized one of the boys as a neighbor, who told Jo Ann and John that they walked with Ali for a while but that she veered away from the neighborhood on a path that would have led toward the Burger Barn.
But the owner of the Burger Barn told John that he never saw Ali the day before — she had never come to the restaurant, and never picked up her paycheck.
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John was also able to view surveillance footage from a gas station that was across the street of the Burger Barn, and saw no sign of Ali approaching the restaurant.
Jo Ann Lowitzer [Investigation Discovery]
On May 3, Ali’s parents gave detectives all of the evidence they had. Detectives also found Ali’s journals and found an entry that alluded to plans to run away.
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But Ali’s parents insisted that the journals did not reflect her true feelings — and said that she had no history of attempting to run away.
Police later changed Ali’s status from “runaway” to “endangered runaway.” In May, the case was transferred to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Within hours, Ali’s family said that homicide detectives were knocking on the door.
Police began their investigation close to home, and interrogated John for hours. John admitted that Ali had been “very angry” with him since he andJo Ann had separated two years earlier.
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Brandon Laverge [Investigation Discovery]
Mason and John both took polygraph exams. Police say that both were found not to be deceptive to the questions they were asked.
Detectives later said that John was cleared of any involvement in connection with his daughter’s disappearance but, even though Mason passed the polygraph, police did not officially clear him from suspicion.
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Authorities say that Mason has refused to talk further with them about his sister’s case, but he has always maintained that he had nothing to do with her vanishing.
Detectives found a clue in Ali’s cell phone records: At around 2:50 P.M., Ali texted an older boy from high school named Jay.
According toJo Ann, Ali asked him to come over after school and hang out. Detectives tracked Jay down, but Jay said that he never met up with Ali after she texted him.
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Over the next two years, the case went cold.
Image from family video of Ali Lowitzer [Investigation Discovery]
A private investigator working with the Lowitzer family believed that the killing could have a connection to Ali’s case.
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He pointed out that someone gave a tip that they had seen a girl talking to someone in a white truck — the same type of vehicle that Lavergne drove.
In addition, Lavergne had family in the area not far from where the Lowitzer family lived. “He had burned a white truck just north of Spring,”Jo Ann said.
Police investigated the lead, but Lavergne was able to prove that he had been offshore working on diesel engines.
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In the fall of 2012, the Lowitzers hired a second investigator, Amber Cammack, who began to investigate the possibility that Ali had been kidnapped and forced into the sex trade.
In October 2012, Joanne received a call from a woman in Columbus, Ohio, who said that she believed she had seen Ali at a church function.
Cammack traveled to the Columbus area and went undercover to find Ali. She met a prostitute named “Amy” who led Cammack to a drug house. There, Cammack believed that she recognized Ali.
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Eventually the Lowitzers, Cammack, Amy, and the police hatched a rescue mission — and in January 2013, a SWAT team raided the house.
Amber Cammack [Investigation Discovery]
Cammack still believes that Ali could have been trafficked. But Detective Christopher Cooke of the Harris County Sheriff’s office doubts that theory.
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He says that the police department sent Ali’s fingerprints out around the globe and have yet to find a match. He said: “This case begins and ends right there where she got off the bus.”
Jo Ann has left her room untouched since the day her daughter disappeared. The Lowitzers say that they believe that someone, somewhere knows what happened to Ali — and that they will do anything to get answers.
Police have asked anyone with information about the case to contact them at (713) 274-9100.
For more on Ali Lowitzer, watch the “So Close to Home” episode of Investigation Discovery’s Disappeared on ID GO now!
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AlexandriaLowitzer.com
Main photo: Ali Lowitzer [Investigation Discovery]
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