True Crime Campfire - Bound By Hate: The Murder of Rozanne Gailiunas, Finale

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Last week, we learned the identity of the man hired to kill Rozanne Gailiunas—Andy Hopper, an insurance adjustor turned weed dealer who had apparently added “hitman” to his list of careers. But investigators were still uncertain whether Andy was who they were after, or just a middleman who could lead them to the real killer. So they let him remain free—and then, tipped off by his girlfriend, he vanished. Join us for the conclusion of “Bound by Hate: The Murder of Rozanne Gailiunas.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESources:Open Secrets by Carlton StowersD Magazine: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1991/july/fatal-obsessions/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Last week, we learned the identity of the man hired to kill Rosan Guy Leunis, Andy Hopper, an insurance adjuster turned weed dealer who had apparently added hitman to his list of careers. But investigators were still uncertain whether Andy was who they were after or just a middleman who could lead them to the real killer. So they let him remain free. And then,

tipped off by his girlfriend, he vanished. This is the conclusion of Bound by Hate, the murder of Roseanne Gileunis. When Andy Hopper had met his girlfriend Linda in Boise, Idaho, she'd secretly told him the police had been watching and listening to them all weekend. He should get out of town, she said, and ditch his motorcycle. A few days later, just as the investigators in Dallas were getting ready to finally pull Andy in, they got a teletype message from the little town of Salmon, a five-hour drive from Boise up in the mountains.

Someone had found Andy's motorcycle in the woods outside of town covered with brush. It's not wrecked or anything. deputy told them. Looks like somebody just wanted to get rid of it. For months afterward, no one knew where Andy was. The answer was never in one place for long. First, he hooked up with a family of migrant workers who lived in a beat-up old bus, moving wherever the work took them. They felt sorry for him, and they liked him. Andy had always been able to turn on the charm when he needed to. But these weren't work hard, party hard people. They were work hard till you're so tired all you can do is fall asleep people. It was a tough, uncomfortable life, and it was soon clear to Andy that he couldn't

cut it. Surprise, surprise. He camped out in an abandoned logging camp for a while. After that, a traveling carnival hired him on $150 a week to help set up tents and rides and travel ahead of the show to put up posters and hand out free tickets at schools. Dang, this would be a Simon and Garfunkel song if it wasn't about a rapist murderer shit stain like Andy, or, you know, like a short story by Jack Kerouac or some shit. All sounds very romantic until you consider who it's about. On one of these trips, Andy and a fellow Carney ran out of gas before their pickup reached the next town, so a helpful state trooper gave them a ride. He did ask the guy riding up front for ID, but having gotten that, he didn't bother with Andy, who was sitting smiling cheerfully

in the back. But like with the migrant workers, being a Carney is hard work, and it's next to impossible to save any money. By November of 1988, Andy had had had enough. He called a buddy in Dallas, Don Price, and asked him to wire $200 so that Andy could afford to come back home. Don was an executive for a claims adjusting firm and had gotten friendly with Andy when Andy was still involved in that line of work in the early 80s. They struck up a very middle-class dudes kind of friendship, weekly golf games, going to watch Rangers baseball games playing softball together. Don's wife and Andy's wife Becky became good friends. But Don and his wife pulled back when it became impossible to ignore that Andy was physically and emotionally abusive

to Becky. They stayed in touch with Becky and offered her whatever support they could, but did their best to avoid Andy. Good choice. So Don was surprised when Andy called him at his office to ask for money. I need it to get back to Dallas, he said. I want to come back and clear myself. What Andy needed to clear himself of, he wouldn't say. He wanted Don to wire the money via a Western Union under the name Mike Hargrove, who played first base for the Texas Rangers. To get the money from Western Union, Andy would have to have the correct answer to a question, and he told Don to choose Rangers tickets as the answer. All this was deeply confusing for Don.

He called Becky to find out what the hell was going on. Whatever you do, don't send him any money, Becky told him. She started crying. I'd hoped he was dead, she said. I was hoping someone would call me to tell me to take. tell me they'd found his body. And then she gave Don Detective McGowan's phone number. The system Western Union had at the time meant that money didn't have to be wired to a particular branch, and the recipient didn't have to show ID. So Andy could walk into any Western

Union in the country and say he was expecting money from Mike Hargrove and the computer would prompt the cashier to ask the code question. If he gave the right answer, he'd get the cash. After Don called them, the police set up the transfer, but had Western Union added tag to the file so that they'd be alerted whenever somebody asked for Mike Hargrove's money. And to create enough confusion that Andy would hopefully stay in whatever local office he tried to use until law enforcement got there, Detective Ken McKenzie had the code answer changed from Rangers tickets to Cowboys tickets. It's devious. I love it.

