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around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Picture this. You're a mother or father.
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For the sake of this week's true crime story, it will make more sense from the perspective of the mother.
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It's the middle of summer in Austin, Texas and it's plenty hot outside. Your oldest is your 18-year-old
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daughter. Now, at this age, she's your daughter, but she's not really a child, but she is still not yet a woman.
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She's really still a girl, but she's finding her way. She's just starting to carve out her
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little place, her soon to be well-deserved little place in this world. She's had some ups and downs,
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but it's really starting to feel like she has put most most of those downs behind her.
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And through her own hard work and dedication to herself, she's really starting to put it all
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together. But there's this. Let's call it a large anchor attached to a short chain
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that's wrapped around her throat and it's holding her back. She is so close to spreading her wings
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and finally taking flight, but that dead weight is holding her down. It's her boyfriend
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and he's a real piece of work. But to mention work and the boyfriend in the same sentence
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really just seems kind of silly. It's funny when you really think about it because this guy does not know the
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meaning of the word work. He's a loser and why the heck your daughter hitched her wagon to his star,
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well, no one has a clue. And you didn't like this guy to begin with. You knew he was a loser
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when she first started to bring him around. It was obvious and she's still with him.
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If she could just wake up and leave this guy, then she would most certainly be on a
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bridge to better days. But she's 18 and she's in that weird space where she's still your daughter,
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but she's not really her own woman. She does not have to listen and obey your every command.
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And she's not your only kid. You have others, younger ones that still require more
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attention. Regardless of the boyfriend situation, everything between you and your oldest
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daughter is good. And you were working on each other, growing as ladies together and
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separately. But tonight, she's staying at a hotel with the loser boyfriend because he certainly is not welcome in
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your home. Morning rolls around and the two of you had plans to go shopping, but your daughter
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doesn't show up. And now you're angry. But it's not the first time that plans have been broken or mom got stood up.
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"We'll go shopping without her," you decide. After all, she's the one that promised
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that she'd be home first thing in the morning as this was a special shopping trip.
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Mom and her four girls were going shopping in San Marcos, but your 18-year-old daughter never
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showed. And now it's 15 years later and you're still waiting. Waiting for her to come home.
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This is True Crime Garage. Roxanne Elizabeth Paltauf was born on January 3rd, 1988
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and 18 years later Roxanne is living at home with her mother, Elizabeth Harris, and her sisters and one brother in
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Texas. Roxanne was the oldest of the five siblings and the family was super close.
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The people close to her called her Roxie. Her sisters and her mom describe Roxanne as hilarious, sweet, fun-loving,
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maybe a little naive. She and her mom spoke numerous times a day and everyone who has been involved
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in this case describes the two as having a very special relationship, closer than
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most moms and 18-year-old daughters. One of Roxanne's friends said that whenever
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she would sleep over at Roxie's house, they would hang out on her mother's bed just chatting with Elizabeth for hours.
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Roxanne went through some things, some difficult things in her teen years and dropped out of McCollum High School in
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her junior year, but was slowly working on obtaining her GED. Now, Captain, from what I've heard in my
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limited understanding of what was going on with the family during her high school years,
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is that mom and dad were separating and I don't know the details of the divorce, but it sounds like there was a
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lot of moving around. You know, dad moves, mom moves, kids are being moved around. This might have added some
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difficulty to her high school years and led her to dropping out. Well, a divorce
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becomes a lot more difficult when you have that large of a family. And now she's working to get that GED
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and it sounds like she only had one test remaining, a math test, before she completed obtaining her degree. Her deal
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with her mom was that if she got her GED, her mom would purchase her a vehicle, which she was super excited
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about. For now, she was taking the bus or would get a ride from friends whenever she
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needed to go somewhere. She was also working two jobs on that summer. Roxanne had enrolled in the Goodwill job
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training program and through that she had obtained an internship at Charlotte's Fiesta Flowers on Lamar
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Boulevard. According to the Austin Chronicle, for which the journalist Jordan Smith
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extensively covered Roxanne's case, quote, "Everyone loved working with her," said flower shop owner Charlotte
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Waynescott. "She was just such a sweet and nice person." When the internship ended, Waynescott
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hired Roxanne as a paid employee. According to her case worker, Roxanne hoped that one day she might be able to
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have her own flower shop. She also aspired to get into fashion, perhaps being a designer. But for now,
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Roxanne picked up a second job at the Census Bureau. So, she's really working things out here, in my opinion, Captain.
