Beyond All Repair Ch. 2: The Case

WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Heads up, this show has descriptions of violence and strong language.

Hey, so my brain always spins after we have a conversation and you introduce so much new information. and oh my goodness, there was a lot of it today.

I'm freshly back from a trip to New York to see Shane Correa and share the latest with him about his sister, Sophia, who was charged with murdering her mother-in-law back in 2002.

I am starting to accept that whenever you visit, I am going to have terrible night's sleep.

I am haunting Shane. Just kidding, but I am offering him information on Sophia's case as it comes in. And he has been offering me his thoughts on all of it in the form of voice memos.

I'm just trying to understand like what was going through her head.

We're several months into revisiting the murder. at this point. It had become a sort of obsessive side project for both of us. I was reading documents and talking to Sophia regularly, usually in the early morning hours, before my regular workday started. Hi, good morning.

Did you get the stuff I sent you?

I did, I did. And I got the picture while I was- Shane is more of a night owl, recording himself while he's unwinding from his day at work.

For the record, that's wine.

And poring over his sister's case file.

First installment, lots of pages.

Thousands of pages, witness interviews, call records, crime scene photos.

Okay, this looks like it's an evidence form.

Shane is Sophia's brother, obviously, but he's also a lawyer.

Entry number 23, paper bag with blood flakes.

And if he's ever gonna believe, really believe, that his sister did not kill her mother-in-law.

How many entries are there? Oh, there's a lot of entries.

He's gonna have to go through everything.

Even if she committed murder, I know that I love my sister, but she needs to also be held accountable if she committed murder.

I'm Anne-Marie Siebertson from WBUR and ZSP Media. This is Beyond All Repair. Chapter two, The Case.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

The evidence in this case will show.

that on January 10th of 2002, Marlene Johnson was brutally bludgeoned to death in her home.

I've fired up the footage of Sophia's trial, that box of VHS tapes I got in the mail. On screen, a drab courtroom, grainy faces, outfits from 20 years ago, and the prosecutor delivering the evidence.

The evidence will show that she was bludgeoned to death by her own daughter-in-law, the defendant in this case, Sophia Jansen.

All right, so Clark County Sheriff's Office Enforcement Intelligence Information.

Meanwhile, Shane is reading through Sophia's case file.

January 12th, 2002.

And we each arrive at someone very important.

There's Rick Buckner.

Scott, your last name for the record, please. B-U-C-K-N-E-R.

Rick Buckner, Detective Rick Buckner, whose decisions in the days following Marlene's murder solidified Sophia as the primary suspect.

I've been the lead investigator on probably anywhere from 45 to 50 homicide cases.

That was Rick on the stand in Sophia's trial in 2003.

I'm a total asshole.

Rick is big and broad, bald with a mustache. I'm sitting across from him in a small conference room in downtown Vancouver, Washington, which is near Portland, Oregon, in Clark County. Rick is cordial but guarded, and a little intimidating, if I'm being honest. Part of that may have to do with the polygraph machine I saw in his office next door. That's what he's been up to since retiring from the sheriff's office.

I've had people say they don't want to talk to their attorney, they want to talk to me, so that's pretty good.

People like Keith Jesperson, aka the Happy Face Killer, who killed at least eight women in the 90s and drew smiley faces on letters to police and the media.

He wouldn't talk to us, and I says, come on, Keith, I'll buy you dinner, come on. But eventually he called me and said, yeah, I killed her. I've probably gotten more confessions than anybody else.

But Rick never got one out of Sophia. He remembers her well all these years later.

So is her position that she didn't do anything, that she didn't have any involvement in the death of Marlene Johnson, or?

It is, it is, and I know that you probably have a different perspective.

I do.

Despite the fact that Rick's notes from this 20-year-old murder case are long gone, and it's clearly one of many that he's worked on, it stayed with him.

Well, I've seen a lot of crimes in my years as a detective, but to see this one, where, I mean, this woman, was just beaten beyond recognition.

Buckner and his team started mapping out Marlene's movements the day of the murder. She'd gotten home a little before quarter to one on that Thursday in January.

