Alexis Nelson’s husband is jailed on charges filed more than a year after her last confirmed sighting.
JUNEAU, Wis. — More than a year after Alexis Nelson stopped answering family, her husband is jailed on homicide charges in a case that began with missed contact and grew into a criminal investigation spanning several Wisconsin communities.
The disappearance of the 42-year-old Beaver Dam woman moved from a missing-person inquiry to a murder case after investigators traced her last known movements, reviewed messages and searched property tied to her husband, Aaron Nelson. He was arrested May 15 and charged with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. Authorities have not found Alexis Nelson’s body, a fact that has left her family without a burial and left prosecutors with a case built on circumstantial and forensic evidence.
Alexis Nelson’s mother told police she last spoke with her daughter by phone March 25, 2025. Four days later, security video showed Alexis and Aaron Nelson together at a Kwik Trip on North Center Street in Beaver Dam. That footage became a fixed point in a timeline that later included phone records, online activity and a purchase at Menards. On March 30, Aaron Nelson bought a 32-gallon Rubbermaid Brute trash can with his debit card, according to the complaint. Investigators later treated that purchase as significant after finding a trash can of the same kind among his belongings. The complaint does not say Alexis Nelson was seen alive in public after the Kwik Trip video.
Months passed before police received a formal report from the family. On Oct. 30, 2025, Alexis Nelson’s mother contacted Beaver Dam police and said her daughter had lived with Aaron Nelson in Beaver Dam. She also told investigators about a May 7 text that said Alexis Nelson and her husband had moved to Missouri. When her mother asked for a mailing address, no answer came. Investigators later reviewed that message alongside a wider drop in contact and activity. The case raised a direct question that remains central in court: whether Alexis Nelson sent those later messages herself or whether they were part of an effort to make it appear she had left Wisconsin.
By then, prosecutors said, Aaron Nelson’s life had moved in a different direction. Reports on the complaint said he created a new Facebook profile under the name James Nelson and listed himself as widowed. On April 30, 2025, he met a woman through Tinder. By the end of May, that woman told investigators, Aaron Nelson was living with her in Oakfield. During an interview, officers noticed she was wearing an engagement ring. Investigators later identified the ring as Alexis Nelson’s. Authorities have not accused the woman of helping hide a body or cover up a killing. The ring, however, became one of the most striking details in the complaint because Alexis Nelson was still officially missing.
Police then searched the Oakfield property in Fond du Lac County. In a shed, they found the 32-gallon trash can with Aaron Nelson’s other property. Testing showed DNA on the trash can was consistent with Alexis Nelson’s DNA, according to the complaint. Reports said human remains detection dogs alerted to the scent of decomposing remains in areas connected to the case, including a shed and other locations tied to the Nelsons. Authorities have not publicly said what happened to Alexis Nelson’s body after that point. They also have not released a cause of death. Those unknowns make the physical evidence, the timing of the purchase and the later statements by witnesses more important to the prosecution.
The complaint also reaches back before Alexis Nelson vanished. Prosecutors said Aaron Nelson had been abusive toward his wife and that a domestic incident led her to seek a restraining order. After that, Aaron Nelson stayed with a co-worker, according to public reports on the filing. That history is expected to matter because prosecutors often use earlier conduct to show context, motive or control in domestic homicide cases, though a judge decides what evidence a jury may hear. A neighbor, Carrie Peaine, said she remembered conflict in the building and rarely saw Alexis Nelson without her husband nearby. “The family needs it,” Peaine said, referring to answers about where Alexis Nelson’s body may be.
Aaron Nelson also allegedly gave an explanation for his wife’s absence to someone at work. Around Halloween 2025, while at a jobsite in Fitchburg, he told a co-worker Alexis Nelson had died from excessive alcohol abuse, according to the complaint. Investigators said he did not give more detail. That statement now sits beside the Facebook relationship status, the Missouri text, the dating relationship and the trash can evidence. Prosecutors are likely to argue those details show knowledge of her death and a changing story about her absence. Defense arguments have not been fully aired in public, and Nelson has not been convicted of any charge in the case.
The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest May 18 and said no further details would be released while the case is before the court. The office said it was withholding comment out of respect for Alexis Nelson’s family, the judicial process and the integrity of the investigation. Sheriff Dale Schmidt was listed as the contact for questions, but the public statement directed people to the Dodge County Clerk of Courts Office for the criminal complaint. The formal charges were filed by the Dodge County District Attorney’s Office under state homicide and corpse-hiding statutes. A judge set Nelson’s cash bond at $1 million during his first appearance.
For the family, the court case does not end the search. Alexis Nelson’s remains have not been recovered, and no public filing has closed that part of the investigation. For prosecutors, the next phase is procedural: hearings, discovery, possible motions and any later trial date if the case is not resolved earlier. For the community, the case has left a blunt record of a woman last seen at a convenience store, a mother waiting for a response that did not come and a husband now accused of turning her disappearance into a false story of widowhood. Nelson remains presumed innocent as the case moves through Dodge County Circuit Court.
As of Wednesday, June 17, the public record still shows Alexis Nelson missing and Aaron Nelson jailed on felony charges. The next milestone is any further Dodge County court action in the homicide case.
Author note: Last updated Wednesday, June 17, 2026.