Aileen Seiden Was Found Dead After a Motel Visit With Her Throuple Partners

What started as a romance between three people ended in the killing of one — a South Florida woman named Aileen Seiden. Back in 2018, Seiden's remains were found 400 miles from home ... and about six miles away from a bloody motel room that police had been investigating. It wasn't long until the two cases were connected, and the investigation into Seiden's suspected murder began.

As it turns out, Seiden had been staying at the motel with her two romantic partners, and just before her death, she had contacted a close friend to express that she felt like she was in danger. Now, her mysterious murder is the subject of a new CBS special called "Who Killed Aileen Seiden in Room 15?"

Here's what we know about how it all went down.

According to one of Seiden's close friends, who spoke to CBS under the pseudonym "Allie," Seiden began dating her romantic partners, Zachary Abell and Christina Araujo, in 2017. The three were in what could be considered a "throuple" relationship.

However, things weren't all positive between them — in fact, Allie shared that, on multiple occasions, Seiden would call or text her to report instances of physical abuse from Abell.

"Aileen would call me … and say, 'You have to come over here, like, he hurt me again,'" Allie told CBS.

Their relationship dynamic quickly grew into an unbalanced one in which one person was always the "odd man out," and experiencing jealousy about the other partners. "At that point, it just started to spiral out of control," Allie said.

Reportedly, both Seiden and Allie were afraid to contact the police because of threats made by Araujo, whose father allegedly had a high-ranking position with the Florida police.

Allie told CBS, "She came from police royalty ... she had gotten away with … everything in the past. And there was going to be no solutions to … someone like Aileen getting hit."

This conflict continued until the throuple took a fateful road trip to Franklin County, in which the three stayed in a small motel together. It was during this trip that Seiden contacted Allie for the last time, telling her friend that she "needed to find a way out."

According to Allie, the two came up with a plan to get Seiden away from Araujo and Abell — but it was only shortly after that Seiden was found dead.

Police were notified of a bloody crime scene inside room 15 of a Florida motel, and just six miles away, a woman's remains were discovered on an abandoned cul-de-sac. Investigators quickly put the two together, leading to the official investigation into Seiden's murder.

"I just put two and two together," lead investigator Ronnie Jones said. "It wasn't just, somebody cut theirself and bled a little bit on the bed [in the motel room]. I mean, the amount of blood … tells me that whoever was here was probably deceased."

Given the circumstances, both Abell and Araujo were charged with the murder, and in 2024, a jury found Abell guilty of second-degree murder as well as accessory after the fact of second-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence. Araujo, on the other hand, accepted a plea deal in 2023.