Transcript of Joyce Pelzer

A woman and her wife were building their life together.

They got married on a beach. They would laugh together. They were getting along good.

Outside looking in, it seemed normal until it ended with a bloody assault in a Georgia hotel room.

Not only was there a pool of blood, there is blood smeared up the door. The victim's halfway in and halfway out of her door. She is bleeding bleeding profusely.

She had been stabbed 34 times total.

The investigation reveals one of them has a history of violence.

Like any other couple, we argue.

Shondell stated that she was verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive.

She finally broke free, but her ex-girlfriend was still stalking her.

But was the stabbing a repeated pattern or an attempt to The Silence of Co-Conspirator.

I asked her what was wrong, and she said, "I killed my ex-girlfriend." She was completely paranoid and scared that the ball was gonna drop any day.

She threatened to kill her over the situation in a sense of, "If I can't have you, nobody can have you." On the morning of December 10th, 2018, police in Conyers, Georgia are called to the scene of a bloody crime. Conyers 911, where's your emergency?

Yes, ma'am.

I'm calling from Motel 6 Conyers. Somebody's screaming and hollering.

He stated that he had guests telling him that there was a lady screaming for help, saying that she's trying to kill me inside of the hotel room. A maintenance worker was unable to make contact by knocking on the door, so the hotel manager called 911. And as he's talking to us on the phone, the door opens, and the victim falls outside the door, and he sees all the blood. When I arrived, I could see The victim had shallow breathing. She appeared to be in a state of consciousness. You could tell that she was very weak and was losing a tremendous amount of blood. EMS began to arrive shortly after.

She's bleeding profusely from the abdomen.

I see the knife.

The knife on the floor.

I see it.

Hey, honey, what's your name?

The hotel room itself also bears the signs of a brutal attack.

Not only was there a pool of blood there, there is blood smeared up the door, as if— I would surmise that she probably slid on her back. There are also bloody handprints all over the curtains. You would surmise she's trying to get curtains open, 'cause she's hollering for help.

Who did this?

She did it.

Do you know Joyce's last name?

Mm-hmm.

OK. Who is she to you?

Rosalyn Lewis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 31, 1971.

It's my two older brothers, and then it was Rosalyn and myself. We had loving parents, my mom and my dad. We was brought up just to love and to nurture and to care and to have laughter and just be good people. Roslyn was a bundle of joy. She literally met no stranger. Coming from New Orleans, our culture, everyone is baby or sweetheart. She talked to everybody. She made you laugh. She had this huge smile, beautiful white teeth that just lit up the room. She went to college in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a period of time. And then she started working in healthcare, medical billing and things like that. She liked the seniors. She liked the elderly people. She was able to give them some kind of joy.

Rosalyn's open acceptance of people also extended to her love life.

Rosalyn was around the age of when she first started dating same-sex mid-20s, I want to say. With Roslyn coming out as being a lesbian, it was mixed feelings within the family. Um, some of the family understood, some of the family was taken aback, shocked. We grew up very Christian family, very religious family, so that was, um, maybe taboo, to say the least. It never wavered our love for her. I just wanted her to be genuinely happy. At the end of the day.

In the early 1990s, Rosalynn decided it was time to make a change and moved east to Atlanta, Georgia.

She wanted to go to better herself, to get a different environment, a different take on the world. And my dad would call 1,000 times a day because that was his— that was his first daughter, his baby girl.

Rozlyn found a new job in a medical call center. She also found the love of her life, Joyce Pelzer.

I want to say they just met out somewhere through a mutual friend. One of the things that she liked about Joyce, that she was spontaneous, that she was adventurous. Adventure was one of Rozlyn's key things that she just would get up on a whim and go. First meeting Joyce, she looked like she had a good head on her shoulders. She seemed to be educated, kind, and nice. She just was a well-put-together person. She just was a normal person.

After dating for several years, the two women got married in 2016.

They got married on a beach. My mom and my dad didn't attend the wedding. They love Roslyn with everything in their hearts, but that was just something that they wasn't willing to participate in. Some of my cousins went and witnessed, but we didn't go. Seeing Roslyn and Joyce interact as a couple, outside looking in, it seemed normal. They would laugh together. They were getting along good. This is what she wanted.