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She's got two jobs. She's trying to finalize this GED. She certainly has some short-term and
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long-term goals. Now, even though Roxanne was technically an adult, she's 18, she was still dependent on her mother,
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living at home. And she had just got off of her mother's cell phone plan, and recently purchased
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her own cell phone, and was working towards saving money and establishing good credit. She spoke with her mom and
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her sisters constantly. This would be via text or phone calls anytime that she wasn't at home. She stayed in close
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and constant communication with mom and the sisters. Now, at this time on our timeline, the summer of 2006,
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Roxanne had been dating a guy named Louis Walls for about 2 years. The timeline of their relationship is a
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little foggy. And this is coming from the people that knew Roxanne the best. But the best we can figure out is that
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it's roughly since she was 16 that she had been dating this guy. It sounds like it started off pretty casual in the
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beginning, and then got pretty serious at some point. Now, Louis Walls, he's bad news, and he's bad news from
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the get-go. Roxanne's mom said that she never approved of him, and he was not allowed
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in their home. According to the mother, Elizabeth, Louis was abusive and violent. In fact,
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there was an incident where Elizabeth and some of her younger daughters had, just by chance, come upon Roxanne
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sitting at a bus stop across town from their home, wearing big giant sunglasses. When she got in the car,
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they saw that her nose was severely injured. Roxanne lied to her family, and said
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something accidental had happened to her. It looked like she got beat up by her boyfriend. But the story that she was
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going to tell is that some guys were harassing her, and her boyfriend, Louis, decided to
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defend her. And this broke out into a fight, and during the course of the fight,
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that Roxanne had accidentally got hit in the face. But some of her very close friends seem
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to know the truth. And after Roxanne disappeared, her friend Elizabeth Ellis told Roxanne's
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mother that actually Louis had punched Roxanne in the face, and broken her nose so badly that Roxanne had to have
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surgery to repair the damage. How old was Louis? Well, Louis is quite a bit older than Roxanne.
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And that does not help the situation for anybody to try to like this guy. It's a little weird, though, here,
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Captain, because the waters are very murky. And it sounds to me like Roxanne and her
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friends and family were not fully aware of this guy's age when they first started dating. Right.
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So, from my understanding, it sounds a little happenstance that these two met, and I'll just go ahead and cut through
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it right now, but he was like in his late 20s when they met. Well, he's probably showing up to high school
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parties. So, of course it should be it should be kind of happenstance, right? They probably shouldn't be running in
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the same circles if she's 16 and he's in his late 20s. But from my understanding, they meet
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each other, and it sounds like most of her close friends and family seem to say that
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Roxanne was not fully aware that this guy probably lied to her in the beginning.
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He did say he was an adult, but it sounds like Roxanne thought that this dude was like 19 or 20.
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And most of the people seem to agree that this guy is younger-looking, and did even kind of pass as 19 or 20
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when they first met this guy. But again, in the beginning of their relationship,
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it was extremely casual. They were dating, and this would be for about 6 months. So, it wasn't like she was
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bringing him around a lot during this 6-month time period. Yeah, she was probably a pretty naive
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16-year-old when they started dating, but at some point, when she turned 17, 18,
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knowing the age difference, that's either something you need to be explaining to your parents, or you
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need to be cutting off ties with this individual yourself. And of course, after this incident with the broken nose
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and the nose surgery, of course, her mother, Elizabeth, and her family, they're doing their best, or at least
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what they could to try to keep Roxanne away from Louis, or encourage her to not be with this guy anymore.
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But since her 18th birthday in January of 2006, as we said in the trailer, she's now an
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adult. Technically, she's an adult. And sometimes she's going to go out and do what she wants to do, hang out with who
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she wants to hang out with, regardless of what others may say. Well, right. And she has that right because she has a
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she's an adult, but as a parent, these are my rules. You live in If you live under my roof,
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then you have to follow my rules. But back to the the broken nose, even if he's not abusive, physically
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abusive, cuz we don't know if that is true or not. But even if her story is correct, and
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you're But that means you're now hanging out with somebody that's getting into violent altercations while you're
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around, and you become uh innocent bystander. Well, and if you're trying to sell the
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story to mom and friends, what a better story to come up with than, "Oh, he was defending me." He, you know, he's
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You might think he's a bad guy, but he was really just doing the right thing here, and I ended up getting
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accidentally hit or injured during the course of him defending me. The thing here, though, is we have close
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friends of hers that have come forward and say that, "Look, she may have told mom and her family this one story about
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this fight breaking out with these guys that were rude to her, and knight in shining armor, Louis
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defending her." Yeah. But she told them a completely different story, her her two friends,
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and that involved him punching her in the face. So, when they met, Captain, my notes say that Louis was 28 years old,
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and he had two kids at that time. And at some point, of course, Roxanne had to learn of this dude's age, and of
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course, she becomes aware of these children. And in fact, there's a lot of speculation that over the course of this
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2-year relationship, when she's being told to leave this guy by practically everybody, Uh-huh. that not only did she
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seem to love this Louis character, but she probably fell in love with these two children as well, because it seems like
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she was helping out a good deal with these kids. Now, Louis lives at home, or from what I could find, was living
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mostly at home with his mother, and at least his two children seem to be mostly in the care of his mother. But
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Roxanne's trying to help out with these kids. Louis Well, they probably rode the bus
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together. is the opposite of Roxanne. And what I mean by that is he doesn't seem to be doing anything to
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get his life together. We have Roxanne who's out there working multiple jobs. She's trying to line up future better
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jobs. She has goals, short-term, long-term. She's working on that GED. If she gets the GED, she's going to get a
00:19:00
vehicle from mom. She's got her own cell phone. Louis doesn't have his own phone, doesn't have
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a driver's license, doesn't have a car, doesn't have a job. What he's got is a girlfriend that seems to be paying for a
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lot of his stuff and his children's stuff. And a mom that's helping out. Yeah, which would be fine if you're
00:19:21
in your late teens, and you're in between that high school and college, or high school and real life.
