True Crime Campfire - Bound By Hate: The Murder of Rozanne Gailiunas, Pt 1

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

The late, great Bo Diddley asked one of life’s big questions in one of the 20th century’s greatest songs—“Who Do You Love?” That’s a simple question, but in some relationships, the answer isn’t simple at all. Love, money, revenge—people kill for all kinds of reasons. And in this week’s case, those motives tangle together in a way that will tear lives to pieces. A woman torn between two men, a crime scene straight out of a nightmare, and an investigation that twisted and turned for years. 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://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @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. The late great Bo Diddley asked one of life's big questions in one of the 20th century's greatest songs. Who do you love? That's a simple question, but in some relationships, the answer isn't simple at all. Love, money, revenge, people kill for all kinds of reasons. And in this week's case, those motives tangle together in a way that will tear lives to

pieces. A woman torn between two men, a crime scene straight out of a nightmare, and an investigation that twisted and turned for years. This is part one of Bound by Hate, the Murder of Roseanne Gileunis. So, campers, for this one, we're in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas, October 4, 1983. A little after 6 p.m., Dr. Peter Gailunis got a call from his four-year-old son, also named Peter, who said something was wrong with his mom, Roseanne. She won't wake up, and there's stuff coming out of her mouth, the little boy said. The doctor had his own mom. mom waiting on the line when little Peter called and told her to call 911 right away. He'd later say he feared Rosanna tried to end her own life. The initial call put out by

the dispatcher was urgent but calm, an injured person report from Loganwood Avenue. Paramedics and a patrol officer were on their way. Not long after, there was an updated report, gunshot victim, at Loganwood Address. Soon, the narrow little street was crammed with cop cars and an ambulance. The First officers to arrive had found a horrific scene. Roseanne Gailunis, a pretty young nurse, had been bound, face down and naked to the four corner posts of her bed. Some panty hose and a belt were on the bed close to her head, and marks on her neck suggested she'd been choked by one or both of them.

She'd managed to pull her left hand free. Her head hung over the side of the bed where she'd vomited through tissues that had been shoved into her mouth to gag her. She'd been shot twice in the head. Roseanne was, remarkably, still alive, or at least she was still breathing. Her dark eyes stared glassily from her swollen features as the paramedics hurried her into an ambulance. Outside, little Peter ran screaming into the arms of a thin man in glasses, his father, the doctor. Along with other officers at the scene, Detective Morris McGowan, who would lead the investigation, found Dr. Gailunus to be,

chilly and strange. He seemed surprised but not particularly moved by this brutal assault on his wife and calmly told officers he'd wait for his attorney to arrive before he answered any questions. The spouse or romantic partner of a victim is always going to be a likely suspect in the early stages of an investigation and the doctor was not doing himself any favors. But the doctor would soon have company in the spotlight. An officer came up to McGowan and said, the woman's boyfriend is here. This was Larry Ailer, every inch a beefy Texas dude. He'd been trying to get hold of Roseanne on the phone for hours

and had finally decided to drive over and see what was going on. Although they were still married, Peter and Roseanne Gailunis had been separated for four months and she'd just recently moved into this house on Loganwood. At the hospital, Roseanne went into emergency surgery. The doctors thought this attempt to save her life was most likely feudal, but they tried. At the police station, McGowan had one detective interview Dr. Gailunis and another interview Larry Ehler. The one who spoke to the doctor, came out later and confidently told him, this is our guy. Around the time that paramedics estimated Roseanne had been

shot, Peter Gailunis claimed to have been taking a 45-minute nap at his desk with no witnesses. A little later, the detective who interviewed Larry Ailer came out and confidently told McGowan, this is our guy. When he tried to pin down where Larry had been when Roseanne was shot, Larry launched into a bizarre story of being run off the road by an old lady trying to kill him, or possibly a man dressed like an old lady. He also owned a 25 automatic. Investigators had found two shell casings of that caliber,

one in the bedroom and one that had fallen out of Roseanne's hair in the ambulance. The doctor and Larry Ehler were each point in the finger at the other. He must have done it. Roseanne survived long enough for her parents and sister to fly down from Boston and be by her side, but she was brain dead, and by now only a ventilator kept her breathing. Her sister Paula was by her bedside as the ventilator was unplugged. A little while later, Roseanne's vitals faded to nothing. She was gone.

