Billy Glenn Ivy Jr. murder-for-hire case

Billy Glenn Ivy Jr., an Amarillo-area rancher, was the central figure in a sprawling, multi-year investigation into an alleged murder-for-hire and arson scheme that spanned 2014 to 2021. Over the course of the investigation, Ivy was accused of hiring or attempting to hire multiple people to kill at least four different targets, was linked to the unsolved disappearance of a young woman, and was separately charged in the 2016 capital murder of a pregnant woman. He died in the Potter County Jail in September 2020 — before any of the murder charges against him went to trial, leaving the most serious allegations against him legally untested.

Background: the 2014 arson plot

According to court documents, the case traces back to May 2014, when Ivy's wife, Joanie Kay Ivy, admitted to having an affair with another man — who became the scheme's first alleged intended victim. Court documents show Billy Ivy began negotiating with Kimber Danielle Eisenhaur to have someone set fire to the man's residence in the 2700 block of Emily Place in Amarillo. Ivy and Eisenhaur are also said to have separately asked Tyree Lamont Sanford to burn the intended victim's semi-truck.

On June 4, 2014, the victim's truck was set on fire in Randall County. Eisenhaur later admitted to the arson and to driving her husband, who she said carried it out, to Canyon to commit the crime; she also picked Ivy's photo from a lineup as the man who hired her. Sanford was separately arrested and charged in the arson. On September 10, 2014, an incendiary device was thrown at the home of the intended victim's mother, also on Emily Place; APD investigated it as arson, but no arrests were made at the time.

Escalating attempts (2015–2016)

Court documents describe two further attempts on the same victim's life. In October 2015, Eisenhaur said she tried to meet with the intended victim to poison his drink with a bottle Ivy had given her. On a separate occasion, she said Ivy gave her a black, all-black .38-caliber semi-automatic handgun with the serial number scratched off; she did not use it and eventually returned it to Ivy.

On April 29, 2016, according to court documents, Patrick Dewayne Clemons agreed to accept money from Eisenhaur and Ivy to kill the same man, and traveled with Eisenhaur to the victim's residence intending to carry it out; documents say Clemons instead tried to talk Eisenhaur out of going through with it.

Disappearance of Nicole Moore

Nicole Moore, a known associate of Ivy's, disappeared on December 2, 2016. She had told others she was leaving with Ivy to get marijuana and had said she was afraid to go with him, reportedly trying to convince someone to come along. Cell phone records show Moore's and Ivy's phones traveling together westbound on I-40 from near Soncy Road that night; Moore's phone later hit a tower near Ivy's ranch in rural Oldham County and was never turned on again.

Moore's abandoned vehicle was found in a Toys "R" Us parking lot at I-40 and Soncy Road on January 6, 2017. Investigators concluded she was likely dead and named Ivy the primary suspect. Her body has never been found.

Manhunt and arrest (March 2017)

On March 2, 2017, investigators searched Ivy's rural ranch property in the 6900 block of County Road 18 in Oldham County for several hours, from the ground and by air, but did not find Moore. Eisenhaur was indicted for cocaine possession on March 5, and on March 9 was formally charged with Attempted Capital Murder for Remuneration; an arrest warrant was issued for Ivy the same day.

Rather than surrender after a phone call with an investigator who urged him to turn himself in, Ivy fled — according to court documents, he got into a ranch employee's truck and drove away from an Amarillo hospital (where he and family said he'd been visiting his mother) carrying $8,700 in cash, two cellphones, two handguns, ammunition, and his passport. Following a manhunt, he was arrested in Quay County, New Mexico. A broken cellphone recovered from him reportedly showed contact with people in Brazil; his attorneys said he had been planning a fishing trip there.

