Joyce Pelzer is a killer from Georgia who would murder two partners years apart
According to court documents Joyce Pelzer would murder her wife Lewis by stabbing her more than thirty times after the other woman planned to get divorced
Joyce Pelzer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life
However after she was sent to prison authorities learned about another murder that was tied to Joyce Pelzer. Years earlier she had stalked and killed 35-year-old Shawndell McLeod. McLeod body has never been found
Joyce Pelzer would find herself inside of another Georgia courtroom and again she would be convicted of murder and receive another life in prison sentence
Joyce Pelzer Now
NAME: LEWIS-PELZER, JOYCE MARIE
GDC ID: 1002703239
YOB: 1976
RACE: BLACK
GENDER: FEMALE
HEIGHT: 5’03”
WEIGHT: 136
EYE COLOR: BROWN
HAIR COLOR: BLACK
MAJOR OFFENSE: MURDER
MOST RECENT INSTITUTION: PULASKI STATE PRISON
MAX POSSIBLE RELEASE DATE: LIFE, W/O PAROLE
Joyce Pelzer Case
A woman accused of abducting and murdering her former girlfriend has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and she was already in prison.
Authorities in Georgia said the killing happened back in 2011 and after the initial investigation, the case went cold until 2018.
The mother of the victim, 35-year-old Shawndell McLeod, called police outside Atlanta to report her missing after she didn’t show up to work.
The DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office said investigators learned McLeod had recently ended an abusive relationship with Joyce Marie Lewis-Pelzer, who was already the subject of an arrest warrant for threatening McLeod with a knife, two months earlier.
After the murder, investigators interviewed Lewis-Pelzer but later realized she wasn’t telling the truth about where she’d been.
Nearly seven years later, a detective tracked down Lewis-Pelzer’s newest girlfriend — there was at least one in between — who said Lewis-Pelzer “admitted to murdering McLeod.”
It had apparently been planned for a few months and “Pelzer’s wife, Rosalyn Lewis, had hired a hitman to help kill McLeod.”
Authorities said the three “kidnapped McLeod as she arrived to work and held her captive for a few days while they dug a hole for her body.”Then, in December 2018, Pelzer’s girlfriend told police she planned to kill her wife — Lewis — who had filed for divorce.
A few days later, Lewis had been stabbed more than 30 times and told police Pelzer did it, before she was taken to a hospital where she died.
Lewis-Pelzer, as she’s called by the Georgia Department of Corrections, then led state troopers on a highway chase, and when they “used a PIT maneuver to stop Pelzer’s car, she raised a gun at troopers, who shot her.”
Days later, she blamed McLeod’s murder on Lewis. She also claimed she’d helped bury McLeod, but McLeod’s body has never been recovered.
Lewis-Pelzer, 47, was convicted of malice murder and felony murder in December, but it wasn’t the first time. She was already serving a life sentence for stabbing her wife, Lewis.
She has now been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