I think she came back from a yoga class that day, went out grocery shopping. We had the grocery receipts in the bag, so we could pretty much pinpoint the time that she actually would have arrived home. And by all indications, she just parked her car in the garage, came in from the garage, into the house, carrying groceries, and somebody just viciously attacked her.

Marlene hadn't even set the bag in her arms down. when she was struck by someone wielding fireplace tongs. She fell to the floor, groceries strewn around her. Marks and swelling on her hands and arms indicated that she'd tried to defend herself. The state's forensic expert estimated she'd been struck at least nine times.

What steps did you then take with regard to, shall we say, managing the investigation at that time?

Well, first off, as the lead investigator, it's my responsibility to direct and guide the investigation, to evaluate the information that comes in. I'm also responsible for the crucial interviews. So obviously, we wanted to contact the family.

Marlene and I had a very, very tight bond.

This is Roylene, Marlene's sister.

In fact, we made a pledge that we would never leave the state. We would never be long distance from each other ever.

Can you just tell me a little bit about your sister, who she was as a person, things that she loved?

Very, very trusting, which was something that I'm very untrusting.

Roylene is 15 years younger than Marlene, but she often found herself feeling like she needed to look out for her loving, trusting, generous older sister.

She'd go for long walks, love to walk, love to hike. I stressed about it all the time. I told her always to take protection. She said, there's nothing out there. I said, there's men and wild animals.

She'd go by herself.

Yes, go by herself with a little Yorkshire terrier. Like that's gonna protect anything. I had to protect her from so many people, because if you said, geez, I wished I had a dollar, she'd give you 10.. I was very, very protective of my sister because she was so kind and thought there was something good in everybody. And here to me, and I'm the opposite, you have to prove to me that there's something good in you.

Someone did prove that to Marlene, likely someone she knew, but who? That was Detective Buckner's job.

And did you conduct a series of interviews over the next day or so?

Yes, I did. I interviewed Brad, Sophia Johnson, Richard Johnson.

Brad, Sophia's husband, Marlene's son, and Richard, Marlene's husband, now widower.

We asked everybody, what was your day like? What did you do? Who were you talking to? Those kind of things. Do you know of anybody that could have done something like this?

Do you remember any kind of first reactions from those first conversations that you had with Richard and Brad and Sophia?

All of them were very distraught. Brad Johnson was beside himself in the fact that he had just discovered his mother. Brad had gone through the back door, I think it was, because he couldn't get in through the garage door, and found his mother laying there, bludgeoned to death.

Early interviews with family members filled out the events of the day, but they weren't all that illuminating in terms of the why of it all.

So then we were pretty much at square one. You know, who would have done this? I mean, what are we looking at? Is it some kind of a robbery gone bad? Is it a burglary in the house?

Sometimes, in an investigation, you have to seek out all of the leads. And sometimes, as Buckner told the jury, a lead comes to you.

9-1-1 had received an anonymous phone call from a pay phone, and the person refused to give their name or anything.

But they did eventually give a name. the detectives could work with, Sean Coria. Not Shane, Sean, the middle brother of the Coria children. Four years younger than Sophia, six years older than Shane. Sean, this anonymous caller said, he knew something about Marlene's murder.

How did your investigation proceed, based upon what you were told?

Based on what we were told, our investigation focused on Sean Coria at that time and Sophia Johnson.

Sean and Sophia. Because, as Detective Buckner told me...

There is no connection between Marlene Johnson and Sean Coria. The only connection is Sophia Johnson.

And Sean had a story for the detectives that was about to fully connect the dots for them.

Eventually, he said that he didn't actually do it, but he was there when it happened, and that his sister is the one that actually blungeoned Marlene Johnson to death.

More in a minute.

It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime.

When you're driving down this road, I like to plan on killing somebody. Yep. All right.

Yep.

A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.

I don't have any opinion on that.

Season three of In the Dark is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Real quick before we get back to the show, I know you listen to Beyond All Repair, but do you follow the show? Are you following the show in your podcast app or subscribe to it, or whatever the terminology is in your app of choice? I don't want you missing any new episodes as they come out or having them served up to you out of order. And I don't want you losing your place in an episode if you need to pause it part of the way through. So do me another favor, will ya?

