To Hatred Turned (43 page)

Epilogue

Joy Aylor
remains imprisoned in France and is fighting extradition to Texas, where she is charged with five offenses: capital murder, solicitation of capital murder, and conspiracy to commit capital murder, all in connection with the death of Rozanne, plus conspiracy to commit capital murder and solicitation of capital murder as a result of the attack on Larry. District Attorney John Vance has agreed not to seek the death penalty on the capital murder charge if the French agree to extradite her. Although a French lower court agreed to send her back, she is appealing the order, a process that could last for two years or more. So far, her requests to be released on bond have been rejected by French officials.

Andy Hopper
is in a Texas prison awaiting his fate. Despite his circumstances, his parents told Lesser and Mitchell that he is in good spirits and seems to be adjusting to prison life. Mitchell and Lesser were expected to have his appeal ready by August 1993, but an appeal is a lengthy process that could drag on for as long as ten years.

Mike Wilson
was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison and fined $20,000 on charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine. He is not eligible for parole.

Gary
and
Buster Matthews
are serving their sentences and will not be eligible for parole in Texas for eight to ten years.

Bill Garland
remains free on bond on charges of solicitation of capital murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder. No trial date has been set. The assault charge brought by Carol was reduced to a misdemeanor and then dismissed.

His ex-wife and Joy’s sister,
Carol Garland
, remains charged with solicitation of capital murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder in connection with the attack on Larry. No trial date has been set.

Jodie Packer
was still listed as a fugitive by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He is being sought on charges of passport fraud, harboring a fugitive, and circumventing federal financial-reporting laws.

Brian Lee Kreafle
remains free on bond on charges of solicitation of murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder in connection with the death of Rozanne. No trial date has been set.

Joseph Walter Thomas
is free on bond awaiting trial on charges of soliciting the murder of and conspiring to murder Larry. No trial date has been set.

In February 1993,
Brad Davis
, Joy’s cousin, was sentenced to thirty days in jail for lying to a grand jury about his role in Joy and Mike’s escape. He also was placed on probation for five years for his part in the incident.

Larry Aylor
is remarried and living in Virginia. There are no charges against him.

Dr. Peter Gailiunas, Jr
. also is remarried and continues to maintain a lucrative medical practice in Dallas. There are no charges against him.

Liz Davis
, Joy’s younger sister, lives in Dallas and owns a small business. She has dropped the name of her former husband, Goacher.

Morris McGowan
remains with the Richardson Police Department. He was promoted to captain soon after Andy Hopper’s trial.

Larry Mitchell
and
Peter Lesser
continue the appeal for Andy Hopper.

Kevin Chapman
left the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office in mid-1992 to join his father in his insurance business in Austin. He plans to return as a special prosecutor to handle the case against Joy when she is extradited.

In the meantime,
Daniel Hagood
has taken over as lead attorney in the cases stemming from the murder of Rozanne and the attempted murder of Larry.

Doug Mulder
, Joy’s attorney, in another highly publicized case, successfully defended a former Methodist minister, Walker Railey, who was accused of trying to kill his wife after having an affair with his bishop’s daughter.

Afterword

This story is not as complete as I would have liked it to be. Although much is known about Joy Aylor from the available evidence, from what her family members have said, and from what has been written about her, there are still many unanswered questions about her alleged participation in the series of events that led to Rozanne Gailiunas’s murder and the attempt on Larry Aylor’s life. These issues will not be definitively resolved until she is returned to Texas and brought to trial.

Unhappily, this does not appear to be imminent. On January 20, 1992, the French prime minister and the minister of justice signed a document ordering her return. But that order can be appealed both before French judicial bodies and the European Commission of Human Rights. The process could take many months. In the meantime, other proceedings which
could
be held in Texas—namely the trials of the other principals charged in the case—are being delayed pending Joy’s return. To me, it is a doubly compounded unfortunate circumstance.

In the first place, French courts are, in effect, holding American justice hostage. Secondly, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office seems so obsessed with trying Joy that nothing else appears to matter. The prosecution determination to shut off even the merest mention of Joy’s possible involvement in Rozanne’s murder during Andy’s trial bordered on the fanatical and may be grounds for a reversal in an appeals court.

As much as the district attorney’s office would like to compartmentalize the situation, it is much easier said than done. Andy Hopper did not operate in a vacuum. If other events had not preceded Andy’s alleged meeting with Brian Kreafle, he might never have been involved. While it would be foolish to contend that he might not have committed some other violent crime, or that someone else might not have been found to kill Rozanne, the fact remains that Andy’s involvement stemmed directly from the actions of someone else, allegedly Joy. Without being allowed to see
how
Andy became involved, the jury did not get a clear picture of the dynamics of the situation.

Judge McDowell is unquestionably a skilled and fair-minded jurist, but from where I was sitting he seemed to bend very far backward in favor of the prosecution. From my layman’s point of view, considering the sizable amount of information jurors did
not
have about a variety of subjects, including but not restricted to details about Joy’s alleged involvement, I wonder how they reached a verdict at all.

As troubling to me as the excision of information about Joy’s supposed involvement was the deletion of particulars about the parts in the drama allegedly played by Bill and Carol Garland, among others. For example, perhaps there was something to Carol’s hint that her husband and “others” may have been present when Rozanne was killed. No one, least of all the jurors, had a chance to evaluate any statements she may have made in this regard.

