Nursing Student Charged in Death of Missing South Bay Woman

CULVER CITY, CA -- A Culver City nursing student was in custody Wednesday accused of killing a South Bay nurse who went missing after attending a party with him.

Jackie Jerome Rogers, 34, was held in lieu of $2 million bail on suspicion of murder.

Lisa Marie Naegle of San Pedro -- a 36-year-old registered nurse and contestant on the E! Entertainment Television series "Bridalplasty" in 2010 -- went missing after leaving a party early Sunday morning at Alpine Village, a German restaurant in Torrance, and a missing persons report was filed Monday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Her body was found in a shallow grave Tuesday at Rogers' home in Lennox. Rogers, a nursing student at West Los Angeles College who accompanied Naegle to the party, claimed he left without her, said Los Angeles police Detective Meghan Aguilar.

Police and coroner's officials searched Rogers' home in the 5000 block of West 106th Street and recovered Naegle's body some time after 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to Officer Tony Im of the LAPD's Media Relations section. Rogers had told investigators where to find the body, police said.

According to Naegle's husband, Derek Harryman, his wife called him around 2:45 a.m. Sunday and said she was leaving the party but stopping to get something to eat on the way. She never came home. She also failed to show up for nursing classes she teaches at West L.A. College in Culver City.

Naegle's relatives said she went to the party with one of her nursing students, but he repeatedly told the family he did not leave the party with her.

"We begged and pleaded that he'd come to our home to kind of give us details on what time, where were things, and when he left her, but while he was talking to us and telling us his story, multiple different times he said he absolutely did not go home with her, or did not take her home," her sister, Danielle Naegle-Kaimona, told ABC7.

Naegle-Kaimona added that a friend of hers at the party sent her multiple photos of her sister with the student and that surveillance footage showed Naegle getting into an SUV belonging to Rogers. There is also footage of the pair going to a gas station.

Aguilar declined to release information on the relationship between Naegle and Rogers, saying only they knew one another.

The website TMZ.com reported that Naegle was struck repeatedly with a hammer after she and Rogers went to a Jack in the Box restaurant. TMZ also reported that Naegle and Rogers were romantically involved, but Naegle informed Rogers she was breaking up with him to be with her husband -- leading to the killing.

One of Naegle's relatives suggested that Naegle spurned Rogers' romantic advances, and he killed her with a blunt object.

-- City News Service contributed to this report. Photo courtesy of the LAPD