I know. It's pretty great. Two days later, the call came through. Andy was in the Western Union office at a truck stop in Minot, North Dakota. Two calls quickly went north, one to the local PD and the other to the Western Union cashier, asking her to try and keep Andy there as long as she could. Andy was wearing a beat-up backpack and looked like he'd been rode hard and put away wet, and he was confused why his code word wasn't unlocking the cash. The cashier felt sorry for him.

Maybe it's Texas Rangers, he said, but that didn't work either. About 10 minutes later, a bunch of cops and FBI agents burst into the truck stop. The cashier pointed to the parking lot. He just left a few minutes ago, she said. There was no sign of him, but when the police chief called McGowan in Dallas, he said not to worry. There's no way in hell he's going to get far. The biggest snowstorm we've had in years just blew in. It's shutting to everything down, including the highways.

But he'd underestimated either either. Andy's desperation or his stupidity because as the snowstorm started and with the wind chill hitting minus 50 degrees, a couple and their teenage daughter saw a guy hitchhiking wearing nothing heavier than an army jacket. Knowing he would freeze to death if they didn't, they gave him a ride. And once again, Andy Hopper's ass was saved by the kindness of strangers. Boo. Andy babbled out an entirely fictional sob story as they drove. Back in Dallas, his wife and daughter had been killed by a drunk driver,

and he'd been so overwhelmed by grief he'd come north to stay with the distant relatives, but that had been a violent, abusive household, so he'd left. Then his motorcycle had been stolen, along with his wallet and ID, and he'd decided to go back to Dallas. His sister was wiring him some money. That last part was almost true. After the Western Union deal with Dawn blew up, Andy had called his brother John, who sent him $200.

When the family reached Fargo, Andy finally got his money, and he bought a bus ticket for Dallas. The family who'd picked him up felt so sorry for him. They gave him their phone number and said to call if he ever needed help. God, imagine how they must have felt when they saw this dude on the news later. The detectives in Dallas figured Andy might head for home around Christmas time, mostly out of sentiment and loneliness, but also because the upper plains in winter could make anybody homesick for Texas.

They set up surveillance around Becky and her daughters, and also in the neighborhood where Andy's old girlfriend, Linda, lived. Linda might have helped Andy skip out on the law once, but she had a new boyfriend now, and she let the police install a device that would trace the origin of incoming phone calls. No loyalty. There is no loyalty in Dallas, I guess. Sure enough, Andy stepped off a Greyhound at the Richardson bus station on December 18th. The bus station was just down the street from the police station, and Andy, either cocky or oblivious, walked through the police parking lot on

his way to Linda's house just yards away from all the detectives who were desperate to find him. He stopped briefly to hide his backpack in a park and swipe a clean sweatshirt from a clothesline, then carried on. Detective McKenzie was one of the officers staking out the neighborhood that night, sitting alone in his pickup. He noticed someone crossing the street in his rearview mirror, and shortly afterward, a man walked by on the sidewalk. McKenzie wasn't sure, but it might have been Andy. As soon as he heard the pickup door opening behind him, the guy started running. Police, freeze, Andy! McKinsey! Yelned, and after the last word, he had no doubt he had the right man, because when he heard

his own name, Andy screamed and started running harder. McKenzie went after him, but a few months of tough living had carved Andy into shape, and he took off like a jackrabbit. He dipped between two houses, vaulted clean over a backyard fence, and McKenzie lost him. Police and FBI agents searched the neighborhood until dawn started to break, but could find no sign of Andy. He actually wasn't far from where McKenzie had first started chasing him, curled up tight under an overturned kid's paddling pool in a backyard. He stayed there all night and most of the next day, should have got the dogs after him. Then he turned up at a friend's apartment and begged for a place to stay for the night.

She let him in. When her roommate got back, she was pissed and no wonder, as a general rule, I feel like roommates should have veto power over what, like, sketchy dudes you're allowed to invite to crash on your couch. Andy still wanted to talk to Linda. He called her and she kept him on the line long enough for police to trace the address. So for her kindness, Andy's friend and her roommate got the pleasure of being shoved out of their doorway by FBI agents who flooded into the apartment ahead of Detective McGowan. McGowan pushed open the bedroom door, but it wouldn't

open all the way. McGowan figured he knew why and darted in, turning to pin Andy Hopper against the wall where he'd hidden behind the door. Ooh, that must have been satisfying. Andy, don't do anything stupid, he said. I won't, Andy said, a little late. Moments later, he was in cuffs, and it wasn't too much later, after some classic good cop, bad cop work by McGowan and McKenzie that he was talking. Shady auto mechanic Brian Creeple had given Andy an envelope with Roseanne Guy Leunis's photo and personal details, he said, along with $1,500. He cruised past Rosanne's Logan would address a few times. One evening, when the house was dark, and there was no car in the driveway, he broke in and just wandered around the house for half an hour,

lighting his way with a cigarette lighter. Then he went to the kitchen and found a sharp knife. You were planning to stab her when she came home? McGowan said, I guess so, Andy said, I don't know, I was all fucked up. Anyhow, I chickened out. I got to thinking there might be somebody with her when she got there, boyfriend or somebody, so I got the hell out of there. Andy claimed he'd been so shaken up, he went to buy some meth, then at his dealer's place, he'd met a guy named Chip. Andy started talking about his hitman job and Chip volunteered to take care of it. Andy gave him the envelope, money and all. A couple days later, Chip called him to tell him the job was done. Then, in the interview room, Andy started sobbing. He said to McGowan,