I also am intrigued by the Thorazine. I do not subscribe to the prosecution’s theory that the presence of the drug in Rozanne’s blood can be ascribed to an analytical or mechanical mistake. I believe that Thorazine
was
there. And I further believe that she did not administer it herself, nor did Andy inject it into her. Where it came from, I do not know. And I probably never will.

Then there is the tissue that was shoved down Rozanne’s throat. Unlike a drug, which can be detected only by complicated and temperamental laboratory equipment, the fact that the tissue was there is without doubt. There are pictures of it; there is ample testimony attesting to its presence. But, as with the Thorazine, I ask, where did it come from? Andy denies that he put it in Rozanne’s mouth. When he has admitted to so much else that he did to her, why he would disavow one more detail?

Also bothering me are some of the maneuvers perpetrated by the district attorney’s office and investigators from Richardson. Most important, there is the question of why Andy was not allowed to summon an attorney after his arrest despite his repeated requests. And when the court finally appointed one, she was treated in a very unusual way. Jan Hemphill had nothing to gain and everything to lose by publicly confessing that she ineffectively represented Andy. I think the jury should have been furnished with this information, should have been told that there was at least a question about what happened in those early stages of building a case against Andy. Also, there is the failure of Richardson police to document the investigation by taking notes.

There is no question, at least in my mind, that the Dallas District Attorney’s Office is a smoothly operating, highly efficient machine. Nevertheless, it
is
a machine and sophisticated machines operate with very narrow tolerances. While John Vance’s strategy may be effective in the vast majority of cases handled by his assistants, there also may be instances where such tactics work against this country’s concept of justice.
Is
the public’s interest best served when considerable information is willfully withheld from members of a jury? I suspect not.

Up to a point, I can empathize with the prosecution. This case is
extremely
complicated and involved. Kevin Chapman’s desire to keep the state’s presentation against Andy as simple, as brief, and as uncluttered as possible is understandable. But, in doing so, he insulted the jury and shortchanged the public. He also may have damaged Andy’s right to a fair trial. Did Chapman have so little faith in the intelligence of members of a panel that his own people helped select that he was willing to subvert the judicial process to secure a conviction?

I have a lot of respect and admiration for Chapman. I think his heart is pure. But I also think that the years he spent working on this case, his total immersion in the events surrounding the murder and attempted murder, colored his perceptions. I assume he wanted to keep jurors from becoming confused. But I think he underestimated their ability to sort things out on their own.

One thing that I have not learned, despite my own immersion in the case, is
why
this all happened. Nothing I have seen in the record or heard at Andy’s trial has answered that to my satisfaction. The prosecution claims Andy attacked Rozanne because he wanted the money and because he enjoyed committing violence. How much Hagood and Chapman actually believe that, as opposed to how much was said in an attempt to impress the jury, I don’t know. I do know that it doesn’t impress me a lot; I was not convinced by their argument. I have no clue as to Joy’s motivation, if in fact she is guilty, since they would not mention her at all or willingly allow anyone else to do so.

When I asked McGowan why these crimes occurred, he shrugged, explaining that
why
is often the last thing that investigators are searching for. That’s an inadequate answer, I feel, perhaps influenced by his own desire to protect the case against Joy.

Carol and Joy, in their conversation in the motel room, implied that Joy launched upon her plot against Larry because she believed he had been having an affair with their younger sister.

Larry himself has a much firmer opinion of why Rozanne was killed and he was ambushed: money. To substantiate his claim, Larry points to how Joy allegedly told him in June 1985 that all their money had been exhausted. Larry believes that Joy stripped their account to help build her escape fund and create a nest egg on which she could live comfortably abroad. As for the attempt on his life, he claims that he had a $250,000 insurance policy naming Joy as beneficiary, plus their not inconsiderable private property, which presumably she and Chris would have inherited. Also, when he was on the stand during Andy’s trial, Larry repeated his long-held belief that Dr. Peter Gailiunas was involved in Rozanne’s murder. His motive, Larry believes, also was money. If Rozanne had successfully divorced Gailiunas, Larry maintains, she stood to collect almost one third of a million dollars in the subsequent settlement.

The thing that bothers me the most about the situation, I guess, is the possibility that there may never be a final resolution. By running to France, Joy insured that she would never have to face the possibility of being executed for her actions, whatever they were. While Andy was the unknowing instrument in Rozanne’s death, Joy may have been the one who set everything in motion. And she apparently will never have to pay the same price as Andy, even though her involvement allegedly was greater, especially when one considers that she also may have plotted the attempted murder of her husband. Seemingly, it was not from lack of trying that the attempt failed. She could not predict that the Matthews brothers were hopeless bunglers.

Troubling, too, are news reports from France indicating that Joy is seeking to be released on bail from her Marseilles jail pending a decision on her extradition. So far, the French courts have refused her request. But if it looks as though the process is going to continue to drag on, a judge could always relent and turn her loose. If that happens, there is no doubt in my mind that she will flee again. Remember that her lover, Jodie Packer, is still a fugitive, undoubtedly holed up in an out-of-the-way locale hoping for just such an eventuality.