Now, 2 years later, Rosalyn is barely clinging to life outside a hotel room in Conyers. And she says her wife Joyce was the one who attacked her.

Of course, there were life-saving measures trying to happen in order to keep her alive.

It was an overabundant amount of stabs. A tremendous amount of blood loss. Once they approached the ambulance, Rosalyn went into cardiac arrest, so they had to begin CPR. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

The information that she told us that her wife Joyce had stabbed her. We're knocking on doors, interviewing witnesses, collecting video. We had to apprehend her and keep her from hurting someone else.

I go to the front desk, and I meet with the manager of the hotel. He provided me with the registration for the room that had been occupied for about 3 days by Joyce Pelzer. I had him pull the video up for me to watch at the hotel, and you can observe during the altercation the curtains moving back and forth.

From watching the video, you know there's a severe fight going on behind the curtains.

Short while later, You see a maintenance worker knock on the door of the hotel room and then walk away. And then the door opens. You see the arm of the victim fall outside the door as the suspect begins walking toward the rear parking lot.

Next, officers speak to the maintenance worker that saw Joyce flee the motel.

What all do you know about what happened?

I'm hearing somebody scream, so I knocked on the door. She coming up.

She went straight down. I took off. I took—

ran behind the girl and stabbed her. And when she saw me following her, she tried to run.

Where did she run to?

To her car.

He gave a description of Joyce leaving the hotel room. She was not wearing shoes. She was only wearing socks. We did find bloody footwear impressions on the sidewalk, and the pattern was consistent with wearing just socks.

Witnesses did describe that she appeared very calm, but that she was bloody. Her hands were bloody. Her clothing was bloody on the front. The innkeeper told us that the car that left was a dark car that was an out-of-state plate that had the numbers 307 on it.

As the manhunt swings into high gear, police are left wondering what could have caused such a vicious attack.

We had a lot of law enforcement south on I-75 that was looking for Joyce Pelzer and the Black Nissan that she was operating.

They need to use caution because she was somebody that we felt was a danger.

Coming up, a previous missing persons investigation suggests a pattern of behavior.

She was in a violent relationship with her ex-girlfriend Joyce Pelzer.

And police begin to suspect the two cases are connected.

She has a pattern of not allowing people to leave her.

Conyers police are tracking down Joyce Pelzer after paramedics have transported her wife, Roslyn Lewis, to the hospital in critical condition. Emergency room doctors are fighting to save her life.

Rosa had been stabbed 34 times total. There was one penetrating wound from the back that caused her lung to collapse at that point. Another significant stab wound was in the neck.

Unfortunately, she did pass. She was not able to make it. Now this has gone from attempted murder to an actual murder investigation.

We contacted Georgia State Patrol and the Marshal Service at the same time. We have crime analysts back at headquarters. We have been feeding information as quickly as we could get it to them.

Analysts conduct a background search on Joyce, looking for any possible motive for the murder. What they find is surprising.

Our analysts had found out that Joyce was the person of interest in a missing person case in DeKalb County. So we felt like she was dangerous.

The missing persons case was filed 7 years ago, and the woman in question was Joyce's ex-girlfriend, 35-year-old Shawndell McLeod.

Her mother called the police after she didn't show up for dinner on a Sunday night on September 25th, 2011. Shondell also hadn't gone to work that morning. That was very unlike Shondell.

Shondell was hired on at Nurse Care Bucket as a cook, and that's how I met her. That Sunday morning, another young lady called me and told me that Shondell wasn't at work. And that was kind of unusual for Shondell because she always called me if she couldn't make it that day, just so I can step in.

Unfortunately, you have to wait 24 hours before you can upgrade this case to a missing person's case because she is an adult.

As 2 days passed with no sign of Shondell, the case was assigned to Detective Henry Guest.

They gave me the report. I called Ms. McLeod. I said, hey, I see you made a police report about your daughter being missing. This lady was hysterical. And then she explained her relationship to me of her and her daughter, how close they were as a family, and that she would never just walk away from the family. Ms. McLeod had told me Shondell was in a violent relationship with her ex-girlfriend Joyce Pelzer. From there, I just start reaching out to track down Joyce.

Detective Guest begins by digging deeper into Shondell's background.

