Beyond All Repair Ch. 6: Hope

WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Basically, he says, I believe Sophia is stealing from me. I went on a rampage. I felt wronged, I felt cheated, and it felt slimy. I don't think you should marry her. And of course, I went ahead and in turn did the exact same thing.

You know, she was looking for money. That was her big motivation. right there. The tornado just kept getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, this is the walls closing in, man.

My primary concern was making sure this money was paid back and that this baby that I'm pregnant with would be okay.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I have been handed the verdict forms by the jury. And the matter of state versus Sophia Johnson, cause number 021-01770-3..

It's April 9th, 2003.

It turned out to be my sister.

Now, after dozens of hours in the deliberation room, these dozen people have reached a decision as to whether or not Sophia Johnson, beyond a reasonable doubt, bludgeoned Marlene to death.

I already felt like I was doing a death walk. It was so weird because I had walked these hallways now so many times.

Sophia remembers being escorted down a dimly lit hallway, down three flights of stairs, down another hallway, to an elevator.

And when you get out, it's the courthouse. It felt like it was a full house.

It was. People shifting nervously, looking around, whispering to each other. I've watched this footage many times, thanks to those VHS tapes of the trial Sophia sent me. What do they think, I wonder, as I try to make out the grainy faces in the gallery? Is that Grace, Sophia's mom, sitting next to the woman in the yellow jacket?

Therese looked over at me and she said, let's not kid ourselves. This is not going to be good.

Therese is furiously taking notes. She looks pissed. A lot has already gone down that day in court. I'll get there. But right now, the verdict.

We, the jury, find the defendant, Sophia S. Johnson, guilty of the crime of felony murder.

And I said guilty. And I just, I cried. I couldn't even help it.

The camera stays on the judge. But Sophia says she bowed her head. She thinks Therese may have squeezed her shoulders. And then they listened to those 12 jurors reiterate their decision, one by one.

Ms. Moore, was this your verdict in the verdict of the jury?

Yes.

And Mr. Miller, was this your verdict in the verdict of the jury? Ms. Cox, was this your verdict in the verdict of the jury? Yes.

Yes. Mr. McDowell.

Sophia was taken back to the elevator, back down the hallway, up the three flights of stairs, down the other hallway, back to jail. She says one of the officers escorting her tried to comfort her.

And he said, you know, Johnson, juries get it wrong all the time. They just do. Ask your attorney to get you an appellate attorney. And I said, why bother? He said, because as long as you're alive, there's hope.

I'm Anne-Marie Sievertson. From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair. Or is it? Chapter 6, Hope.

I have known the Johnson family for over 13 years. When they say Marlene was the glue that held this family together, that is no exaggeration.

A couple months after the verdict was read, Sophia was called back to court for sentencing.

And they had something called victim's impact statements. I'd never heard of that before.

This is when the people most affected by a crime get to speak to the judge, and, if they want, directly to the decidedly guilty person.

To add insult to injury, it was Danielle that read it on behalf of the family.

I have seen them shed more tears than any one person should have to shed in a lifetime.

The reading of these statements wasn't included in the trial footage, but I do have written copies from the court records. So you're hearing a colleague of mine read the words of a woman named Danielle Rustig, described at the top of her statement as a friend of the Johnson family. But in recent months, she'd become more than a friend to Brad Johnson, Sophia's husband.

You gotta know, I loved that.

Brad filed for divorce from Sophia just weeks after his mother was killed. But by this point, more than a year later, the divorce still hadn't been finalized.

I had still loved my husband at that time.

You may remember that Sophia was six months pregnant when Marlene Johnson was killed in January of 2002.

The day that Marlene's son has to tell his now one-year-old son that it was his mom who killed his grandmother, that is when the tragedy will be lived all over again.

She had my husband. She had my son. She had the life that was supposed to be mine.

Every year, Sophia makes a video like this for her son, Ethan.

