Where Is Joyce Pelzer Now? Inside Her Life After Murdering Her Ex-Girlfriend and Wife

Joyce Pelzer was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of her ex-girlfriend and her wife

NEED TO KNOW

• Joyce Pelzer is the subject of Netflix’s Worst Ex Ever, which explores her crimes and relationships
• Pelzer was sentenced to life in prison for murdering her ex-girlfriend and later her wife
• Her ex-girlfriend Shawndell McLeod’s body has never been recovered despite Pelzer’s confession to the crime

Joyce Pelzer had already gotten away with murder once when she met Katie Long.

The two met online in 2016, and Long didn’t realize what she was signing up for. Five years prior, Pelzer had murdered her ex-girlfriend, Shawndell McLeod, and her family still didn’t know what happened.

Pelzer was also recently married to Rosalyn Lewis, whom she would stab 34 times two years after meeting Long.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she killed Ros,” Long said in an episode of Netflix's Worst Ex Ever. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she could have been coming to also kill me.”

In December 2018, Pelzer was arrested and charged with the murder of Lewis. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Five years later, she was found guilty of the murder of McLeod and given another sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So where is Joyce Pelzer now? Here’s everything to know about her crimes and where she is today.

Pelzer was a serial cheater

Pelzer was a registered nurse at the time in Conyers, Ga. After months of talking, Long went up to Atlanta to visit Pelzer for the first time in October 2016, and the two stayed at the Omni Hotel.

“Joyce painted this beautiful picture for me,” Long said in Worst Ex Ever. “She was very attractive; she dressed very nicely.”

Pelzer said she was legally married, but that relationship was rocky and complicated, and the two were separated.

After about two months of dating, Pelzer was visiting Long at her home in Florida when the topic of past relationships and exes came up.

“Joyce proceeded to tell me that a previous girlfriend had gone missing — she wasn’t sure what happened to her,” Long said. “I thought it seemed a little strange.”

McLeod went missing after breaking up with Pelzer

McLeod was a 35-year-old cook at a nursing home in Lithonia, Ga., who was declared missing on Sept. 25, 2011.

McLeod and Pelzer had previously bought a home together, and Pelzer claimed she put the cash down for the house and paid for all of the renovations, according to Long. But after they settled in, McLeod apparently wanted to end things and told Pelzer to leave.

“Joyce was furious that Shawndell broke up with her, that she had kicked her out of the home,” Shannon Hodder, the DeKalb County senior assistant district attorney, said. “Joyce was talking to some of their mutual friends and seemed obsessed, like she couldn’t leave it alone.”

On the morning of Sept. 25, 2011, one of McLeod’s coworkers noticed that she hadn’t come in that morning, and management couldn’t get a hold of her.

Later that night, McLeod missed a family dinner at her mother’s house, and her mom contacted the police. Investigators looked into McLeod’s bank account and phone records, and could not find anything that suggested she may have disappeared willingly on her own.

“I knew that this wasn’t just an average missing persons case,” former DeKalb County detective Henry Guest said on Worst Ex Ever.

On Sept. 27, two days after McLeod went missing, Guest brought Pelzer in to answer questions.

“She said she hadn’t seen Shawndell since they broke up,” Guest said. “She said she had moved out of the home that her and Shawndell shared and had moved in with Miss Rosalyn Lewis.”

In 2017, Pelzer confessed to Long that she had McLeod kidnapped and buried in the North Georgia woods. She said she hired a hitman and the two of them took McLeod into the woods and dug a hole, where they proceeded to taser her until she fell into the hole. They then buried McLeod and left her there.

Lewis named Pelzer as her killer

Pelzer had been dating Lewis and McLeod at the same time, Hodder pointed out on Worst Ex Ever. Lewis and Pelzer had been together for years before they got married in 2016.

“Rosalyn, to me, is the big sister, the friend, the confidante,” Errica Lewis, her sister, said in the documentary. “She was everything to me.”

Errica said it was after the two got married that Lewis revealed she knew Pelzer was cheating and had been lying about her jobs and income. When Lewis decided she wanted a divorce, she stopped paying the bills and took her name off their lease.

“She was fed up, and she was done,” Errica said. “Up until that point, Ros had never mentioned that Joyce could be dangerous.”

In August 2018, Long recorded a phone call with Pelzer, where Pelzer admitted she wanted to shoot Rosalyn and potentially frame her for McLeod. Long immediately contacted Lewis to warn her that Pelzer was potentially on her way to harm Lewis.

“Ros was very adamant about going to the police station immediately,” Long said in Worst Ex Ever.

While Lewis reported the threats to the police, she still really wanted a divorce. Even though Errica protested the idea, Lewis booked a flight to Conyers to make Pelzer sign the divorce papers.

On Dec. 10, 2018, someone called 911 to report that a guest at Motel 6 in Conyers was screaming and that they suspected there had been a stabbing. Conyers police arrived and found Lewis stabbed 34 times.

Lewis was still in and out of consciousness when they arrived. In an audio recording played on Worst Ex Ever, when the police asked her who stabbed her, she said, “Joyce.”

Pelzer was caught on her way to Florida, where police suspected she planned to kill Long

Conyers police were able to identify Pelzer in security camera footage, which showed her leaving the motel room where Lewis was found. They were able to trace her cell phone and saw it was heading south toward Florida, where she was likely headed to see Long.

The following day, the Georgia State Patrol performed a PIT maneuver to stop Pelzer on the highway. She was shot by police and transported to a nearby hospital for the injuries. Then, she was arrested and charged with murder in the case involving Lewis.

Guest visited Pelzer in the Rockdale County Jail because Long had been in contact with him over the McLeod case.

Pelzer tried to tell Guest it was Lewis who had hired a hitman because she was jealous of McLeod. After the conversation, Guest charged Pelzer with the murder of McLeod.

While Pelzer said that they buried McLeod at Arabia Mountain, despite an extensive search in 2019, McLeod’s body has never been recovered.

Where is Joyce Pelzer now?

In January 2021, Pelzer pleaded guilty to malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault for the death of Lewis. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

“She showed no signs of remorse,” Errica said in Worst Ex Ever. “Not even an ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

Long’s retelling of Pelzer’s story was classified as a third-party confession. In December 2023, Pelzer was found guilty of murder and felony murder for the kidnapping and death of McLeod, and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

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