Nelson abducted Jonathan on Christmas Eve, 2010, and burned him to death with a blowtorch. Jonathan’s badly burned body was found four days later, wrapped in carpet in a drainage ditch.

No evidence of a motive for Jonathan’s killing was ever turned up, and the boy's body was so badly burned, pathologists could not determine how he was killed.

Houston Police Department Homicide Detective Mike Miller called Nelson a “cold, soulless murderer who showed an absolute lack of remorse in taking the life of Jonathan Foster.”
He called the boy’s death “an absolute tragedy that can’t be put into words.”