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There was really no connection between Sean Coraya and the victim, Marlene. The only connection is Sophia Johnson.

There's a reason this little son of a bitch who I happen to be related to is up here lying. This is a story that was concocted by Coraya to save himself from the charge of murder in the first He would do anything to save his own skin, so I definitely don't trust his testimony at all. He's somebody that's manipulative, a pathological liar. He almost killed me. I could have been his first victim. Was there any physical evidence connecting Sophia to the crime scene the way that there was the drop of blood on Sean's boot? Physical evidence, no. It's December of 2022. I'm in Vancouver, Washington, about to meet a woman who'd warned me in advance. She's a hugger. All right.

Hello there.

It's really nice to meet you.

Oh, my goodness. I've been looking for- Look at this place. Oh, God. It's a museum.

It's a museum. I've barely stepped foot into this basement apartment, but it is a feast for the eyes. Handwoven rugs, pottery, animal skulls, house plants, and an aroma coming from a room to the left. I smell some incense, maybe?

I made pumpkin spice muffins this morning.

Oh, that could be it. That could be it. This hugging muffin maker is Lynn Page, and the room to the left is basically the Everything Room. There's a music space with a synthesizer from the '70s, an office zone with a desk and a computer, an art making area with table and various fabrics and fibers.

There's always a work in progress, and so it's always a mess. Now, let me show you this.

Lynn walks me over a couple steps to a particularly impressive work in progress. Oh, my gosh. This is a huge macramé. What is that? Two feet? It's 23 inches. It's 23 inches. It's plus extra string.

I'm not done with it because I'm putting fringe on it now. The tree is done. This This is what I'm making for Dick and Jean for Christmas.

Dick and Jean, a couple Lynn is friends with. Dick is short for Richard Johnson, the widower of Marlene Johnson. Lynn has known Richard since junior high, and she's only become better friends with him since then. 23-inch, handmade macramé friends. But Lynn was also a confidante of Marlene's when she was alive, and her closeness with both of the Johnson's offers a window into a marriage and a family that not many who know about Marlene's murder have ever gotten to peer into before.

We didn't know whether or not they were going to separate. And that's where that $10,000 stash comes in.

I'm Amarie Sievertsen from WBUR and Zsp Media. This is beyond all repair. Chapter 4, The Husband. Ten months before stepping foot in Lynn's Museum of an Apartment, she left me a voicemail.

My name is Lynn Page, and I understand that you've been in conversation with Brad and Richard Johnson recently. They suggested that I give you a call.

The irony of Richard leading me to Lynn is that later in this episode, Lynn will lead me back to Richard Johnson, who you will get to hear from. But when I first reached out to him, he wasn't sure he wanted to talk to me. In fact, I'd say he was pretty sure he didn't want to, or at least didn't want to be recorded. But Richard told me about a couple people who might want to talk to me, friends of the family, one of whom attended every single day of Sophia's trial in 2003 and had taken detailed notes.

You can return my call if you're interested in talking about this The A-Frame murder, which is the name of my book.

A book? The A-Frame murder? Hell, yes, I was interested in talking to Lynn.

Frankly, I think you should read it.

Hell, yes, I wanted to read it. Lynn emailed me a PDF of her unpublished opus, The A-Frame murder. It's fiction, technically. Lynn changed all the names. Marlene is Maureen. Sophia is Sonja. Sean is, wait for it, Shane, confusingly enough, which I'm sure actual Shane will cringe at hearing. Lynn added some other embellishments and signature flourishes. Note, like a gust of cold air through a warm room, his extended sigh blew across our silent attention. But the details of the trial itself are based off of pages and pages of shorthand transcriptions of witness testimony and notes, pages that Lynn had typed up and filed away until 2020, when it occurred to her that Sophia and Brad's son, the one Sophia had given birth to in jail, had just turned 18. The time felt right to finally do something with those notes. So she wrote the book. I read all 239 pages of it and hopped back on the phone with Lynn about a month later. Why did you decide to attend the trial?

Well, because Marlene was my friend and because I was the only one who was going to do it, who would be able to attend every single day.

Lynn was a self-employed massage therapist at the time. She gave Richard massages at his house every other week.

I'm like his sister that he never had, who calls it like it is and tells him what he needs to hear.

With Marlene, Lynn had more of a spiritual sisterhood.

My time with her was mostly in the teepee, and we'd just chat about any old thing going on.

