Hitmen: True Stories of Street Executions

by Wensley Clarkson

  Investigators quickly checked out the alibis of Finley and the victim’s husband. Both were able to account for their movements. Perhaps it was a random crime after all? At that time, serial killers were getting vast press coverage and the finger of suspicion was pointing in the direction of such a psychopath. Maybe he’d killed before?

  Detectives contacted the FBI who submitted all the details of the Gailiunas killing to the VICAP – Violent Criminal Apprehension Program – specifically set up to track down such random acts by making computerised comparisons to other similar crimes across the United States. But there were no matches.

  The police investigation into the slaying of Rozanne Gailiunas was eventually wound down as detectives ran out of leads. It was not until three years later – on the afternoon of 14 June 1986 – that an incident occurred which immediately re-ignited the inquiry.

  Rozanne’s lover Richard Finley reported to police that he’d been shot at while driving to his ranch with a friend. Numerous bullets had shattered his car’s windscreen. Fortunately, Finley only suffered minor cuts from the broken glass although his friend was wounded in the wrist. All they could tell the local Kaufman County Sheriff was that they’d caught a glimpse of a man with a raised gun, but could not identify him.

  Detectives still hunting the killer of Rozanne contacted the Kaufman County authorities to see if there was a link between the two crimes. The local sheriff was convinced that Finley and his friend had stumbled upon a drug deal or some poachers who’d turned their gun on the two men.

  So once again the investigation into the murder of Rozanne Gailiunas fizzled out.

  Cut to two more years later – in March 1988. Detectives get a call from a very frightened woman asking for a meeting to discuss the case. She tells police that Richard Finley’s former wife, Joy Aylor, planned the Rozanne murder. The tipster – one of Aylor’s relatives called Marilyn Andrews – also claimed that Aylor was behind the gun attack on her former husband in 1986. During her interview with detectives, Andrews claims she delivered the money which paid for the Rozanne slaying to a man she now feared was about to kill her because she knew too much.

  Andrews explained how she’d taken the money to a designated spot where it had later been picked up. But afterwards she got a call from the man who was supposed to have taken the envelope saying he’d been keeping an eye on her and because she was so pretty he wanted to date her. Within days a romance had developed between Andrews and the hired gun who’d shot and killed Rozanne Gailiunas.

  Andrews named the hitman as Robert Cheshire, who’d even bragged to his beautiful young lover about the numerous other people he’d been hired to ‘rub out’. Detectives promised Andrews round-the-clock police protection and devised a plan to trap the killer. She would meet him with a concealed microphone to record their entire conversation.

  The first encounter in a restaurant was a disaster because background noise drowned out the recorded conversation. Then they agreed to meet in a motel room. Just a few yards away, investigators hid in a van with tape recorders and video cameras running. Soon they’d gathered enough evidence to show that Aylor had taken out contracts on both Rozanne and her own husband Richard Finley. So-called hitman Cheshire was arrested, but insisted he didn’t carry out the actual hit and pointed the finger at a number of other middlemen involved in the crime.

  Detectives then tape-recorded phone calls between Marilyn Andrews and Aylor. At one stage Andrews says, ‘I got one thing that still bothers me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why didn’t you get rid of Richard Finley first?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Aylor responded. ‘Stupid, wasn’t it? I thought about that, too. It would have been a lot better.’

  In another comment on tape, Aylor told Andrews: ‘I paid for it. Really, I have paid for it, not only monetarily but mentally, I’ve paid for this.’

  Joy Aylor was then picked up for questioning by investigators and taken to a local police station. At first the pretty blonde Aylor shrugged off the accusations by claiming Marilyn Andrews was mentally disturbed. Without a full confession from Aylor, the detectives were left with no choice but to release her because she had never actually said on tape that she’d had Rozanne killed.

  Months of cat-and-mouse games between detectives and Aylor followed. The murder team tried to confirm the identity of the hitman through a chain of sleazy middlemen, each of whom blamed the next one for the actual hit. But eventually, police established that the last man to receive cash, along with a photo and the address of Rozanne, for the contract hit was an insurance appraiser called Andy Hopper. He had no major criminal record, but was heavily involved in trafficking marijuana. Hopper still retained his full-time job as an appraiser although police suspected it was nothing more than a ‘front job’.

