- 2 days ago
This is the story of Eli Hart — a case that should never have happened.
A routine traffic stop.
A missing tire.
A strange smell.
And a discovery inside a car trunk that would shock even experienced officers.
This true crime documentary dives deep into the disturbing case of Eli Hart — a 6-year-old boy whose life could have been saved. From warning signs that were ignored to the final moments that changed everything, this is more than just a crime story — it’s a failure of a system meant to protect.
⚠️ Viewer discretion is advised.
👉 Watch till the end — because the full story is more disturbing than you think.
A routine traffic stop.
A missing tire.
A strange smell.
And a discovery inside a car trunk that would shock even experienced officers.
This true crime documentary dives deep into the disturbing case of Eli Hart — a 6-year-old boy whose life could have been saved. From warning signs that were ignored to the final moments that changed everything, this is more than just a crime story — it’s a failure of a system meant to protect.
⚠️ Viewer discretion is advised.
👉 Watch till the end — because the full story is more disturbing than you think.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00a police officer pulls over a car. It's missing a tire. Strange, but not unheard of. Then he gets
00:06closer. He smells something. He looks inside. And in that moment, everything changes. Because
00:13whatever he expected to find, it wasn't a six-year-old boy. My name is Faison. You are
00:20watching Cremova. Some cases are disturbing. Some are complicated. And then there are the ones that
00:27stay with you. Not just because of what happened, but because of how many chances there were to stop
00:32it. This is one of those cases. I've covered a lot of dark stories on this channel. But every once
00:38in
00:38a while, you find a case that sits in the back of your chest for days after you're done researching
00:43it. That makes you stare at the ceiling at 2am thinking about all the moments where someone
00:48could have stepped in. This is one of those cases. This is the story of Eli Hart. And I need
00:54you to
00:54stay with me all the way to the end. Because the full picture is worse than the headline.
00:59And more important, Eli Hart was six years old. He loved playgrounds. He made friends instantly.
01:06The kind of kid who walks into a room full of strangers and leaves with five new best friends.
01:11His foster mother, Nikita, described him as a social butterfly. A kid who was always trying to
01:17figure out how things work. Always curious. Always happy. She said he was probably the best kid in
01:24the world. And the way she said it, I believe her completely. Eli was born with a condition called
01:30Treacher Collins Syndrome, which affected his hearing. He wore hearing aids. He had kidney disease that
01:37needed annual monitoring. But none of that defined him. None of that slowed him down. What did affect
01:44Eli's life from the very beginning was instability. His biological parents were Julissa Tower and a man
01:50named Tori. They weren't together. Tori had married a woman named Josie. And together,
01:56they desperately wanted Eli in their lives. But Julissa had built a wall between them.
02:01A wall made of accusations, legal filings, and orders of protection that, according to police records,
02:08she herself later admitted weren't always truthful. Julissa had a complicated history. Mental health
02:14struggles. A criminal case involving stolen pharmaceuticals. Repeated problems at a drug
02:20testing facility. To the point where they refused to test her anymore. And woven through all of it,
02:26again and again, Child Protective Services. CPS had Eli's file. They knew this family well. And Eli was
02:34removed from Julissa's care not once. Not twice. Three separate times. The first, after Julissa told a doctor
02:42she was hearing voices and having suicidal thoughts. The second, after a social worker visited the home
02:48and found conditions so bad that the house was deemed uninhabitable. The third, after police responded
02:54to a call at Julissa's apartment and found Eli screaming. With no clothes on, eggs smeared across
03:00the walls. The upstairs bathroom flooded. They couldn't even find clothes for him to wear. He had a large
03:07gash on his arm. Three removals. And three times, he was eventually returned. Here's what really gets
03:13me about this part. It wasn't like people weren't paying attention. They were. Dozens of them. Nikita,
03:21Eli's foster mother, contacted CPS hundreds of times with concerns. Hundreds. Teachers called. Neighbors
03:29called. A building manager called because Eli had been seen on the apartment balcony in the middle of the
03:34night. Screaming. And Eli himself was showing signs. He would chew his shirts until they fell apart.
03:41A brand new shirt would be destroyed within a week. He woke up in the middle of the night with
03:46night
03:47terrors. He would sit up screaming the same thing every time. The bad guy is coming to get me. A
03:53six
03:53year old. Night terrors. Screaming in the dark. I keep coming back to that. Because that child was trying
04:00to communicate something. In the only language he had. And the system around him kept resetting the
04:06clock. On January 20th, 2022. Eli was placed back with Julissa by Dakota County CPS. On May 9th,
04:14she was granted full custody. Eleven days later, Eli was dead. Eleven days. Let me take a step back
04:22because what happened in the weeks before May 19th is important. This wasn't a snap decision. This wasn't a
04:28moment of rage that got out of hand. This was planned. On April 13th, Julissa received a text
04:35message confirming she had applied for $500,000 in life insurance, with Eli listed on the policy.