Paula felt a strange sense of relief. At least her sister wasn't suffering. And then Roseanne sat bolt upright on the hospital bed, her eyes wide open and her arms straight out in front of her. Paula screamed. Like Roseanne, Paula was a nurse, and she knew about the post-mortem muscle spasm some body's experience, but knowing about it and seeing it are two different things.

And she was badly shaken up. I cannot even imagine. I would never get a full night's sleep again. The Gailuna's case was now officially a homicide investigation, and it looked like it was going to be a messy one. A bizarre and sadistic murder. and a love triangle with likely suspects in two of the corners. So how did we get here?

Peter Galunis was three years old in 1949 when his parents emigrated to the U.S. from the chaos of post-war Germany. Peter remembered almost nothing about the long ocean voyage except constant seasickness and the fact that he ate nothing but oranges the whole trip. Like many immigrants, the Gailunus family had to start over from nothing. Peter's father, a veterinarian who had studied medicine, worked as a mill laborer and dishwasher before landing a job as a government meat inspector. When he wasn't working, he was drinking, and when he drank, Peter's dad was violent and abusive. At a Christmas dinner, when Peter came home from Boston College for the holidays,

a family argument ended with Gailuna Sr. hitting Peter so hard he knocked him out of his chair. Without saying a word, Peter left, went back to college, and decided he'd never go home again. Again. Good for him. Soon after that, his mother left his father, who quickly drank himself to death. We've seen it before on our show. Kids from troubled backgrounds can be incredibly driven to succeed. And Peter had set his sights on a medical career ever since he was little. When he was a junior in college, he married a classmate, but he focused much more on medical school than his new marriage. When problems arose in his relationship, he just threw himself even harder into his work to destroy.

himself, which obviously didn't help. After four years, his first marriage was over. Yeah, men's school will do that. I can't imagine how people find time for anything else while they're doing that. The hours are just bananas and the stress. I mean, it's bound to end marriages left and right. Oh, yeah. When he was finally close to finishing med school, Peter started to relax a little and allow himself to have a social life. He was working at Boston General Hospital, and on his first night in the ICU, he met a smart, gorgeous nurse with jet black hair and a great smile. Her name was Roseanne, and at the end of their first shift working together, she smiled at Peter, handed him a piece of paper, and walked away without a word.

The note had her phone number written on it, as well as, call me sometime. Ooh, my girls got game. Smooth. I love it. Soon, they were on like Donkey Kong, but it didn't take long for Peter to notice that Roseanne never asked him to come back to her house. After a couple of months, she came clean. Roseanne and her high school boyfriend had gotten married right after graduation. And now, at 27, their marriage had fallen apart. They were separated, but still living together, and she'd just filed for divorce.

When Peter asked her to marry him, she said yes. He'd already accepted a teaching gig at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, and it didn't take long for Roseanne to line up a job in the burn unit of Parkland Hospital. So in 1978, they headed south and started a new life together in Texas. It went great at first with Peter quickly advancing from assistant professor to director of the kidney transplant program and Roseanne in line to become head nurse at the burn unit. They were busy, apparently happy, and financially comfortable. And then they went beyond comfortable when Peter and a colleague bought a medical supply company and through an extreme amount of hard work

turned it into a multi-state, multi-million dollar operation. Peter essentially worked two jobs, one after the other. After a day of teaching and clinical work, he'd dive right into work for the supply company. More often than not, he was working 100-hour weeks. He'd sometimes get home at 3 a.m. and leave just three hours later. Look, I don't care how much money I would make doing it. You could literally pay me $1 billion a year. I would snap like a twig trying to work that much.

No, thank you. Not worth it. The money was pouring in, but whatever lessons Peter had learned from the failure of his first marriage, they obviously hadn't stuck. He and Roseanne barely saw each other. Their friends noticed how unexcited she was by all the trappings of their new wealth. Peter didn't seem to notice it at all. But Roseanne was homesick and often flew back to New England to visit her close-knit Italian-American family, sometimes for weeks at a time. That's the kind of thing that should probably set warning lights flashing in any marriage, but Peter, consumed by his work, was oblivious.