Mo, Chip told me if I ever told anybody about this, he would rape my daughters and cut him into pieces. That's real convincing, Andy. Plus your heart. To most of the detectives, and probably to you, this sounded like the interrogation room version of The Dog Ate My Homework, but McGowan apparently believed not only in second chances, but in third and fourth ones, too. He still thought Andy was just a middleman in Roseanne's murder and sent a frustrated McKenzie out to track down Chip. A few weeks worth of legwork told McKenzie that Chip was in fact real. a low-level drug dealer who had moved to San Diego. A retired officer had made copies of his old files,

and he gave McKenzie a photo of a skinny guy with dark, center-parted hair, which matched Andy's description of the guy. Andy, meanwhile, was taking a polygraph. Afterward, the soft-spoken technician told him, Andy, I'm afraid it didn't go well at all for you. He had reacted strongly to each question about the murder, especially the one that asked if he'd shot Roseanne himself. With the polygraph results in hand,

McGowan had Andy talk through his version of events again. Then he said, hey, what if we find Chip, bring him in, and he passes the polygraph you just flunked? Where would that lead? Back to me, Andy said quietly. McGowan showed him the photo of Chip. He still didn't know where the guy was, but he hoped Andy's mind would jump ahead to the constant.

consequences of the police bringing Chip in. Andy was quiet for a while, then, barely above a whisper, said, Mo, I did it. I shot her. There you go. I knew you could tell the truth if you tried real hard. On October 4, 1983, Andy Hopper had been up for days, getting high on meth as he tried to work himself up to do the job he'd already accepted $1,500 to do. He stole a 25-caliber automatic from a friend's apartment, then stole some license plates from a mall parking lot, and put them on his own car. He drove to Safeway and bought cotton rope and surgical gloves. There was a florist nearby, and he bought a pot of mums. When Rose Nguilunis looked through her peephole, she saw a pleasant-looking man with a nice smile holding flowers. Delivering flowers, he said, as she opened door.

Once the door was open, the smile vanished. and Andy pushed her inside. A moment later, he was pointing a gun at Roseanne's face. Just keep your mouth shut, he said, and put the potted flowers down on the floor. He grabbed Roseanne's arm and led her to the bedroom. He wandered around the house just a couple nights ago, so he knew his way around.

He stopped just long enough to shut the door to the room where Roseanne's little boy slept. In the bedroom, with his gun pointed at her the whole time, he told Roseanne to take off her clothes and lie face down on the bed. He tied her arms and legs to the corner posts. When he noticed Roseanne was crying, he shoved tissues into her mouth so she couldn't make a sound.

This next part is really awful, so skip the next 30 seconds if you aren't up for awful right now. Andy squatted over Roseanne and jerked off into his hand, then went into the bathroom to wash up. Coming back, he took the belt from one of Roseanne's dresses and pulled it tight around her neck. Roseanne struggled desperately and managed to tear her left hand free. Andy had been enjoying himself, but now he was suddenly scared that he'd lose control.

He pressed a pillow over Roseanne's head and fired the gun twice into it. She went limp. Andy ran out of the house and drove away. It might have been even worse than that. It came out later that Andy had bragged about the hit to his weed supplier, James Carver. He told Carver, who thought he was full of shit until Andy was arrested, that he'd put the rope around Roseanne's neck and led her around the house like she was on a leash, and he'd threatened to hurt her kid.

Man, you've no idea the power you feel when you've got somebody in a life and death situation like that, he told Carver, I wish you could have seen the bitch squirm. Almost no one in Andy's life believed he could be a killer. He was friendly, fun, always had a smile, but underneath his heart was as shriveled and twisted as anybody we've ever covered, and if you know much of anything about the Texas judicial system, you can probably guess how his part in this story is going to end. If Andy had any idea of that, he didn't show it, delivering his videotaped confession as easily as if he was describing a baseball game.

So Andy Hopper, the killing tool, was under wraps, but the hand that had ultimately wielded him was still free, indicted for murder and attempted murder, but out on bond. and Joy Ehler wasn't happy. She'd hired Dallas's top defense attorney, but because he was the top defense attorney, he was often busy, and Joy couldn't get a hold of him whenever she wanted. Joy had a new friend, Darla, who lived next door to Joy's cousin.