04:41Eight days later, she passed her concealed carry firearms course. In the weeks that followed,
04:47her search history included things like, how much blood can a six year old lose? Most powerful knockout
04:53drug. How to commit crime and blame a child. Does life insurance cover drowning? Payment from life
05:00insurance if child dies. And then, two days before the murder, May 17th, she went to a gun store and
05:07purchased a shotgun. She took it to a shooting range with a man named Rob who had been staying
05:12at her apartment for about a week. He later told investigators he thought she was going to shoot
05:17him that day. She fired into the ground. Erratically, like she barely knew how to hold it. And then the
05:24day before the murder, May 19th, she walked into a sporting goods store and told an employee she wanted
05:31whatever would blow the biggest hole in something. I thought about that sentence a lot. Whatever would
05:37blow the biggest hole in something. She already had a target in mind. She had for weeks. May 19th,
05:442022. Mound, Minnesota. Inside Julissa's apartment building, surveillance cameras captured something
05:51that looks completely ordinary in hindsight, but is devastating to watch knowing what comes next.
05:57A child playing in the background. Yellow shirt. Blue shorts. That was Eli. Alive. Moving. Just being a
06:05kid. Rob was also there that evening. He later told investigators that at some point, Julissa put Eli to
06:12bed. There was arguing, raised voices, tension. He described Julissa losing her temper in a way that
06:19went beyond normal parent-child conflict. More angry than she should have been. More than the situation
06:25called for. Then Rob fell asleep. And when he woke up, Eli was gone. But before Rob woke up, something
06:33had
06:33already happened. At 11.22pm, the building's surveillance footage captures Julissa leaving through the
06:39corridor. She's pushing a cart. On the cart, something wrapped in a gray blanket. That blanket.
06:46Rob had mentioned it before. Julissa used it to wrap her shotgun so Eli wouldn't see it. Now it was
06:52wrapped around something else. GPS data from Julissa's phone traces her movement across multiple locations
06:59throughout the night. At a gas station. Near a park. Along roads in Mound. Witnesses later came forward
07:06saying they saw a woman near dumpsters in the early morning hours. Discarding things. One described her
07:12face as vacant. Like the lights were on but no one was home. By the time the sun came up,
07:18she had been
07:19driving for hours. Without a front tire. With a smashed rear window. And with her car full of
07:25something that smelled like death. Just after 7am, the Orono Police Department received a call about a
07:32suspicious vehicle. No tire. Smashed rear window. Driving erratically near the highway. Officers spotted
07:39the car quickly and pulled it over. First routine. A woman behind the wheel. License check. She gave her
07:47name as Julissa Tower. 28 years old. She had a story ready. Teenagers had shot at her car with BB
07:54guns and
07:55paintballs the night before. Broke the tire. Smashed the window. She was just trying to get home to fix it.
08:01The officers listened. They asked follow-up questions. And they noticed things. A shotgun
08:08shell on the floor of the car. She denied having any weapons. Just shells lying around. She said.
08:14Blood on her hand. Female issue, she said. A hole in the rear seat between the headrest and the backrest.
08:21The kind of hole that has a story behind it. And the smell. One officer said later that the smell
08:27hit him immediately. Anyone who's been around decomposition knows it. It doesn't smell like
08:33deer meat. It doesn't smell like groceries. It smells like death. Julissa's explanations kept
08:39shifting. Each answer raised three more questions. But she stayed calm. She complained about being
08:45treated rudely. She asked when she could get her car back. Officer, I have to complain. This is incredibly
08:52rude treatment. I understand your frustration. Please bear with me. To me, the strangest thing
08:56here is how composed she was. She wasn't shaking. She wasn't crying. She was annoyed. Like this was an
09:03inconvenience she needed to get through so she could move on with her day. Officers noticed blood on the
09:09outside of the car too. Not just inside. Deer meat in a closed car doesn't end up on the exterior.
09:15They made a decision. They were impounding the vehicle. Julissa protested loudly.
09:22You can't just impound it. That's ridiculous.
09:24Ma'am, step aside. It's the law.
09:25No, you have no right. I won't let you.
09:28But she accepted a ride back to her apartment. Officers dropped her off at 8.25 a.m.
09:3420 minutes later, she was already gone. She'd run upstairs, started the washing machine,
09:40and slipped out the back of the building with Rob who was carrying a large backpack.
09:44They didn't get far. Officers caught them within minutes. And back at the impound lot,
09:50one officer walked toward the trunk of Julissa's car. He said later that he'd had a terrible feeling
09:56about that trunk. From the very beginning, he opened it. Inside a shotgun. And beside it,
10:03a gray blanket. Wrapped tightly around something small. What the is that? Holy, we got a body.
10:10Inside that blanket was a small child. Little t-shirt.
10:14Little pair of shorts. His face was, I'm not gonna go into detail. But the officers on scene
10:20that day described it as one of the most disturbing things they had ever encountered in their careers.
