Harold Allen Case Update 2026: Where Is Ashley Jones Now?

Bottom line — the case on Dateline tonight is closed. Ashley Jones is serving 50 years in Indiana, her mother died before she could be charged, and the poison that killed Harold Allen came out of an antifreeze jug.

Key takeaways

• Dateline NBC airs "The Man Who Loved Christmas" Friday at 10 p.m. ET, an hour later than its usual slot, with Blayne Alexander reporting.
• Harold Allen, 52, of Freetown, Indiana, died on Dec. 20, 2022. Investigators say his wife and her daughter had tried to poison him at least four times before that.
• Ashley Jones pleaded guilty in August 2025 and was sentenced the following month. Her mother, Marsha Allen, was never charged — she died weeks after her police interview.

What time is Dateline on tonight, and is it new?

It's new. NBC posted the episode trailer on Sept. 17, and the hour runs 10–11 p.m. ET rather than the 9 p.m. start Dateline keeps most weeks. NBC has not said why it moved; the network listed it at 10/9c from the start.

It streams on Peacock the next day. Our viewing guide for all three newsmagazines has the rest of the streaming detail, and the weekly true crime TV grid tracks what else is on. 20/20 is dark tonight and 48 Hours loses Saturday to college football.

Who was Harold Allen?

Harold L. Allen — "Peanut" to people in Jackson County — was 52 and lived on State Road 135 near Freetown, a town of a few hundred in southern Indiana. He married Marsha, whose maiden name was Buxton, in July 2021, about two years after the two reconnected at a high school reunion.

He got sick through the fall of 2022. Doctors and family put it down to his heart. He died on Dec. 20, and for nine months nobody treated it as anything but a health decline.

How was he poisoned?

Court filings and reporting by CBS News describe a string of attempts, not one act. Investigators say the first involved pong pong seeds ordered online and ground into brownies. Then water hemlock, mixed into chili, into a soda, into a margarita, on three days that December.

None of it worked. What did, prosecutors said, was ethylene glycol — the sweet-tasting compound in antifreeze — stirred into a root beer float on Dec. 19, 2022. Jones later told deputies she bought the chemical.

👉 Ethylene glycol poisoning is notoriously easy to miss: it presents like kidney failure, and it isn't on a standard toxicology panel.

How did a burglary reopen the case?

On Sept. 19, 2023 — 273 days after Harold Allen died, by our count — deputies took a burglary report at Marsha's house while she was away in Gatlinburg. Two men had gone through it.

Security footage identified one of them as Steven White, who was Ashley Jones's closest friend. What he told investigators after his arrest turned a property crime into a homicide investigation, and detectives went looking for the text messages between mother and daughter. There were thousands.

What happened to Marsha Allen?

She was interviewed by the Jackson County Sheriff's Department in the fall of 2023 and went home afterward. She was found dead on Oct. 16, 2023, in what authorities treated as a suicide.

She was never charged and never tried, so the allegations investigators made about her were never tested in a courtroom. That matters for how tonight's hour has to be read: one of the two people at the center of it never got to answer any of it.

Where is Ashley Jones now?

In the Indiana Department of Correction. On Aug. 7, 2025, Jones pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder resulting in death and to attempted murder, both Level 1 felonies. Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Richard Poynter sentenced her that September to 25 years on each count, served back to back — 50 years, the most the plea allowed him to give.

One more thread runs through the prosecution file. While she was held before trial, police alleged Jones passed a cellmate a list of witness names, with Steven White at the top. She has not been convicted of anything arising from that allegation.

Didn't 48 Hours already do this case?

Yes, and that's worth knowing before you settle in tonight. CBS aired 48 Hours' "The Root Beer Float Murder," reported by Peter Van Sant, on April 4 of this year. Tonight is the second network newsmagazine hour on the same Indiana case in 167 days.

The two shows are working from the same closed file, so expect overlap on the poisonings, the burglary and the sentence. What differs is usually access: NBC's interview list names the prosecutor, three investigators and four members of the Allen family, which suggests tonight leans on the people Harold left behind rather than on the investigation's mechanics.

What else is in court right now?

Two of the cases we're following move this week. In Ohio, opening statements in the Caleb Flynn murder trial began Friday morning after a jury of six women and six men was seated. And in Indianapolis, the Delphi appeal reaches oral argument Monday at 10 a.m. — a different Indiana courtroom, three days from now.

Everything we track sits in Case Updates, and next week's listings are in the Sept. 14–20 breakdown.

FAQ

Is Dateline new tonight? Yes — "The Man Who Loved Christmas," 10 p.m. ET on NBC. Our Is Dateline new tonight? page carries the running answer week to week.

Is the Harold Allen case still open? No. The one surviving defendant pleaded guilty in 2025 and is serving her sentence.

Where can I watch it after it airs? Peacock, the day after broadcast. NBC also posts full episodes on its Dateline site.

Sources

• NBC News — Preview: "The Man Who Loved Christmas" (Sept. 17, 2026)
• CBS News / 48 Hours — An Indiana man is poisoned with a root beer float
• CBS News — Woman charged in Indiana root beer float murder, police say
• The Tribune (Seymour, Ind.) — Woman receives 50 years in the poisoning death of her stepdad (Sept. 24, 2025)
• Fox59 — Documents: Indiana women poisoned man's root beer float

Listings data via TVmaze.

By the True Crime On Air desk · Updated Sept. 18, 8:21 a.m. ET