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But he he's 10 years past that, and he has two children that uh he's responsible for. And then it makes you
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wonder, are these kids primarily with him, or technically his mother? Was he such a loser
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that he corrupted the mother of these children, and now she became even a bigger loser
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than Lewis. Well, the the kids seemed to be mostly in the care of his mother. I don't know what the situation was with
00:20:00
the children's. No, that's what I'm saying is like where is she at? Like did he corrupt her so bad that she's a
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bigger loser than him? It sounds to me, Captain, like most people seem to agree that they
00:20:15
believe that Roxanne probably did not know Lewis's true age until about a year into their
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relationship. According to the Austin Chronicle, this citing Jordan Smith's interview with Roxanne's friend
00:20:29
Elizabeth Ellis. Quote, Roxanne was simply too trusting and too generous. Roxanne stayed with Walls, Lewis Walls,
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in part. She believes to help take care of his kids, his two children, to whom she had grown attached. She would buy
00:20:45
them presents at the dollar store, dinosaur toys for his son, for example, and pretty accessories for his
00:20:52
daughter's hair. She'd go to the apartment Lewis Walls shared with his mother and babysit for the kids by
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herself when Lewis wanted to go out, sometimes overnight. She had a big heart and was a nurturer, says Ellis.
00:21:08
she was watching the kids when he was going out to see his other girlfriend. Ellis says that she and Harris tried to
00:21:15
convince Roxanne that she was being used. Quote, she really didn't know how to pick them, Ellis recalled recently.
00:21:22
Roxanne was always trying to get Lewis Walls to get himself a job, to be a man, and that's something that her mom and I
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would always tell her. You can't tell a man to be a man. He needs to just be one. But Roxanne would always stick up
00:21:38
for him and perhaps lie for him. Roxanne's junior high school friend Rachel Gonzalez said that Lewis
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regularly cheated on Roxanne and pushed her around, but Roxanne refused to leave
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him and instead, as so often happens, pushed her friends away to still be with this guy. Still, in the summer of 2006,
00:22:02
her friends believed that Roxanne was in fact done with this guy, done with the loser Lewis, but he would not let her
00:22:11
go. Rachel Gonzalez told the Austin Chronicle that the two weren't getting along. Quote, she told me that they were
00:22:18
arguing, she recalls. She was trying to leave him alone, but he wasn't letting her. I said to her, just leave. Don't
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talk to him anymore, but you can only tell a person so much. Let's just state what this wanker is.
00:22:32
He's a pedophile. I mean, he met her when she was 16. He was grooming her. That's one of the big things when you're
00:22:40
grooming individuals, separate them from their friends and their family and and have it where you're their whole
00:22:48
existence. That's what he did. He groomed her. All right, we're back. Cheers, mates.
00:23:23
Cheers to everybody in the front and in the back. Cheers to you, Captain. All right, let's start talking about July of
00:23:32
2006. We have 18-year-old Roxanne who had been staying with Lewis, her then 30-year-old boyfriend, for several days
00:23:40
at various motels around Runberg, Texas. This is a high crime area near the city
00:23:48
of Austin or in the city of Austin. Now, from my understanding here, Captain, is
00:23:54
that this area, this general area of Runberg, they've done a lot to really clean it up
00:24:00
in the past several years, but a quick check of crime in that area, and this was studies as of 2012,
00:24:10
state that 11% over 11% of the greater Austin area's crime takes place in this space, in this Runberg area, which is
00:24:22
only about 6 square miles. Wow. So, that's a good amount. Now, while Lewis wasn't welcome in Roxanne's family home,
00:24:32
it sounds like for whatever reason Roxanne was not welcomed into Lewis's mother's home, where she lived with
00:24:41
Lewis's two kids. So, the two of them would have a difficult time being together, hanging out together, spending
00:24:48
time together, because it doesn't seem like anybody wanted the two of them to be together.
00:24:53
Or that's just what he's telling her. Well, so they're hanging out at these motels. These are overnight stays over
00:25:00
the course of several days. Now, on July 4th, God bless America, Roxanne stopped
00:25:07
in at home. This was to grab some clothes at her mother's house. She talked to her mom daily for the next
00:25:16
couple of days, as one would expect. As we said, they have a close relationship.
00:25:20
Then Roxanne called her mother. This is around 4:30 p.m. on Friday, July 7th. This was to say, hey, I'm not coming
00:25:28
home tonight. I'm staying out one more night. And her mother Elizabeth said that uh
00:25:35
she thought that she had been spending way too much time with Lewis. Yeah, well, and I don't want you to spend time
00:25:43
with him anyway, but let's not do one more night. Here's my problem. So, if he doesn't
00:25:48
have a job and she has two jobs, but she has some bills and look, when you're 18,
00:25:55
you just the jobs that you have don't pay it that much money. Where are they staying? Motel flicky
00:26:02
flicky, long dong hotel? I mean, they're they're they're staying in crap hotels.
00:26:10
Agreed. And you have a couple where only one person seems to have any kind of income. And to defend Roxanne here a
00:26:17
little bit, I I do think she was making pretty good money at the time, given her
00:26:21
age anyway. As you said, a lot of jobs when you're 18 don't pay a whole heck of a lot. No, no, and I'm not I'm not
00:26:28
knocking her. What I'm saying is when you're 18, your jobs don't pay that well, and plus she has these expenses.
