To Hatred Turned (11 page)

McGowan wanted to know what exactly the caller had said.

“She called while I was in the shower,” Larry said, “and she told my wife, ‘Tell him to get his butt in here right now if he wants to know who shot at him.’”

“Who were they?” McGowan asked.

“She wouldn’t say,” replied Larry.

“Then who was
she
?”

“She wouldn’t say that either.”

McGowan sighed. “Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” he asked in exasperation.

“She said she was going to call back,” Larry said, his enthusiasm quickly waning.

“Well,” McGowan told him, “if she does, let me know.”

A few days later, to the investigator’s surprise, he got another call from Larry.

“She called again,” Larry reported.

McGowan asked what she had said that time.

“She said,” Larry quoted: “‘Larry, I understand a friend of yours was murdered. The answer to the riddle is why.’”

McGowan considered what Larry told him. Did he have any way of substantiating his statements? McGowan asked.

“Yeah,” Larry replied. “I got her last call on tape.”

After listening to the recording, McGowan urged Larry to see if he could convince the woman to get in touch with him the next time she phoned. It was a shot in the dark; McGowan had little hope that he would ever hear from the mystery caller. However, a few days later he was shocked when he answered his phone and the woman was on the line.

She was, she explained, interested in the $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rozanne’s killer, a bounty announced years previously by Peter Gailiunas. If she told the detective what she knew, she asked, would she be able to collect the money?

“Come see me,” McGowan replied, “and we’ll talk about it.”

The woman who showed up at his office was slightly overweight and dowdy, with frizzy, dyed hair and eyes that bounced around like a basketball at an NBA game. Looking at her he thought, What have I gotten myself into?

Before he could say anything she stuck out her hand.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Carol Garland.”

McGowan looked blank.

She smiled. “Carol
Davis
Garland,” she said. “I’m Joy Aylor’s sister.”

McGowan’s eyes widened in surprise.

Offering her a chair, he invited her to speak. “What do you have to tell me?” he asked.

McGowan, who was extremely good at listening, sat spellbound while Carol blurted out a confusing story of murder plots, blackmail, a secret marriage, not-so-secret affairs, and sisterly rivalry. He had been a police officer for nineteen years, but he had never heard a tale with as many soap opera elements as the one he was hearing from his guest. It was almost too much for him to digest.

McGowan listened intently as Carol continued on, sometimes almost hysterical, skipping about wildly in time and subject matter. Although she jumped ahead, flashed back, repeated herself, and left big holes in her narrative, essentially what she was saying was that her sister—Joy—had enlisted her—Carol—as a go-between in a plot to have Larry murdered. After she was involved in the scheme, she said, she learned that Joy had also been behind the murder of Rozanne Gailiunas. And
now
, she said, she believed that Joy was building a list of other people she wanted eliminated. So far, Carol claimed, there were five names on the hit list, including hers.

McGowan interrupted, firing questions at her, seeking names, dates, reports of conversations, anything he could get to help nail down the allegations that were spewing forth from this most unlikely source.

When she appeared about to collapse from exhaustion and tension, McGowan eased up. But inwardly he was ecstatic. At the very least, he thought, this is material I can use to renew the investigation. For the first time since October 1983 he felt confident he was on the way toward solving Rozanne’s murder. Until Carol Garland walked into his office, he had not given much thought to the idea that Joy was connected to the killing, even though Gailiunas had suggested that very idea the night of his estranged wife’s shooting. McGowan remembered what the doctor had answered when Investigator Corley asked him who he thought had shot Rozanne. “It was either Larry Aylor or Joy Aylor,” Gailiunas had said. To suddenly discover that Joy might indeed be the one behind
two
unsolved crimes, especially one which he had not even considered a crime, was something the detective was going to have to adjust to.

Joy’s alibi for the day of Rozanne’s shooting had checked out, he reminded himself. Plus, she had passed the polygraph with flying colors. Suddenly, it came to him: Joy had been able to answer the examiner’s questions about Rozanne’s shooting without registering any deception on the machine because she, in fact, did not
know
any of the details. That meant that Carol might be right, that Joy had arranged for the shooting much as Larry once had handed out contracts to subcontractors.

According to Carol, Joy turned the job over to a man named Bill Garland. And this was where Carol’s story really got confused. Bill Garland was Carol’s estranged husband. She had met him while working as the contact between him and Joy. She had fallen in love with him, or thought she had, and married him on October 4, 1986, three years to the day after the attack on Rozanne and less than two months after Joy and Larry were divorced. Her new husband had ordered Carol not to tell anyone in her family, especially Joy, about the marriage. But now, it seemed, Carol and her husband were on the verge of a falling out. She had, in fact, filed assault charges against him, charges that were later dismissed. As a result, she was scared and angry, not only at her husband but at Joy, who she blamed for getting her into the position in which she now found herself. Also, several years before, her father, Henry Davis, had had a stroke, so he was largely incapacitated. Ever since he had become ill, his generous subsidy to her had evaporated. Now she was broke and the $25,000 reward was very appealing.

Carol had mentioned no one other than Garland as a participant in the plots, but McGowan considered that to be a lack of knowledge on her part. If the scenario was as complicated as Carol had given him reason to believe, the detective felt certain that others had to be involved. But he did not know how many or how. The long interview with Carol, the detective knew, had only cracked open a door.

Although McGowan, even today, is unable to go into details about his conversations with Carol for a number of legal reasons, Carol touched on the subject in an interview with Glenna Whitley, a writer for Dallas’s D magazine, in 1991, three years after the initial meeting with McGowan.