Darla, who moved in the same sophisticated circles as Joy, was in the middle of ironing out a plea deal for a reduced sentence on bank fraud charges. I guess it's normal for people of means to think about fleeing far away when they get in trouble, and Darla recognized the direction Joy's mind was turning when Joy wistfully spoke about wanting to go to a resort in Mexico and just disappear. Then she asked Darla, who'd had a lot of work done,

if plastic surgeons could change your fingerprints. It was pretty clear this little birdie was thinking of flying the coop. For now, though, what Joy wanted was a more attentive defense attorney, and Darla put her in touch with her own team, Denver McCarty and Mike Wilson. Joy had the two of them over for iced tea and told him about her problems, speaking casually the whole time, always with a little smile. After an hour or so, Denver and Mike recommended Joy stick with her current attorney, who they both thought highly of.

As they drove away, it was clear the two men had radically different reactions to Joy Ehler. That's the coldest damn woman I've ever seen, Denver McCarty said. Mike Wilson kept his mouth shut, but he couldn't disagree more. He'd thought Joy was beautiful and scared, but brave. He'd liked her right away. Liked her a lot. But then, by this time, Mike Wilson had already revealed a talent for turning his own life into a slow-burning dumpster fire. Everyone in the little East Texas town of Winsborough expected big things of Mike Wilson,

the brightest kid in school, who was also quarterback of the football team. He headed off to the University of Texas and never looked back. In college, he worked hard and lived the frat bro life of parties and drinking until you peeped. In his junior year, he got married and moved into an apartment on the edge of campus, but plenty of people noticed that married life sometimes took a back seat to frat life, especially the parties and the drinking. After graduating, Mike went to law school in Dallas, initially because it made him less likely to get drafted for Vietnam,

but once he was there, he was fascinated by the work. After passing the bar, he got a job with the district. district attorney's office and soon carved out a reputation as an aggressive, hard-charging prosecutor. Junior prosecutors do a lot of work for not a lot of reward, and with people farther up the chain showing no signs of quitting, after a few years Mike quit to go into private practice. He failed miserably, with not many people willing to take a chance on a baby-faced and inexperienced attorney, and Mike went crawling back to the DA's office. Again, he did well there, but people started to notice his drinking. Lawyer who works too hard and drinks too much is a type so common that

is a cliche, but Mike took things to extremes. He was in and out of alcohol treatment centers all through the 70s. In 1981, his ship came in. A high-paying gig is a civil litigator for a big railroad company. Six months later, Mike got hammered at a seminar, made an ass of himself, and passed out. When he got back to Dallas, he was fired. Finally realizing he had a serious problem, Mike checked himself into the hospital for a month. He never had another drink again. Forced into private practice for a second time, things went better for Mike. He had a big house and drove a Porsche, and every month he made more money than the month before. The reason for this was that Mike, the former prosecutor, had carved out a professional niche representing big money

drug dealers. Money was all he got out of this. His reputation among his peers plummeted, and there were soon rumors. Only rumors, no proof, that he was directly involved in the drug trade himself. Yeah, that happens a lot, I think, with the defense attorneys who get involved in, you know, defending drug dealers. I mean, I feel like I've heard about a lot of cases like that. Yeah. When he failed to get sweet deals for a couple of heavy-hitting cocaine smugglers, he started to get death threats. Mike was a nervous wreck, and his marriage was spiraling quickly towards divorce. He'd become buddies with a client who was a coke-dealing Vietnam vet, and when the guy offered Mike some blow to improve his nerves, Mike made the worst choice possible for a

recovering addict and said yes. He soon had himself quite the little cocaine problem. His work suffered, and his athletic build shed 50 pounds in less than a year. Does cocaine help your nerves? I don't know. No. Seems like speed would do exactly the opposite of that. If you're looking to take the edge off. I feel like cocaine is not going to help. You're putting the edge on. You're just sharpening that edge to a fine point. The finest point. Yeah. Maybe a little less of a fine point than like meth, but pretty fine. Right. Mike's first wife divorced him, and he was just a few months into marriage number two when he laid eyes on Joy Ehler and fell head over heels. It was clear the interest is mutual. Although Mike would later come to believe,

that the whole thing was calculated on Joy's part, an attorney who supposedly had ties to international drug dealers would be a nice catch for a woman looking to skip out of the country soon. And Mike was certainly an upgrade over Joy's current blowhard boyfriend, Jody Packer. Mr. My Wife's a ex-wife's a George. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like upgrading from I'd like to speak to your manager to Captain Save a Ho, you know? Yeah. Joy came on pretty strong. As often as she could, she tagged along when her friend Darla visited the law office, always popping in to say hi to Mike. When he told her he liked to go bird hunting, Joy said he could use her family's ranch. He could stop by her house any time and pick up the key. When Joy called to ask him out for lunch, Mike declined. When Joy asked him why, he said, because I might find that I like you too much, which is

