911 Call Captures Some of Loan Officer’s Last Words

Lawrence Joyce, 35, of Laconia, N.H., leapt to his death from Hoover Dam last week after calling 911 and telling a dispatcher where they could find the body of 27-year-old Rebecca Roux of Sanford, Maine.

“Listen, I’m only going to stay on the phone for a minute with you,” Joyce told a 911 dispatcher early in the phone call. “I’m going to give you guys directions to [a body] and then I’m going to kill myself.”

In an apparent attempt to prove he was not joking, Joyce told the dispatcher he had spent four years in New Hampshire state prison for rape, kidnapping, assault and weapons charges. He asked that Roux be taken to her family, but declined to tell where he was — saying he was at a “very public location.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry, it was a f****** accident,” Joyce told the 911 dispatcher. “It just spiraled out of control.”

After the emergency call, security officials found Roux’s body in a room at the Treasure Island hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nev., according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The victim was beaten, strangulated and stabbed to death, the Clark County Coroner’s Office said, but the time of the death was not known.

As homicide detectives investigated the murder, Hoover Dam Police found Joyce walking on the ledge. He told the officials he had killed his girlfriend at Treasure Island, the Metro Police reported.

Other area officials came to assist Hoover Dam Police to prevent Joyce from taking his own life. Joyce was shot with a Taser, but moments later he leaped over the dam wall, falling to his death, according to the Metro Police.

Joyce did not say what happened between he and Roux. He informed the 911 dispatcher that he had four drinks at a bar, thought something had been slipped into his drink, and that he had started hallucinating.

Investigations are still ongoing, Metro Police Sgt. Chris Jones said, but as of yet “we have not found any evidence that supports” Joyce’s claim of a possible drug slipped into his drink.

Joyce had worked as a loan officer for approximately two years at Schaefer Mortgage Corp., based in Londonderry, N.H., according to a company official, who could not provide additional details. The Maine Press Herald reported online Joyce’s coworkers were baffled when he cut off contact three weeks ago, letting phone calls and e-mails go unanswered.

Roux was a loan officer for Cousins Home Lending in Sanford. She had just been promoted to the full-time position after serving as a loan officer assistant for over one year, her friend and coworker Judi Berry, a loan officer for Cousins Home, told MortgageDaily.com.

Berry described Roux as “an amazing person” and “very beautiful.”

According to Berry, Roux was a very selfless person who still kept in touch and regularly visited former patients she had attended to when she had worked as a certified nurse assistant. Roux had also done some modeling for clothing catalogs

Several published reports have said Roux’s coworkers knew about her trip to Las Vegas with her boyfriend of four or five months and had warned her not to go.

“That’s not true … we didn’t know she went and did not know she was there,” Berry said, adding that she last saw Roux the day she went away and that Roux had informed “it was a family emergency.”

The loan officer said Cousins Home is collecting funds to donate to Roux’s family to help bring her body home and give her a proper funeral.