Son's death still haunts parents
Jack Elliott's fatal boating excursion was hard to handle, as were the lies they heard that followed
From the moment Jack Elliott tumbled from the bow of a 22foot boat into the darkness of a Texas lake, hysteria gripped the college friends who had ventured out for a day of revelry on the water.
In their panic, the teens hatched a plan to hide the truth from authorities and even Jack's family in Newport Beach.
It would take 10days to recover Jack's body at a depth of more than 100 feet, and two years to fully unravel what happened that day on Lake Travis outside Austin.
Jack, 19, was among 12 teenagers, nearly all from Texas Christian University — and several from Southern California — who climbed onto the Axis A22 vessel in October 2019 for an afternoon of wakeboarding and drinking. Nearly all of the 18- and 19-yearold students had been sipping vodka, beer and White Claw hard seltzer as they ventured near Devil's Cove, considered one of the most prolific floating party places in the country.
But when Jack went overboard, their alcohol buzz turned to fear.
The group knew police would have questions. Were they drinking? Who was driving the boat? And, of course, what happened to Jack? Quickly, the gears started spinning.
Five of the teens face criminal charges. Some also have been sued by Jack's family. This article was reported using police records and sworn statements from the lawsuit — depositions and affidavits — as well as recordings of a phone call some of the students made to Jack's parents.
Throughout the legal proceedings, the teens invoked their Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves. But, de
spite tears and tight lips, the story still came out.
College life
At the center of the tragic saga was Jack Elliott, a Corona del Mar High School graduate with a closemouthed grin that now haunts his parents, Brett and Amy.
Jack was a hometown athlete, No. 2 for the Sea Kings football team. He was all-Sunset League, a two-year starter as a cornerback.
Friends knew him as outgoing and enthusiastic, a boy with a big heart who was looking forward to studying business at TCU. He wanted to go into commercial real estate, a lucrative field occupied by many of his Newport Beach neighbors.
“He always joked he wanted to take care of Mom and Dad when he got older,” remembered his father.
TCU ticked off all the boxes for Jack. It had a top20 business school and a 302-acre campus where graduates earned an average of $60,833 a year right out of college. And it was a Big 12 school, home of the Horned Frogs.
The university attracted others from Southern California, including Caden Strauss, another Newport Beach teen whom Jack had known since seventh grade. They became roommates in the dorm.
Before school started, Jack hosted a pool party for the future TCU students from the area at his parents’ house. It was there he met Delaney Brennan, a Huntington Beach High School graduate who planned to study fashion merchandising in college.
There was an instant attraction between Jack and Delaney that summer of 2019, a casual flirtation that lasted right up to the moment he disappeared.
Weekend plans
Jack had been in college only eight weeks when he and some friends jumped into a borrowed car on Oct. 10, 2019, to make the three-hour drive from Fort Worth to the Austin City Limits music festival at Zilker Park, along the Colorado River.
On the bill for the threeday festival were Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Childish Gambino and other major acts performing on multiple stages. Jack, like most of his schoolmates, had a fake ID and purchased the White Claw, vodka and tequila for the festival, with Venmo donations from the other kids, including $57 from one of their mothers.
The students met with others from TCU who were staying with relatives or in an Airbnb. On that Saturday, Brett Elliott videocalled his son, who appeared on the mobile phone screen freshly scrubbed and ready for a night in Austin.
“He looked handsome and happy,” Brett said. It was the last time he would ever see Jack.
That Monday, Oct. 14, Jack’s mother, Amy, talked to him by phone. He told her of his plans to go with the group that day to Lake Travis, where his friend’s father had a boat and managed the members-only Northshore Marina.
Amy’s stomach dropped. For some reason, she felt uncomfortable with the boating trip. Call it a mother’s intuition. She didn’t know the friends, she didn’t know the lake, and she couldn’t possibly know how right she was.
Perfect start
Traveling in separate cars, the 12-member group ventured to the lake, led by Carson Neel, whose father,
Billy, ran the marina.
They stopped at the boat shop for cigarettes, ice and snacks, loaded up the vodka, beer and White Claw and set off about 3:30 p.m. with Carson at the wheel of the wakeboarding boat. Carson had plenty of experience in the captain’s chair and had taken a boating safety class when he was 15.