The teepee. Lynn says she has Cherokee ancestry, and she's had several teepees over the years, including a 22-foot tall one that Marlene and Richard let her set up on their property. You've heard of a man cave? Well, this was a lady lodge where Lynn says she and Marlene drummed and chanted, and where Marlene would open up about problems in her marriage to Richard.

As a couple, in those days, he was different than is now.

Lynn says the Johnson's were on the verge of divorce more than once. At a certain point, Marlene started putting money aside.

She had done what we, friends of hers, counsel her to do in case there was a breakup of the marriage. She needed to be able to take care of herself.

Lynn was pretty open about the existence of tension in Marlene and Richard's marriage, generally. But when it came to Richard and the source of the tension.

She worried about his drinking and his gambling. Now, more than that, it's hard for me to say much about that.

Richard's drinking and gambling. There was clearly more to the story here, and I was hesitant to press further during this first phone call. But as I told Lynn, I had another call to make to someone named Lynn Duh, whom Richard had also suggested I talk to. You need to talk her.

Okay, get her on the phone. She'll dump everything. Oh, God, I love her.

I love a talker.

Mostly what I remember about her were the birds. She loved the birds so much.

This is Linda Dillard, who says Marlene spoiled the birds both outside her house and inside. She had one particularly memorable pet bird.

That's what the bird said all the time. She loved that bird, and that bird would rip your nose off, but not hers.

Linda was the Johnson's house cleaner her. She'd come every other week, and Marlene was usually home at the time.

I was there four or five hours, and we talked about everything you can imagine.

I could imagine a fair bit after talking to Lynn, but I was hoping to hear more about Marlene and Richard's marriage. Linda also knew about the money Marlene had set aside.

That was in case things got weird and she wanted to leave.

Does that have to do with Richard's gambling and drinking problem?

Yeah. I also was in a battered relationship for several years with my- I'm so sorry to hear that. Well, I got out. I got out. But we used to talk about that stuff because we had things in common like that, and we could just tell each other anything.

When you say you had things in common, was Mar Marlene being abused?

Oh, God. Physically, I don't believe so. But they would have some pretty rough arguments.

Marlene and Richard.

Yeah.

This all had an eerie feeling to it. Big arguments, a marriage on the rocks, a stash of money set aside by a woman who ends up getting killed in her own home with no obvious sign of a break-in. Linda's felt this, too.

When it all came down, people always think the husband did it. That thought came across my mind a few times just because you're wondering and wondering.

It seemed like Linda and Lynn might be holding back. I didn't blame them. I was a stranger on the phone on the other side of the country until What's in the hummus?

This is great. It really is. Yeah.

I wasn't. Linda, Lynn, and I were eating salad and bean dip together, knee to knee, around a small table in the everything room in Lynn's apartment.

I went easy on the garlic because I didn't want you to have to worry about breathing on people in this closed space.

That would be more your problem at that point. Exactly. I'd be worried on your behalf. We waited to dig into the topic at hand until after we dug begin to lunch. And then we started just talking about their friend, Marlene, their very generous friend.

The chair you're sitting in came from her. That credenza with all my cookbooks in it came from her.

Some of the handwoven rugs I'd unceremoniously stepped on coming into Lynn's place, those came from Marlene, too. And Linda has a big yellow bread bowl in her house that used to be hers.

I used to tease her all the time about it When you die, I get that bowl.

And she gave it to you.

Well, Dick ended up giving it to me. Oh, he did? Yeah.

A smaller but maybe more poignant gesture are the feathers Marlene would give each of them, left behind by skybound visitors to her yard.

Just good. She was good. And crappy things kept happening to her. And then ultimately, the worst thing happened to her. If you knew her, you just can't imagine that anybody could do that to her.

When you said bad things kept happening to Marlene, Linda, what were you referring to?

Just stuff in life. That just the regular, are you having a good day or are you having a bad day? Those little things. Except dicks drinking and gambling. That was an ongoing deal. I wasn't going to go there. I've already breached that dam. I wasn't going to go there.

But there we were, breaching that dam together.

It caused her great anguish. I told her many times So you just get rid of him. No. She stood by her man. But she did listen to those of us who were encouraging her to get her own credit cards, bank account, establish herself. That was what she was supposed to be saving for her possible exit from that marriage.

Marlene's separate bank account had come up in one of my unrecorded phone calls with Richard. He told me that Marlene was just saving up for a new heat pump for their house.

Was that the agreed-upon narrative? I don't know that story, but I'm sure- Dick did not know about her bank account that was hers. Sure. And whatever she told him, if he found out, was bullshit, Lynn's expression suggested.