00:26:35
He She has to support him, and so she's probably paying for these hotels. I mean, this this guy is just a
00:26:41
manipulator, a user. He should have these expenses. He just doesn't He just chooses not to have
00:26:47
them. And I kind of go back to what her friend and her mom were saying about you
00:26:51
can't tell a man to be a man. He just has to be a man. And one thing I've always thought, we're here we're talking
00:26:58
about a 30-year-old, for crying out loud, but one thing I've always tried to tell younger people and even myself in
00:27:05
my younger days is age does not dictate whether a boy becomes a man. You know, just because
00:27:11
you wake up one day and you're 18, you're not a man. A man is someone that upholds their responsibilities in life.
00:27:18
And this dude certainly is not that. Yes, some boys never become men. And I could get past the age thing a little
00:27:27
bit. Not not when she's 16. If he was 30 years old and he met a 18-year-old, technically that's legal in the eyes of
00:27:37
the law, but if this guy had a job, was supporting her, taking her nice places, buying her nice things, telling her to
00:27:48
go to college, I could get past that. I can't get past a 28-year-old manipulating and grooming a minor.
00:27:58
Well, and you're exactly right. What you have here is when she's 16 and leading up to this time of her
00:28:04
actually being an adult at 18, he is in fact grooming her. Because by this point, she's I can't say for
00:28:12
certain what was going on in the relation relationship at this very day in our timeline in July of 2006, but
00:28:19
what's clear to everyone is at some point she fell in love with this dude. And so she was blinded by that love,
00:28:27
that affection. And so, of course, she's probably not making the best judgments and decisions
00:28:35
at the time because her love was blind. And unfortunately, she fell in love with
00:28:40
this loser guy. Now, on this night, okay, we're at Friday, July 7th at 4:30 in the afternoon, we have Roxanne
00:28:49
calling home, calling home to speak with her mother Elizabeth, saying, hey, I'm going to be out for one more night. And
00:28:56
of course, we know Elizabeth doesn't love this because she knows this means Roxanne's spending another night with
00:29:01
Lewis, who she doesn't like at all. But on top of that, there's an added urgency
00:29:08
to getting Roxanne to come home because they had already agreed that Elizabeth, Roxanne, and Roxanne's sisters, they
00:29:17
were all going to go on this big shopping trip in the morning. And this was kind of a special to do for the
00:29:22
group. You know, it's hard to get everybody together. It sounds like Elizabeth and Roxanne both had a little
00:29:28
extra money at this time, and there were some new stores opening up nearby, and they wanted to go check them out
00:29:35
together. So, this was kind of an event that was planned in advance, and she's a
00:29:41
little worried that this extra night out, another night out at the motel with Lewis, might mean she doesn't show up
00:29:50
for the morning's shopping trip. Her mother Elizabeth says, "Okay, fine." Reluctantly agrees. I don't really know
00:29:57
that she has to agree for her 18-year-old daughter to stay out another night, but
00:30:02
she accepts it. Well, Saturday morning came and went and Roxanne never showed up.
00:30:08
The family waited and waited and then gave up at some point and just went shopping without her. They You know,
00:30:15
you've promised these other kids that we're going to go out and have this fun day.
00:30:20
So, now you're out. You got to take the other kids. But, her mother Elizabeth obviously is
00:30:26
not pleased. And in fact, she was a little ticked off to the point of saying, "You know what? I'm
00:30:33
I could reach out to her. I could give her the business for not showing up today,
00:30:39
but I'm not going to call her. I'm not going to call and bother. Not going to waste
00:30:43
my time to call my daughter's cell phone." She thought, "You know what? I will let
00:30:48
her Let her be the one that has to call me and apologize or make up some excuse while why she couldn't be on this
00:30:56
shopping trip that we had all planned together." When the family gets home from this
00:31:01
trip, the shopping trip, this is around 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. So, if you're filling out a timeline here,
00:31:08
this is almost exactly at the 24-hour mark since she is last heard from her daughter. Elizabeth's phone rings
00:31:17
and it was Roxanne's cell phone number that was calling her. So, Elizabeth answered it. She's
00:31:24
thinking, "All right, here come the excuses or here comes the apology for missing the shopping trip." Right. But,
00:31:31
she's immediately surprised when it's not Roxanne on the other end of the phone.
00:31:37
In fact, she's quite surprised to hear that it's Lewis that is calling her. A guy that she does not like that
00:31:45
probably has no reason nor business to be calling her. She says, and this is Elizabeth's words,
00:31:51
that Lewis did sound concerned. He sounded concerned and he asked Elizabeth if she had seen or heard from Roxanne
00:32:00
recently. Now, as you can imagine, Captain, Elizabeth is very alarmed by this. She says, "No, I thought she was with
00:32:10
you, of course." Yeah. You know, this This is a situation. You know she's been staying
00:32:15
in a motel with this guy. If she's not at home, they're close. You're She doesn't have a driver's license. She may
00:32:21
have had a driver's license, pardon me, but I know she didn't have a vehicle at this time. Right. So, at the very least,
00:32:27
you're thinking in your mind, "I don't like this guy, but at least I know where my daughter is. She would either be at
00:32:33
home, at work, one of her two jobs, or out with this dude. Now, this dude's calling me wondering where she is." It's
00:32:40
strange. It's very strange. So, this is what Lewis tells Elizabeth on the phone.