In 1979, little Peter was born, five weeks early. His dad was away in Chicago, opening another franchise in his growing medical supply empire. Having missed the birth of his son, Peter promised to cut back on work and spend more time with his family, a promise which lasted maybe a couple of months before he was back to the obsessive grind. A lot of times, the arrival of a new baby will just make the problems in a relationship, worse rather than better, and the Gailuna's marriage started to go downhill fast. Peter pressured Roseanne into giving up her nursing job to care for their son full time, and then started criticizing every tiny little choice she made.

She should hand-make little Peter's every meal from natural ingredients, not buy baby food from the store. She should be with Peter constantly, not send him to preschool, something Roseanne felt was necessary to give the boy time with other kids. Basically, Peter wanted a perfect little Stepford Tradwife and nothing seemed to be good enough for him. And his drinking wasn't helping. Peter had watched his own father ruin and ultimately end his own life with alcohol. And for a while, Peter seemed determined to follow in his footsteps.

It's wild how often that happens. I guess that just proves that there is a genetic, you know, predisposition to that stuff. After his normal day's work was done, when Peter stayed at the medical school to work on research or the supply company, he'd steadily chug his way through a whole case of beer. On the increasingly rare times when he hung out at home with his wife and son, he almost always had a gin and tonic in his hand. Roseanne begged him to get professional help, but like a lot of people with addiction issues do, he just shrugged her off. His drinking was just one of a litany of things they

argued about. With a new son and new wealth, Peter decided that he and Roseanne needed to upgrade their living situation. A search of availability. homes didn't quite hit the spot, though, so Peter decided to buy a plot of land in the upscale Preston Hollow neighborhood and have a new house built to his own very exacting requirements. If he thought working on this project together might improve his shaky relationship with Roseanne, though, he was mistaken. She was lonely. She was bored. She was homesick. On the phone to her sister, she said she was getting ready to ask for a divorce. And this was where Peter and Roseanne Guy Lunis were in January of 1983.

when they invited over the couple they'd contracted to build their new house. This was Larry Ehler and his interior decorator wife, Joy. They all got along really well. Larry was cheerful and friendly but professional, and he impressed Peter and Roseanne with his grasp of cost and design. Joy, on the other hand, was quiet and reserved, which Peter thought was interesting. Joy was model pretty,

and he'd never met anybody that hot who was as shy as Joy was. Peter was obviously stoked about the building project, asking question after question, but both Larry and Joy noticed that Roseanne showed hardly any interest at all. As they drove away, Joy said to her husband, His wife is very pretty. Larry just nodded and very unhappy, Joy finished. As the building project progressed, Peter finally realized that his marriage was in trouble. Up until now, Roseanne had always waited up for him at night,

matter how late he worked. She wasn't doing that anymore. She was distant, hardly ever started a conversation with him, and they'd always had a good sex life, but now Roseanne had no interest at all. Peter started to suspect she was having an affair, and because his personality tended towards the obsessive, he shared his worries with everyone he knew, until they were sick of hearing about it. At the building site, he asked his new buddy Larry Ehler if he thought Roseanne might be fooling around. Larry said, no way. She's not that kind of person. Uh-huh. Not long after he'd won the contract to build their house, Larry had set up a lunch date with

Roseanne to talk about fixtures for the house. When Roseanne didn't show any interest, he asked if there was something wrong. She told him, it's just that I don't really want to build this house. It's Peter's idea, not mine. As soon as it's built, I'm out of here. That, like most of our quotes in the story, comes from Carlton Stowe's book, Open Secrets, which is terrific. Larry smiled at her. He was having trouble in his marriage, too, he told Roseanne. He and Joy, we're on the verge of divorce.

Can we yada, yada, yada the start of an affair? I feel like in this case, we maybe can. Two people in failing marriages meet and yada, yada, yada, pretty soon. Nosey neighbors were seeing Larry Eiler's truck stopping by almost every day while the doctor. was at work. Yeah, I think Yada away here. This is pretty standard issue infidelity. Tale as old as time. In May, Roseanne rented the house on Loganwood Avenue and moved in, despite Peter

pleading with her to stay. She wasn't talking about divorce yet. She just wanted some time to herself, and she wanted to go back to work. By now, Peter's suspicions had focused on Larry Ehler, and he hired a private investigator to be sure. His initial instructions were the bread and butter of P.I. work. Find out who my wife is sleeping with. But Peter wanted more. I want you to follow her very closely, he told the investigator. I want her to know you're there. I want her scared. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a red flag. Uh-huh. With his suspicions confirmed, Peter started drinking even more, which led to furious screaming confrontations with both Roseanne and Larry. Both of them still denied they were having.

