Joyce Pelzer

A woman and her wife were building their life together.

They'd 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 realm. Knowing was our pool of blood. There is blood smeared up the door.

“The victims halfway in and halfway out of her door,”

she is bleeding profusely. She had been stabbed 34 times, total. The investigation reveals one of them has a history of violence. And I can get the other color we are doing.

Chondelle 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 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 going to drop any day. She threatened to kill her. Over the situation, in a sense of, if I can't have you, no body can have you. [MUSIC PLAYING]

On the morning of December 10, 2018,

“police and Kanye's Georgia are called to the scene of a bloody crime.”

Chondelle is now on where's your emergency? Oh, yes, we are. I'm calling for more than six more onions. Somebody's screaming and hollering. He stated that he had guests telling him

that there was a lightest 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 she's talking

to us on the phone, the door opens and the victim follows outside the door and he sees all the blood. When I arrived, I could say that 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 tremendous amount

of blood. M.S. began to rob short after. She's bullying profusely from the abdomen. I see the knife. The knife will be small.

I see it. Hey honey, what's your name? I'm lost. [MUSIC PLAYING]

“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 it was smiles that she probably slid on her back.

There are also bloody hand prints all over the curtains. You were smiles she's trying to get curtains open off but she's hollering for help. Who do this? She's like a fox.

Do you know twice this last name? OK. Who is she to you? Rosalind Lewis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 31st, 1971.

It's my two older brothers. And then it was Rosind and myself. We had loving parents, my mom and dad. Who's brought up just to love in the nurture and the care and to have laughter and just be good people.

Rosalind was a bundle of joy. She literally met no stranger. Coming from New Orleans, I'll call you everyone. It's baby or sweetheart. She talked to everybody.

She made you laugh. She had this huge smile, beautiful white tea 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 building and things like that. She liked the seniors. She liked the elderly people. She was able to give them some kind of joy. Rosalind's open acceptance of people also

extended to her love life.

Rosalind was around the age of when she first started dating

same sex. Mid 20s, I want to say, with Rosind coming out

It was mixed feelings within the family. Some of the family understood. Some of the family was taken back, shocked. We grew up very Christian family, very religious family. So that was maybe taboo to say at 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, Rosalind decided it was time to make a change and moved east to Atlanta, Georgia. She wants to go to better herself, to get a different environment and take on the world.

And my dad will call a thousand times a day, because that was his first daughter, his baby girl. Rosalind found a new job in a medical call center. She also found the love of her life, Joyce Pelser. 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 Rosalind'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, 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. It got married on a beach. My mom and my dad didn't attend a wedding. They love Rosalind, everything in their hearts. But that was just something

that they wasn't willing to participate in. So when my cousins went in witness, but we didn't go. Seeing Rosalind and Joyce interact as a couple outside looking in, it seemed normal.

They were laughed together.

They were getting along good. This is what she wanted.

“Now, two years later, Rosalind is barely”

clinging to life outside a hotel room in Corners. And she says her wife Joyce was the one who attacked her. Of course, they were life-saving measures trying to happen in order to keep her alive. It was an overall button amount of stabs,

I'll tremendous amount of blood loss. Once they approached the ambulance, Rosalind 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 were 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 a manager of the hotel.

He provided me with the registration for the room that had been occupied for about three 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 of the curtains moving back and forth from watching the video. You know, there's severe fight going on behind the curtains. Soap law later, to 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 towards the rear parking lot. Next, officer speak to the maintenance worker that saw Joyce flee the motel.

What do you know about that? We run here from bad screens, but I'm not going to go, she's coming up. She goes right there and it's like took off. I took her in my hand, girl, and stabbed it.

And when she saw me fall, then she cut her arm. Where did she run to? To a car. He gave a description of, so we're sleeping in the hotel room. She was not wearing a shoe, 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 endkeeper told us that the car that left was a dark car. It was an out-of-state plate that had the number 307 on it. As the man hunch swings into high gear, police are left wondering what could have caused such a vicious attack. We had it a lot of law enforcement

south on our 75 that was looking forward to us pelzer

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

“Coming up, a previous missing person's investigation”

suggests a pattern of behavior. She was going to a violent relationship with an 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. Conor's police are tracking down Joyce Pelzer

after paramedics have transported her wife Rosalind Lewis

to the hospital in critical condition.

