Georgia woman serving life for killing wife now also convicted of murdering an ex-girlfriend

A Georgia woman serving life in prison for killing her wife has now also been found guilty of murdering her ex-girlfriend more than a decade ago.

Joyce Marie Pelzer, 47, was convicted last Friday for the 2011 kidnapping and murder of her ex Shawndell McLeod, the DeKalb County District Attorney said in a statement.

She was aided in the killing by wife Rosalyn Lewis — who Pelzer then later stabbed to death in December 2018, leading to the life sentence she is already serving.

After the latest conviction, the inmate was immediately sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Lewis had helped Pelzer kidnap and kill McLeod, who was reported missing by her mother on Sept. 25, 2011 – shortly after ending an abusive relationship with the former.

A few days later, police found McLeod’s vehicle in southeast Atlanta with a tarp and a spare tire in the backseat.

Despite authorities interviewing Pelzer at the time of McLeod’s initial disappearance, the case went cold for over seven years until authorities contacted Pelzer’s latest girlfriend in August 2018, the DA said.

The girlfriend – who was not named in the statement – told police that Pelzer admitted to killing McLeod after plotting to do so for over two or three months, the statement explained.

Lewis supposedly helped Pelzer by hiring a hitman to help kidnap McLeod when she arrived at work.

The couple and the hitman then allegedly held McLeod captive for a few days while they “dug a hole for her body,” noted the statement, which did not detail exactly how they killed her.

The same “latest girlfriend” who helped break the McLeod case open subsequently told police, in December 2018, that Pelzer planned to kill Lewis, who had filed for divorce.

Just a few days later, officers responded to a motel in Conyers where they found Lewis “suffering more than 30 stab wounds,” the DA’s statement explained.

Lewis died of her injuries, and Pelzer was arrested in a dramatic stand-off with Georgia State Patrol troopers, who shot the suspect when she raised a gun at them.

In an interview with police, Pelzer later claimed that Lewis was the one who orchestrated McLeod’s killing.

She told investigators that they buried her ex on Arabia Mountain, but her remains have still never been found, the DA noted.

Pelzer pleaded guilty to charges related to Lewis’ death in January 2021. The DeKalb County District Attorney’s office declined comment Friday.