Definitely not the kind of thing you say if you want to scare somebody off. No. There's only one way to be sure, Joy said, reeling in the fish she'd just caught. For a while, they had a relationship of lunches and long conversations, a friendship that was clearly heading for something more. However, after seeing Joy on Christmas Eve of 1989, Mike decided he needed to cool things off with her. His life was in enough of a mess already without getting involved with a woman indicted on multiple murder charges. But however calculated Joy's pursuit of Mike had been, what happened next was something she could never have planned for. Joy had fallen asleep on the couch in front of a crackling fire.

The phone woke her just after 1 a.m. The chances of a 1 a.m. phone call being good news are slim to none, and this was no exception. It was a friend of her son, Chris, and he sounded like he was crying. There'd been an accident with Chris's Corvette, the kid sobbed out, and gave her a location on the LBJ freeway. Hurry, he said. Oh, God, please hurry. Joy could hear ambulances in the background. Terrified, Joy hurried to her bedroom and shook Jody Packer awake. Chris has been in an accident, she said. Those fucking kids muttered Packer who could write a book called How to Lose Your Girlfriend. He fell asleep again immediately.

So Joy called Mike Wilson, who right away said he'd be waiting outside for Joy to pick him up. It was a horrific scene. Police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances were all around the burned smoking remains of Chris's Burgundy Corvette, which was mangled up against the guardrail. With Chris in the passenger seat, his best friend Raymond had been using the Corvette in a drag race. He'd lost control, hit the guardrail, and then hit a car parked on the side of the freeway. Chris had been thrown through the windscreen. Raymond had been trapped in the car as it caught fire. Mike watched as paramedics put an orange blanket over charred remains in the driver's seat.

An ambulance was taking Chris to Parkland Hospital. Mike drove Joy's Porsche as fast as he dared, but by the time they got there, Chris, just 19 years old, was already dead. Mike watched as Joy wept over her son's body. Then back at his apartment, he watched as Joy visit him. visibly got a hold of herself and called her mom and younger sister. She was calm and collected and set up a meeting to arrange funeral arrangements. As we've said, many times before, people grieve in different ways, and tightly clamping down on your emotions like that certainly is not unique to Joy Ehler.

But it's something that hits a little different when you're talking about somebody indicted for murder. Sharing a trauma can do weird things to people. Just hours after deciding to keep clear of joy, Mike Wilson will, was all in. His brief second marriage was already failing, and Mike just gave up on it all together, while Joy kicked a pouting Jody Packer out of her house. Obviously, given the circumstances they'd gotten together in, the start of their relationship wasn't exactly full of smiles and laughter. In her serene way, Joy quizzed Mike on how it would feel to end her life by letting her car run in a closed garage. Was it painless? Was it like falling asleep? How long would it take?

Mike, meanwhile, threw some gasoline on his dumpster fire life. He got a new client, Mark Northcutt, a bodybuilder turned steroid dealer, turned cocaine dealer, an ecstasy manufacturer. Northcutt was in desperate need of quality legal representation, but previous lawyers had drained his cash and the feds had frozen his bank accounts. He didn't have any money. But he did have 21 kilos of cocaine in a suitcase in a motel room. Mike could go pick up a kilo of that as an initial payment. Before his own nose-candy adventures, Mike would have probably been sharp enough to spot an obvious sting, but right now he was desperate for cash, having run up a 15 grand tab with his own Coke dealer.

After a few days, he went to the motel room and transferred not one, but 11 kilos of cocaine from an aluminum suitcase to a gym bag. When he opened the door to leave, he was staring right into the barrel of a gun, behind which was a DEA agent. Put the goddamn bag down and get on the floor, the agent said. and Mike did. He was soon out on bond, but now he and Joy had something new in common, the prospect of serious jail time in their futures. Joy didn't know how closely she was being watched. She did get away with some stuff the authorities didn't know about, private sales of jewelry and furniture and the like, but all through March, she moved money among various accounts before taken it out as cash. She had a cousin, Brad Davis, who adored her, and he helped Joy move money around,

each transfer just below the $10,000 threshold that would trigger an automatic report to federal authorities. The feds might not have been getting reports, but the local DA's office sure were. By April, they thought Joy had at least $200 grand in cash. A prosecutor called Detective McGowan and told him she's getting ready to run. Just before jury selection was about to start for her trial, on a Friday, a paralegal in her attorney's office called to tell Joy a pretrial hearing with scheduled for the following Monday. Joy had no clue what this was about, but Mike had a pretty good idea. Revocation of Bond. Or, as he put it, to Joy, they're going to yank your pretty ass up and toss it in jail. Yep. Although Joy hadn't explained it to him, Mike knew perfectly

