LOS ANGELES – A suspect was arrested Tuesday after a former bridal reality show contestant disappeared under "suspicious circumstances" following a weekend birthday party, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Jackie Jerome Rogers, a 34-year-old nursing student, is being held on $2 million bail after he was detained in the morning for questioning as officers searched for 36-year-old Lisa Marie Naegle, a nurse and onetime contestant on E! Television's "Bridalplasty," LAPD Officer Tony Im confirmed to KTLA.
Rogers confessed to burying her body in the yard of his residence on West 106th Street in Lennox after leaving the party in Torrance, California, investigators said. Around 6:30 p.m., authorities said they had found Naegle's remains in a shallow grave at the home.
“The information he has provided has led them to believe that Lisa has been murdered and that her body is at Rogers’ residence in Lennox,” LAPD Detective Meghan Aguilar said.
Rogers had been studying under Naegle, who taught nursing classes part-time as West Los Angeles College in Culver City. Investigators said they suspect the two had been having an affair, but were unable to confirm a motive or time of death, noting Tuesday afternoon that a search warrant had not yet been obtained for Rogers' home.
Naegle hadn't been seen or heard from since she called her husband around 2:30 a.m. Sunday following a birthday party at the Alpine Village restaurant in an unincorporated area near Torrance.
Authorities on scene at Jackie Rogers' Lennox home, where investigators say they found the body of his nursing teacher, Lisa Marie Naegle. (Credit: CNN)
She told her husband, Derek Harryman, that she was going to stop for food before heading back to her San Pedro home.
“I even said to her, ‘You sound like you’ve been drinking a lot, are you OK? And she said, like, ‘I’m going to get food, and then I’ll be home," Harryman told KTLA.
Naegle never returned to the home and failed to show up Sunday morning to teach at West L.A. College.
"There's video footage that was just discovered from Alpine Village within the last hour showing my wife getting into a black SUV," Harryman said in an interview Monday night.
The missing woman's family told KTLA they called police on Monday after speaking to Rogers, who said he attended the party but then changed his story.
“When I started questioning him ... he just seemed really antsy, kind of nervous," the victim's sister Michelle Naegle said.
Naegle appeared in 2010 on "Bridalplasty," a reality show that documented a group of women who competed for a dream wedding and plastic surgery.