an affair. But in the first week of June, both Roseanne and Larry filed for divorce, just four days apart and using the same attorney. Oh, boy. Peter was fallen apart. He was drinking a half bottle of vodka every day and hardly eating anything, losing 40 pounds in just two months. He mostly called in sick to work, and when he went, he shuffled through the day like an extra from the walking dead. Roseanne sought sole custody of their kid, and with Peter in the state he was in, she'd probably get it. Realizing he was in danger of losing his son, as well as his wife, Peter managed to stop drinking

and get his life into some kind of order. For his custody case, he tried to enlist the aid of the fourth party in this whole mess, Larry's wife, Joy. Basically, Peter was trying to get some dirt on Larry. Even after Roseanne had moved to the house on Loganwood Avenue, she still sometimes came by the house she'd shared with Peter.

Most of her stuff was still there, after all. Peter knew this and had placed a recording device on his own phone line. He'd gotten a tape of Roseanne and Larry talking and invited Joy Ayler over to listen to it. Even though he'd heard it all before, listening to the two of them making lovey talk and criticizing their respective spouses made Peter's blood boil. So he was surprised to see that Joy just sat calmly and placidly through the whole thing. She didn't seem angry, like at all. She asked Peter to replay the parts where Larry criticized her, then just politely said she didn't want to get involved in Peter's custody fight. She just wanted the whole thing done and dust it as quickly

as possible. Peter's divorce was set to be finalized on October 10th, just six days after Roseanne was shot in the head. To call the marriage between Larry and Joy Ehler troubled would be to undersell it, big time. Roseanne hadn't been the first or even the third or fifth female client Larry had put the moves on. He apparently made a pretty solid effort to get every woman he'd worked for into the sack. Really, literally, like almost every woman he met, he's like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Just go for every single one you meet. Larry Ehler's pants were up and down so often he should have tied a yo-yo to his belt. Larry and Joy Davis had met in the fall of 1966 when they both went to Hillcrest High School in Dallas. Larry was a senior, a popular kid,

and already kind of a fancy man. He liked to have the best clothes he could and would sometimes change outfits two or three times a day, a habit he'd keep up into adulthood. He's a peacock, our Larry. In the yearbook, the only extracurricular activity he listed

was intramural football. Joy was a year younger, a pretty outgoing girl with her hair done up in an archetypal 60s blonde bouffant. She was on the honor roll and the daughter of a wealthy property developer. They were both in their own way

quite a catch. Larry had caught Joy's eye and she'd asked a friend to introduce them at what I assume is the hub of teenage romances in Texas a football game. They were soon dating and by spring they were already talking about getting married as soon as Joy graduated. Their friends called them the perfect couple. Which, you know, maybe dial it back a little guys. They're 18 and 17 years old. Maybe wait till they're old enough to drink before turning them into like a power couple. Jesus. They got married in 1968, and although Joy's dad Henry was rich, he wasn't going to help out the newlyweds, at least not right away. When Joy's older sister Carol had gotten married, her dad had set the new guy up in the construction business, where he'd failed, miserably, and Daddy didn't like to make the same mistakes twice. Joy and Larry both got jobs in clothing stores, which Larry loved, because he took up twice as much closet space as Joy did. She mostly liked to wear jeans and men's button-down shirts. In 1970, they had a son, Chris, and that eventually opened up the paternal checkbook. The young family moved in with Joy's parents on their ranch south of Dallas, and Henry said he'd financed the creation of a building firm for Larry, as long as Larry undertook what was essentially

an apprenticeship under one of Henry's friends. This kind of got on Larry's nerves. He didn't like to be under anyone's thumb, but he stuck it out, and eventually he started his own company. He'd oversee the construction projects and Joy would work as a bookkeeper and interior designer. On the surface, everything in their relationship looked rosy. But there were dark currents in the depths. Larry had already cheated on joy multiple times, including skipping across the border to Mexican brothels whenever work took him to South Texas. But as serial cheaters tend to be, he was still super jealous and possessive of joy.

He'd call her up multiple times a day to interrogate her. Where are you right now? What are you doing right now? Who are you with? Oh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He'd get furious if she talked to other men.