I hope that wherever you are, that you know just how much you're loved.

Ethan has never seen these videos. Sophia's never sent them. Wouldn't even know where to send them. It's possible, Ethan will never see them.

It is hard to have a conversation with a person you've never met that you love so much.

And it's possible. Sophia will keep having these one-sided conversations, monologues, really, for years to come. But there's something she has for Ethan that no one else does.

I cannot help but go back to the day that you were born.

The story of his actual birthday.

It's the only real memory of you that I have.

I know this story. Not the version she hopes to tell Ethan someday, the one that starts in a hospital. The version I heard starts in a jail cell.

Being pregnant with him while incarcerated, truly saved my life when this happened. It was too big, it was too overwhelming. I just truly, I wanted to disappear. So the only thing I could focus on was keeping this baby safe and healthy.

Sophia says she was taken to the hospital the night before Ethan was born, after three days of contractions in the jail's medical ward. Two male correctional officers brought her there and stayed in her hospital room the whole time, while an armed guard stood just outside the door.

One of the officers, he was just a douchebag.

Eventually, Sophia says, a nurse came in and let her take a shower.

I was not allowed to take a shower for three days while I was in the medical unit and really wanted to just feel clean.

As Sophia was getting out of the stall, she says she saw something startling. Herself, in a full-length mirror, for the first time since being arrested three months earlier.

I couldn't believe how large my stomach was.

The next morning, Ethan Marley Johnson was born. Marley is a tribute to his grandmother, Marlene.

I heard his tears turn into a whimper and then silence followed. I checked his fingers and his toes to make sure they were all there. I never stopped talking. the whole time. He was quiet and his eyes were open.

This is an excerpt of an essay Sophia wrote when Ethan was about four or five months old, she tells me. She wrote it in jail, but she recorded it within the last few years. I didn't know this essay or recording existed. Shane, Sophia's youngest brother, told me about it. Initially, Sophia didn't want anyone other than Ethan hearing it.

Which, if the jail had known, the doctors and the nurses would have gotten in trouble. Because they didn't want me to even hold him. They said, take him immediately.

One of the doctors offered to take a few pictures, which Sophia has sent to me. They're the only pictures Sophia has of her and Ethan together. In one of them, she beams down at the little red-faced peanut resting on her shoulder. Sophia looks proud, at ease, and for a moment, totally unaware of what was coming. Here's more from that essay.

When the midwife touched the top of my shoulders, I looked up. We have to take him now, Sophia. Why, I asked. Brad is here, she said. He's waiting to see his son.

It wasn't just Brad there, Sophia told me. It was Brad and his new girlfriend, Danielle, whom he'd started dating sometime in the three months since Sophia's arrest.

They were at the hospital already waiting for him at the nursery. And every time they'd come in my room, they would ask, is there anything we can do? I would always say, just go, kiss my son.

Two days later, Sophia and Ethan both left the hospital. Ethan went home with Brad and Danielle. Sophia went back to jail.

This is not goodbye, Ethan. This is, I'll see you later.

I will never forget what it was like hearing Sophia tell me about the birth of her son. And, as much as I've tried to set this story aside, when considering everything else— her brother Sean's testimony, the Johnsons' anecdotes about her, the embezzlement— it is hard to understand how a woman who loves this much could take another person's life. It doesn't mean she didn't.

No sentence would be strong enough for Sophia, but we hope that justice will prevail in this matter.

One year later, Danielle, the woman who would go on to marry Sophia's soon-to-be ex-husband and raise her son, was delivering a statement in court trying to ensure, on behalf of the Johnsons, that Sophia wouldn't be seeing that son for a good long time. And Therese, Sophia's lawyer, tried to brace her.

She said the sentence and recommendation, Sophia, is really high, and this judge is going to give you every single day of it. I said, well, what is it? She said, 517 months.

