She Didn't Escape Death In The Pool - The Truth Behind Her Marriage | True Crime

[Music] On the morning of October 12th at 11:06, Gerald Bishop, a gardener who had been with the Elridge mansion for nearly 10 years, drove into the backyard as usual. But when he stepped down, he immediately sensed something was wrong. An overturned chair by the pool, a silk scarf fluttering at the foot of the stairs, and a body floating limply in the water.

A white night gown was hidden in the sunlight. Gerald rushed over, trembling as he dialed 911, choking out the woman's name, repeating in panic, "It's Scarlet. She She's in the pool.

" When the police and paramedics arrived, Scarlet was dead. The body was pulled up in heavy silence. She was wearing a silk night gown.

Her hair was still wet, and she was wearing only one high heeled slipper. The other was found stuck under the sprinkler a few meters away around the lake. The grass was ruffled and muddy footprints extended from the second floor staircase where the stone railing had a small dent as if from a hard impact.

Preliminary examination revealed fresh bruising on the wrist and a laceration on the back of the neck that were inconsistent with a fall. Notably, all the cameras in the back of the house had been disabled. Three hours before the body was discovered, Mason Elridge, the victim's husband, was not present at the scene.

The front camera recorded him leaving the house at 800 a. m. with the twins still in pajamas with disheveled hair without his usual backpack or belongings.

The nanny received an unusual text message from Mason asking him not to come and do something that had never happened before. The police began to suspect this was no longer an accident. Eli Monroe.

Scarlett Elridge, 38, is a woman with a unique blend of French elegance and Madagascar's sharp, seductive beauty. Born and raised in a peaceful suburb south of Paris. Scarlet quickly attracted attention thanks to her striking appearance and natural charisma in front of the camera.

At the age of 20, she began her modeling career, appearing in perfume in high-end fashion advertising campaigns and appearing on the covers of several major magazines in Europe. Although she did not study at a conservatory, Scarlet also tried her hand at being a studio singer. She briefly collaborated with small record labels, singing backing vocals for electronic mixes and commercial soundtracks.

Her life in Paris was colorful but also fleeting and unstable. After a failed relationship, Scarlet decided to leave France for a fresh start. In 2010, she came to the United States on a temporary work visa in the fashion and advertising industries.

It was at a charity event in Los Angeles that Scarlet met Doctor Mason Elridge, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who had just completed a project to expand his private practice in Arizona. Mason was 12 years older than Scarlet, but the two were quickly attracted to each other. Mason was calm and principled.

Scarlet was lively and instinctive. After their first meeting at a charity event in Los Angeles, Scarlet and Mason's relationship progressed rapidly. Within months, Scarlet left her unfinished advertising contract in New York and moved to Sedona, where Mason was living and running his medical business.

Mason was approaching his 40s, but he still looked polished, trim, and had a natural charisma that came from a strict workout regimen. Mason Fairchild, then 45, was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a middle-class family with a medical background. After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in medicine, he completed his residency at the Mayo Clinic and quickly became a sought after specialist in sports surgery for professional athletes in the Midwest.

Mason expanded his practice by opening a chain of high-end Elridge sports medicine clinics spanning Sedona, Flagstaff, and Las Vegas. Each facility features state-of-the-art physical therapy areas, luxurious customer service, and a sophisticated, personally designed space. Mason, whose marriage broke down in the late 2000s, has a son who lives with his mother in Phoenix.

To his friends and colleagues, he is a man who craves order and control, perhaps stemming from his job's need for absolute precision. Scarlet, with her vibrancy, softness, and brilliance in every space, is Mason's irresistibly attractive counterpart, and their relationship develops like a line of fire in a dry wind. Between private dinners at upscale hotels, short flights between Arizona and Los Angeles, and phone calls that last well into the night, the two find a perfect contrast.

Scarlet is instinctive, brilliant, and emotional. Mason is rational, controlled, and experienced. They didn't argue too much, didn't discuss things too far away because the attraction between the two didn't come from reason but from the need to be compensated in terms of image, emotions, and status.