Shondell has 6 brothers and 1 sister.

The family was originally from Guyana, and her mother moved with her children when Shondell was fairly young to New York originally. They then moved to Atlanta.

She was very close to her family, you know. They depended on her, especially her mother. Shondell took her to the grocery store, just whatever her mother needed. Just a loving family, you know, from day 1 since I met them.

They were always bonding, and they eventually started cooking together. And it actually eventually led to her getting a job in Gwinnett at the Life Care Center.

Cooking was her passion. She took pride in whatever she do. Everybody was, you know, ready to eat whatever she cooked.

Detective Guest learns the job provided Shondell with more than just a source of income.

While Shondell was working at the Life Care Center of Gwinnett, that's where she met Joyce Peltzer. They developed a friendship, but that friendship turned into something a little bit more.

And eventually, her mother found out she was dating a woman. And her mother was very upset. It was brand new to her. She accepted it, you know, but she didn't like it. I think her family was most supportive, you know, because they wanted to see Shondell happy.

Shondell's mother tells investigators she thought the relationship was going well, so she was shocked to learn the truth was quite different.

Shondell was telling her mom everything that was going on. Shondell stated that Joyce was verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive, how she was controlling. She didn't like when certain people would really be around. She would want Shondell to really end certain relationships that she did not like. Mind you, Shondell is also stating that Joyce was having her own relationships on the side.

She had been a mother that she felt Joyce was out there being unfaithful.

The woman Shondell suspected Joyce was cheating with was Rosalyn Lewis. Shondell's mother tells Detective Guest that led to a breakup in 2011.

She finally broke free of her. She finally got her out of the house. But the lady was still stalking her.

She would call Shondell's friends and ask them about her, plead with them to convince Shondell to come back, to give her another chance. She would follow Shondell around.

Over the following months, Joyce's harassment only continued to escalate.

One day Joyce came. And pretty much took everything out of their house, even the toilet seats off the toilet. Took all the furniture, all the fixtures, everything. Shondell was pretty much sleeping on an air mattress.

Shondell was very— she was distraught. She was crying. She was very upset. You know, you come home to— she done tore pictures up, throw them in the yard, taking everything that she ever worked hard for.

Shondell spent the next month trying to put the incident behind her and rebuild her life.

At this point, they've broken up. Joyce is out of the house. She thinks she's at peace, just to wake up in the middle of the night of Joyce standing over her with a knife. Joyce threatened to kill her over the situation. In a sense of, "If I can't have you, nobody can have you." In July, Shawndell went to the court and asked for a protective order.

Shawndell told her mother that she was scared she was gonna die that night.

Investigators are searching for Joyce Pelzer after her wife, Roslyn Lewis, named her responsible responsible for the stabbing before ultimately succumbing to her injuries. In a shocking revelation, investigators learn Joyce was considered a primary person of interest in ex-girlfriend Shondell McLeod's disappearance 7 years earlier in September of 2011.

At the time, my biggest thing was to talk to Joyce. We have our suspicion, but there's always two sides to a story.

Joyce eventually comes into the police station, and she also brings Rosalyn Lewis, her current girlfriend. And Joyce sits down for questioning.

This is going to be in reference to a missing person, Ms. McLeod. How do you know Ms. McLeod?

We used to date for a couple of years, and we also lived together.

Were you ever served with a TPO order to stop no contact with her?

Yeah, but she called me still.

She just sat there and looked at me. It was like, you know, if you've been in a relationship for 5 or 6 years, I believe you would have some kind of expression. She had no expression. I asked her about that. She said, well, Shonda had hurt her, so— and she said she wanted to go back to her family. She don't believe she's missing. She believes she's in Guyana. How was the relationship between you two?

It was good.

Like any other couple, we argued.

Argued.

Never got violent?

No.

Police was never called?

Never.

She made it seem like all of these details that were coming out from family and friends were completely untrue.

Joyce also claimed to have an airtight alibi the night Shondell disappeared.

She indicated that she had been home with Rosalyn all weekend, the weekend that Shondell is believed to have gone missing.

About on the 26th.

Went to work.

Because Rosalyn was part of Joyce's alibi, police went on to question Rosalyn about what took place.

I'm just going to take a statement from you. What I'm investigating is a missing person.

