Hey, it's Amari. Beyond All Repair is made at WBUR, Boston's NPR, a. K. A public radio station, which means we cannot make shows like this without public support. Here's what we're going to do. We're kicking off a membership program called, wait for it, Beyond. For a contribution of $25. That's it, $25. You'll get access to a private feed of the show that's ad-free. We're going to be dropping bonus episodes in there. And once we get a little later Before in the series, you'll get early access to some of our final episodes. So just go to Wbur. Org/beyond. Pitch in 25 bucks, get yourself some nice perks, and feel good about yourself knowing that you are making Beyond all repair possible. That's Wbur. Org/beyond. Thank you. Wbur Podcasts, Boston. Heads up, this show has descriptions of violence and strong language.

Shane, you have no idea how much I'm trying to protect you, little brother. You don't know it yet, but you're being misled. Mr. Shane, good morning. How are you doing? Listen to me carefully. You're not ready for what will come down if you don't stop your nonsense and keep away. If you guys attempt to sabotage or to trouble me in any which way or to try to slow down my life, I'm going to fight you guys. You don't know what you're playing with, okay? I wanted nothing to do with it in the beginning, and up to now, I still want nothing to do with it. Stop talking shit about me and don't lie on me. But I'm not going to let anybody lie on me, okay? Okay? You're worse than Jules. You're wicked All I'm doing is I'm giving you fair fucking warning. If you come at me, I'm going to destroy you, dude.

You're hearing an implosion of sorts, a family on the brink of a civil war, or maybe not so civil. This is the voicemail box of a guy named Shane. The two people leaving him messages, his older brother- Keep me out of it. And his dad.

Watch your mouth.

But Shane isn't receiving the worst of it, especially from his father. Shane's sister is.

You are the disease of this fucking family. You're devious. You're worthless.

That's from her voicemail collection. Here's another one.

Oh, you're so fucking illiterate, ignorant, and stupid. Give it to the reporter, too. You lie.

Give that to the reporter, too. The dad says. Hey, hi, hello. I'm the reporter, and I'm the reason for these intimidating voice messages. Part of it, anyway. They started after I called that brother and father days earlier. Speaking. My name is Amarie Sievertson. I work for WBUR. It's a national public radio station.

Okay.

I have reopened a box, let's just say, that some members of this family were hoping would stay shut forever, while others are the reason it showed up on my doorstep three years ago. Inside are the details of something that ripped this family apart, a he said, she said between two siblings that left one of them a continent away, and the other on the run.

Sister fighting against brother, try to lie, to set up your own brother. What feeling you have, lady?

And despite the fact that this event happened more than 20 years ago, it's never been resolved. I'm talking about, oh, wow, a murder. I'm Amaury Sievertson, From WBR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair. Chapter One, Boxes. Let's start with the younger brother receiving voicemail threats from his family, Shane Coraya. He's the reason I'm here. Hi, Shane of Amory. So nice to meet you. Amory, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I first met Shane back in 2017. I'd gone to his New York City apartment to interview him for another podcast I make called Endless Thread. It was for an episode about his experience with homelessness. Shane spent a period of time in his teens sleeping on the subway, nowhere else to go.

I was angry and pissed and sad. I only had until morning when school started for some normalcy.

Back then, I didn't know much about the murder that affected Shane's life. But the way I see it now, Shane doesn't end up sleeping on the subway without that dark chapter. Shane was born in the Bronx, the youngest of four siblings, three boys and a girl with parents who were never not fighting. Name calling, violence, an ugly divorce. It was a bad scene. So by his pre-teen years, Shane and his mom and sister had moved across the country to Washington State. They were all devout Jehovah's witnesses.

1 Corinthians 15:33, Do not be misled. Bad association spoils useful habits. Still know my verse. Couldn't shake that part.

Shane is not a Jehovah's Witness anymore, in large part because of something he was realizing about himself around this time.

I remember the night that I I came out to my mom. She was in her room, and I roll in the chair from my room and put it in the doorway. I'm like, Mom, I have something that I want to tell you. I'm trying to couch it as much as possible. I tell her I'm attracted to men. She looked at me and she said, Why hasn't my children become my worst fears?

Shane's mom mostly stopped talking to him She'd leave food outside his bedroom door as if he were in solitary or something. Then right around this same time came this.

Arrests made in woman's killing. Daughter-in-law accused in woman's killing.

The daughter-in-law accused is Shane's sister.

Woman pleads not guilty to murdering her mother-in-law. Slaying suspect has bailed tripled. Woman's murder charge upgraded. Him.

This murder was a big deal in a small Washington town, and word started spreading, from newspaper headlines to gossiping teenagers at Shane's school.