  Naturally, Andy Hopper denied all knowledge of the Gailiunas killing when approached at his home. He then excused himself to take a phone call and promptly ran out the back door. Over the following few weeks, detectives tracked Hopper through the Midwest and West of America but he always managed to stay one step ahead of them.

  Back in Dallas, detectives believed they still had enough evidence to prosecute Aylor, Marilyn Andrews and four of the alleged middlemen involved in setting up the hit. So on 19 September 1988, all six were indicted to face criminal proceedings. Aylor was charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder in the death of Rozanne Gailiunas plus solicitation to commit capital murder on the life of her ex-husband, Richard Finley. The other suspects were indicted on conspiracy charges, two of them – brothers Gary and Buster Matthews – were charged in connection with the 1986 attempted shooting of Finley. Joy Aylor was arrested and taken to Richardson police station but later released on bail having maintained her complete silence.

  Meanwhile the hunt for hitman Andy Hopper intensified and, in December 1988, detectives and FBI agents nabbed the alleged triggerman when he returned to the Dallas area to meet a girlfriend. Hopper denied the killing, just like all the other ‘go-betweens’. He claimed he’d paid yet another man – a drug dealer from Houston whom he only knew as ‘Renfro’ – $1,500 to do the job.

  Hopper told detectives he’d met Renfro at a drugs an sex party held at a friend’s apartment in Dallas, and later Renfro confirmed to him that the hit on Rozanne had been carried out. Police didn’t believe Hopper’s story, but the only way they could disprove it was to find Renfro. A woman who was present when Hopper claimed he met Renfro recalled that he’d been busted for drugs in the Highland Park area of Dallas.

  Investigators then dug up a mugshot of Renfro Stevenson and showed it to Hopper who immediately cracked and confessed to carrying out the hit himself. In a video-taped statement, Hopper revealed all the details of that night seven years earlier when he’d murdered Rozanne Gailiunas. He even said he’d stolen a .25 automatic from a friend’s apartment and then purchased rope, surgical gloves and a potted plant before driving to Rozanne’s house.

  Hopper then rang the doorbell and gained entry by producing that potted plant and pretending to be a florist. Hopper pulled out the .25 and ordered Rozanne to disrobe and lie face down on the bed, where he tied her up with the rope. When Rozanne began sobbing, Hopper grabbed some tissues from the bedside table and rammed them down her throat. Then he found a belt, placed it around her neck and started strangling her. But Rozanne thrashed around so violently that she managed to free one arm. Hopper shoved a pillow over her head and fired two shots point-blank through the pillow.

  Hopper had no idea that Rozanne’s four-year-old son was fast asleep in the next room. Hopper also insisted in his statement that he didn’t know who ordered the hit. He was jailed without bond on a charge of capital murder.

  On 7 May 1990, Joy Aylor failed to turn up at a pre-trial hearing set in order to choose a jury for her coming trial. It then emerged she’d been collecting vast amounts of cash through withdrawals from her bank and selling stocks and other holdings. Investigators also discove
red that Aylor and 45-year-old Dallas attorney Ted Bakersfield – arrested on a federal narcotics charge the previous March – had been seen together after they met when she was looking to hire a new attorney to defend her.

  Bakersfield recommended that Aylor stick to her original lawyer but the two began a romance. Now associates said they were convinced the couple had fled to Mexico. One friend then admitted dropping off the couple at a car dealership in the nearby town of Cheyenne where Bakersfield splashed out $7,800 on a second-hand jeep, using his real name in the transaction. Authorities began tracking the two fugitives across several western states. In Montana, the pair registered their jeep and picked up local licence plates. It seemed as if they were now heading north for Canada and eventually emerged near Vancouver, British Columbia, where they booked into a remote motel under the name of ‘Mr and Mrs John Storms’.