43 years. Sophia wouldn't just be missing Ethan's childhood. He'd be middle-aged by the time she got out of prison. As the judge announced the decision, she added, she never needs to be on the streets again.

What he said is, I hope, for your sake, you didn't do this, because you're not going to like prison.

After her sentencing for the murder, Sophia was moved from the medium security part of the prison to maximum. And the level of competition in there, she says, was fierce.

They were doing three-legged races. They were doing egg toss. And it was officer and inmate playing on the same team.

Shortly after getting back to prison, the facility was having a field day of sorts, Sophia says. There. she was, standing across from a sergeant, in prison, about to do an egg toss.

And he's like, OK, what's your name? Johnson? OK, Johnson, I like to win. Do you like to win? Because if not, you're going to need to switch with your neighbor.

Prison wasn't all one big egg toss, Sophia says. But I was honestly shocked at the way she described it.

Great job, great roommate. I'm in classes that I love. I have a life.

Sophia worked in the kitchen, which was perfect, because this woman loves to cook. She says she took a ceramics class. She was in the chess club.

They had toastmasters, and I did that and loved it.

It's a speech club, basically. Women at this prison were also allowed to wear makeup and plain clothes. No more head-to-toe monochrome. They'd have picture days in the prison's gymnasium. Sophia's shown me a few pictures from her time there.

And she said, I swear to God, I hate to say this, but you look like the poster child for prison. I'm like, what does that even mean? She's like, I don't know, but it's just, how are you doing so good? And I didn't know how to answer her, because I am doing good. I'm doing great.

It was a world without Ethan, her son. But it was also the best she could probably hope for, given that she'd be spending the next 43 years of her life there. But then, about a year and a half into her sentence, Sophia got a phone call in prison.

And I picked up the phone, and Therese was excited.

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When you're driving down this road, I might plan on killing somebody.

A rock.

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I don't have any opinion on that.

Season 3 of In the Dark is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I believe that what occurred yesterday is an interference with Ms. Johnson's right to a fair trial.

It essentially amounted to reconstituting the original 12 jurors.

because we had a juror who was out of the same mindset as the majority of the rest of the jurors.

Therese is alleging that this juror was dismissed because she was preventing the jury from reaching a verdict. They were deadlocked, in other words, which would normally lead to a mistrial. The foreperson, or lead juror, said the dismissed juror was being difficult, emotional, uncooperative. The dismissed juror herself told Therese. She indicated under no uncertain terms that that was an absolute lie.

I refuse to stop the jury deliberations. I don't see this as being extraordinary and striking circumstances that would indicate a substantial injustice at this point.

At this point. But at a different point, nearly two years later, a different judge would find otherwise. That judge would also rule that the bailiff in Sophia's 2003 trial had had improper communications with the foreperson of her jury. An injustice had occurred, this ruling indicated. Sophia, amazingly, was getting a second chance.

So I was doing chemical analysis, I was doing trace evidence, I was doing blood analysis, I was doing firearms work.

Kay then worked for the state of Washington's crime lab before going out on his own in the 90s. And on one of my reporting trips out west, Kay showed me around his crime lab. Yeah, wow, look at this. Oh man, office and lab all in one. But just the downstairs.

I've participated in roughly 750.

Kay Sweeney didn't have much time or evidence to work with in Sophia Johnson's case. But he did have a piece of the wall next to where Marlene's body was found. And the fireplace tongs used in the attack. And after analyzing those two pieces, Kay had an interesting discovery to share with the jury. Something that hadn't come up at all in Sophia's first trial.

Yes.

And what was your conclusion?

I see evidence of left-handed use of the weapon on the scene.

Can you explain? Left-handed use of the weapon. This is based on two things, Sweeney says. The first is what are called skip marks. Marks left on the wall by the fireplace, tongs as they were, swung.

Right. Left wall.

Given the position of Marlene's body, essentially parallel to the left wall, with her head closest to the corner, and the direction of the skip marks, which appear to go from left to right and up to down, Kay's assessment is that the assailant had to be left-handed.