6 months after their first meeting, when the local media had yet to know much about their relationship, Mason and Scarlet suddenly held a lavish wedding at Red Rock Canyon Resort in the middle of Arizona's famous Red Mountains. It was an event that had been prepared for nearly 2 months by a wedding planner team from Las Vegas. More than 300 guests, including businessmen, doctors, models, and journalists, were transported by limousine to attend.

Two parties were held consecutively. a French-style dinner with a sixcourse menu and a bohemianstyle outdoor party with live music by a troop of artists from Paris performing a special selection of scarlet. The bride dressed in a simple white gown cut from the finest French silk walked down the stone steps between rows of wild flowers while Mason stood in the wooden altar with a sunset that burned like the last streaks of color of a bygone era.

From the outside, Mason and Scarlet Elridge were the epitome of a modern couple. Wealthy, stylish, and always looking radiant in every frame. They traveled the world, attended Fashion Week in Milan, and were featured in Interiors magazines in their gilded French-style mansion in Sedona, where every detail from the crystal chandeliers to the ebony floors had been carefully selected by Scarlet.

Their twin daughters, born in 2012, were the perfect addition to the family picture. Scarlet, who has taken a break from the limelight, has turned to developing a children's clothing line named after her two children, which has received a lot of attention from mommy and baby magazines. She organizes events, appears on local talk shows, and is often praised.

Mason still runs the Elridge Sports Medicine Clinic chain with a series of lucrative investment deals and a busy schedule of medical conferences from New York to Denver. But behind the shiny glass doors of the mansion, life is a mess. Mason, with an increasingly controlling personality, is no longer the calm man he once was.

He has begun to interfere in Scarlet's business. From choosing models for new collections to the number of events she is allowed to attend. Scarlet, who is emotional and free, feels increasingly suffocated.

The arguments were silent, but the coldness was evident in every glance and gesture. They had slept in separate rooms since late 2013. Scarlet had never truly integrated into local life in Sedona.

Although she had lived in Paris, a cosmopolitan city, moving to a small town with closed and prejudiced relationships always made her feel out of place. Scarlet's English was still limited, especially in complex conversations about law, finance, and Americanstyle interpersonal relationships. She had no close friends here, except for a few acquaintances at charity events, who often complimented her dresses, but never listened to the loneliness beneath the silk.

Scarlet's dependence on Mason grew more and more apparent. Every bank account was in his name. Real estate, car, and even credit card contracts were tied to her doctor husband.

Despite her own children's clothing line, Scarlet had no legal control. All the paperwork was handled by the Elridge Group's legal department, which Mason directly controlled. As Scarlet grew more and more strangled, Mason grew more distant.

He frequently used work as an excuse to travel to Las Vegas, where he was opening a new branch of his luxury therapy clinic. But in reality, these trips became a place for him to seek personal satisfaction. Anonymous text messages, hotel receipts, and leaked photos from strip clubs began to surface, not publicly, but enough for some in the upper echelons to start gossiping.

At the same time, Mason was embroiled in a federal health insurance fraud investigation involving false claims for services in his practice to profit from insurance. Though he denied the allegations, the situation began to affect the reputation and morale of Sedona's former gold doctor. A month before the tragedy, Scarlet quietly filed for divorce in Cookanino County Circuit Court.

She hired a Phoenix attorney who specialized in highstakes divorces and child custody battles. Though her English was not yet fluent, Scarlet insisted on attending every meeting, bringing her own files, printouts of text messages from Mason's phone, and photos of hotel receipts, financial documents hidden in a basement safe. She knew she was up against a powerful, well-connected man who was determined to protect his reputation at all costs.

But this time, Scarlet refused to back down. The court granted her temporary custody of her twin daughters and the Sedona mansion as her primary residence. Mason was forced to move out and only be allowed supervised visitation.

A serious blow to him both legally and personally. According to Monique Seavoi, a longtime friend from Scarlet's time in Paris and now living in Los Angeles, the separation was about more than just dividing assets. Mon'nique remembers what her friend said during their final video call.

Scarlet was no longer the calm, patient woman she had been. She began to appear publicly at small community events as an independent woman, changed her style of dress, took her children to school by herself, and returned to her old yoga studio. But this change only made Mason more out of control.