Emergency room doctors are fighting to save her life. Rosalind had been stabbed 34 times, total. There was one penetrating wound from the bat that caused her alone to collapse at that point. And those significant stab wounds 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 Joyce State Patrol and the Marshal serves. 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 into Cab County. So we felt like she was dangerous. The missing person's case was filed seven years ago.

And the woman in question was Joyce's ex-girlfriend 35-year-old Shondell McLeod. Her mother called the police after she didn't show up for dinner on a Sunday night on September 25th of 2011. Shondell also hadn't gone to work that morning. That was very unlike Shondell.

Shondell was hired on the nurse care book as a cook. 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 on use for Shondell because she always called me.

If she could make it that day, but 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. After two days passed with no sign of Shondell, the case was assigned to Detective Henry Gast. The game in a report, I called Miss McLeod.

I said, "Hey, I see you in a post report about your daughter being missing. Slay was hysterical." Then she explained her relationship to me of her and her daughter, how closely were as a family.

And that she would never just walk away from the family.

Miss McLeod had told me Shondell was in a violent relationship with an ex-girlfriend, Joyce Pelzer. For me, I just thought, "Reaching out the track down, Joyce." Detective Gast begins by digging deeper into Shondell's background. Shondell is six brothers and one 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 it to the grocery store, just whatever her mother needed. Just 11 families, you know, from day one since I met you. They were always bonded, and they eventually started cooking together, and it actually eventually led to her getting a job in Gwynette at the Lifecare Center. Cooking was so passion, she took pride in whatever she do.

Everybody was, you know, ready to eat whatever she cooked.

While Shondell was working at the Lifecare Center of Gwynette,

that's where she met Joyce Pelzer. 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 a brand new to her.

She accepted it, you know, but she didn't like it.

“I think her family was most supported, you know, because they wanted to see Shondell happy.”

Shondell's mother tells investigators that 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's out there being unfavorable. The woman Shondell's suspected Joyce was cheating with was Rosalind 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 stopping 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 a totally cease-off to toll it. Took all the furniture, all the fixtures, everything.

“Shondell was pretty much sleeping on it, you know, mattress?”

Shondell was very, she was destroyed, she was crying, she was very upset, you know, you come home to, you know, to pitch us up, throw them in the yard, take an everything she would work to her for. Shondell spent the next month trying to put the incident behind her and rebuild her life. At this point, they broken up, Joyce is out of the house, she thinks she's at peace. Just to wake up in the middle of the night, Joyce standing over her with a knife.

Joyce threatened to kill her over the situation. In a sense, if I can't have you, know what he could have you. In July, Shondell went to the court mass for a protective order. Shondell told her mother that she was scared she was going to die at night. Investigators are searching for Joyce Pelzer, after her wife Rosalind Lewis named her 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 McCloud's disappearance seven years earlier in September of 2011. At the time, my biggest thing was to talk to Joyce.

We have our suspicion, but it was always too south to the story.

Joyce eventually comes into the police station and she also brings Rosalind Lewis, her current girlfriend, and Joyce sits down for questioning. This is going to be a reference to a missing person, Miss McCloud. How do you know Miss McCloud? We used to date, work up the years, and we also met together.

“When you have a servo to TV or a stop, no contact with her?”

Yeah, but she called me still. She just sat down like that, me. It was like, you know, if you've been in a relationship for five or six years, I believe you would have some kind of expression. She had no expression. I asked about that. She said, well, Shondell hurt her,

and she said she wanted to go back to her family. She don't believe she's missing. She believes she's in Guyana. That was the relationship between you two. It was good. I can tell the couple we argued.

Okay. No, we got violent. No. The police didn't have a problem.

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 Rosalind all weekend, the weekend that Shondell's believed to have gone missing. Hello, 26.