well why she'd been hoarding cash, so it wasn't a surprise when she told him, we have to go. Now, today. She'd never asked if Mike was willing to go on the run with her, but he laughed and said he didn't have anything to lose. Bad Life Choices Theater, Volume 2. Joy, always meticulous, was already mostly packed, and she'd gone through her personal papers, selecting a big bunch to burn in the fireplace. The Porsches, they both drove, were too small and too distinctive, so Joy decided they'd rent a car. She'd recently swiped one of Jody Packers' credit cards with precisely that goal in mind. Still, despite her planning, she and Mike had different conceptions of how serious a situation they were in.

Joy paced back and forth in her living room going through her to-do list. It won't take me long to finish packing. Get the money, some groceries to take with us, rent the car, go buy Neemans. Neemans, Mike asked, incredulous. Well, I've got a $600 credit there, Joy said. And since we won't be coming back, I thought I'd buy this purse I saw the other day. Oh, my God. This is the same joy who wrote her hitman to thank you note.

Just when you think this woman can not get more absurd. God. Can't leave money on the table, Whitney. I know. It's basically a Neiman's credit for God's sake. Burning it in the fireplace. God. Get some perspective, Joy.

God. Like our quotes in previous episodes, these are from Carlton Stowe's great book, Open Secrets. They did not, in fact, go to Neiman's. Joy had hidden her cash in a leather case down at her parents' place and popped in for a farewell chat with them to pick it up. Joy wanted to head straight for Mexico, but Mike convinced her that was where the authorities would concentrate their search, so they should go north instead. He didn't tell Joy, but his work had taken him to a few Mexican prisons in the past, and he decided that if he was going to get arrested, he'd rather it'd be. in Canada. They decided they had a better chance of escaping with the help of a third party,

so they roped in Joy's cousin Brad. Like we said in the last episode, you should get as many people involved as possible in your schemes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Schemes and japes. Yeah, just get as many people involved as you can. In return for his help, Joy would forgive the five grand she'd loaned him so he could buy a truck. Brad probably would have helped them anyway. He loved his cousin and was certain she was being wrongfully prosecuted.

When he got back if the police asked him, Brad would say he'd driven up to Las Vegas on a whim, a story that would hold water about as well as a paper teapot. They switched out driving duties and traveled all night. Mike dozed in the back seat. When he woke up, he saw they were turning off the interstate. What's happening? he said. It's lunchtime, Joy said cheerily. You can't come to Colorado Springs and not have lunch at the world-famous Broadmoor.

Mike gritted his teeth, frustrated that Joy seemed incapable of differentiating between a desperate flight from the law and a fun road trip. Why don't you stop and get your hair dead, too? And get a manny-pity. As Joy and Brad bickered over the wine list, Mike looked around the cross. crowded dining room. They were a distinctive trio and he was sure plenty of the other diners would soon be describing them to the police. Saturday afternoon, they pulled into a Jeep dealership in Cheyenne and Mike bought an eight-year-old Grand Wagoner. As Brad got ready for the long trip back to Texas, he looked resigned and said, I can get in trouble for this, can I? Joy shrugged this off and Mike

kept quiet. He knew that the kind of trouble Brad was buying probably came with bars on the windows. As they headed north in the Jeep, Joy's indifference to Brad's fate really stuck with Mike. He knew she'd been indicted for murder and, in fact, was confident she was guilty, but seeing firsthand her total disregard for somebody who'd stuck his neck out for her really brought home that he might have made a big mistake. Despite their nerves, they cruised into Alberta without a hitch, waved through by a friendly customs officer who wished them a good time. When they got to the motel and unpacked, Joy had a meltdown.

She thought she'd brought $400,000 with her, but realized she'd neglected to pick up a second bag that held more than half of that. All she had was $150K, and for modern-day context, by the way, multiply that by about two and a half times to get the values. It's not like she was, you know, traveling light on the cash. She also still had fistfuls of expensive jewelry, but she started obsessing over the forgotten money. They had to go back to Dallas and get it or call somebody to pick it up for them. To Mike, both of these were obvious ways to get themselves arrested, but Joy couldn't let it drop. He realized that the only thing that could soothe and calm Joy was knowing she had fistfuls of money close at hand. Amplifying what he'd witnessed in how Joy treated Brad, Joy suggested Mike's teenage son could say,

decide to take a spur of the moment Canadian ski vacation and smuggle the cash up to them. The Mike obviously wasn't going to let that happen, but he was sure Joy would have gone through with it if she could. And if his son had been caught, well, just another life ruined by being too close to Joy Ehler. They got a cabin in Banff National Park. Mike thought it was the most beautiful place he'd ever seen. Joy just fretted about the money. The bloom was definitely coming off the rose in their relationship, and Mike started to think he maybe ought to turn himself in. Joy had confessed to him that she had, in fact, had Roseanne Gileunis killed by now, but she'd gone further. Not only did she not regret that.