Who's missing?

Who's missing?

Yes.

Joyce's ex-girlfriend. You know her name?

Yeah.

Shundell. She indicated, like Joyce did, that they had been home all that weekend, that they really hadn't left the house. But unlike Joyce, on the Monday, she indicated that she went to work. Rosalyn said that on Monday, they had stayed home as well.

Yeah, both stayed home.

Yeah, we chilled out.

It was one of those days you just want to just chill out because we didn't really do a whole lot. I was like, okay, let's just stay home today.

Crazy kids.

Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Joyce lied to police. Police still have a A lot of lingering questions after investigating and interviewing Joyce and Roslyn. Certainly had them as people of interest.

Detectives don't have enough to charge Joyce, so they follow up on her other alibi.

I checked records. A supervisor pulled the records. She said she did not show up that day, so No, that's a falsified statement.

The detectives get a search warrant for Joyce Peltzer's phone records as well. And what they're able to determine is that not only did she lie about going into work on Monday, but she wasn't at home on Sunday or Saturday. She wasn't with Rosalyn, as she said. In fact, there were multiple phone calls and text messages between Joyce and Roslyn, showing that they weren't together.

Basically, her whole alibi gets blown up. So if you're lying about that, what else are you lying about?

The phone calls and false statements suggested to police that Roslyn was covering something up for Joyce. So investigators searched Shondell's home, looking for signs of a struggle.

Shondell lives in the up-and-coming part of DeKalb County. We was thinking maybe she got abducted from in front of the house.

While there's no evidence of a struggle or anything like that, they do find a man's watch on the floor in her bedroom, as well as some shot glasses in the sink. It looks like someone may have come over. She may have had company, and they had a drink together. There was also an ashtray ashtray with some cigarettes.

Miss McLeod had told us, you know, Shondell didn't really drink, she didn't smoke. You know, we found cigarette butts, we found a man's watch there, and I believe we found liquor.

Joyce is a person of interest that keeps coming up, but now they're trying to figure out who this person was, who was in the house of Shondell, because the evidence is right there saying that there's another person involved.

Coming up, investigators zero in on the truth.

Joyce and Rosalyn, their relationship is troubled, just like Shondell and Joyce's relationship was troubled.

And they learn of Joyce's plan to silence her own wife.

She said, I am not a good person. She said, I knocked off my ex-girlfriend.

Investigators believe the murder of Rosalyn Lewis may be connected to the disappearance of Shondell McLeod 7 years earlier through their shared ex, Joyce Pelzer, who is currently on the run. When evidence of a third party was found at Shondell's home, detectives wondered if they had a new person of interest or a possible witness.

So now investigators are trying to really figure out the pieces of who this person was.

So in talking to Shondell's coworkers, they learned that she struck up this flirtation and romance with the food delivery driver, Rico.

He was very nice. So friendly. That's the person who she would ha ha, giga giga with.

Every morning. Shondell wanted to have kids. She wanted to start back dating men.

The issue, though, is that Rico was actually married. That certainly created an inference of motive that he might have had something to do with Shondell's disappearance.

To find out the details of the potential affair, investigators brought Rico in for questioning.

When he comes in, he's a little nervous because police police are telling him that Shondell is missing.

Unlike Joyce, he appears very concerned, very upset, and emotional.

He said he had been seeing her for quite a while now, but he didn't plan on leaving his wife or his children anytime soon.

He knew all about Joyce. He said Shondell was so afraid of her that he used to leave a pair of his work boots over at her house to sit them outside, 'cause Joyce would drive by the house.

Rico confirms he was with Shondell on September 24th, the night before she disappeared.

He said it was him that was smoking. That was his watch.

He explains he went over to Shondell's house. He had a few drinks, and because he was drinking, he wanted to kind of sleep it off for a second. A little after midnight, he's rushing to try and get back to his house. And that's why the watch was still at the house. But he does go back home to his wife. He sleeps with her the rest of the night.

He was very cooperative. But based on our records, he was the last one that saw her.

Although Rico seemed genuine, detectives needed to verify his story, which involved an uncomfortable conversation.

They call the wife. She's obviously distraught because she just found out her husband has been cheating on her.

She verified all of his information of what he told us.