Friends say that about 2 weeks before her death, Scarlet began to show signs of nervousness, becoming startled by loud noises, and checking her security cameras more frequently. Scarlet quietly gathered evidence. Instead of just hotel receipts or scattered text messages, she purchased a videotape from a receptionist at a Las Vegas hotel where Mason had stayed on a business trip.

In the video, Mason appeared with Eli Monroe, a young woman who had worked as a masseuse at a local nightclub and had been rumored to be his mistress for months. The videotape not only confirmed the affair, but also showed Mason engaging in suspicious financial behavior using a corporate card that belonged to his clinic to pay for personal expenses such as VIP rooms, expensive alcohol, and private services at the hotel. For Scarlet, this was the best leverage she could muster in her upcoming legal battle.

She planned to use the tape to gain full custody of her children, keep the mansion, and sue Mason for financial fraud and post-sepparation blackmail. But it was like adding fuel to an already smoldering fire. Mason, who had always seemed calm and in control, became erratic, prone to anger, and showing signs of losing control.

Neighbors began to notice strange behavior. Mason's gray Ferrari would frequently show up at the mansion's gate at odd hours. One witness saw him standing outside Scarlet's house, ringing the doorbell at 2:00 a.

m. , only to quietly turn around and walk away a few minutes later. Scarlet began changing the locks on all her front doors, installing double bolts, updating her alarm system, and keeping her attorney on standby if she felt threatened.

Mason began walking around the house at night, checking her car, tapping the front door camera, even though his ex-wife had told the nanny not to open the door. These actions were not illegal, but they were enough to keep Scarlet in a state of heightened anxiety, as if she were being hunted. In her diary, Scarlet wrote a line that was repeated many times.

On the morning of October 12th at 11:06, the late autumn sun was shining through the red tinged maple trees. Gerald Bishop, the old gardener, who had been with the Elridge estate for nearly a decade, drove into the gate as usual in his pickup truck. He had pruning shears, gloves, and a bag of fertilizer for Scarlet's newly planted lavender.

But when he got out of the truck, he immediately noticed something was wrong. The chair was overturned by the lake. A silk scarf was fluttering at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor.

And most horrifying of all, a body floating limply in the water, a white night gown visible in the slanting sunlight. Gerald rushed over, calling 911 in a panic. His voice broke as he said the woman's name, repeating the phrase over and over when the police and paramedics arrived.

Scarlet had no pulse. The body was pulled from the pool in tense silence. She was wearing a thin silk night gown.

Her hair was still wet and only a nude high heeled sandal was stuck under a sprinkler pipe near the stone railing. The police immediately cordined off the scene. Around the edge of the pool, the grass was torn up in several places.

On the stairs leading from the second floor to the backyard, people found wet footprints mixed with mud, showing no signs of swimming or falling, but there was an odd disturbance in the position of the handrail. A few potted plants were chipped and dirt was scattered about. On the second floor railing, there was a small mark that looked like it had been hit hard, facing directly into the pool.

Preliminary examination showed that the new bruises on Scarlet's wrists and arms were not consistent with a normal fall. Police also noted a small laceration on the back of her neck, possibly due to impact before she fell into the water. However, there were no signs of forced entry.

The front security camera was working normally, but the entire rear system, including the camera overlooking the pool, had been disabled about 3 hours before the body was discovered. Mason was not present at the scene when police arrived. However, when checking the data from the security camera in front of the villa, police discovered that his black SUV had left the house at 8:00 a.

m. , just over 3 hours before Gerald discovered Scarlet's body in the pool. What particularly caught the investigator's attention was that the two twins sitting in the back seat were both wearing pajamas, their hair was still messy, and they did not carry backpacks or any personal items as usual.

According to the nanny, she received a text message from Mason that morning informing her that he would personally take the children out and asking her not to come to work. This had never happened before. Scarlet had always been the one to get her two children ready every morning, from picking out their clothes and brushing their hair to making breakfast and reminding them to bring their favorite toys.

