Husband arrested after woman weighted with boulder tossed from bridge

After a night out with colleagues, Elizabeth Pule Arellano called a co-worker to let her know she’d arrived safely at her parents’ north Fort Worth house.

Then the 28-year-old mother of four vanished.

When her mother awoke later that morning she found her daughter’s car nearby, with the keys still in the ignition. Her daughter’s purse and cellphone were still inside.

The mother called police that afternoon to report her daughter missing — unaware that her body had already been found.

Fishermen on a Lake Worth dock had called 911 at 3:20 a.m. on April 16 — some 10 hours before Elizabeth Arellano was reported missing — after seeing what appeared to be a person falling from the Loop 820 bridge.

“One witness described hearing what sounded like screams on the way down,” homicide Detective J. Cedillo noted in court documents.

When the fire department’s swift water rescue team pulled the then-unidentified woman’s body from the water, she had a rope tied around her neck that was attached to a concrete boulder still encasing part of a wooden fence post.

“We believe this was an attempt to conceal the body,” said homicide Sgt. Joe Loughman.

A medical assistant, her body was still clad in maroon medical scrubs.

On Tuesday, 10 days after her disappearance and death, police arrested the woman’s estranged husband, Rodolfo “Rudy” Arellano, on a capital murder warrant.

He is accused of kidnapping his estranged wife, then throwing her into Lake Worth and causing her to drown.

Family members say the couple had been high school sweethearts at Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School and been together 13 years. The couple had recently separated, however, and Elizabeth Arellano had planned to divorce him.

“We’re just having a tough time right now. It’s double the shock — first when you lose your sister and for him to do that to our family when we trusted him,” said Johanna Kelly, Elizabeth Arellano’s older sister.

A husband’s denial

When initially questioned about Elizabeth Arellano’s disappearance by Cedillo and homicide Detective E. Pate, Arellano “did not appear to be concerned or worried about his wife’s disappearance,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram.

Arellano told homicide detectives that he last saw his wife two days before she died and that he last spoke to her at 2:39 a.m. on the morning of her disappearance.

He said she told him in that phone call that she had just arrived at her parents’ house and would soon be bringing their four children to his house.

“Elizabeth also told Rodolfo she planned on staying in a hotel for the night. Rodolfo stated he asked her to stay with them and she refused,” Cedillo wrote in the affidavit.

Arellano said when his wife and children never arrived, he assumed she decided to stay at her parents’ home.

When asked about his whereabouts that night, Arellano told the detectives he had spent most of the evening of April 15 with a friend, tinting the man’s windows. He said he arrived home about midnight and didn’t leave the house again until 7:30 a.m.

Phone records and video

But cellphone records obtained by homicide detectives Jeremy Rhoden and Kyle Sullivan tell a different story.

The investigators determined Arellano and other family members had called and texted Elizabeth Arellano throughout the night, according to the affidavit.

“Elizabeth made them believe she was working late although she was at happy hour,” the affidavit states.

In text messages, Arellano repeatedly asked his estranged wife when she would be done with work. He also called her several times, but she apparently didn’t answer, the affidavit states.

Though he told police that he was at home, cellphone tower mapping indicates he was actually at or near Elizabeth Arellano’s place of work when he sent those messages.

Later, when he claims his wife made her last phone call to him, waking him from his sleep, cellphone towers indicate he was actually at or near her parents’ home, the affidavit states.

Several homicide detectives waded through hours of footage from surveillance cameras from businesses near the home of Elizabeth Arellano’s parents.

The footage confirmed Elizabeth Arellano had arrived at her parents’ house but drove away for unknown reasons a short time later at 2:41 a.m.

At 3:02 a.m. on April 16, the footage revealed, a white Dodge Ram pickup — similar to that owned by Arellano — was traveling north from the vicinity of the parents’ home. Four minutes later, the same vehicle is seen again on North Main Street, just south of Loop 820.

“This direction of travel would be the most direct path from the last place Elizabeth’s vehicle was seen on camera and where she was found,” Cedillo wrote in the affidavit.

Concrete found at suspect’s home

Through interviews, investigators learned that Arellano had torn down and replaced a wooden fence which contained wood posts and concrete in the past year for an acquaintance.

In the backyard of Arellano’s north Fort Worth home, police found concrete boulders similar to the one used to weigh down Elizabeth Arellano’s body.

In the bed of his pickup, they uncovered a small piece of concrete consistent with that found at the crime scene. A large piece of concrete was also found in the driveway directly behind his truck, the affidavit states.

In a second interview on Tuesday, Arellano once again claimed to Cedillo and Pate that he was at his home at midnight and never left.

“Even after presenting him with proof of his whereabouts during the times in question, he continued to deny being at Elizabeth’s parents’ home during the time she went missing,” Cedillo wrote.

‘There is help out there’

Kelly said her sister was a loving and nurturing mother to the couple’s four children, ranging in age from 4 to 12.

“They’ve lost both their parents,” she said.

Kelly said the couple had recently separated but that she did not know if there had been past domestic violence in the relationship. Police had no record of previous reports of domestic violence involving the couple.

“I don’t know. If he did this to her, he must have done other things to her before,” Kelly said.

SafeHaven of Tarrant County officials said most physical assaults in domestic violence incidents go unreported.

“As always when this happens, the staff and supporters of SafeHaven are deeply saddened by this senseless, tragic, and entirely preventable murder,” said Kathryn Jacob, president of the SafeHaven, which operates the county’s largest domestic violence shelter. “Tarrant County has one of the highest rates of intimate partner homicides in ... Texas, and events like this only strengthen our resolve to continue working to end domestic violence here at home.”

In 2015, SafeHaven answered more than 19,000 hotline crisis calls and protected 664 women and 896 children in its emergency shelter. On an average day in 2015, SafeHaven served 125 women and children with shelter.

Kelly said she is a previous victim of domestic violence. She said she hopes her sister’s tragic death will convince women who may be in abusive relationships that they should leave.

“They need to get out,” Kelly said. “There is help out there. There’s resources. Don’t be afraid.”

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This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Husband arrested after woman weighted with boulder tossed from bridge."