10:25The body was identified through forensic testing as Eli Hart, age 6. DNA from a blood-like substance
10:32found in Julissa's hair matched Eli's profile. Eli had been shot nine times. With the shotgun his
10:39mother had purchased two days before. While he was strapped into his car seat. What followed was a
10:45rapid and devastating unraveling of evidence. At the Shell gas station where Julissa had stopped
10:50before the traffic stop. Investigators found a dumpster. Inside, two large cardboard boxes with
10:57biological matter. A backpack nearby with suspected skull fragments, brain matter, and blood on the bottom.
11:04Inside the backpack Eli's schoolwork. His name written at the top of the page.
11:09At Surfside Park. Along roads in Mound. At multiple drop points traced through surveillance and GPS.
11:16Towels with blood. Yellow kitchen gloves turned inside out. Bone and tissue fragments. And in a dumpster,
11:23a child's car seat. Covered in blood. The evidence of what happened to Eli was scattered across the city.
11:29And Julissa had spent the entire night trying to make it disappear. Rob was eventually released
11:35without charges. His phone data and the building surveillance confirmed he never left that night.
11:40He was a witness, not a suspect. Julissa, in her interrogation, stayed composed. She talked about
11:48an alleged assault. She brought up her ex. She asked about DNA evidence. She said they had taken Eli,
11:55some unnamed threat. When investigators told her there was a dead body in her trunk. She asked,
12:02who was it? Honestly, the part that still bothers me most is that moment. The way she asked. Like it
12:09was new information. Like it was a surprise. Here's where I need to slow down. Because this is the part
12:15that matters beyond the crime itself. Eli's death wasn't inevitable. It was preventable. Multiple times
12:23over. CPS had this family's file. They knew about the mental health history, the substance issues,
12:29the criminal case, the repeated removals. Nikita had called hundreds of times. Teachers called.
12:35Neighbors called. Eli himself was showing signs of fear and trauma so visible that even strangers
12:41could see it. And 11 days after gaining full custody, Julissa shot her son nine times.
12:47Josie, Tori's wife, said something that I haven't been able to shake. She said,
12:53my personal opinion is they gave Eli back because they were sick of dealing with her.
12:57I don't know if that's true, but I know that a child welfare system exists for one reason,
13:02to protect children who cannot protect themselves. And in Eli's case, that system failed at almost
13:08every level. After his death, Tori and Josie filed a lawsuit against Dakota County and the social
13:15workers involved in Eli's case. It was reportedly the first lawsuit of its kind filed in this way.
13:21They accepted a settlement of $2.25 million. Money doesn't bring a child back. But Julissa's own
13:28father, when he spoke to police after the arrest, said he had been terrified of something like this
13:33happening for years. He said he was happy when she lost custody of Eli. He told investigators,
13:39anything she tells you is a lie. I think she did this so Tori couldn't have him. Her own father.
13:46And even he couldn't stop it. Julissa Tower was convicted on both counts. First degree
13:52premeditated murder and second degree intentional murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without
13:58the possibility of parole. At sentencing, she looked at the judge and said, you all are garbage. Later,
14:05she wrote a letter of apology. She claimed she had been in a state of psychosis during the trial.
14:11That she hadn't been sane. I'll let you decide what to make of that. What I'll say is this.
14:16The legal system worked at the very end. The problem is, it didn't work anywhere in the middle,
14:22when Eli was still alive and asking for help in the only ways a six-year-old knows how.
14:26Eli's family has channeled their grief into something real. The Eli Hart Foundation.
14:31The Eli Hart Memorial Playground. A place, as Josie described it, where children can be happy
14:38and families can make memories together. She said, memories are all we have now.
14:43They also changed something legally. The lawsuit they filed sparked conversations in Minnesota
14:49about child welfare reform. About what the threshold should be before a child is never
14:54returned to a dangerous home. Those conversations are Eli's legacy in some way. The possibility that his
15:00story changes the outcome for the next child who's waiting for someone to listen.
15:04But I want to leave you with one final thought. On the night of May 19th, Julissa moved through that
15:10city for hours. Gas stations. Parks. Roads. Dumpsters. A city full of people sleeping or driving home or
15:18working night shifts. And no one knew. Evil doesn't announce itself. It just moves quietly through the
15:25dark. And sometimes, by the time anyone notices the smell, or the missing tire, or the strange look
15:31on someone's face, it's already too late. Eli deserved better. Full stop. That's the story of
15:38Eli Hart. If this case stayed with you, I want to hear from you. Tell me in the comments. Where
15:44do you
15:45think the system failed most? Was it CPS? The courts? Something else entirely? Because I think that
15:52conversation matters. Not just for Eli, but for every kid in a situation like his right now.
15:58If you're new here, welcome. Subscribe if you want more stories covered with the depth they deserve.
16:03For Eli, I'll see you in the next one.
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