The fact that the two children had left the house unprepared was completely at odds with their mother's usual routine. In addition, data from the home's access control system, including the back gate and the side door leading to the pool deck, recorded an unlocking operation at 7:47 a. m.

, just before the rear camera system was disabled. Inside the house, there were no signs of major disturbances, but a cell phone was found in a kitchen drawer that did not belong to Scarlet. The device had been largely reset, but a temporary location record that remained showed it had connected to the villa's Wi-Fi at exactly 6:30 a.

m. to 7:55 a. m.

Inspector Hannah Dr, who led the investigation, soon realized that the details at the scene did not fit the accident theory. She had handled dozens of drowning cases. But when she entered the backyard of the Elridge mansion, she immediately sensed something was wrong.

Scarlet's body was lying in the center of the pool, her arms outstretched, her head facing the shore, as if someone had intentionally placed her there. The other flip-flop was not near the pool, but stuck under a garden hose at least 15 ft away from where it fell. With more than 15 years of experience as the chief investigator in Yavapai County, Dr concluded this was no random scene.

This was a stage. The autopsy report from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office later reinforced that suspicion. Scarlet had a skull fracture at the back of her head that was determined to have been caused by a hard angular object.

The injury had occurred before she entered the water. In addition, the medical examiner found no trace of alcohol or drugs in the victim's blood, although Mason said they had both been drinking the night before. 3 days after Scarlet's body was discovered, Mason Elridge was arrested at a motel in Flagstaff, about 130 mi from Sedona.

He was preparing to leave the state, carrying his twin daughters and a sports bag containing $5,000 in cash in his passport. These actions were seen as clear signs of intent to flee, especially since Mason was the prime suspect in his ex-wife's murder. At the police station, Mason appeared tired and unsteady.

During the first 3 hours of questioning, he maintained a single assertion, his innocence. He claimed that the two had reconciled the day of the incident and he denied being at the mansion at the time of her death, claiming that Scarlet's death was an unfortunate accident. However, investigators quickly presented a series of evidence that began to undermine Mason's story.

First, a CCTV extract showed Mason's SUV leaving the mansion at 8:00 a. m. around the time the rear view camera was disabled.

Then came the scratches on Mason's cheek and hand, which he initially claimed were from his daughter playing, but forensic analysis showed that they were shallow, recent scratches and showed signs of resistance consistent with self-defense by an adult victim. When pressed about this detail, Mason took a sharp turn, he began to suspect the gardener, Gerald Bishop, who had first discovered Scarlet's body. He suggested that Gerald might have snuck into the house with an unclear personal motive.

However, this accusation was quickly dismissed. Gerald had a solid alibi for the entire morning except for the moment the victim was discovered. Additionally, the only DNA trace on Scarlet's hand was Mason's.

Mason Elridg's trial began in January 2017 in Cookanino County Courthouse, Arizona, attracting widespread public and media attention. The defendant, a prominent orthopedic surgeon, faced firstdegree murder charges in the death of his ex-wife, Scarlett Elridge. The courtroom was packed with reporters and locals who had known the power couple.

Prosecutor Jonathan Messer argued that the case was not just a simple murder, but a deliberate attempt to destroy the victim's image. He emphasized that Scarlet, a mother and a woman who had loved the wrong man, had been the victim of years of emotional control and abuse. Evidence presented included personal diary entries from Scarlet, in which she expressed her fear and feelings of being hunted by Mason.

A major surprise during the trial was the testimony of Dale Monroe, Mason's cellmate, during his time in custody. Monroe revealed that Mason had admitted to pushing Scarlet in a fit of rage, causing her to fall and hit her head and die. This confession, although not recorded, was considered important evidence to support the prosecution's case.

In addition, physical evidence such as Mason's DNA on the victim's body, injuries to Scarlet's head consistent with a blunt force trauma, and the fact that the home's back security camera system was disabled around the time of the murder were presented to the court. These details showed a carefully calculated plan to conceal the crime. After several days of trial and deliberation, the jury returned a verdict.

Mason Elridge was guilty of firstdegree murder. On January 26th, 2017, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The verdict was seen as a recognition of justice for Scarlet and a warning that toxic relationships can lead to serious consequences.