And once loudly insisted they leave a party at a friend's house because Joy was spending too long chatting to the host's teenage son. Oh, wow. Yikes. Also, hypocrite much, Larry. You can mean how freaking embarrassing that would be. To have your husband freak out because you're talking to their host kid. Oy, y, y, y. Yeah.

When they were alone, he'd constantly criticized. Joy's intelligence and looks, which was rich coming from him. Again, we don't like to look shame, but anybody with eyeballs could see that Joy was way out of Larry's league. That was probably why he worked so hard to grind her down. If Joy realized she could do better, she might decide to do better. Literally what my asshole X told me after I dumped him, that he tried to make me feel shitty about myself, so I'd stay with him.

He got really drunk, and he tried to give me to come back to him, and he told me that. Because I know I don't deserve. you. No, you don't. Heck off. When she was alone with friends, Joy was bright and funny, but when people saw her with Larry, she barely spoke at all unless he directly asked her opinion on something. Oh, man. It was clear to their friends that this was an unhappy, essentially abusive marriage, but Joy's family had no idea about any of that. She didn't have the kind of a relationship with her parents where she could open up about personal stuff, and they just saw what they wanted to see, a successful young couple on their way up in the world.

She'd always had a fraught relationship with her older sister, Carol. Joy saw Carol as a troublemaker, always stirring stuff up and starting fights, and Carol saw Joy as the spoiled family favorite. And Joy's other sister, Liz, was 11 years younger than her and had just been a little kid when Joy and Larry got married. They certainly had all the trappings of success, the kind of stuff that would make Keith Morrison and say, they seemed like a family who had it all. They bought a house that would be worth a million dollars in today's money,

plus a farm outside of town to keep horses. Joy had a Porsche while Larry had a jaguar, a Jeep, a truck, a motorcycle, and a ski boat. Dang. Joy's favorite purchase was a boob job. She got in 1982. She told a friend, if your husband is always drilling over other women's breasts, You start thinking how nice it would be If he'd do the same thing at home

Joy, honey I hate that It does not work like that Okay, Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley Okay, one of the most flawless looking women In the history of time It is not about your looks But women, we always convince ourselves that it is, right?

Like, oh, she must be otter It's not about that. It's not about you at all. No. It's about them. Absolutely. Yeah. Larry was careless. On a hunting trip by the border, he took several guys across to Mexico to visit a few of his favorite brothels. One of the other men on the trip was a friend of Joy's dad, Henry, and he spilled the beans.

When Henry asked around, it quickly became clear that pretty much the only people in the dark about Larry's screwing around were his family. Everybody else had known for years. And despite learning the truth, Joy seemed determined to stick it out with Larry. so her dad mostly kept his temper in check. He just avoided Larry as much as humanly possible. He'd used to brag about his son-in-law's success and throw work his way when he could, but now, if he talked about Larry at all,

it was to call him that little son bitch. I can just hear that in like the Texas voice, that little son bitch. Joy's family froze Larry out, except for her 15-year-old younger sister Liz, who was the only one to still give him the time of day. Despite her determination to stay, Joy and Larry were drifting apart, talking about little other than their shared business, hardly ever spending time together to do anything fun. Joy claimed to have been surprised when Larry eventually filed for divorce so he could be with Roseanne Gailunis, but she was probably the only one who didn't see the end of her marriage coming.

Larry moved into an apartment. He was delighted. He told everybody who'd listened that he'd never been happier, that he was with Roseanne, that he loved. loved her more than he ever loved anyone. A lot more people were surprised by Larry's next move. A few days after Roseanne's funeral up in Boston, Larry visited Detective McGowan to see if he'd made any progress on the case. As he left, he offhandedly told McGowan,

By the way, Joy and I sat down, had a long talk. I've moved back home. Now, campers, imagine you're a guy, and you've just ditched your wife for somebody else. You go all around town till an ever. everybody that your new woman is the hottest thing you've ever seen and makes you happier than you ever thought possible and you also get caught on tape making fun of your wife then your new lover dies and a few days later you go crawling back to your wife

would you expect her to take you back and not just you know kick you in the balls and laugh but joy did take larry back for the sake of their 13 year old son chris which as we've seen in many many cases before is a terrible reason to keep a toxic relationship going. You're not doing the kid any favors. Despite the obvious sexualized nature of her murder, Roseanne's autopsy found no evidence of sexual assault. She had been partially strangled with both panty hose and a belt before being shot twice in the head. The shots fired through a pillow. Significantly, the medical examiner moved the estimated time of Roseanne's attack back from what the paramedics on the scene had thought. They thought she'd been shot shortly after