Yeah, after Sean was arrested, we decided to go ahead and see if he could step a call into his sister Sophia and get her to admit something on the telephone. We structured it a little bit.

Structured it a little bit, or as he would tell the jury.

We had scripted what we thought Sophia Johnson would have believed. And we wrote out what we wanted Sean to say.

And that call, of course, was recorded. Hello?

Hi. How you doing? Doing good. How are you?

Um, um, hey, uh, like, I need to talk to you.

Can, like, is it possible for me to talk to you where nobody can?

Yeah, you want to come over?

No, I can't really come over right now.

It was the day of Marlene's funeral. Sophia and Brad had close family over at their house when this call from Sean came in. And he was seemingly falling apart.

Sophia, I'm tripping. Oh, okay. I don't want these people to think that I did anything, man.

Whatever they're thinking, you didn't do anything, huh?

These people are asking me questions.

Everybody's thinking. The recording's a little hard to understand in places, but Sean tells Sophia he doesn't want anyone to think he did anything. He's being asked questions, Sophia tells him everyone's being questioned right now. What am I supposed to do?

Sean?

Sean? Yes? Calm down. Calm down, okay? I've tried to picture what it must have been like being on all sides of this call.

Sean, what are you saying?

You are really scaring me. Stop it. Relax.

Stop it right now, okay? But Sean doesn't stop. He dances around whatever exactly was done by whoever for about four minutes, until, finally, he says this. If these people find out that we had anything to do with this. Excuse me?

What? If these people find out that we had anything to do with this, we're going to go to jail. Sean, what are you saying? Okay. Sean?

And then Sophia asks.

Sophia, I'm tripping. Do you need me to get you an attorney?

Do you need me to get you an attorney? No, I just need some help, man.

I just.

I don't want to go down for something I didn't do, Sean says. Okay, I'm tripping out, Sophia.

What am I supposed to do?

We'll be coming back to this call, just like the attorneys in this case would keep coming back to this call, in part because of what happened next. Sophia placed a call of her own to Detective Rick Buckner.

She said, I just received a strange phone call from my brother. You know, I don't know what's going on. And she kind of downplayed the whole thing. Wait a minute, do you think he's involved in the death of his brother?

No,

She didn't come right out and say, my brother killed Marlene Johnson.

But she did say she'd head down to the police station to share more of what she'd heard. Or at least, that's all she thought she'd be doing.

I am not in there for very long when this thing takes an awful turn.

When Sophia says they, she mostly means Rick Buckner, who took the lead in this interview.

Phony, if you will. It sounded phony, the whole thing sounded phony.

I felt like I was being attacked. I felt confused. I was afraid. The interrogation lasted for probably about four hours. And then they said that they were charging me with murder.

Sophia was fingerprinted and booked into Clark County Jail.

And this female officer said, I booked your brother and he said you did it. And I thought, what? She said, yeah, he's the one saying you did it. Don't you know this information? He's telling everybody you did it, girl.

Ready for the next witness.

Yes, state police, Sean Correa.

It's now April of 2003.

Come forward, please.

A jury of nine women and three men are about to hear what happened the day of Marlene Johnson's murder.

Raise your right hand.

From the brother who says he witnessed it.

You swear to tell the truth in today's proceedings?

Yes, I do.

All right, have a seat.

Sean is on the stand for three and a half hours. So I'll summarize his version of events. You're going to want to listen closely.

Do you recall what time of day you left your residence to go over to Sophia's?

It was about 8.

Sean says he had gone to Sophia's house early that morning with his girlfriend, Susie. He was technically married to another woman at the time and Sophia had agreed to help him file for divorce.

She told me she would help me fill out the paperwork and she would give me the money to file the papers.

Money that Sophia suddenly realizes she doesn't have on her. She tells Sean that the money is in the pocket of a coat that she left at her in-law's house the day before. Sean says that Susie then drives the three of them over to Marlene's house to go get the coat.

Did you know the way out there?

No.

Who was directing the route to be taken?

Sophia.

Susie testifies to that as well, by the way. No one was home at the Johnsons. Sophia's father-in-law was at work, Marlene was at yoga, then the grocery store. Sophia has a key, but after about 10 minutes in the house, she comes out without the coat. She can't find it.