There are secrets that Linda has kept well beyond Marlene's grave and will likely take to her own.

See, even now, I wouldn't talk about it.

Now, Linda and Lynn have nothing nice to say about Sophia.

She played the whole damn family.

She did. They told me she came across as brady and materialistic, that they heard stories from Marlene about Sophia getting caught in lies, being unkind to animals, and having a temper.

She was just a bitch.

But these friends also want to know what Sophia has told me about her backstory, about Marlene pain and about the murder. What she said to me is, as long as they think I've done this, then they're not looking for who actually did this.

Which is very true. That is very true. And that's what makes it a cold case. It's listed in Vancouver as a cold case. Is it? Yeah. Shit. If somebody got away with this horrendous thing, they're very clever, whoever that might be. So you're going to have to be really good at trying to figure out who's telling the truth and who's not telling the truth.

Would Richard Johnson tell me the truth? Starting with his relationship with Marlene as Linda and Lynn remember it? I was about to find out. More in a minute. Up First achieves the rare one-two punches of being short and thorough, national and international, fact-based and personable. Every morning, we take the three biggest stories of the day and explain why they matter. We do it all in less than 15 minutes. So you can start your day a little more in the know than when you went to sleep. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. Hey, it's Amari. You've heard me mention that this series, Beyond All Repair, was born out of another podcast I make called Endless Thread, and I co-host that show with Ben Brock Johnson. Hi. Ben, tell the good people what the heck Endless Thread is. It's me and you solving internet mysteries. Yeah. Telling untold histories and other wild stories that originate online. Yeah. And you can listen any of the 200 plus episodes of Endless Thread that Amari and I have made wherever you're listening to this podcast. That's Endless Thread from WBUR. Okay, so it is a spray situation.

I'm assuming so.

I know. How would they get it so perfect? Hi. Hi. That's Jean. Hi, Jean. Hi, Amari. See, she got your name, right? She did. Lynn and I have pulled up to a therapist's office on a residential street in Vancouver, not far from her house. Jean, Richard Johnson's girlfriend, is outside waiting for us. This is where Jean and Richard suggested we meet, which makes sense. I don't expect everyone to invite me into their museum of a home and feed me garlicy bean dip. Certainly not when I'm about to ask them uncomfortable things. I'm Amory. I'm sorry for the cold. It's a warmer-I know. I offer Richard a cold hand, but he greets me warmly in his reserved soft-spoken way. He's narrower than the Richard I saw in trial footage from 20 years ago. Can you state your name and spell your last name for the record, please?

Richard M. Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-M. Your occupation, sir.

Well, I. Richard's in his late '70s when I make this visit. He Slurs his words a bit, he warns me. Slurred words were the least of my concerns. I was predicting this interview to be unpredictable. Lynn had told me that Richard can go on and on about his wife being murdered, but also that he wants this to all go away. The vibe in the room feels a little like an intervention. Like Richard probably doesn't want to be there and is only talking to me as a favor to Lynn or Jean or both. But I'd waited a full year for Richard to ready to go on the record with me. I'd flown across the country. It's now or never to talk to him about Marlene. How did you meet her?

I met her over at Jimmy's house one time. Jim was a friend, and I said, Man, that's a good-looking woman. And then I saw her another time.

She had the most wonderful dimples.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I can see that. That's Lynn chiming in, helping Richard along. I had asked him to bring any photos of Marlene that he might want me to see. He brought four or five of her old driver's licenses. An interesting choice. But Marlene didn't take a license photo the way most people, or at least the way I take a license photo. She looks casually perfect in all of them. Cheery, youthful, fair skin with black curly hair that's in pigtails in one of the photos, matching dark eyes and the sweetest smile, as if she'd been genuinely happy to be at the DMV. And yet, the most wonderful dimples. The second time Richard saw Marlene was on Christmas Day, again at his friend Jim's house. They were in their early 20s at the time.

Marlene showed up with Brad, one-year-old baby.

Richard Richard Johnson might be dad to Brad, but he's not his biological father.

She was estranged from her husband. He was a bum. He was in the Navy, and he was screwing around, and that seems to be common for Navy guys.

The third time he ran into Marlene. She did not have a one-year-old in her arms.

I was out at the Longhorn, crawling with the tavern.

Marlene was there with a friend whom Richard also knew.

I'm a pretty shy person. If I'm I don't just talk very easily to people I don't know, but I knew them. And so I sat down and talked, and we proceeded to talk until they closed the place. And then we had Chinese dinner at 4:00 in the morning.