Like Jack, Carson was a business major and a former football player, an allstate wide receiver for Cedar Park High in Texas.
On the boat, Carson showed the group where the life jackets were stowed. Eli Stevens, one of the teens who made a legal statement, said he couldn’t remember Carson doing anything else in the way of giving safety instructions. So they danced on the slippery, wet deck of a moving vessel, the music blaring from the boat’s speakers.
It was a sunny afternoon, perfect for swimming and wakeboarding. When it was Carson’s turn in the water, he gave the wheel to Elle
Weber, another California native from Hermosa Beach. Weber had no formal training but had some experience driving boats.
When the beer ran dry, they went back to the marina, where Carson took a 12-pack from the refrigerator in the office area. No one else was there.
Then it was back to the festivities.
Chaos erupts
After several hours on the water, the boat rumbled hard, as if it had run over something. That’s when the partiers noticed Jack was gone. Carson had the vessel on cruise control, traveling just over 10 mph, and Elle was at the wheel.
Chaos erupted as the group realized what that bump meant. It was 8:27 p.m., about 90 minutes past sunset.
Carson turned the boat around and went back to the spot where he believed Jack went overboard. The friends screamed Jack’s name and shined their cellphone flashlights into the dark water. One member of the group described the scene as “extreme hysteria.”
“A lot of people were freaking out and crying and not communicating well,” Carson said in a sworn affidavit. “I tried to stay as calm as possible because I knew it was serious and freaking out would make it worse.”
Carson jumped into the lake, checked the propeller and looked for Jack. But the group spent no more than five minutes searching before they headed back to shore, according to Caden’s deposition.
And in the panic and shock, lies were born.
Elle called 911. She gave her name to police as “Elle Macpherson.” She would later say in a sworn deposition that she was unfamiliar with the name of the famous supermodel and actress.
Carson convinced the group there was nothing more they could do out on the water.
On the way back, they dumped the remaining alcohol overboard. And since Carson and Elle had been drinking — Carson had about five beers and Elle two White Claws and four swigs of vodka — another member of the group, Anthony Salazar, was enlisted to say he had been driving the boat. Anthony felt sick that day and didn’t imbibe. Out of what appeared to be a sense of duty to his friends, Anthony allegedly went along with the ruse.
Investigators from the Travis County Sheriff’s Office met the teens after they pulled into the marina. Deputies questioned them separately. But the stories didn’t add up — and wouldn’t for a long time.
Parental nightmare
That night, in Corona del Mar, Brett Elliott got a phone call from a friend, who asked if he had heard from Jack. Social media was abuzz with the news of a boating accident involving TCU students.
Brett wasn’t overly alarmed and was less worried after he called another TCU father, who said he hadn’t heard anything.
As a precaution, Brett telephoned the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, but was given little information about the accident. So far, so good — until his wife’s phone rang. Someone was calling from the 512 area code — Travis County.
It was the sheriff’s department, informing the parents that Jack was missing and they were calling off the search for the night due to darkness.
During that gut-twisting phone call, Brett said authorities told him Jack had done a back flip off the boat. Amy Elliott was instantly dubious. “No way!” she screamed in the background.
Deputies later told Brett another story allegedly from the teens, that Jack fell while vomiting over the side of the boat.
Two days after the accident, some of the teens got together with their parents in a meeting room at a Courtyard by Marriott in Fort Worth. By then, authorities had called off the active search for Jack and now were focused on retrieving his body.
The Elliotts were grieving, and not knowing how their only son died just made the pain worse. All they wanted was the truth, and to find Jack. The teens put a phone on speaker mode and called Brett and Amy, promising to bare all. The Southern California News Group reviewed two separate recordings of the call.
Elle did much of the talking. Sobbing loudly, she said how sorry the teens were for
“My heart is broken into a million pieces. But, with each passing month, you give me more and more strength to keep pushing forward and fighting for TRUTH and ACCOUNTABILITY. I won't stop. You deserve it.” — A post from Brett Elliott, written on son Jack's Facebook memorial