Wait a minute, can you pull over so I can think for a second?

Sophia proposes a new plan, according to Sean. Sean, I'll give you more money later if you call out of work, come back to my in-law's house with me, and help me clean their carpets.

I thought about it for a minute. I didn't miss no work before, and, you know, I figured I can get the money, go file for my divorce, and have it all taken care of in a day. So I said, okay.

This is kind of a weird plot point, right? Skipping work to clean carpets at your sister's in-law's house? It's a fishy story that either Sophia cooked up for Sean or that Sean cooked up for detectives and was now feeding to a jury. Did you then, in fact,

go back to the Johnson residence?

Yes, we did.

Again, no one was home. Pretty soon after they get there, Sean says, Sophia admits, there are no carpets to clean. I made it up. And she starts looking around for something. Her coat, with the money in the pocket, Sean assumes.

But then.

She said that Marlene had $10,000 stashed in some place in her house.

$10,000.

Sophia was on the upper level and she hustled by me and she told me wait right here.

Sean says he did, as he was told while Sophia went somewhere downstairs. About five minutes went by and then, Sean says, he heard a weird noise.

It was kind of like a low screech in a sense.

Did you hear any words that you understood?

Uh,

no. I just got a little curious.

So Sean got up and went downstairs to the ground level of the house, where he thought the low screech must have come from. And that, Sean says, is when things really took a turn.

As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I felt something wet drop on me. I wasn't sure what it was. I wiped my face and I just kind of wiped in on my shirt. and as I was looking and as I turned to the left, I seen someone laying on the floor and there was blood all over the place and there was someone standing over them. The person had something in their hand a long object and as I looked,

I seen

the person standing over the body on the floor. strike it one time.

Striking the body on the floor? Yes.

Sean says he didn't recognize the person standing over Marlene's body at first. But as he ran towards a sliding door he heard the person yell his name.

And when I turned around, I saw the person standing over the body coming toward me.

This day in court. Sophia told me was the first time she was hearing Sean tell this story.

I looked at the jury and I could see that they were listening to what he was saying, but I couldn't move. I couldn't cry. I couldn't scream. I was paralyzed.

And this

It turned out to be my sister.

This was the first time Shane was hearing his brother's testimony. On my laptop, in his apartment during that particular visit. that left him restless. Are there any initial gut reactions one way or the other?

I mean really, this person is so unrecognizable that you see their outline committing a brutal crime and you're like who is that? That's odd, right? It doesn't seem to pass the smell test.

We kept watching.

I probably said like

what's happening. From there, Sean says Sophia told him to get into the passenger seat of Marlene's van and keep his head down.

I was really scared. She told me just to stay quiet and not say anything, and you know, I was crying. I didn't know what else to do.

Sophia drove them back to her house, Sean says. She could see blood on his undershirt and pants, so Sophia took the shirt and gave Sean a pair of her husband Brad's pants to change into. Then, Sean says she instructed him to drive the van to a particular parking lot where he'd be able to catch a bus home.

She also let me know that my daughter lived not too far from where she was.

Did you take that as an implied threat?

You know, I wasn't sure how to take that. I didn't know what to do. At this point, I just figured I better just listen.

I wanted to tear his head off. His body. Just the blatant lies. With me in the courtroom, with him, he could say such awful things about me.

Sean, did you kill Marlene Johnson?

No.

Thank you. No further questions at this time.

Anything about the way that he's speaking that jumps out at you?

He sounds coached, which makes sense. You have to prepare for trial, so that's just good.

work. Shane told me that hearing his brother's version of events finally left him more confused.

There are a lot of details. To me, it sounds like something you would see on TV for someone who's coming up with a story.

Sean's audience in the courtroom that day didn't get much insight into who the Mariah's siblings were.

The way Sean was presented to a jury, it was as if he'd never been.

in trouble. Or who they were to each other and how they got.

that way. I don't know if I'm just because I'm so close to them that I would be shocked.

But that's where I'm going, and I'm taking you with me to places the jury didn't get to go, to, people they never heard from. I have no doubt in my mind that he killed that woman. I have no doubt because he almost did it to me.

Thank you for listening.