She had every opportunity to throw this guy under the bus for cheating on her, but she confirmed he was there at home.

There wasn't anything to indicate that Rico or his wife had been untruthful or that they had done something to Shondell.

With Rico and his wife officially cleared from any involvement in Shondell's disappearance, detectives are left with Joyce Pelzer as the only suspect. But they still need more evidence.

We checked her credit cards, seen that last time it was used, it was used at a gas station in Gwinnett County, right on the line of DeKalb County. So I went out there and— So happened they had videos of that pump, so we was able to see Shondell heading to work, getting gas in her car.

She never actually made it inside her place of employment. The working theory at that point was that Shondell had been kidnapped somewhere in between. So at this point in the investigation, police certainly have strong suspicions that something bad has happened and that Joyce and Rosalyn know more about it than they're letting on.

I tried to get a warrant on them, but the DA wanted more. We didn't have a body. We know she was missing. We know foul play was in play, but we just needed a little more.

Detective Gast pursued this case for 7 years. Keeping up with leads for all these years and always thinking that Joyce Peltzer had some involvement.

Conyers police investigating Rosalind's murder question why would Joyce have reason to hurt her wife 7 years after Shondell.

Joyce was able to get away with what she did for years, but she knew that Rosalind knew what she did. Their relationship is troubled, just like Shawndell and Joyce's relationship was troubled. And she has a pattern of not allowing people to leave her, not allowing people to move on, and retaliating against anyone who broke up with her or hurt her.

Over the 7 years before the murder of Roslyn Lewis, Georgia investigators worked diligently to close the case on Shondell McLeod's disappearance.

It was hard on the family. I'm a parent myself. If something was to happen to my kids, I would want that investigator, that police officer, to exhaust all avenues.

Those efforts included keeping tabs on their prime suspect, Joyce Pelzer.

Detective Guess doesn't give up. He continues to have the media cover the case on Shondell's birthday every year, see if he can generate some information from the public.

Detectives believe Joyce got rid of Shondell once she realized she couldn't control her. And similar issues emerged shortly after her marriage to Roslyn in 2016.

Roslyn found out that Joyce was cheating, and she was not happy with that, of course.

I had been doing interviews with a lot of Joyce family members. They pretty much told me that Joyce had a new girlfriend. I did some workup on her and found out who she was.

Joyce's latest affair was with a woman named Katie Long in August of 2018.

It took me a minute, but I tracked down Miss Long. She was in Clearwater, Florida, and she said, I've been waiting on you to call me. She told me she had some things for me to hear.

Katie told investigators about a conversation she had with Joyce a year before Rosalind's murder.

She got real quiet and I asked her what was wrong, and she said, I have to tell you something. And she said, I knocked off my ex-girlfriend. And I said, who? And she said, Shondell. And I said, knocked her off meaning. And she said, "Katie, I killed my ex-girlfriend." She said, "I just feel like I can talk to you and that this is something that you needed to know so that you know who you're dealing with." And I said, "Well, who am I dealing with?" And she said, I am not a good person, Katie.

But they don't have evidence of an actual crime being committed. They have nothing concrete to prove that Shondell has been kidnapped, hurt, or murdered.

Following her interview, Katie agreed to help detectives get the evidence they needed.

Katie is starting to realize the type of person she's in bed with, and she truthfully is scared.

Katie records Joyce in their phone conversations. Joyce is making statements about why she did what she did. She makes statements about implicating Roslyn, and that she seems basically to express fear that Roslyn's going to go to police. Katie reached out to DeKalb County Police, to Detective Guest, in December of 2018, and was very concerned about threats that Joyce was making about Roslyn. She was going to point it all towards Roslyn.

As Conyers police finish reviewing the Shondell McLeod case, the reason for Roslyn's stabbing comes into sharper focus. Despite the violent threats from Joyce, Roslyn agreed to meet her in that hotel room on December 10th, with the intent to end their marriage.

They had talked back and forth, and I think Joyce thought there was some room for reconciliation between her and Roz. When Roz began telling her that she had filed for divorce, Joyce snapped.

Joyce's world was falling apart. I think that she was completely paranoid and scared that the ball was going to drop any day and that she was finally going to be held responsible for Shondell's murder and that Rosalyn was going to be the reason.