Search of the Ivy ranch

During the week of March 21, 2017, investigators returned to the Oldham County ranch and found a black 2016 Ford F-350 near a barn, which they believed might hold evidence tied to Moore's disappearance. A ranch employee and potential witness surrendered a black .38 semi-automatic handgun with the serial number scratched off — matching the description of the gun Eisenhaur said Ivy gave her — along with what an FBI investigator later testified were a suppressor, a 9mm Glock, and a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun. The same employee said Ivy called him from the Quay County Jail asking him to "get rid of some pipe" hidden in the truck bed.

On March 27, 2017, with consent to search the ranch, investigators found several deep holes capable of concealing evidence, including a blue ammunition box roughly 15 feet down in a "cistern" — the same location where Moore's cellphone had last pinged. On March 31, ATF agents searching the Ivy home in Adrian, Texas, found three unmarked, unregistered silencers in a bedroom gun safe that Joanie Ivy opened for them.

Witness tampering and bond conditions

A criminal complaint alleges that on March 6, 2017, Billy and Joanie Ivy offered to pay the ranch employee and potential witness to withhold information from investigators. Joanie Ivy was arrested and charged with Tampering with a Witness on May 6, 2017; Billy Ivy faced the same charge. His bond conditions, set May 11, barred contact with any potential victim, required a GPS monitor, and restricted him to Potter, Oldham, or Randall counties.

On May 23, 2017, Patrick Clemons was arrested and charged with Conspiracy and Solicitation to Commit Capital Murder for Remuneration, and Amber Stone was charged with arson in connection with the 2014 Emily Place house fire.

Federal weapons case

Ivy made his first federal court appearance on May 31, 2017, over the unregistered/unmarked suppressors found at his home. He pleaded guilty on July 11, 2017, to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, facing a range from probation up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine; he remained in federal custody pending sentencing. On November 13, 2017, he was sentenced to nearly three and a half years in federal prison. His attorneys asked that the sentence run concurrently with any future state sentence; the judge refused, saying the federal sentence would not be influenced by other pending charges.

Additional murder-for-hire charges and the Elmore standoff

Ivy was arrested a fourth time on September 7, 2017, and booked into the Potter County Detention Center on two counts of Attempted Capital Murder for Remuneration. The next day, APD reported a suspect was shot and killed in a standoff on the 800 block of North Forest (a K-9 SWAT officer was also shot in the incident). On September 11, 2017, that suspect was identified as Billy Joe Elmore, fatally shot by police during the standoff; the Special Crimes Unit was at the time investigating Elmore's ties to Ivy.

On October 13, 2017, a Potter County grand jury indicted Ivy in connection with the September 7 plot. On October 30, 2017, he faced two additional counts of capital murder for remuneration, with court documents alleging he had tried to hire Elmore to kill two people. On November 6, 2017, Kimberly Dison, 47, and Tyler Geisdorf, 33, were indicted in Potter County on Attempted Capital Murder while Remuneration charges connected to the same plot.

Randall County indictments and civil suit (2017–2018)

On November 15, 2017, Ivy was indicted again — this time in Randall County for Arson of a Habitation, tied to the original 2014 plot. The same grand jury indicted Clemons for Conspiracy and Solicitation to Commit Capital Murder for Remuneration, and indicted Amber Stone for the related arson. Stone pleaded guilty in Randall County court on April 5, 2018.

Ivy posted bond on his four Potter County attempted-murder-for-remuneration charges on May 1, 2018, but returned to federal custody the same day. On May 22, 2018, a new criminal complaint was filed against him in Randall County for Capital Murder for Remuneration, and a Randall County grand jury indicted him on that charge on August 9, 2018.

On November 7, 2018, Billy and Joanie Ivy were named in a civil lawsuit in Randall County alleging the couple had tried to kill one plaintiff multiple times between 2014 and 2017 and had set fire to a second plaintiff's property.