That's how all the best memories are made. Yeah. I thumbed through Marlene's driver's licenses again, looking at them through a slightly different lens now. A young mother who had already been through a broken heart in marriage, finding new love and a new iteration of family. I studied her eyes from picture to picture, looking for signs of hope or pain or premonition. A stretch, I know, and certainly not something I was going to say out loud. But it's hard to look at a photo of a person who doesn't know they're going to die an unimaginably brutal death and not want to whisper some warning into their two-dimensional ear. What came out of my mouth in the moment was, she has really kind eyes.

Yes.

She's beautiful. Yeah.

Absolutely. She aged really well.

Yeah.

At least up until 58 years old.

Richard walked me through the day of Marlene's murder and the immediate aftermath.

I was at the office at midday or so. Then at that point in my life, sometimes I took a long lunch and went up to Lucena and gambled.

Lucena, Washington, about 20 minutes from Vancouver, where there's a cluster of casinos. I wasn't expecting Richard to be the first to bring up his gambling. I was glad he did, although I also wasn't expecting him to talk about it in the present tense.

Everybody's wondering why I don't just throw all my money away gambling, but actually, I have luck occasionally, more than occasionally. Sometimes I would win four or $5,000 in one hand. It's a part of my life, and I keep it under control.

I had heard that Richard had gone to the casino the day Marlene died. He may have been mid-card game when the attack was happening, in fact. Detective Rick Buckner had surveillance footage.

I believe we had Richard at one of the casinos gambling. Okay, but again, was it his twin brother? We don't know.

Pause. Richard has a twin brother, identical, who also lived in the area and who also gambles. So was the person they saw on the casino's surveillance footage at the time of the murder Richard Johnson? Or was it the nearly indistinguishable David Johnson?

I mean, there's little things in the investigation that we could never really pin down.

Richard says he went to the casino for an hour or two around lunchtime that day and then back to his office. And then in the late afternoon.

And all of a sudden, a phone call came in and my secretary starts going nuts and just, You got to go home. And so I drove home. And as I got near the house before I rounded the bin where you could see the house, I just started crying. I knew something was bad. I just knew it I'm true enough.

There were a few moments like this during my conversation with Richard, where The emotion overflowed so suddenly it was almost startling. He told me he suffers from PTSD.

Well, it was shock. I mean, you get them up there and the Sheriff's there, and they got a chaplain to talk to you. And you can't even step foot on the property. All they wanted to do was find out if I was involved in it. For a couple of weeks, that's where they were at. And that's about as frustrating as you can imagine because they're wasting their energy. Instead of finding the person that might have killed my wife, they're looking at me. We were looking at everybody at that point. Police are pretty hard. There's not a lot of compassion there.

But as Linda said earlier, people often do suspect the husband when a spouse is murdered. Especially if there's a history of problems in the marriage, which Richard was also open with me about, and about supposedly trying to fix them.

Probably the most significant counseling that I had was for alcohol abuse. The first I voluntarily did that and was sober for five years. Otherwise, I would have lost my marriage. I was having some issues with alcohol and stress. Lawyering is a stressful job.

Richard's a real estate attorney, was a real estate attorney. He stopped practicing law or even really believing in it as a result of how he feels the system has failed him time and again, beginning with failing Marlene. Richard refutes the idea that her murder is a cold case.

No, it's a botched case. That's all it is. I was so full of anger that I knew I was unfit to practice law, and so I just surrendered my license.

You stepped away from law because you lost a faith?

I have nothing but contempt for the law at this time in my life. Nothing but contempt for the law and the people that earn their living off of it. And then, of course, they put me up on the stand and have me testify.

And, sir, when you were gambling on Tuesday, January eighth, isn't it true that you drank some black Russians at the New Phoenix?

That's what I told the detectives. That's what I told.

So is that the truth?

I told the detectives the truth. I had no reason to lie. Their lawyer was very effective at goading me, and I'm sure my temper came out, which has been exploited more than once. Didn't you know I was convicted of domestic violence for raising my voice? And so If they had any evidence at all that I was involved, that my temper would have led them to that. But obviously, I wasn't. I was out playing cards in the center at the time, and I had no motive. But I have a temper, and... I don't need to get into that sad chapter of the alleged domestic violence. That law is so flawed.

Don't go there, Dick.

All right.

You're on the record here.

It's over and done with now, finally.

