Roxanne Paltauf /// Part 1 /// 491 | Forensic Files

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

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com This week we cover a strange missing persons case out of Austin, Texas. Roxanne Paltauf vanished in 2006 while staying at a seedy motel with her boyfriend. This case is considered now 15 years later to be a cold case homicide. Foul Play of course is strongly suspected. Join us in the Garage as we try our best to keep the story out there. Police need the public’s help. This is truly a case when the person(s) responsible have told someone what they did.

Beer of the Week - Sunset Cerveza by Oasis Texas Brewing Company Garage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

Roxanne Paltauf, 18, disappears after a fight with her boyfriend Louis Walls, raising suspicions about his involvement.

Key points

Roxanne's Struggles. Roxanne is an 18-year-old navigating life with a toxic boyfriend, Louis.
The Dark Side of Love. Roxanne's relationship with Louis is marked by manipulation and abuse.
Roxanne's Night Out. Roxanne calls her mother to say she's staying out one more night with Lewis.
Missing Person Report. Roxanne's mother reports her missing after she fails to return home.
The Argument. Lewis claims he and Roxanne had an argument before she stormed out.
Suspicious Return. Lewis returns Roxanne's belongings, raising concerns about their authenticity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She's so close to spreading her wings and finally taking flight.

Describing Roxanne's potential and struggles with her boyfriend.

4:53WatchJun 2, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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