Wait to work. Because Rosalind was part of Joyce's alibi, police went on to a question Rosalind about what took place. I'm just going to take a statement from me, but I'm going to best again as a missing person.

Who's missing? Yes. Joyce's ex-girlfriend, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, Shondell. 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. Rosalind said that on Monday, they had stayed home as well.

Yeah, both of them. Yeah. We chilled out.

“It was one of those days you just wanted to just...”

She allowed her with it really to a whole lot. I was like, "Okay, let's just stay home today." When the crazy kids... Sometimes I do what you guys do. Joyce, why, to police?

Police still have a lot of lingering questions after investigating and interviewing Joyce and Rosalind. Certainly has them as people of interest. Detectives don't have enough to charge Joyce, so they follow up on her other alibi.

I checked Rekus as a provisive pole of Rekus. She says she did not show up that day.

So, no, that's the first five statement.

The detectives get a search warrant for Joyce Pelter'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 Rosalind as she said. In fact, there were multiple phone calls and text messages between Joyce and Rosalind, showing that they weren't together. Basically her whole alibi gets blown up.

If you're lying about that, put else you're lying about. The phone calls and false statements suggested to police that Rosalind was covering something up for Joyce. So investigators searched Shondel's home, looking for signs of a struggle.

Shondel lives in the up and coming part of the cab county. We was thinking maybe she got a doctor told him 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 and her bedroom, as well as some shot glasses in the sink.

Looks like someone may have come over, she may have had company and they had a drink together. There was also an ash tray with some cigarettes. Ms. McLeod, I told us Shondel didn't really drink. She didn't smoke.

I don't see where Buzzi tried to, a man's watch there. And I believe we found Lickerick. 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 enjoys his relationship with trouble. 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 while McCloud's seven years earlier through their shared ex-Joyce

Pelser, 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 co-workers,

they learn that she struck up this flirtation and romance with the food delivery driver, Riko.

It's the person who she will ha ha giga giga giga every morning. Shondell wanted to have kids. She wanted to stop back dating men.

“This shoot, though, is a request, was actually married.”

That certainly created an inference of motive. But he might have had something to do with Shondell's disappearance. To find out the details of the potential affair, investigators brought Riko in for questioning. When he comes in, he's a little nervous

because 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 children anytime soon.

In the world about Joyce, he said Shondell was so afraid of her that he used to leave a pair of his work booths over at her house to sit on my side. But Joyce would drive by the house. Riko confirms he was with Shondell on September 24th,

the night before she disappeared. He said it was him that was smoking, and that was his wife. 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 and offer 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 in his wife. He sleeps with her or the rest of the night. He's very cooperative, but based on our records, he was the last one that saw him. Although Riko seemed genuine, detectives needed to verify his story,

which involved an uncomfortable conversation. They call the wife. She's obviously the straw because she just found out her husband has been cheating on her. She verified all 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 Riko or his wife had been untruthful, or that they had done something to Shondell. With Riko 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 the credit cards. I've seen that last time I was used, it was used at the gas station

in Gwynette County, right on the line of the cab county. So I went out there and saw happening ahead. Videos of that pump, so we was able to see Shondell heading to work getting gas in a car.

She never actually made it inside her place of employment.

Working theory at that point was the Shondell had been kidnapped, somewhere in between. So at this point in the investigation, please 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 warning on them, but the DA wanted more. We didn't have a body. We know she was missing, we know fileplay was in play, but we just needed a little more. Detective Gas pursued this case for seven years, keeping up with

leads for all these years. And always thinking that Joyce Pelzer had some involvement. Conor's police investigating Rosalyn's murder,

“question why would Joyce have reason to hurt her wife seven years after Shondell?”

Joyce was able to get away with what she did for years, but she knew that Rosalyn knew what she did. Their relationship is troubled just like Shondell 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 her.

Over the second years before the murder of Rosalyn Lewis,

Georgia investigators worked diligently to close the case on Shondell MacLeod's disappearance. It was hard on the family. I'm a parent myself. If something was happened to my kids,

to exhaust all avenues.