I'm not going to go there either in this series, other than to acknowledge that Richard did have a domestic violence-related charge brought against him six years ago. It was in the relationship he was in before Jean. There was another relationship Richard Richard spoke openly about, the one with his son, Brad, which has been complicated at times. Richard raised Brad. They love each other. But I couldn't help but detect some degree of bitterness, maybe even distrust, because Brad brought Sophia into the Johnson family.

And as far as I'm concerned, she is the person who murdered my wife, and nobody's ever going to convince me otherwise.

Now, I don't think Richard blames Brad for Marlene's murder, but he does hold him accountable for things he didn't tell him and Marlene about Sophia, like the fact that she had been married once already. To be fair, Brad had, too. So had Marlene. But it was the deception that Richard told me he's still angry about today.

Not only her lying, but convincing Brad to lie.

After Marlene murder, Richard had an interesting conversation with a legal partner of his. This guy told Richard that he'd run into Brad and Sophia at the courthouse about a month before they got married.

He said, What are you doing here? Then, Well, Sophia is here to get her divorce finalized. Well, don't tell dad. That's the lie I'm talking about. I didn't talk to Brad for about two years.

I get why Richard would be unsettled by the secret keeping here, but I also don't think that's something you cut off contact with your son for years over unless there's a deeper unspoken sense of betrayal simmering below. Or maybe the therapist's office was having an effect on me. I had this conversation with Richard Johnson in December of 2022. Almost exactly a year later, he died suddenly, days before his 80th birthday. He'll never hear this, but it's still important to me to say, I don't think Richard Johnson killed Marlene. He may have had a temper. He had a history of addiction, and as much as he laid into Brad and Sophia for lies they told, it's quite possible he lied to Marlene at times about his gambling and alcohol use during their marriage. I don't know. I do know that I had the sense talking to Richard that I was in the presence of a man who was as scarred as he was flawed, who lost his wife of 32 years in the most nightmarish way and was never the same. I also think there's a chance Richard was wrong about Sophia being the person who murdered Marlene.

Linda and Lynn at least seem open to another explanation.

Because I still don't know for sure. None of us know for sure.

And as such, they left me with words of warning.

Be careful. You're digging in a place that's been very peaceful for a while. And if Sophia didn't do it, then you might dig up something that nobody wants you to dig up. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.

Dig.

And then I want to know. Yeah.

Moments after Linda left Lynn's apartment that day, she came hurrying back in with something in her hand, a large, brown and white feather that she'd found on the hood of her car. Marlene was here, she said. A sign, Linda thought that she'd been watching over our conversation. A sign of approval? I wish I knew. But I have kept digging. And the next spot to tell you about is one where most people didn't think to look. Hey, Brad, how's it going?

Oh, not bad.

Another peachy day. Another peachy day?

If anything were to happen to Richard or to Marlene who inherits it? Brad Johnson.

Next time, The Motive and the secret that Sophia and Brad may have been keeping together.

Who's married to Brad? Sophia Johnson.

So the embezelment started, and What year did I marry Brad?

I don't remember talking to Brad much about it, saying, It's your problem. I don't know a thing about it.

There's no erasing him from those pictures depositing the checks. Beyond All Repair is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR, and ZSP Media. It's written and reported by me, Amarie Sievertsen, and produced by Sophie Codner. Mix, sound design, and Original Scoring by Paul Wikus, Production Manager of WBUR Podcasts. Theme and Credits Music by me. Our managing producers are Summer Tajoshi for WBUR and Liz Stiles of ZSP Media. Our editors and executive producers are Ben Brock Johnson of WBUR and Zack Stuart-Pontier of Zsp Media. If you have questions about the case, the people at the center of this story, or anything else, we want to hear him. Email beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. You can send a voice memo, you can send a written message. You do you, beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. Do me a favor, will you? Eat a treat, go for a little walk, tell someone you love them, and tell them about this show in that order. Thank you for listening. Look at you making it all the way through the credits. Thank you for that. Just a quick reminder about our Beyond membership. You give 25 bucks to help support the show, and we give you access to an ad-free feed.

You're going to get extra episodes or Beyond episodes, as we're calling them. A little later in the series, you're going to get access to our final episodes early. So go to Wbur. Org/beyond, or there's a link in your show notes. Thank you so much. Look at you making it all the way through the credits. Thank you so much. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you about our Beyond membership. For $25 to support the show, you can get access to a private ad-free feed. You're going to get some bonus episodes, and then later in the series, we're going to be releasing some episodes early just to you as our thanks for a contribution of $25 to keep shows like Beyond All Repair going. Go to Wbur. Org/beyond. Thank you.