Bio

George Anderson "Andy" Hopper was born on October 6, 1955. Little is publicly documented about his life prior to 1983, when, at age 27, he was hired to carry out a murder-for-hire scheme that would take five years to unravel and become one of the most notorious cases in Dallas-area history.

Murder Story

On the afternoon of October 4, 1983, in Richardson, Texas, four-year-old Peter Gailiunas Jr. woke from a nap and went looking for his mother, Rozanne Gailiunas, 33. He found her lying on her bedroom floor, naked and unconscious, her mouth stuffed with tissue, making a gurgling sound. She had been strangled and shot twice in the head. The boy called his father, Dr. Peter Gailiunas Sr., who rushed to the home and called 911. Rozanne never regained consciousness and died at the hospital two days later.

At the time of her death, Rozanne had been having an affair with Larry Aylor, a wealthy homebuilder who was constructing a new house for the Gailiunas family; both Rozanne and Aylor had filed for divorce from their respective spouses and were planning to marry. In the initial investigation, Peter Gailiunas Sr. accused Aylor of the murder, and Aylor accused Peter in turn; both men were cleared, and Aylor's wife, Joy Davis Aylor, was also briefly considered a suspect. No arrests were made, and Peter Gailiunas Sr. offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Larry and Joy Aylor reconciled for a time after his affair became public, but by 1986 they were again considering divorce. That year, Larry was ambushed by two gunmen at his ranch but managed to escape. The case remained unsolved for two more years, until a woman named Carol Garland — motivated partly by anger at having been dismissed by detectives and partly by the reward money — came forward and told police that her sister, Joy Aylor, had paid Carol's husband, William Garland, $5,000 to arrange Rozanne's murder. Garland and another man, Brian Lee Kreafle, had in turn hired Hopper, paying him $1,500 to carry out the killing. Separately, it emerged that Joy Aylor had also paid two brothers, Buster and William Gary Matthews, to carry out the 1986 attempt on her own husband's life.

Hopper eluded police for five months after being identified as a suspect before being arrested in the Dallas area on December 20, 1988. Two days after his arrest, without an attorney present, he contacted the lead detective and offered a partial account, falsely claiming he had passed the murder-for-hire money on to a drug dealer he called "Chip." After further investigation revealed inconsistencies in this account — including a polygraph indicating deception — Hopper ultimately confessed on February 27, 1989, in a detailed statement captured on both audio and video. He described posing as a flower delivery man to gain entry to the Gailiunas home, forcing Rozanne to undress, tying her to the bed, and attempting to rape her before strangling her with a pair of pantyhose. When she managed to free one hand and began fighting back, he shot her twice in the head through a pillow.

At trial, prosecutors presented Hopper's confession, the recovered murder weapon, testimony from a jailhouse informant whose account of Hopper's admissions closely matched his police confession, and a letter Hopper had written to a close friend in which he stated, "I am the one who killed this person." Hopper was convicted and sentenced to death.

Joy Aylor, identified as the case's mastermind, was arrested in September 1988 and released on $140,000 bail. The night before her 1990 murder trial was set to begin, she emptied her bank accounts and fled the country, first to Canada with her attorney — reportedly also her lover — and later to Mexico and Europe, eventually settling near Nice, France, under the alias "Elizabeth Sharp." She was identified and arrested in March 1991 after a minor traffic accident exposed her true identity; France's government refused to extradite her due to its opposition to capital punishment. She was ultimately returned to Texas in December 1993 after prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against her. She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. William Garland and Brian Lee Kreafle, the two middlemen who arranged the hiring of Hopper, also received life sentences, as did Buster Matthews, one of the men hired for the separate 1986 attempt on Larry Aylor's life.

In 1993, Rozanne Gailiunas's parents won a $35 million civil lawsuit against Joy Aylor over their daughter's death, and in 1990, Larry Aylor separately won a $31.2 million judgment against his wife for the attempt on his own life. The case drew significant media attention over the years, inspiring two true-crime books — Ken Englade's To Hatred Turned (1993) and Carlton Stowers's Open Secrets (1994) — as well as a 1993 television movie, Telling Secrets, starring Cybill Shepherd.

George Anderson Hopper was executed by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, on March 8, 2005, at age 49. Witnesses described him as visibly remorseful, and in his final statement he directly addressed Rozanne's family members present, including her son, Peter Jr., who had discovered her body more than two decades earlier, expressing regret and asking for their forgiveness.