Savana
On October 21, 2021, 17-year-old Savana Elliott disappeared from the Dardanelle area. Sadly, it wasn’t that notable. No parents called the police saying she hadn’t come home. No school teachers noticed that she hadn’t made it into class.
Savana had a troubled life. Her parents kicked her out of the house when she was just 14-years-old. For the next three years, she was a wanderer in a world that is too often not kind to girls. She floated between drug dens. She walked the streets. She was a girl, alone.
Then on October 23 around 4 a.m., a man hunting in Holla Bend Wildlife Refuge found her body. She wore only socks, shoes and underwear. Her wrists were bound with a bra and a romper, and she had a gunshot wound to her head. Holla Bend is a wild place, 6,600 acres that runs south of the Arkansas River from just east of Dardanelle to near Pontoon and the Petit Jean River.
Police looked into the man who found her, Nathan Fowler. He had a .22 rifle, and a firearms expert brought in by the state concluded that the bullet that killed Savana came from a .22. But after testing, it was determined the murder weapon was not Fowler’s.
For two years, officers hit dead end after dead end trying to find Savana’s killer. Then finally, a hit. Investigators had collected DNA samples from Savana’s body in at least two places – one, from a scrape she had on the upper part of her inner thigh; another as part of a sexual assault kit.
This DNA was fed into CODIS, a national database that stores and compares DNA profiles from convicted offenders and victims of crimes. In early 2024, investigators were notified there was a match for the DNA found in the scrape on Savana’s thigh. And the man it belonged to was already in jail.
The DNA Match
Stephen Karl Watson was 39 years old in February 2024, just a month shy of his 40th birthday. That’s when investigators brought him a McDonald’s hamburger and sat down with him at the Perry County Jail. He was locked up for violating his parole. Again.
A frequent flyer with police around the River Valley, Stephen had been in and out of jail since he was 18. He was from Casa, a map dot in Yell County less than half an hour from Holla Bend. He’d been convicted of breaking or entering, fleeing, rape, drug possession and possesion of firearms by a felon, among others. His mom and his ex-wife had both petitioned for orders of protection against him at different times.
The questioning at the Perry County Jail started softly– the hamburger, complaining about jail food, talking about Stephen’s kids and family. They got him talking about the outdoors, hunting and fishing. He admitted to doing some fishing around Holla Bend when he was younger. And consequentially for later, he said he liked to hunt and that he’d had a gun taken by Arkansas Game and Fish after a hunting violation years ago.
When asked about Savana, Stephen said, “I know her. I mean, I don’t know her, but I know about the case.”
He said he’d heard about Savana’s death at a nursing home while visiting a friend and again when he spent time in Yell County Jail. He said the rumor was that Savana had taken someone’s ‘dope’ and they’d killed her for it, possibly a guy named Jacque or “Jock.”
Stephen told investigators he’d only met Savana once, when he was with his girlfriend, coincidentally also named Savannah. Savannah Voss. He said that he and Savannah Voss went to Daniel Wilson’s house and they’d seen Savana outside lying on a bench. It was cold and she was wearing little clothing. Savana Elliott was holding a knife in her hand, he said, and Savannah Voss covered her with a jacket before they went inside.
He was adamant, no matter how many times he was asked, that that was the only time he ever saw her, that he didn’t speak to her, that he never saw her again.
“She was a baby, had her whole life ahead of her,” he told investigators. He claimed only a monster would hurt a girl like that.
Then officers dropped the bomb. They’d found his DNA in a scratch on her upper thigh. How could that be, they asked. Did he help move her body? Did he have a relationship with her?
He continued to deny knowing Savana throughout the remainder of the interview. His fidgeting and bouncing drew comments from investigators.
“I do not have nothin’ to do with that girl. Period,” he said.
But before investigators left, they got a cheek swab for additional DNA testing.
On April 16, 2024, two months after the interview, the Crime Lab matched DNA from Savana’s sexual assault kit to the DNA obtained from Stephen Watson. In June of 2024, he was charged with capital murder.
He remains in jail with no bond awaiting trial. Next up in part two, we’ll look at some of the facts of the case, the evidence that’s piling up, and why Stephen REALLY doesn’t want his Facebook data admitted.