00:32:45
He says that the previous night, sometime around 8:30 p.m., that he and Roxanne, they got into an argument in
00:32:55
the hotel room. Hold on cuz I'm trying to follow this. This is Saturday, right? So, Lewis is calling Elizabeth on
00:33:03
Saturday asking where Roxanne is. Right. Now, he's talking about his story of Friday night. The last time he saw her
00:33:11
and he he says this is about 8:30 p.m. on Friday night. Wow. So, he's saying, "Hey, we had an
00:33:17
argument at the motel room. The argument was about an old girlfriend of his or something or other
00:33:24
and Roxanne storms out." And do you know what her name was? I do not. Skinkasaurus Rex. She sounds
00:33:31
lovely. She was a dinosaur of a woman. Whatever went down, Roxanne, according to Lewis,
00:33:37
underline that, stormed out of the motel room and left, walking out walking away
00:33:44
from the hotel. Right. Lewis says, "Hey, he tried to go after her, but she wanted
00:36:35
nothing to do with him." Finally, you would think, right? He saw her walking along the service
00:36:40
road out in front of the motel and then he says that he saw her make a left, again, she's on foot, onto Middle Lane.
00:36:48
So, he went back to the room and he says that, you know, he's going to try to cool down. It was a heated
00:36:54
argument. He was just going to let her blow off some steam. He's going to chill out in the hotel room, wait for her to
00:37:02
come back. Well, in his defense, right? In his defense, she doesn't have a car. She You're in a bad area. She's probably
00:37:12
not going to just take off on foot. So, she might just pace around a little bit in the parking lot and come
00:37:19
back in. Yeah, this is one of those times when, you know, look, if you've if you've lived in a city long enough, you
00:37:26
are aware of the bad areas, the bad parts of town. Yeah. And you just hope and pray, and I do this with even That
00:37:33
seems like a weird thing to kind of throw in there, but that's what she says that that Lewis said. You think that'd
00:37:39
be in your purse. It sounds like, according to all parties involved, that Roxanne walked away from
00:37:47
this motel room, if this story is to be believed, wearing a pink tank top, white shorts, and a
00:37:55
pair of flip-flops. So, normal summer attire. Elizabeth and some of her daughters,
00:38:02
well, they're they're nervous. They're anxious. They want to go find Roxy. So, they all
00:38:09
jump into the car and they went down to the area. This is the Budget Inn where the two were staying, right off of
00:38:16
Interstate 35. This was an area of Austin, as we said, called Runberg, which was, to put it
00:38:23
mildly, sketchy. The hotel was basically a cheapo motel on a seedy, dangerous strip that was known for drugs
00:38:34
and even sex work and things of that nature. There was crime going on in and around those streets.
00:38:42
Elizabeth was angst to see that area where her daughter had walked off into the night alone. Well, first of all, you
00:38:52
Like we said, she doesn't have a lot of money, so she you know that your daughter is
00:38:58
staying the night in these hotels. You can't really say much because she is 18 and and but at some point, as the
00:39:06
mother, then you have to decide how long are you going to put up with this until
00:39:11
you put your foot down and say, "Hey, if you're going to keep doing this stuff, you're going to just have to move out."
00:39:15
Well, in in Elizabeth's defense with Roxanne here, too, we have a situation where mom probably doesn't fully know
00:39:23
exactly what's going on other than what she's being told by Roxanne. So, Elizabeth says she shows up to this
00:39:30
area, to this place, and she's like, "Oh, I was kind of under the impression that they were staying at a nice hotel,
00:39:37
not some run-down place that's, you know, a dump near the highway. Well, it's nice to Lewis.
00:39:44
Right. Right. She opened up the door and she's like, "Oh my god, it smells like feet in
00:39:48
here." To Lewis, it's like Disney World. Yeah, he's like, "Man, it's so nice to be out of my mama's house for the
00:39:54
night." So, Elizabeth and family and friends spent the next couple of days trying to
00:39:59
track down Roxanne and of course searching the area around the motel. They peered into ditches and climbed the
00:40:08
sides of dumpsters, but found nothing. No sign of of Roxanne or where she could be.
00:40:15
Can we take a step back for a second because Okay. If we believe Lewis, then I applaud him for calling
00:40:28
his girlfriend's mom. He knows "She don't like me, but it's gotten into a point where I
00:40:36
have to call her. So, I would applaud him for that. My big issue is why did you wait till
00:40:44
the next day? Once you go out looking for her and you can't find her and you know that she doesn't have her
00:40:53
cell phone on her so she wasn't able to contact anybody that she knows. There would be no way for her to get to
00:41:03
a area of safety that she knows. That Roxanne knows. Once you know that around 9:00 p.m.
00:41:12
that's when you call. You don't hesitate and wait till the next morning. Well, he's likely calling at this time
00:41:20
because he knows that the parents, her mother being close with Roxanne, her family being close with her, at some
00:41:27
point they're going to come looking for Roxanne. And the longer I delay telling anybody that I think she's
00:41:34
missing or or at least throw out there the possibility that I might be worried or concerned about her,
00:41:41
the worse this is going to look for me later. So, at some point, yeah, he decides I
00:41:45
got to reach out to mom. I got to reach out to her family and see where she is. Now, the other thing that goes down
00:41:52
here, too, and I've seen several different reports about this and I I don't know,
00:41:57
in all honesty, which one is the most accurate, but some reports say that that day, that later that night, this is
00:42:04
after Roxanne's mother Elizabeth shows up on scene with her daughters actively looking for Roxanne.