Connection to the Charlesetta Telford murder

Separately, investigators had connected Ivy to the June 2016 shooting death of Charlesetta Telford and her unborn child at the Plum Creek Apartments — a case in which Anthony Dwion Richards had already been charged in 2018. Investigators came to believe Ivy may have been the father of Telford's unborn child. On April 30, 2020, Ivy returned to Potter County custody after completing his federal weapons sentence. On May 4, 2020, APD arrested him on a charge of Capital Murder by Remuneration for Telford's death, and separately on a charge of Capital Murder by Terror/Threat or Other Felony for Nicole Moore's presumed death. On May 11, 2020, prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against him on the new charges.

Death in custody

Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas confirmed that Billy Glenn Ivy Jr. died in the Potter County Jail early on the morning of September 16, 2020. Jail staff found him alone and unresponsive in his cell around 1:40 a.m. and attempted to revive him for about 45 minutes before he was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy was ordered to determine the cause of death.

The day after his death, APD leveled additional allegations, saying Ivy had continued attempting to hire people to commit murder while behind bars. Investigators, working with the FBI, said they recovered evidence from a contraband cellphone, including audio in which Ivy described his crimes. Sgt. Mike Dunn, lead investigator on the Nicole Moore case, said Ivy had hired someone to kill his ex-wife Joanie Ivy, but police intervened and stopped the plot. APD also alleged Ivy had planned to pin Moore's murder on Joanie while withholding information about the location of Moore's body in hopes of negotiating leniency.

Because Ivy died before trial, none of the murder, attempted-murder, or Moore-disappearance allegations against him were ever tested in court or resulted in a conviction.

Aftermath

On December 2, 2021, Kimberly Dison, 50, was sentenced to 42 months in state jail after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, tied to the September 2017 plot in which she was accused of conspiring with Billy Joe Elmore and Ivy to have someone killed.

The Telford case continued independently of Ivy's death: a second suspect, Jessica Lynn Black, was indicted for capital murder in Telford's death in August 2021.

People

• Billy Glenn Ivy Jr. — central figure; rancher; faced murder-for-hire, arson, witness tampering, federal weapons, and capital murder charges across multiple counties; died in custody in 2020 before any murder trial
• Joanie Kay Ivy — Billy Ivy's wife; charged with witness tampering; alleged intended target of one of Ivy's later murder-for-hire plots
• Kimber Danielle Eisenhaur — hired by Ivy for arson and attempted murder plots; charged with attempted capital murder for remuneration and arson
• Tyree Lamont Sanford — charged with arson in the 2014 semi-truck fire
• Patrick Dewayne Clemons — accepted payment for a murder plot but reportedly balked; charged with conspiracy/solicitation to commit capital murder for remuneration
• Nicole Moore — disappeared December 2016; presumed murdered; body never found; Ivy named primary suspect
• Billy Joe Elmore — allegedly hired by Ivy for a 2017 murder-for-hire plot; fatally shot by police during an unrelated September 2017 standoff
• Kimberly Dison — indicted alongside Tyler Geisdorf in the Elmore-linked plot; sentenced to 42 months in 2021
• Tyler Geisdorf — indicted in the Elmore-linked plot
• Amber Stone — pleaded guilty to arson tied to the 2014 Emily Place fire
• Charlesetta Telford — separate June 2016 capital murder victim Ivy was later charged in connection with

Timeline

Sources

• The Ongoing Case Against Billy Ivy, Jr.[4] — KAMR/MyHighPlains.com (I-Team investigation, comprehensive case timeline)
• One arrested, additional charges filed in Amarillo murder-for-hire case[1] — KVII
• Billy Ivy, Jr. found dead in jail cell — KVII

Status

Because Ivy died before trial, the murder and murder-for-hire allegations against him were never adjudicated. The disappearance of Nicole Moore remains unsolved and her body has not been recovered. This entry is cross-linked with the separate [Murder of Charlesetta Telford and her unborn child] case, where the murder charges against Anthony Dwion Richards and Jessica Lynn Black also appear to remain pending based on available public reporting.