4 p.m. If he'd driven like a bat out of hell from the hospital, that would maybe have given Dr. Guy Yunus time to drive to Loganwood Avenue, kill Roseanne, and get back to work during the only period of the day when he didn't have a solid alibi, the 45-minute nap he said he'd taken at his desk. But the Emmy thought the shooting had occurred before 4 p.m. at a time when the busy doctor was surrounded by witnesses at the hospital. Larry Ehler's alibi also checked out. On the morning of the shooting while he was riding his bicycle, a driver had forced him off the road. It seemed to investigators that this was just an accident, and not as Larry claimed, an attempt to kill him, but regardless, the bike was damaged. When Larry first started trying to call Roseanne, a little after three, he was

in a repair shop, and from then until he rolled up to Loganwood with the police already there, he always had somebody right by his side. Larry and Peter both passed a polygraph with no sign of deception at all on the three most important questions. Did you kill Roseanne Gailunis? Were you present in her house when Roseanne Gailunis was attacked? Do you know who killed Rosanne Gailunis? On the advice of her attorney, Joy Ehler volunteered to take the same test and also breezed through. So the investigation was in trouble. Their two prime suspects looked like they were in the clear and they had no witnesses at all. Little Peter had slept through whatever it happened to his mom, thank God.

In fact, detectives suspected it was a threat to wake and harm her son that had kept Roseanne quiet and compliant during the attack. Other than the shell casings and the harm done to Roseanne, there wasn't much physical evidence. There were a couple of strange things, but so far they hadn't let anywhere. On the floor, just inside Roseanne's front door, they found a potted plant. It seemed like a weird place for it. And a week before she'd been shot, Roseanne had come home to find that a window at the back of the house had been broken. She could find nothing missing except for her spare set of keys.

That was creepy. If it had been a burglar, why hadn't they just robbed the place there and then instead of apparently planning to come back later? Roseanne had had her locks changed. If a murder case isn't solved quickly, it inevitably becomes less of a priority. Other crimes happen, and investigators have to do other things. The investigation into Rosanne Gailunis' murderer was going cold. Also going cold, surprise, surprise, was the reconciliation between Larry and Joy Ehler. Just two weeks after moving back in, Larry was telling friends,

I've got to get out of here. Joy was chilly and secretive. She'd have long conversations with girlfriends. playing rock albums loud on the stereo so Larry couldn't overhear what she was saying. He'd come home to find her and her dad sitting silently, obviously having just stopped talking as soon as he came in. Her dad, Henry, would just get up and leave as soon as Larry walked in. Joy did have secrets.

After Larry moved out, an old high school friend had set her up with a guy named Jody Packer, a tall, blonde, kind of sleazy plumbing contractor, and the two of them were at it hot and heavy. And they continued to be hot and heavy in secret after Larry moved back in. But this was a Disney movie compared to the other secret that came to light. Joy's older sister told her that their younger sister, Liz, had had a years-long affair with Larry while she was still a teenager. And there's no way of painting this as anything other than creepy and gross.

He was 12 years older than her. He'd known her since she was. Seven years old. Ugh. Nope. Don't like that. Ugh. When Joy confronted Liz, her younger sister burst into tears and admitted the affair.

You must hate me, she said. Joy took her hand and told her it wasn't her fault. And, yeah, no argument here. That's 100% on Dirty Larry. Oh, yeah. It was obvious their marriage was circling the drain. At a high school reunion dinner one night, Joy suddenly turned to Larry, stared at him coldly

for a few seconds, then said, I don't want to be here with you, and stormed out. Wow. In 1985, two years after Roseanne's murder, Joy found out she was pregnant. She almost immediately visited an abortion clinic under a false name. She told a friend, I just couldn't bear the thought of having another child with him. She filed for divorce, but then changed her mind. No one close to her could understand why. On Saturday, on Saturday, on Saturday,

