After looking for her for more than a year, authorities arrested a woman accused of dumping her 91-year-old boyfriend’s body on the side of the road on the Seminole Tribe’s Big Cypress Reservation in far western Broward County in 2023.
According to an arrest warrant from the Seminole Police Department, detectives discovered blood and several suspicious items, including a shovel, tarp and hydrogen peroxide, in a vehicle driven by then-58-year-old Aprilanne Markley-Pope after Milton Ewell’s body was found along Airport Road, near a rock quarry, four days after he had last been heard alive.
Markley-Pope, now 59, lived with Ewell in Hollywood, authorities said.
She had been initially taken into custody on a Colorado arson warrant, but was later released after Palm Beach County prosecutors “failed to file formal charges” and she later couldn’t be located, police said. Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies took Markley-Pope into custody on Tuesday.
As of Thursday, authorities had not directly implicated her in Ewell’s death; she’s instead facing charges of abuse of a dead body and tampering with physical evidence, stemming from an investigation that began on March 25, 2023, when a man driving out of the Big Cypress Rock Mine called 911 at around 5:30 p.m. to report that he had discovered the body, authorities said.
Tribal police Detective Elio Garcia wrote in the warrant that about three hours before that call, Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office deputies received a 911 call that a woman, later identified as Markley-Pope was driving impaired in what was later determined to be Ewell’s vehicle.
Deputies pursued the vehicle but called it off after Markley-Pope continued driving, police said. According to the warrant, PBSO deputies later spotted Markley-Pope passed out behind the wheel of a Toyota Avalon in a Walmart parking lot in Royal Palm Beach.
It would still be two hours, however, before the 911 call from the reservation would come in. Medics took Markley-Pope to a hospital in Palm Beach County and sheriff’s deputies were treating the case as a medical call, rather than a criminal investigation. Therefore, Garcia wrote, authorities did not inquire into Markley-Pope’s criminal history and didn’t discover that she had a fully extraditable warrant for arson out of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
According to the warrant, the vehicle came back to Ewell and PBSO deputies asked Hollywood police to go to his address, at 1822 Cleveland St., in an attempt to contact him — not knowing he was missing or dead.
On March 26, a woman had called the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office seeking information on Ewell, telling them that she was his former partner and he was now “in a very volatile relationship” with another woman, police said. They said the caller told them she hadn’t spoken to Ewell since March 21.
Police said the following day, Ewell and his vehicle were reported missing by Hollywood police.
That same day, they said another witness called and said when he learned of the discovery of human remains, he remembered seeing a Toyota Avalon with a “heavyset white female” who was alone and “leaning into the rear of the vehicle,” which he thought was “suspicious.”
Video footage from that man’s truck taken just after 9:30 a.m. March 23 showed the Toyota parked on the side of the road, authorities said.
Garcia wrote that detectives looked at SunPass information, which showed Ewell’s vehicle at the westbound Alligator Alley toll plaza at around 8:30 a.m.
The detective said he went to 1822 Cleveland St., where neighbors confirmed that Ewell lived with a woman named “April” or “Allyson,” who was known to be “verbally abusive” towards Ewell and she and the senior “were frequently involved in verbal disputes.”
Police said they were able to pull up a past domestic violence report where Ewell was “the victim of a battery by ‘April Pope,’” who neighbors described as a “transient person.”
Authorities said on March 28, medical examiners positively identified the body as Ewell’s because of medical prosthetic implants; however, they said his body was too decomposed to determine a cause or manner of death.
Garcia wrote that license plate reader data pinpointed his vehicle to the Royal Palm Beach Walmart and PBSO deputies were sent back to the store to locate the vehicle.
“The vehicle was located and (two) smears that appeared to be blood were observed on the rear bumper of the vehicle,” he wrote.
Palm Beach deputies seized the vehicle pending a search warrant, which they obtained and executed the next day, police said.
“Upon entering the vehicle, (investigators) found presumptive blood pooling in the cushion of the left rear seat,” Garcia wrote.
The detective wrote that PBSO investigators also saw suspected blood in “several other places within the vehicle,” along with several of Markley-Pope’s belongings.
The warrant states that investigators also found “a brand-new shovel, a brand-new blue tarp, a large chain with a lock, a bottle of bleach and three bottles of hydrogen peroxide,” along with a receipt from a Hollywood Dollar Tree for the hydrogen peroxide purchase.
“The Dollar Tree receipt revealed that the purchase for the hydrogen peroxide was conducted after the victim’s body was abandoned in the rock quarry,” Garcia wrote.
Authorities determined that Ewell likely died sometime between 8 p.m. on March 21 and 10 a.m. on March 22 — that’s when police said a neighbor told detectives he had asked Markley-Pope about Ewell’s whereabouts and she claimed he was getting the car fixed.
PBSO deputies located Markley-Pope on April 6 on the Colorado arrest warrant and a fleeing and eluding warrant regarding her actions on March 25, authorities said.
Garcia said he went to a PBSO station to interview Markley-Pope.
“During her voluntary post-Miranda statement, Markley-Pope stated she began driving the victim’s car when she returned to the house on Wednesday, March 22, 2023,” he wrote. “Markley-Pope was confronted with the fact that she was seen by witness Jim (redacted) and he asked her where Milton was. She told (him) that Milton was with the car fixing the back window of the vehicle because it was broken. Markley-Pope was advised that based on the statement she told (him), there was no way she could take possession of the victim’s vehicle if the vehicle was not there. Markley-Pope then invoked her right to counsel.”
Authorities said Markley-Pope would be released from custody on May 9, with “the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office (having) failed to file formal charges and Colorado changed their warrant to in-state pick up only.”
She hadn’t been located until her arrest on Tuesday. It’s not clear where or how authorities found her.
As of Thursday, she was being held in BSO’s North Broward Bureau jail facility on a $200,000 bond.
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Source: local10