00:42:13
Some reports say that it was that night and other reports say that it that it was the next day, but regardless,
00:42:19
what we do know that did happen is that both Roxanne's mother Elizabeth calls Austin PD to report Roxanne as missing
00:42:32
and she also convinced Lewis at the same time. She says, "No, you got to call as
00:42:37
well because according to your story and what you told me on the phone, you are the last person to see her.
00:42:46
So, we need you to call this in as well." So, kudos to Elizabeth for sounding the
00:42:52
alarm. So, police received two calls, both of them for the purpose of filing missing persons reports on Roxanne. And
00:43:01
the police responded. They looked around for Roxanne when they showed up in the area. They did make
00:43:07
some inquiries, but of course this is the situation. They assumed that the young adult, 18 years old, gets in a
00:43:14
fight with her boyfriend. They've probably seen this story a million times. Everybody anybody who's watched cops
00:43:21
knows that that show is just filled with calls of of boyfriend and girlfriend yelling and screaming at each other and
00:43:27
a lot of them one of them takes off in the middle of the night. So, after all, we do have Lewis who's admitting to
00:43:35
police and to mom that yeah, we got into an argument. And then he's saying that Roxanne stormed off after this
00:43:43
argument or during the course of. And Elizabeth stressed to the detectives, to the officers that
00:43:50
responded, saying, "Look, there's no way, I don't care what you think happened. I don't think it I don't
00:43:56
care if you think that she's just going to go somewhere and hide out and stay away from this guy, but she would have
00:44:02
come home. She would have figured out a way to get home. She would have contacted me at the
00:44:06
very least to call me, tell me what's up. And to top that off, she would have never have left without her purse, her
00:44:13
phone. And these are all things that Lewis was saying that Roxanne had left behind in
00:44:19
the motel room. Just going to play devil's advocate here for a second. It is possible though.
00:44:25
Get in a fight. You're at a hotel. I'm guessing their door doesn't go to a lobby or go to some fancy area.
00:44:34
Their door probably goes outside. That she storms off and she goes into the parking lot
00:44:43
and she doesn't leave with anything but her ID. And and the reason why maybe I'd buy the
00:44:51
ID if he can if if there was two hotel keys. If there was two hotel keys and she left
00:44:59
with her ID and a hotel key, I could buy his story a little bit more. Yeah, that's one thing I questioned
00:45:06
myself as well here, Captain. I couldn't find anywhere anybody stating whether she
00:45:11
or Lewis even claiming if she left with a hotel key or not. And I'm guessing the way that it's
00:45:18
described that this might be a an actual physical key uh for her to get into the motel room
00:45:26
that they were staying. Not one of the little plastic credit card keys. I'm just guessing. Now, the other major red
00:45:33
flag here though is going to be a few days after Roxanne disappears. This is when Lewis finally brought back
00:45:41
Elizabeth brought to Elizabeth, sorry, Roxanne's things. This is 5 days after she had gone
00:45:48
missing. On the 12th of July, he comes over, he hands her a bag of clothes, Roxanne's phone, Roxanne's jewelry, her
00:45:57
toothbrush and makeup, and her pink purse, saying, "These are the items that she
00:46:02
left behind when she stormed off." Immediately, her mother and Roxanne's sisters were concerned
00:46:09
when they saw the stuff that Lewis brought back. Of course, it was her phone and it was her pink purse,
00:46:18
but in regards to the clothing, immediately, this wasn't like, "Okay, more time goes by and they start to get
00:46:26
concerned and then notice this." This was immediately. They noticed that the clothes they were given,
00:46:32
none of them believed that they belonged to Roxanne at all. And in fact, her sisters swore that they knew every
00:46:40
article of Roxanne's clothing because her and her sisters all kind of shared clothing.
00:46:46
Even, you know, fighting, arguing over clothes at times the way that sisters will do. And not only was this stuff
00:46:52
that they said was not Roxanne's, wasn't her style, wasn't something that she would wear, but it's also stuff that's
00:46:59
all the wrong size. And Roxanne's purse still contained her wallet. And her ID is missing.
00:47:08
Further, that wallet did contain some items that the family observed with horror.
00:47:14
These were Roxanne's rings. According to her mother Elizabeth, quote, "Even when
00:47:19
she went swimming, that girl wore accessories. Why on earth would Roxanne take off all of her jewelry and leave it
00:47:27
behind and then storm off into the night?" As you pointed out, Captain, she's leaving with If we are to believe
00:47:33
Lewis, she's leaving with no money, no phone, and in an unsafe and unfamiliar area.
00:47:40
My answer would be that she wouldn't. And that Lewis is probably not really telling
00:47:48
the truth here. Regardless of my feelings, what we do know is that this story that Lewis is telling,
00:47:55
it does not sit well with Roxanne's family. I I I hate to play devil's advocate for this giant pile of dog
00:48:02
you know, but is it possible she took off her rings? Why why would he return these items
00:48:11
if they weren't hers? No one's questioning the rings. Mhm. It sounds to me like they're concerned
00:48:19
that the clothing No, no, I understand I understand the clothing and and maybe he
00:48:25
maybe this son of a returned a skinkosaurus Rex clothes clothing to the wrong house. Several days after she goes
00:48:32
missing, he's still in contact with family. Then he takes every item that he claims that she left behind. Look,
00:48:38
within seconds you can explain away certain things. Somebody says, "Well, she would that girl would swim in her
00:48:45
rings." Well, maybe she took a shower, maybe she was putting on lotion and she took off
00:48:51
the rings as they were in a fight and then she got pissed off and she walked out of the room.