the murder? If she had the chance to do things differently, the only thing she'd change would be to kill Roseanne herself. Then she started idly wondering what would happen if her older sister Carol was unable to testify against her. What if she just disappeared, Joy said? Then as if talking to herself said she knew Carol's address, where her daughter went to school and had a recent picture of her. Mike started to wonder if Joy had believed all those rumors about him being tight with drug kingpins, if she'd been expecting him to whisk her away to a South American mansion where he'd arranged to have all her enemies whacked. It's worth remembering that these two were not right or die.

They'd only known each other a few months, thrown together by tragedy and dumb mistakes. Now reality was starting to settle in. Every night, Mike was going to sleep next to a psychopath. They moved west to Vancouver, figuring they'd be less noticeable in a big city. Not long after, a newspaper report sent Joy into a panic. Cousin Brad had been arrested for lying to a grand jury about Joy's

whereabouts and then had predictably and sensibly given up everything he knew. Shocking. Immediately, they made plans to fly to where Joy had wanted to go in the first place, Mexico. They'd fly separately to try and avoid detection, Joy going first. They both knew it was unlikely Mike would ever follow. Once Joy was airborne, Mike went back to his hotel and called an old lawyer friend who had moved from Texas up to Billings, Montana, and asked if he could arrange for Mike to surrender to the authorities back in the U.S. His friend said he'd see what he could do, and Mike drove to a resort in a little town close to the Washington border.

He didn't get a chance to cross. That evening, he called the hotel in Vancouver to see if Joy had left a message, and the clerk passed the number he'd call from to the authorities. Within an hour, there were eight armed Mounties in the resort, two right outside Mike's room, and one on the roof with a high-powered rifle. One of the Mounties called Mike's room. Come out with your hands up, he said, and Mike did. After he was arrested, the Mounties turned him over to U.S. Customs,

and Mike was driven just a few miles over the border to the jailhouse in Oroville, Washington. He'd soon be back in Dallas. But of Joy Ehler, there was no sign. Knowing she was in Mexico didn't exactly do much to narrow down the search, so the investigating team chose a sense. route for cops with a juicy story and a missing person. America's Most Wanted. After the episode aired, Detective Ken McKenzie got a call from a Dallas woman who'd just

gotten back from a month-long stay at a Spanish-language school in Quernivaca just outside Mexico City. There, she'd known a woman who looked just like Joy, except she went by the name Jody Packer. She'd acted weird, avoiding photographs and making tons of calls from the drugstore pay phone. And when she'd left, Jody Packer had stolen the woman's travel card. This obviously was Joy. There were a couple more Mexico sightings in the wake of the show, and then nothing for months. It looked like Joy had vanished. Then, in January, a couple of State Department agents came in and asked McGowan what he knew about a man named Jody Packer. A passport office clerk had been using a program that flagged anomalies and passport requests

and took a look at the one issued recently to a Donald Earhart, who it turned out had died in a hunting accident 25 years ago. The applicant had had a birth certificate and Texas driver's license, which ultimately gave fraud investigators the license plate of a car belonging to Jody Timothy Packer. They'd gone to the Dallas County Sheriff's Office to check him out and a deputy remembered that Judge Ann Packer had an ex-exam. husband called Jody.

Judge Packer sent the agents on to McGowan, and they told him that Jody Packer, under both his real and fake passport, had been making a ton of trips to Mexico, and more recently, to Spain and France. What did Joy do to this man? I know. God, epic simpage going on. Like, she... What?

Man, stand up. These were supposed to be. supposedly business trips for his plumbing company. He'd been channeling a lot of money to European banks. Jody's credit card trail wandered all over Europe, but most recently had stopped in Nice on the southeastern coast of France. He had rented a car at the airport there and hadn't brought it back yet. Liz Sharp, an elegant American lady, had made quite an impression when she showed up at the tourist office in the beautiful little town of Vance, just west of Nice. She and her husband Don, she said, loved the area so much they wanted to stay.

The lady who worked there, Dominique, was immediately taken by Liz, who she described as looking like an Angel. Liz was serene and beautiful and although obviously wealthy, wasn't ostentatious at all. Dominique found the couple a nice little villa in the hills, and while Don traveled for business, she and Liz were soon good friends, working on flowers in the garden, visiting galleries, and antique stores. One evening, Dominique told Liz she'd broken up with her married boyfriend, who refused to leave his wife.

She didn't want to be just a mistress. If I learned my husband was sleeping with another woman, I'd throw him out of the house, she told Liz. Liz smiled wisely and said, No, you wouldn't. What you would do is talk about it, try to understand it, and find a way to work things out.