I remember going into the lunchroom and this group of kids is coming toward me, and the kid that I don't like is like, So is it true that your sister killed someone? And honestly, after that, I just stopped going to school. I'd always been a really good student up to that point, and then I just shut down.

Going to school felt impossible. Being at home with a mom who would barely talk to him felt impossible. So Shane flew back across the country by himself to the only other place he knew, New York.

So I slept on the train. Went to school, went to work, still got to earn that paycheck hourly.

Shane finished high school like this, unhoused. He worked part-time jobs to get by.

And going to work in a grumpled suit because you have no place to put it, that was when I actually started to feel homeless.

Shane eventually pieced together enough of an income to rent a room in an apartment. He put himself through College, then law school. By the time I spoke to Shane for Endless Thread, he was working in the Bronx district Attorney's office. The criminal justice system to Shane is something that's brought order to a chaotic life. It's dealt with things in a way he hasn't been able to, including his sister being accused of murdering her mother-in-law. Even when asked point blank back in 2017, Do you think she did it? I don't know.

Everyone's got a different story, and this is where I just surrender to the justice system.

That's where we'd left things back then, as far as the murder was concerned. But the experience of hearing his larger story told by an outsider was pretty cathartic, Shane told me. He wrote to me after that episode came out, saying, I feel a bit more unleashed from some stuff I didn't fully know was holding me back. And that was it. I thought. Time passed. Shane changed legal jobs, adopted a dog. Dango. Good boy.

Yeah, I'll give you cuddles.

And then, about three years later, in the spring of 2021, I got an email from Shane out of the blue. There was someone else looking to be unleashed from something holding her back.

Look, I don't really know her story.

Something that's been boxed up, and for Shane, at least, untouched for more than 20 years.

Do I think that my sister is capable of committing such a brutal crime?

Shane was reaching out to say that that question might finally get answered. Because the person who could settle it for him once and for all, she wanted to talk, and she wanted to talk to me. Coming up, Shane's Sister. The world's clean energy future relies on ancient elements still in the ground. Without mining, there will not be a clean energy transition. But pulling them out of the ground comes at an environmental and human cost.

Mining is intrusive, but the results are the building blocks for products that we use every single day.

I'm Megna Chakrabarty. Join me on Point for elements of energy, mining for a green future. Five special episodes. Listen and follow On Point wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Amri. 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. Tell an untold histories and other wild stories that originate online.

Yeah, and you can listen to 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. Check, check. It's a couple of weeks after Shane emailed me saying his sister wanted to, quote, speak openly about something that has caused a lot of pain in our collective lives. The murder of her mother-in-law. I'd seen pictures of Shane's sister in newspaper clippings from the early 2000s, handcuffed, wearing the stereotypical bright orange jail getup. No makeup. Her expression, ranging from self-assured to resigned. I didn't know what to expect 20 years later, and the last I'd heard about it from Shane, didn't put me at ease. And yet, When she appeared on my screen, I felt surprisingly calm.

Hi. Good morning.

How are you?

I'm okay.

This is Sophia.

A little nervous, I won't lie.

Yeah. Well, we're embarking on something new. I say that as if I knew what we were embarking on. But listening back to this, I want to warn my past self, Girl, you have no idea what's coming. Sophia didn't either.

Well, let's just see where it goes. Why not?

Sophia showed up to our first video call looking nothing like the woman I'd seen in the newspapers. Her long jet black hair, shiny and neat. Her face impeccably made up, winged eyeliner, red lipstick, meticulously shaped eyebrows, and an almost airbrushed appearance that defied everything I knew about her life at that point.

I wake up, I have usually several cups of coffee, and I'm watching the news.

She sounded so normal, sweet even.

I do a little bit of gardening. I listen to music.

She was talking to me from any point. Yeah, I can't say where she is. I can't say why I can't say either, yet. I can say that Contrary to her appearance, Sophia feels anything but put together.

The only thing I can do because I'm at my bottom is stand up for myself because I have zero expectations that anyone else can do it for She feels held back from the life she had imagined for herself, a life that was really just starting 22 years ago, with a new husband of four months, new in-laws with whom she'd quickly become close, Then came January 10th, 2002.

Sophia's mother-in-law, Marlene, was supposed to come over to her house for lunch that day. She didn't show. When Sophia and her husband went over to Marlene's house to check on her, they found her lying on the basement floor. Marlene Johnson had been bludgeoned to death. Do you know what happened to your mom? She was murdered. Okay. Who murdered your mom? I have no idea. What makes you think she was murdered? It was a hammer imprimed on her forehead where there was teeth and eyeballs.

Okay.

Do you run an hand?

Do your mind if you got it?