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

Detective Gas 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 Rosalyn in 2016.

Rosalyn found out that Joyce was cheating and she was not happy with that, of course. I have been doing interviews with a lot of Joyce family members.

“They pretty much told me that Joyce had a new girlfriend.”

I did some work up 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 checked down this long. She was in clear water floater and she said I've been waiting on you to call me. She told me she has some things for me to hear.

Katie told investigators about a conversation she had with Joyce a year before Rosalyn's murder. She got real quiet and I asked 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 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 or a murder. Following her interview, Katie agreed to help detectives get the evidence they need it.

Katie is starting to realize a type of person she's in bed with and she truthfully is scared. Katie records Joyce and their phone conversations. Joyce has making statements about why she did what she did.

She makes statements about implicating Rosalyn and that she seems basically to express fear

that Rosalyn's going to go to police. Katie reached out to to Cap County Police to detective guests in December of 2018 and it was very concerned about threats that Joyce has made him about Rosalyn. She was going to point it all towards Rosalyn. As Connyer's police finish reviewing the Shondell McCloud case, the reason for Rosalyn stabbing comes into sharper focus.

Despite the violent threats from Joyce, Rosalyn 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 Ros. When Ros 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 exigent requests for services with a phone company and they began to ping Joyce Pelt's herself online. The first ping that we got indicated that she was hidden south toward Florida. Katie Long lives in Florida. I immediately asked the sergeant to notify

Georgia State Patrol in all agencies that would be owned out 75 tort Florida,

Georgia investigators have notified state patrol and federal marshals to be on the lookout for

“Joyce Peltzare. Three days after she allegedly stabbed her wife Rosalyn,”

Joyce's spotted heading south on I-75. We were notified by a just-sipped show dispatch that they had made contact with the car in Chris County. The initiated their emergency equipment was trying to conduct the traffic stop. Joyce fell to yield to the traffic stop

with continued traveling at High Ridge Speed. The third state patrol performed a pippon over

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 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 the threat to the officers and they fire. 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 Rotter County jail. Myself and Crumson investigator began searching so as tells us vehicle, we were able to locate the bloody clothing along with enough, believed to be in use during the attack on Roswell. When Joyce is confronted with the evidence, she confesses to be 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 Roswell and Lewis. She was sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole for the incident occurred in Rotter County. Detectives are hoping she will do the same regarding the suspected murder of Shondale McLeod. Detective guests come to interview her and this is someone who has pursued this case for seven

years at this point, keeping up with the family, keeping up with leads, and always thinking that

Joyce Peltzer had some involvement. We spoke about our hour and a half and she confessed to being there when Shondale was killed. But Joyce said she had nothing to do with it. Joyce said it was Roswell. Roswell said that Shondale gave her herpes and she transmitted it to Roswell. So, Roswell wanted revenge for that. She said that Roswell hired a few guys. They drove her put her in the car and buried the body in the radiant 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 Roswell. That Roswell was the violent type in this relationship and doing all my investigation. That's not true.

Shondale wanted to move on from Joyce Peltzer. And that was something. Joyce Peltzer was not going to accept and was not going to allow it to happen. When she faces trial in 2023 for the murder of Shondale McCloud, Joyce's attorneys argue the state has insufficient evidence to prove their case beyond their 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 in to implicating Roswell and Lewis in the murder of Shondale McCloud. Prosecutors use Joyce's ex-girlfriend Katie Long to refute those claims. Katie Long's testimony was so impactful. She didn't share friends with Joyce or Roswell.

And then when we played that recorded phone call, and when the jury listened to her

“hatching her plan to frame Roswell, 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 could be built”

up in a one person is just very disturbing to me that a person could be that what.

Preism is not good enough for her. Shondale Life was took too soon. Shondale was the most

“kindest person that I will meet. Roswell should be remembered as a person who saw the good,”

who loved with her whole heart. To have known her was truly an experience in a joy of life that so many won't get to experience because she isn't here anymore. But those who knew her get cherished after a lifetime.