  Bakersfield checked out of the motel alone on 11 June and even claimed a partial refund because he’d paid until 14 June. Aylor had already left. The following day a motel clerk contacted local police after seeing an item about the couple on local TV. Later that same day, Bakersfield phoned the motel to see if he’d had any calls. The clerk pretended that an unnamed woman had called for him. Bakersfield presumed Aylor had been in touch. He was so pleased he left the name and phone number of the hotel he’d checked into in rural Osoyoos, British Columbia.

  Less than an hour later, eight armed police officers surrounded the premises and burst into Bakersfield’s room. He surrendered without a struggle and agreed to return to the United States voluntarily. He was immediately transferred to Spokane, Washington, and then flown to Dallas in the custody of a US marshal.

  But there was still no sign of Aylor. Bakersfield claimed she’d walked out on him after an argument. He said he’d even considered suicide before being arrested and blamed all his troubles on his cocaine addiction. He also professed his undying love for Joy Aylor and insisted he was only trying to protect her. FBI agents ran a check of airline flights out of Vacouver Airport and discovered that Aylor had taken a flight to Mexico City on 7 June. Investigators immediately headed south of the border.

  In August 1990, Aylor’s former husband Richard Finley filed a lawsuit against his missing wife. A newspaper article about the lawsuit was read by a woman who’d just arrived back in Dallas from Mexico. The photo looked just like the woman she’d roomed with who went under a different name. Both had attended a Spanish-language school in Cuernavaca, Mexico. However, when investigators contacted the school they discovered that Aylor hadn’t returned for the new term despite registering for it. The Rozanne murder squad from Richardson, Texas, and the FBI then issued an appeal to law enforcement agencies across the world, including Interpol in Europe.

  It wasn’t until March 1991 that an anonymous tipster told detectives Aylor was using the name Elizabeth Sharp and renting a villa just outside the city of Nice, on the French Riviera. She gave English lessons to local people to earn a living – and she’d acquired for herself an American boyfriend called Albert Neilsen.

  Neilsen is suspected of being that tipster because he fled the area minutes before Aylor’s arrest on Saturday, 16 March. Aylor insisted her name was Elizabeth Sharp but when authorities made it clear they were fully aware of her past she confessed to her true identity. Aylor was transferred to a local jail where she made a feeble attempt to kill herself by slashing both her wrists, but was immediately rushed to hospital where doctors said her wounds were not deep enough to be life-threatening.

  Back in Dallas, investigators began the long and arduous process of extraditing Aylor from France. France’s extradition treaty with the US specifically contained a provision protecting capital murder suspects from being extradited because France did not carry out the death penalty. Dallas County prosecutors eventually requested that Aylor be extradited on charges that were not capital cases and assured French authorities she would not be put to death if found guilty. But they still refused to confirm when the extradition would take place which dashed any hopes of trying Aylor before her other co-defendants.

  Back in Dallas, jury selection for the trial of so-called triggerman Andy Hopper went ahead. It took six months to seat the panel and another six weeks for the actual trial, making it one of the longest criminal proceedings in Texan history. Hopper effectively convicted himself thanks to his candid, videotaped confession in which he coldly recited all the appalling details of how he murdered Rozanne Gailiunas.

  The jury even heard Hopper admit standing over Rozanne’s nude and bound body as it lay on the bed and masturbating before strangling her with the belt and then firing two point-blank shots into her head. One of Hopper’s jail inmates told the court that he’d confessed to the slaying while they shared a cell. Another friend of the alleged hitman testified that Hopper wrote a letter to him admitting to the murder and showing little remorse for his crimes.

  Hopper was found guilty of capital murder, which mandated that he be sentenced to death by lethal injection. The verdict was immediately appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

  Meanwhile Joy Aylor remained incarcerated on the French Riviera thanks to highly complex extradition proceedings. It wasn’t until November 1993 that the French officially accepted assurance that she would not be put to death if found guilty. US marshals escorted Aylor back to Dallas County to stand trial – 11 years after the original slaying. When she arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport the once attractive blonde housewife looked drawn and gaunt after so many years on the run.