Is there something that you typically do on this day?

This is a day I wish never existed.

It's now January 10th, 2022, 20 years to the day that Sophia's mother-in-law was murdered. Sophia is in her mid-forties at this point, but every year on this day, she says she's transported back.

I'm 23 years old in my head, and this is 2002. You know what I thought? I thought, It's January 10th. And whoever did this to her, do they know that it's January 10th?

Do they know? They're out there somewhere. Then again, there are a lot of people who would say that the person who killed Marlene is talking to me right now.

I want to say and be very honest with you that if I did Marlene's murder, they wouldn't have to worry about finding me. I would turn myself in.

Sophia has always held fast that she did not kill her mother-in-law. But she also says there's a lot to this story that she's never told anyone until now. This is how she thinks about her life.

It is a house that has lots of boxes and lots of different rooms that need to be unpacked. I'm not necessarily sure where to start.

Okay, it's Monday, April 26th, 2021, and I got a box today. The day I started unpacking metaphorical boxes with Sophia, a physical one showed up at my office. Inside this box were VHS tapes. Sophia says that she's never watched them. She told me today that she does not want to watch them. She said that she's worried that it'll put someone else's version of the story back in her head. Right now, she just wants to focus on what she knows to be true about what happened. Thirteen tapes in black and gold cardboard cases. Oh, this is a lot. It was like a time capsule, this box. Those white stickers along the long edges, handwriting, labeling each one in blue and black pen.

All right, let's see.

So these tapes on the side. Oh, my God. It says state V. Johnson, Sophia. We're ready for the jury? Yes, Your Honor. Yes, Your Honor. Thank you. Okay, Louanne, bring in the jury, please. These tapes are the video footage of Sofia's murder trial, and they were really just the beginning. I didn't know what was in all of Sofia's boxes. I know now there's disownment, deportation, allegations of abuse, financial crimes, to start. The boxes of my own life look nothing like Sophia's. And yet, the more of hers I've opened, the more I've realized that they hold a lot of my greatest fears. Being betrayed by someone who's supposed to be on my side, never being truly believed, loving something more than anything in the world, only to have it taken away.

My son turned 19 years old yesterday. Never met him. Don't know anything really about him.

Her son. When Sophia was accused of bludgeoning her mother-in-law to death, she was six months pregnant. She gave birth to her only child while incarcerated and hasn't seen him since.

I do not want another one of his birthdays to go by without at least having an image of me and hearing the truth about what I'm sure he's read and heard about his entire life.

That's when I realized that Sophia is really trying to clear her name in the eyes of one person.

The only thing he will ever know is that I was accused. His grandmother is dead. This is my legacy. This is forever my legacy.

But maybe it doesn't have to be. Sophia can't start over, but she might still have time to change that legacy. Pretty early into reporting this story, someone told me that Sophia's life just seems so FUBar. I wasn't familiar with this term, but it's a military acronym, Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. Beyond All All Repair. That idea has stayed with me, not as a statement, but a question. Is Sophia's life beyond all repair? If she is, in fact, innocent of murder, will telling her story help change some people's minds about her, starting perhaps with Shane.

Do I believe what she's saying, that she believes she's innocent? I can believe that, but belief is very different from fact. Some someone still died.

If he believes, if anybody believes that I am that person, then I just don't know what that says. That means that I'm not explaining it right, or he doesn't know enough. And I never want my son to ever think that, Mom, I love you anyway. That is not the right answer. That's not the right answer.

The right answer to me is just the truth. I've been up front with Sophia about this from the very beginning. I can't root for people in this story, but I can root for the truth. If the people are aligned with the truth, then I'm rooting for the people.

I agree with that.

It's been almost three years since my first conversation with Sophia. I've spoken to dozens of people connected to this story. I have thousands of pages of case files and court records. I have information. And now-What the fuck? Shane does, too.

Oh, this hurts. This hurts. I can't read it.

20 years after this murder uprooted his life, Shane's decided he's not going to surrender to the justice system anymore. Because according to the justice system, this murder is technically a cold case.

This is not right. I don't care who it is.

Next time, Shane digs into his sister's case file, and I dig into Sophia's trial and the key witness who testified against her.

The person took it was like stalking off their face, and It turned out to be my sister.

Sophia's other brother.

I'm going to fight you guys.

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 Summit Ajoshi for WBR and Liz Stiles of ZSP. The show is edited and executive-produced by Ben Brock Johnson of WBR and Zack Stuart-Pontier of ZSP Media. If you have questions about the case, the real people at the center of this story, or anything else about this series, we want to hear them. Email beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. Voice message, written message, you do you. Beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. Hey, do me a favor, will you? 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 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. 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.