June 14, 1986, Larry was having coffee with a buddy, Don Kennedy, and asked if he wanted to come out to the farm with him. Joy had said she and her mom wanted to go horseback riding and had asked Larry to go down and saddle the horses for them. That afternoon, Larry and Don drove 45 minutes out to Kaufman County, then did some riding of their own and sipped some bourbon as they waited for the ladies to arrive. By the time the sun was getting close to the horizon, it was obvious Joy and her mom weren't coming. Maybe they'd gotten lost, although Joy had made a point of having Larry draw her a map to the farm,

and she hadn't been there a whole lot. More likely, Joy had just found something better to do. Larry and Don unsaddled the horses and started driving home in Larry's Chevy Suburban. Not far from the farm, the road crossed a dry creek bed on a wooden bridge. On the other side, a brown Ford pickup truck was stopped in the middle of the road.

Looks like somebody had to stop and take himself a leak, Don said, as Larry started across the bridge. Before Larry could reply, there was a crack of gunfire and the side window behind Larry exploded. A moment later, a second shot zipped right past his head and shattered the front windscreen. Looking back, Don Kennedy saw someone standing in the middle of the road pointing a pistol at them. Get the hell out of here, he yelled. As Larry hit the gas and the suburban surged forward, another side window crashed in, and Don felt a a stinging pain in his left elbow. He'd been shot. They were soon around a corner and out of range of the gunmen behind them, but Larry barely

slowed down until they pulled up outside the police station in the nearby town of Chorrell. A paramedic patched up Don's arm, but told him he still needed to go to the hospital in Dallas. Meanwhile, Larry told an officer what had happened. The cop took photos of the suburban and suggested Larry and Don had probably happened to bond drug dealers or poachers. Larry didn't buy it. What he'd just been through felt like a planned ambush. Poorly planned, but planned nonetheless. The officer, less than helpful, told him that since the shooting took place outside of the city,

the Kaufman County Sheriff would have to investigate. Dawn, whose fingers were starting to go numb and who was eager to get the hell to the hospital, asked the officer to get in touch with the sheriff. Then he and Larry hit the road for Dallas. The bullet had lodged close to a nerve in Don's arm, and the doctor recommended against risky service. surgery to get it out, telling Don, you may have a little problem getting past the metal detectors at the airport, but otherwise I don't think you'll have any difficulties.

Dawn, exhausted as the adrenaline faded, went home and went to sleep. Larry called the police dispatcher and insisted she put him through to Detective McGowan, despite it being the early hours of the morning by now. The doctors tried to have me killed, Larry said. But that didn't seem likely. Three years after Roseanne's death, Peter Galyunis was, now remarried and had moved into private practice. He had a whole new life that had nothing to do with Larry Ehler. McGowan thought Larry maybe really had just stumbled on something shady out in the

country. It happens. A few days later, he called the Kaufman Sheriff's Office to check up on the incident, and they told him the same thing the officer and Terrell had told Larry. Likely, some drug dealers or poachers had just panicked when they'd been disturbed. McGowan didn't give the incident a whole lot more thought, but he had too much faith in his fellow law enforcement officers. Between them, the amount of investigative work the Terrell PD and the Kaufman Sheriff's Office had put into the attempted murder of two men was pretty much a big fat zero. I bet they were holy hell with the speeding tickets, though, on top of that. On the night of the shooting, a game warden had been at a dance in Terrell and heard about what had happened. He'd gone out to the scene and found some 22-caliber

shells, which he carefully put in an evidence bag. He called the sheriff's office to tell him what he'd found, but they weren't interested. So for months, the bag just sat in the glove compartment of his truck. Can you just take a second and digest that? Two different PDs. How are you not interested? Even if it is just, quote unquote, just drug dealers or poachers, they tried to freaking kill somebody are you not interested in figuring that out when you were when you were little

kids playing cops and robbers did you imagine you were going to be sitting in your car eating eating Burger King waiting for somebody to speed 10 miles over the speed limit like you want to enjoy that kind of pick up cases like oh something exciting that sounds exciting yeah like I'd be all over that shit if I were them but nope just nah just a drug dealer or poacher or something Anyway, just a drug dealer, can you imagine? Just a drug dealer or a poacher. I'm begging. What is wrong with you all?