  Jury selection for Aylor’s trial finally got under way in May 1994. Assistant District Attorney Kevin Chapman predicted a complex legal battle. ‘She started it,’ he said. ‘She’s the one that gave it [the murder] all life. But she’s the farthest from the gun.’

  Aylor’s trial began on 1 August 1994, before Dallas County state district judge Pat McDowell. It was screened live on Court TV. A dishevelled Aylor was shackled at the ankles when she shuffled into the court and immediately entered a ‘not guilty’ plea. Millions of Americans watched as prosecutors began their case by using two side-by-side projectors – featuring on the left an image of Aylor, the beautiful, blonde and suntanned wife, and on the right screen photos of people and places linked to the case flashed by in sequence. Prosecutor Chapman then outlined the deadly chain of events.

  He told the jury that tape recordings of telephone conversations between Aylor and Marilyn Andrews would corroborate the prosecution case. Chapman also told the court that Aylor fled the country because of her fear of being convicted on the murder charge. A stream of witnesses for the prosecution then gave evidence, including officials who arrived at the murder scene, a doctor at the hospital where Rozanne was taken and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on her body. Then came Albert Neilsen, who’d been living with Aylor in France at the time of her arrest. He’d only been apprehended on a federal fugitive warrant days before the trial began.

  Neilsen said that Aylor admitted her role in the slaying. She even told him that she wanted her ex-husband’s girlfriend dead so she could reclaim him and the money she believed he’d taken from their joint bank accounts. Aylor also told her lover that she’d had to pay $15,000 blackmail money to Robert Cheshire, who’d originally arranged the hit on Rozanne Gailiunas. Neilsen also admitted taking $200,000 belonging to Joy Aylor from banks in Switzerland and Mexico, which he used to travel the world as a fugitive following Aylor’s 1991 arrest. He used most of the cash to buy and later sell a $185,000 sailing boat.

  Aylor’s defence team branded Neilsen completely unreliable and claimed that his testimony was part of a plea-bargaining deal on federal charges of passport fraud and concealing a fugitive. ‘He’s a desperate man,’ Aylor’s attorney told the court. ‘I’d expect him to say anything.’

  Then came the transcripts of phone conversations between Aylor and Marilyn Andrews in which Aylor said she was stupid not to have her former husband killed as well. Prosecutors also played the tap
e of a later meeting in a noisy restaurant between Aylor and Andrews. At one stage, Aylor talked about the man she hired for the killing. ‘He didn’t know who I was at the time,’ she said. ‘He did not even know who paid to kill her.’

  Then one of the middlemen involved in commissioning the hit told the court how he gave triggerman Hopper the money, directions and a photo of the victim. This was followed by testimony from police officers involved in the investigation and subsequent worldwide hunt for Aylor. One veteran Dallas detective described the case as ‘Dallas’s most complicated murder case’.

  The defence team then surprised the court by deciding not to call any witnesses. Closing arguments from attorneys were expected to begin on 15 August, but prosecutors then asked the judge to allow them to reopen testimony in the trial. They wanted Aylor’s former lover Ted Bakersfield to take the stand. Three years earlier, he’d pleaded guilty to cocaine charges and been given a 15-year sentence. But he’d been suddenly released in December 1993 after his sentence was reduced to four years, thanks to his co-operation with the Richardson investigators probing Rozanne’s murder.

  Bakersfield had not been called earlier in case he was needed to rebut any of the defence witnesses but, once it was clear they were not calling anyone, Bakersfield was introduced to the court. He described his love affair with Aylor and how they had several conversations about her involvement in the murder and plans to flee the United States. Bakersfield found it hard to reconcile the woman he’d loved with the cold-hearted killer behind that hit on Rozanne Gailiunas.

  But he did recall going to a shooting range where he allowed Aylor to test-fire a new 9mm handgun. She aimed the weapon at a mesquite tree and emptied the clip. Then Aylor handed him back the gun, smiled and said, ‘I should’ve used this on Rozanne.’