Communication is the most important thing a couple can share. Wow, okay. A couple of months into her stay in Vance, Liz was in a minor fender-bender. So when she answered the door and a police detective identified himself, she smiled and said, is this about my accident? Madame, is your name Joy Davis Ehler? The detective said.

No, she said, still smiling, I'm Liz Sharp. She showed no fear or alarm at all, and the detective started wondering if he had the right woman. Still, he had a warrant to serve and said Liz would have to come to the police station with him. She asked if she could shower and change first, and the detective said yes. He had four officers watching the outside of the house. He came inside to wait, and a lot of his doubts evaporated. Outside, the villa was picture-perfect in every regard.

Inside, it was dark. Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink, and on the kitchen table, clothes were strewn everywhere. Overflowing trash bags sat in the corners and yellowing newspapers were taped to the windows. With Liz changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, they drove to the police station in Nice. When her fingerprints matched those of Joy Ehler, Liz calmly admitted to her real identity.

In fact, she remained calm throughout, only getting agitated when she asked about the crimes in Dallas. I don't want to go back there ever, she said, well, I have to? But that wasn't up to anybody in the same. the niece police station. Joy went to a cell. A few hours later, she took out the razor blade she'd hidden in her sock when the police let her shower and change and cut her wrists, deep enough to sever tendons. She was weak from blood loss when a police officer found her and

yelled for an ambulance. Please let me die, Joy whispered. He did not, and Joy was guarded constantly in the hospital as she recovered. Whether or not Joy would ever go back to Dallas was a tricky question. Hers was a death penalty case, and France wouldn't extradite anyone who would face execution. Negotiations dragged on for more than a year, and it wasn't clear if Joy was ever coming back. Meanwhile, Andy Hopper went to trial. With a videotaped confession and a mountain of witnesses, there wasn't much doubt about the outcome. Still, though, his defense attorney, Peter Lesser, took a swing at it. Because Roseanne had not been immediately killed by Andy's two-shot to her head, Lesser argued that her husband, Dr. Peter Gileunis, might have come home, found

Roseanne critically injured, and decided to finish her off with an injection of thorazine. Now, Colin, this theory, absolute cuckoo for cocoa puffs, is really too generous. Watching in the courtroom, the doctor's German mom said to the person next to her, I wish Mr. Lesser a lifetime of hiccups and diarrhea. I like her. Andy Hopper, to the surprise of no one, was found guilty and sentenced to death. It wasn't until November 1993 that Joy was finally transported back to the U.S., with the death penalty having been taken off the table ten years after the murder.

Joy didn't seem to care one way or another. I'm already dead, she told a Paris reporter. Drama Queen. Before Joy's trial, other legal matters were getting wrapped up. Buster and Gary Matthews, the two incompetent assassins, got life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder in addition to their current New Mexico prison terms for kidnapping. Joy's cousin Brad pled guilty to aggravated perjury and was given five years probation. Her sister Carol was arrested for her part in blackmailing Joy but served no time. Bill Garland pled guilty to his part in both murder plots and got a 30-year sentence.

Mike Wilson was given a 15-year-old. sentence for drug offenses, which was reduced on appeal, and he was out after serving less than four years. Jody Packer was arrested for passport fraud, then broke his bond and spent a few fun months sailing his yacht around the Caribbean and the East Coast before being picked up again. He agreed to testify against Joy in the hopes of a lighter sentence. With her two former partners, Mike Wilson and Jody Packer, both testifying that Joy had confessed her involvement in the crimes, there was only a little more doubt about the outcome of Joy's trial than there had been about Andy Hoppers. She was found guilty in sentenced to life in prison four days after her 45th birthday.

If it hadn't been for her extradition deal, she probably would have been sentenced to death. On March 7, 2005, Andy Hopper was executed by lethal injection, moments after apologizing to Roseanne's family members who had come to witness his death. While we were researching this case, we googled Andy's name and stumbled upon his find-a-grave page. And in the comments, on the post about his death, was one from someone with the username Linda with a Y, just like the Linda who was Andy's ride or die until he went on the lamb. The one who warned him he was being surveilled in his hotel room. The post was from 2020.

And it was just a single red rose emoji. That was all. it's wild to me how far the ripples can reach from a case like this somebody out there still thinking about their murderer boyfriend from decades earlier not to mention peter gai leonis junior who's had to grow up without his beautiful loving mom his dad peter senior who had to live under a cloud of suspicion until the truth came out then sit there in court and listen to the killer try and pin the murder on him and on and on and on all this drama all this pain surrogens

circling around the selfish desires of one woman who clearly thought of herself as the central character in the movie of life. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to T, Andrea, Cort Ney, Carrie, and Adam. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not your, at a patron, you're missing out. Patrons

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