If you're that burned out, you need to quit. Good God Almighty. Not long after this, Larry found out about Joy's affair with Jody Packer, and apparently immune to the concept of irony was furious, which included him calling up Jody's ex-wife and yelling, get your goddamn husband out of my house, or I'm going to blow his fucking head off. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A dumb move at the best of times because she already got her husband out of her house.

Because that's her ex-husband. But extra dumb because Jody's ex-wife was a judge. Oh, smart. So making threats. Larry moved out again and filed for divorce. Again. This time it stuck and they were soon officially divorced. Larry quickly remarried and Jody Packing.

moved in with joy. Everything seemed to be fading into normalcy, with Roseanne's murder still unsolved. But in 1987, Larry's answering machine recorded a message from a woman speaking with a southern drawl as thick as molasses. If you want to know the riddle of Roseanne's death, I have the answer. He took the tape to Detective McGowan, who was confident the caller would call again if she was serious. Larry agreed to let the police put a tap on his phone, but no second call came for months, and they took the tap off. It wasn't until nine months later that the woman called again, with the same southern drawl, which Larry now thought sounded kind of fake, but this time the woman sounded scared. She said Roseanne had been killed by someone named Bill Garland, and now he was going to

kill her. As he told McGowan about this latest call, Larry also passed on what he'd heard from his son, Chris, about some strange things happening at Joy's house. She'd gotten several calls that really shook her up. She kept the shutters closed all the time. And just recently, she'd found a dead fish in her mailbox. Oh my God. Wow. The computer showed McGowan that not long ago, a pest control exterminator named William Wesley Garland had been booked into the Dallas County Jail on assault charges against his wife. This made the investigators less confident

that they'd reached a breakthrough in Roseanne's murder. They thought it more likely that Bill Garland's wife, Carol, was pissed at him in trying to screw up his life. But not long after, Larry got another frantic call and gave the woman Detective McGowan's beeper number. When he called her back, she'd dropped all pretense of a southern accent and sounded terrified. Bill Garland, he's after me. He's going to kill me, just like he did that nurse.

She rambled frantically on, barely comprehensible. She refused to give McGowan her name, saying sarcastically, just call me Mrs. Mud. My name is M-U-D. McGowan talked her into meeting him at Jojo's, an all-night restaurant on Spring Valley Road. He left the time up to her. She laughed and said, aren't meetings like this supposed to take place at midnight? McGowan got in touch with a fellow sergeant to sit in the restaurant parking lot as backup. The woman on the phone had sounded kind of nuts and McGowan had no idea how this meeting was going to go. There was almost no one in this restaurant except McGowan when a Mercedes pulled up outside

and a pretty blonde woman dressed all in black came in. A well-put-together lady in an expensive car was not what McGowan had been expecting. She walked over to his booth and said, Are you Sergeant McGowan? He stood up, shook her hand, and said, Yes, ma'am, are you Carol Garland? She smiled and said, I see you've done your homework. She sat down in the booth.

Do you know who else I am? McGowan said no. I'm Joy Ehler's sister. She's the person you're after. Joy is the one who planned the murder of the doctor's wife. and that folks is where we're going to have to leave part one of this story it might seem like we're close to tying everything up but oh hell no this case is beyond bananas there's a whole barrel full of crazy still to come all right now before we go we have some huge news for y'all huge okay so buckle up from november 3rd through november 7th of this year katie and i are going to be joining the hosts of last podcast on the left sinisterhood and scared to death for the very first crime wave, true crime crews.

Y'all know you do not want to miss this, okay? You'll get to watch us podcasters perform live on stage, build community with other true crime fans, and make unforgettable memories on Royal Caribbean's beautiful Liberty of the Seas. We are going to the Bahamas, campers, and Royal Caribbean's private island, which just sounds awesome. I'm like a private island. sun and C and true crime podcasters plus fine dining and top-notch service what is not to love it's

going to be so much fun we're so excited and it is surprisingly affordable one ticket covers accommodations food entertainment and festival events that's us plus you can buy extras directly from royal caribbean if you want to stuff like extra excursions and specialty drinks so how do you get in on this solid gold stuff well visit crime wave at sea dot com slash Campfire to get your fan code and secure your spot. Spots are limited and they're going to sell out fast, so go, go, go. That's crimewave at sea.com slash campfire. Tickets go on sale February 7th, so you go get your fan code now.

So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have part two 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 Emily, Janelle, Eleanor, Lindsay, Chrissy, and Cass. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out.

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