But before Joyce can be charged with any crimes, investigators need to find her.

We went up on an exigent request for services with the phone company, and they began to ping Joyce Peltzer's cell phone live. And the first ping that we got indicated that she was heading south toward Florida. Katie Long lives in Florida.

I immediately asked the sergeant to notify Georgia State Patrol and all agencies that would be on I-75 toward Florida to try to apprehend the suspect before she reached Florida and did violence to another person.

Georgia investigators have notified State Patrol and federal marshals to be on the lookout for Joyce Pelzer. 3 days after she allegedly stabbed her wife Roslyn, Joyce is spotted heading south on I-75.

We were notified by Georgia State Patrol dispatch that they had made contact with a car in Crisp County.

They initiated their emergency equipment to try to conduct a traffic stop. Joyce failed to yield to the traffic stop and continued traveling at high rates of speed. Georgia State Patrol performed a PIT maneuver, which is a precision immobilization technique on the vehicle to try to stop the vehicle before she caused any more harm.

There's dust, dirt all in the air. The sirens are still going. The officers are running up, surrounding the car, trying not to create crossfire. They've got their guns drawn. And as soon as it clears enough, they see her raise a gun. And that's a threat to the officers. And they fired.

The troopers fire into her vehicle. They're able to take her into custody. She's transported to the hospital where she's treated, but there was no significant trauma.

Once Joyce recovered from her wounds at the hospital there, she was then transported to Rottaway County Jail. Myself and crime scene investigator began searching Joyce Pelzer's vehicle, we were able to locate the bloody clothing along with a knife believed to have been used during the attack on Roslyn.

When Joyce is confronted with the evidence, she confesses to the assault.

December of 2019, Joyce decided to negotiate a plea with the Rockdale District Attorney's Office, and she pled guilty to the murder of Rosalyn Lewis.

She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the incident that occurred in Rockdale County.

Detectives are hoping she will do the same regarding the suspected murder of Shondell McLeod.

Detective Gast comes to interview her. And this is someone who has pursued this case for 7 years at this point, keeping up with the family, keeping up with leads, and always thinking that Joyce Peltzer had some involvement.

We spoke for about an hour and a half, and she confessed to being there when Shondell was killed. But Joyce said she had nothing to do with it. Joyce said it was Roslyn. Roslyn was upset. Joyce said that Shondell gave her herpes, and she transmitted it to Roslyn. So Roslyn wanted revenge for that. She said Roz hired a few guys. They drugged her, put her in the car, and buried the body in Arabian Mountain Park.

What Joyce doesn't realize is that investigators know she's lying.

We had a phone call, a recorded phone call, between Joyce and Katie, where she laid out her plan to tell Detective Guest this very story. And she followed through with that plan.

Joyce's whole story was that she was afraid of Roz, that Roz was the violent type in this relationship. And doing all my investigation, that's not true.

Shawndell wanted to move on from Joyce Peltzer. And that was something that Joyce Peltzer was not going to accept and was not going to allow to happen.

When she faces trial in 2023 for the murder of Shondell McLeod, Joyce's attorneys argue the state has insufficient evidence to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defense for Joyce Peltzer was that since there's no body here, there's not enough evidence to show that Joyce was the one that did it. And they leaned into implicating Rosalind Lewis in the murder of Chantelle McLeod.

Prosecutors use Joyce's ex-girlfriend, Katie Long, to refute those claims.

Katie Long's testimony Her testimony was so impactful. She didn't share friends with Joyce or Rosalind, but she had these details that she would only have if she had gotten them from Joyce. And then when we played that recorded phone call, and when the jury listened to her hatching her plan to frame Rosalind, the air changed in the courtroom. I felt like it was over. Joyce was convicted of both malice murder and felony murder. After the trial, the judge sentenced Joyce Peltzer to life without the possibility of parole.

The most bizarre thing of this case is the amount of hatred and violence that can be built up into one person is just very disturbing to me that a person could be that way.

Prison is not good enough for her. Shondell's life was took too soon. Shondell was the most kindest person I ever met.

Roslyn should be remembered as A person who saw the good, who loved with her whole heart. To have known her was truly an experience and a joy of life that so many won't get to experience because she isn't here anymore. But those who knew her can cherish that for a lifetime.