00:48:57
Every little thing that they're pissed off about you can explain away within seconds. He He returned the cell
00:49:04
phone. He returned clothes. Oh, well, you don't recognize those clothes. She stayed a lot over at Lewis's house
00:49:12
before. There was confrontation and she wasn't allowed to stay there. So, is it possible when they
00:49:19
were at these hotels, did they go buy clothes and she didn't take a bunch of clothes with her or did she just get
00:49:25
clothes from Lewis's house and then they went and stayed in these hotels? I I just think you can explain away some of
00:49:32
these things that they don't like. Of course, you can. You absolutely can. Does become a little difficult that the
00:49:38
clothing size does not seem to match up. But you're right. You can explain some of
00:49:45
these things away. The problem though being it's been 5 days. You've not seen her
00:49:50
nor heard from her and this suspicious activity continues. And a lot of it is circling around one
00:49:57
dude. And I want to make sure that we're not painting the wrong picture here because this is not Lewis spending 5
00:50:03
days with these women trying to look for Roxanne. No. He has very, very limited communication
00:50:12
with Elizabeth and the sisters. So much so that yeah, he called Elizabeth. Yeah,
00:50:19
he agreed to file a missing persons report, but other than that 9:00 time that he says he went out and looked for
00:50:28
for a little bit and couldn't find her. Nobody else is saying that he was actively looking for Roxanne at any
00:50:34
other point. Ever. That he was assisting Elizabeth and the sisters looking for Roxanne. No, he
00:50:41
wasn't. In fact, that he was so limited access to Roxanne's family that even though he says, "Hey, she
00:50:49
stormed off and left all of this stuff here." He wasn't available to give them that stuff until 5 days later. And when
00:50:56
he shows up with it, it's not a meeting of the minds. It's "Oh, here's a bag of your sister's stuff." Right. Peace out.
00:51:04
And then you open up the bag after dude leaves and the items in there are not checking out with what you know about
00:51:12
your sister. My biggest problem with Lewis is the hesitation to call. Especially her being
00:51:17
in that area, you know what she doesn't have on her. You don't hesitate. You don't hesitate that long to call. So,
00:51:25
what's going on? on a second. How the hell did they get to the hotel in the first place?
00:51:29
Well, there's public transportation in these cities. Well, now I understand that, but I'm saying do we do we know
00:51:34
how they did it? Did they take a bus? Did they get a cab? Did they You know, because neither one of them
00:51:41
drive. Correct. They were both known to frequent the bus. Note to all the little
00:51:46
ladies out there. If you if your boyfriend asks you to spend the night in a hotel and you have to take a bus to
00:51:52
get there, don't don't do it. Tell him to save his money or save your money so you can get a car. Yeah, she's probably
00:51:59
paying for the motel room. Now, in the meantime of what's going on, I want to make sure that everybody
00:52:05
understands what's going on here. Again, saying he's not actively out looking for
00:52:10
Roxanne as far as we know. Right. There's no one to say that that's what was going on. Again, look,
00:52:16
even if the family doesn't like me, if I supposedly love this woman and she's missing, I'm going to be bothering them
00:52:23
saying, "Hey, how can I help? What can I do?" I'm going to be out there actively
00:52:26
looking. If he was, that is not known to anybody other than Lewis. But what we can
00:52:34
tell everybody and what we do know is the following. Lewis checked out of that motel room.
00:52:41
This was before reporting Roxanne missing to her mother on Saturday afternoon. So, Roxanne never shows back up. He went
00:52:50
ahead and checked out of the motel room and leaves leaves the immediate area. He's at his sister's apartment. This is
00:52:59
a Walnut Creek complex is what I have in my notes. And he supposedly took Roxanne's things with him
00:53:06
to his sister's apartment, then calls her mother to say, "Hey, by the way, your daughter stormed off. I don't know
00:53:14
where she is." Now, by the time the Austin police got around to checking the motel for anything suspicious, well, it
00:53:20
seems like it was far too late. For one thing, the motel records were a mess as you can imagine in this type of area.
00:53:27
They're just happy that someone rented the room. Good luck keeping tabs on everybody. And
00:53:33
probably often charging cash rather than any kind of paper trail. Yeah, cuz then that
00:53:41
that way the person that's working the desk can just pocket the money. As said, the motel records were a mess. It was
00:53:46
the kind of place where where I guess you could get rooms by the hour. And as you pointed out, Captain, a lot
00:53:54
of people probably paid under the table. Some clerks kept records, some didn't. Detectives believed that they figured
00:54:01
out which room Roxanne and Lewis had shared. But by the time they took a look at it,
00:54:07
days had passed and it had been cleaned and reoccupied several times. Think about that statement.
00:54:14
Okay, one it's disappointing that detectives weren't in that room faster looking for evidence, looking for things
00:54:21
that could help lead them to Roxanne. I get that. But within that same statement is something
00:54:29
that's even more alarming. That's not super obvious. Detectives believed they figured out
00:54:37
which room Roxanne and Lewis had shared. That means Lewis is not cooperating with
00:54:42
the detectives. He's not helping them. He's not providing information to them to even
00:54:48
tell them this was the room we were staying in. Yeah, but I I hate this I hate this case
00:54:53
cuz I keep feeling like I'm defending this that you start off by saying I hate to
00:54:58
play devil's advocate, but here I am doing it for the dozen for the for the 10th time today. Yeah, but we That's
00:55:05
what we're supposed to do. I mean, enjoy it. No, I mean, that's that's why we're here is there's this case, this
00:55:11
girl went missing, this guy seems like a giant bag of turds. My question to this
00:55:17
guy would be does he just not remember the room number? And I know that seems like
00:55:22
like something you would remember, but they've stayed in multiple hotels. A couple days later, I don't have a great
00:55:29
memory. If somebody said, "Well, where did you What was your room number?" I'd be like, I don't remember.