You see the angle?

Yeah.

It's like that. It's not like this for a right-hander. It's like that for a left-hander.

Huh. And do we know if her brother Sean was left-handed? Were you able to find that out?

I wasn't told, but apparently he was ambidextrous. He did things both ways.

Okay.

But she is not.

I can confirm, having watched Sophia take notes in many a video call with me, that she is not left-handed. I cannot confirm that Sean is ambidextrous, though that is what his ex-wife Cynthia told me. But Kay had more to show me, and it was hard to look at.

So here's the layout.

We're looking at a photo of the crime scene. Marlene's body had been removed by the time this picture was taken, but the trace of her is still very much there. There's a large bloodstain on the carpet near the corner where her head was, and curving up the wall, the left wall, mostly, from that area on the floor, is a lot of blood.

The crime laboratory was saying all this stuff is cast-off.

The state's crime laboratory, Kay means, as in the prosecution's forensic analysis.

It's not cast-off, that's blood spatter.

What do they mean, cast-off?

Cast-off is when you swing a weapon and you cause an injury to a person, then you get blood transferred to the weapon, right?

Yep.

So when you swing it again, the blood comes off and is deposited on the wall or whatever furniture in the region. Not these kinds of things, which are arcing. It's arcing this way, arcing this way. That's not the pattern of a swing of a weapon. It comes from down here, up.

Huh. Impact spatter. Blood that traveled directly from Marlene's body upon impact to the wall. The spatter also arcs up to the left on the wall next to Marlene, like the skip marks created by the tongs. Those skip marks offered Kay another important clue, he told me.

So a skip mark gives you the maximum height of that person's ability to strike the wall. Okay. Okay, for Sophia, she's a lot shorter than the guy.

Right, her brother, who is what I've found about 5'11", and Sophia is about 5'3", 5'4".

Yeah.

Kay points to a particular skip mark in the crime scene photo. that's about three quarters of the way up the wall, to my very unscientific eye.

I can calculate how far that skip mark is above the floor, and there's one right there. That's way too high for her to have created.

Were you able to render a conclusion as to the probable height of the perpetrator? What was that conclusion?

I could determine that someone my height, around 5'11", could do that. A person in the range of 5'4", probably not. likely they could do that.

Now, not everyone was buying Kay's forensic analysis, and how certain he seemed about evidence that often is considered less so. I have heard that blood splatter. evidence is, can be dicey, can be tricky, can be unreliable.

Well, it's not unreliable, the evidence is not unreliable, it's the interpretations that can be unreliable.

Kay's been accused in the past of mishandling evidence, altering it even. He says, this is all smear by bitter opponents. And he stressed to me, it's never mattered to him which side he was working for on a particular case, that he's beholden only to something money can't buy or tamper with. The truth.

Many times, I find something that's spectacular and I report it to the defense and they say, well, that's no help, you're not going to testify. in my case. I said, oh, okay. The defense has hired me to find things, I don't think that way, I'm focused on the evidence.

And in the case of Sophia Johnson, Kay says, the evidence was clear.

A person, her height couldn't have done that.

Mostly.

Obviously, it doesn't mean she wasn't involved.

Kay Sweeney's forensic analysis in this second trial suggested a very different version of events than the one Sean had given in Sophia's first trial. A story told by evidence, he said, of a 5'11", left-handed or ambidextrous assailant. Not a 5'4", six-month pregnant one. But was Sophia involved? To the surprise of everyone, and the dismay of her attorney, she was about to answer that question for herself.

You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Yes.

If you, please proceed.

Coming up, Sophia takes the stand. But the story she tells the jury is different than the one she's told me. You lie to the police a lot, don't you? Yes.

What the hell? I don't know, I feel like I got punched in the face. I knew that my life was in my own hands, but I didn't know what the truth was anymore.

That's next time.

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