Carol told Whitley that Joy began calling her in January 1986. She had been surprised to hear from her because she and Joy had not been on the best of terms for a long time. Plus, for reasons she would make clear later, she doubted that Joy would want to talk to her. The reason for Joy’s call was to find out what Carol knew about Larry.

Carol told her, then asked her why she sounded so desperate to know.

Because, Joy allegedly said, she wanted to have Larry killed.

Despite her sister’s shocking revelation, Carol’s reaction was relatively mild. Rather than professing amazement, Carol, who had never liked Larry, asked only one question: Why?

Joy hesitated. It was, she said reluctantly, because she had just discovered that Larry was having an affair with their younger sister, Elizabeth, who was then twenty-six, a situation apparently going back several years. That, Joy said, helped explain Larry’s strange reaction to the news in 1985 that Elizabeth was getting married.

“No kidding,” Carol had replied sarcastically when Joy explained about Larry and Elizabeth. “I thought you knew that. Elizabeth and Larry were always together,” Carol said. “They acted more like a married couple than you and Larry did.”

After the murder attempt on Larry failed, Carol told Whitley, her husband involved her in an elaborate plan to blackmail Joy, a scheme that was successful to the tune of $12,500. It was in connection with that scheme, Carol said, that Joy began receiving threatening telephone calls and a packaged fish head.

As Carol came to the end of her story, McGowan’s brain was ticking furiously. Slow down, he cautioned himself. Do this one step at a time. Start with Joy and see what develops. But first do some basic checking on what Carol has said so far. He was as skeptical of the source as he was of the information. How did he know that she was not just a vengeful, perhaps mentally disturbed woman seeking revenge against her husband and her sister? Seeking to buy time to do some quick investigating, he asked Carol to come back and see him again a few days later. Not happy with the idea, but knowing she had no other choice, Carol agreed. At the same time, he knew he was going to need a lot more facts before he could wrap things up.

When Carol returned for a second meeting, McGowan asked her just how serious she was in her determination to blow the whistle on her husband and her sister. Was she resolute enough, he wanted to know, to really help put a noose around Joy’s neck? Would she help police trap Joy?

Carol blinked rapidly. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes seemed as large as silver dollars. Tears welled up and she took a long time to answer. “Yes,” she said finally.

McGowan exhaled in relief. So much for Step One. “Would you be willing to wear a wire?” he asked. “Would you be willing to help us record your sister talking about her part in the murder and attempted murder?”

Again Carol hesitated, but again she said yes.

McGowan nodded solemnly. “Okay,” he said, “let’s work out a plan.”

At Carol’s request, Joy met her in a busy suburban restaurant, JoJo’s, one of a number of outlets of the popular Dallas chain. Carol showed up carrying a briefcase, which, as casually as possible, she laid on the table. Inside the case, unknown to Joy, was a tape recorder.

She and Joy talked for almost an hour. Afterward, Carol was delighted with the way things had gone; she thought she had gotten Joy to make more than enough admissions to insure her arrest. What she was particularly pleased with, she told McGowan, beaming, was the look of complete shock on Joy’s face when Carol told her she was married to Bill Garland.

But McGowan had bad news for her. The conversation between the two was all but obliterated by background noise; the tape was unusable. Carol was going to have to do it again.

Carol paled when she heard the news. Trying to entice Joy to make self-damaging statements on tape was dangerous enough the first time, she felt, but to repeat the performance was flirting with lunacy. She blew up, cursing and screaming. When McGowan finally got her calmed down enough to listen to him without flying off the handle, he explained that he knew he was asking a lot of her but he would not make the request unless it was absolutely necessary.

“You don’t think I like having to ask you to go back and do it again, do you?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he pushed on. “But you are the
only
one who can help us with this. We desperately need your help. If you don’t help us, the chances of getting Joy are pretty slim. We’ll do everything we can to protect you, but we don’t think you’re in immediate danger.”

Carol opened her mouth to protest, so McGowan spoke quickly.

“I mean, I don’t think she’s going to attack you right there. And if you can get her to incriminate herself, we’ll arrest her and slap her in jail and there’s not much she can do to you from there.”

Carol considered what the detective had said. She really
was
pissed off at Joy and her husband. And she really could use the reward money. Besides, she figured, McGowan probably was right. If Joy was in jail, there was not much she could do to her, especially if her connections to Bill Garland were broken.

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll do it.”

McGowan gave her a lopsided grin. “I’ll arrange it,” he said.

Several days later the sisters met again, this time in a room in a seedy motel in a somewhat less than desirable section of the city, a locale that was so unlike a place Carol normally would have chosen that McGowan figured it would give credibility to her claim that she was hiding from her husband.

11

Although Joy had agreed to the meeting, she was suspicious from the beginning. The first thing she did when she walked into the room was scrutinize the surroundings.

“Would you like to look at the rest of the room?” Carol asked nervously, attempting to hide her concern with sarcasm. “I mean it’s got a bathtub. Want to check under the bed?”

Joy grunted. “Okay,” she said impatiently, plopping tensely on the edge of the bed, “what’s the scoop?”

Carol gripped her hands together and tried to sound casual. “Well, Joy,” she said nervously, “I’d say we’re both in trouble.”

Joy asked a simple question: “Why?”

Carol sighed. Garland was less than happy with her, she explained, because she had him arrested for assault. Additionally, he thought she had hidden his truck and was refusing to give it back. But most of all, Carol said, it was because she had a tape that allegedly implicated Garland in the plots against Rozanne and Larry.