00:55:35
Well, can you take us there? I think so. You know what I mean? So, the fact that they stayed in
00:55:40
multiple hotels leading up to all this, again, I I hate to say that I don't think that's as
00:55:47
suspicious as people are making them out to be. Well, what is suspicious is that he's
00:55:52
not cooperating with the detectives. But how do we know that? Because they have no they have no clue
00:55:57
what room that they stayed in. Yeah, but if he doesn't know, then he can't tell police. So, it's not that's not evidence
00:56:04
of him not being cooperative. If they came out and said, "Hey, we asked Lewis and he said, I don't remember and I
00:56:10
don't give a shit." Or I remember, but I'm not telling you. That's that's being uncooperative. Or
00:56:17
they're calling Lewis and he's never answering the phone or never calling them back. Which I believe is probably
00:56:22
the case. And I have every reason to believe that he is fully aware of where they stayed, the room that they stayed
00:56:28
in. I believe he's not being cooperative because he's got a lot to hide. Either he did something or he knows a
00:56:36
lot more than what he's saying. And I think it's easy to see this and go, "Yeah, he probably does know more
00:56:43
than what he's saying because he ain't saying anything." So, it's difficult for me to believe
00:56:48
that when you are reporting your girlfriend missing within 24 to 48 hours of the last time
00:56:56
that you saw her. Think about that. He checked out. His words, the morning after he last saw
00:57:03
her. So, that means within 20 to 30 hours of the time that you checked out of the
00:57:09
hotel room, you don't know what room you stayed in? If it's somebody that I truly cared
00:57:15
about, if if I'm contacted by police or talking to police and I say this is the last time I saw so-and-so,
00:57:21
"What room did you stay in?" I can't remember if it was 318 or 308. Maybe it was 218. I can't remember.
00:57:29
I'd be happy to meet you guys there or could you pick me up? And we'll go over there and I can look. Maybe if I see the
00:57:36
door or walk to it, I can walk to the door and show you where we stayed. But also what we're assuming is that she
00:57:42
paid for the room. So, she got the room number told to her. She grabs the keys. They walk down. She might have told him,
00:57:52
"We're staying in this room." You know, other than leaving for 30 minutes to look for
00:58:00
and I'm I'm sure he didn't go that far. It's amazing he found his way back to the hotel room to begin with. Like a
00:58:06
lost puppy. He had no idea where they were staying. Well, it might have been on the key.
00:58:11
I'm just saying that especially somebody that stayed in multiple hotels, I don't
00:58:16
it's possible that you wouldn't remember. And I and I would just like to know what
00:58:21
the conversation was between him and police. Well, let's get into Lewis's background here. To put it bluntly,
00:58:30
he's a thug. He'd been involved in criminal activity for years. He has a record dating back to 1995 for
00:58:39
felonies like robbery, burglary, and drug dealing. He has been in and out of prison
00:58:44
multiple times. Austin Police Department Detective James Scott, who is now working Roxanne's case, told the Austin
00:58:51
Chronicle, quote, "Lewis, among his peers, is an idiot. I mean, you can look at his criminal record and tell he's not
00:59:00
the smartest criminal out there." End quote. The Chronicle gives an example. In March of 2005,
00:59:08
Lewis was arrested agreeing to sell three rocks of crack cocaine for $50. Unbeknownst to him, he was selling three
00:59:17
rocks of crack cocaine to an undercover Austin police officer who had offered him a ride to Runberg.
00:59:25
Well, we've heard of that place. And it turned out that the crack was fake. So, Lewis got off with only a 120-day
00:59:35
jail sentence. But, selling fake crack to a real cop, not so bright. Lewis' crimes weren't just drug-related.
00:59:44
Two of his exes had taken out restraining orders against him, and Lewis had been arrested for violating
00:59:49
one of those restraining orders. As we know, Lewis was 28 when he started dating 16-year-old Roxanne.
00:59:56
It seems he preferred younger girls, although another of his exes was also underage when they were together.
01:00:04
Elizabeth Harris, Roxanne's mother, considers him to be a pedophile. There are rumors based on some things some of
01:00:11
his exes have implied that Lewis tried to get some of his girlfriends to sell their bodies for him, that he tried
01:00:21
to pimp them out. Now, according to Roxanne's mother, Lewis was a bragger and a poser, a want-to-be big man.
01:00:30
She said he boasted of being a member of the Bloods street gang, but that he was
01:00:35
most likely only marginally involved. Basically, a small-time crook, but still big-time dangerous to women.
01:00:55
So much more to get to in this episode. Stay tuned till tomorrow. If you need more True Crime Garage in your ear
01:01:03
balls, check out our show called Off the Record. It's exclusively on the Stitcher
01:01:07
app. To find that, just go to the Stitcher app or go to our website truecrimegarage.com.
01:01:14
And until tomorrow, be good, be kind, and don't litter.