Hey, it's Amari, and welcome to the second half of Beyond All Repair. You've heard five episodes at this point. Hopefully, if you started in the right place, we have five more to go, and the story is really only ramping up from here. If you want early access to some of our final episodes, please go to Wbur. Org/beyond or click the link in your show notes, and give just 25 bucks. That's it. 25 bucks flat out, and you will get early access to final episodes. You'll get access to an ad-free feed of the show, and we're going to be putting some extra episodes in that feed or our Beyond episodes, as we call them. Again, 25 bucks, Wbur. Org/beyond or the link in your show notes, and thank you. Wbur Podcasts, Boston. Heads up, this show has descriptions of violence and strong language. Last time on Beyond All Repair.

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. I was wrong. I cheated him, and I became slimy.

She was looking for money. That was her big motivation right there. The tornado just kept getting bigger and 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 handled the verdict forms by the jury in the matter of state for This is Sophia Johnson, cause number 02101770-3.

It's April 9, 2003. Over the last two weeks, 12 people have heard from detectives and forensic analysts. They've heard from heart broken family members of Marlene Johnson, and they've heard from supposedly the only witness to her murder. It turned out to be my sister. Now, after dozens of hours in the deliberation room, these dozen people have reached a decision as 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.

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? Is the woman in bright pink with the notebook Lynn Page, Richard Johnson's friend? And where's Brad? Sophia has chosen a black blazer for Decision Day. Her lawyer, Therese La Valley, is in a tan, pleated jacket that reminds you, if you had forgotten for a moment, that this was 20 plus years ago. But it still feels fresh for Sophia.

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 Johnson, guilty of the crime of felony murder in the first- They say guilty. I cry. 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. Then they listen to those 12 jurors reiterate their decision one ten by one.

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

Yes.

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

Ms.

Gillian, was this your verdict and the verdict of the jury? Mr.

Mcdonald. 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 appellant attorney. And I said, Why bother? He said, Because as long as you're alive, there's hope.

I'm Amae 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.

They had something called the 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 entry, 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. 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 had become more than a friend to Brad Johnson, Sophia's husband.

You got to 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. Her son was born that April. Danielle, Brad's girlfriend, quickly became part of the baby boy's life. A year or so later in court, she'd signaled to Sophia that her victim impact statement was on behalf of him, too.

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. I cannot believe that it is your 19th birthday today. I am happy, and I am sad all at the same time.

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 has never sent them, wouldn't even know where to send them. It's possible Ethan will never see them.

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

It's possible Sophia will keep having these one-sided conversations, monologs, 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 wanted to disappear. 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. He made a real scene of saying that he thought I was faking my labor were contractions, that he'd never heard of someone having contractions for that long.

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. It looked so beautiful. I'd never seen it. I was scared I was that this would be the first time I would see this, and it would also be the last time.

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

I heard his tears turn into a wimper, 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. He was looking at me and listened to the sound of my voice. I strokeed his belly, his face, and his back. I held his hand and ran my finger over his little tiny feet. He was perfect. By far the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. My heart was full of love. Making him and bringing him into the world safely was the greatest thing I had ever done. It will remain that way until I die.

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, but Shane convinced her to send it to me with this voice note.

Sophia, the other thing here is that this podcast may honestly be the only thing you ever get to say to Ethan.

I think it's important for you to share that, and this might be your only opportunity, too. The question of what Ethan thinks looms large. What he grew up hearing about Sophia, how he's made sense of it all for himself. Ethan will be 22 years old this April, the same age Sophia was when she got pregnant with him. Of those 22 years, Sophia says she spent 40 minutes with him, total. The first 40 minutes.

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-face peanut resting on her shoulder. Sophia 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. Every time they'd come in my room, they would ask, Is there anything we could 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. As much as I've tried to set this story aside when considering everything else, her Sean's testimony, the Johnson's anecdotes about her, the embezelment, 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 Johnson's 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, Five 517 months. 517 months? What is that? She said 43 years.

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. Sophia was sent to a prison in Western Washington. Really, she was sent back there. By the time her murder trial began in 2003, Sophia had already started serving a three-year sentence for the embezelment I mentioned last episode. She had essentially pleaded guilty to stealing the $70,000 she was proven to have taken from her former employer, County Communications. It's actually much more complicated that, but on paper, her plea was as good as guilty in terms of what it would mean for her going forward, and it would come back to bite her. But right now, she was hearing Detective Rick Buckner's voice in her head. It sounded phony. The whole thing sounded phony. And a warning he'd given her when she was first arrested for Marlene's murder.

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 the prison to maximum. 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.

He's like, Okay, what's your name? Johnson? Okay, 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 has shown me a few pictures from her time there. In one of them, she's sitting on a stool in front of a backdrop of pink and white hearts, wearing a fitted white T-shirt, khakis, her characteristic red lipstick, and a confident smile. She sent this one to her mom, with whom she'd only had occasional contact at this time.

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 just, How are you doing so good? I didn't know how to answer her because I am doing good. I'm doing great, but probably because I've accepted my role. I've accepted my world.

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.

I picked up the phone, and Therese was excited.

Therese La Valley, Sophia's lawyer.

She said, Sophia, are you sitting down? I said, I won, didn't I? She said, You won.

Sophia had won a new trial More in a minute. It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Elaina Irkart. And I'm Ash Kelly. Our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well research. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. Just with a touch of humor. I just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

This motherfucker lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the WNDRI app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Hey, it's Anna Garciam. Host of True Crime Daily, The Podcast. Each week on the show, we cover high-profile and under-the-radar cases from across the country. We'll take you inside some of the most unbelievable and shocking true crime stories that you may or may not have heard of before. Listen and follow to True Crime Daily, The Podcast, an odyssey podcast on the odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. It's 8 January, 2005. Sophia is feeling more at peace in prison than anyone could have expected, and more than the people who believe she's a murderer would have ever wanted when her lawyer, Therese, calls, saying that her murder conviction had been thrown out.

What? Yes. It goes back to the day Sophia's verdict was delivered in April of 2003. Remember I said a lot had already gone down in court that day? What had gone down was this. I am also here to, again, request that this court, direct a mistrial at this time. A mistrial. As in, Therese was asking the judge to start over. Because the day before the verdict was reached, the judge had dismissed one of the 12 original jurors and replaced her with an alternate. I believe that what occurred yesterday is an interference with Ms. Johnson's right to a fair trial trial. It essentially amounted to reconstituting the original 12 jurors because we had a juror who was not 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, uncooperative. The dismissed juror herself told Therese, She indicated under no uncertain, uncertain terms that that was an absolute lie, that that never occurred, that anything that occurred within the jury room was simply the product of their deliberation.

This juror was improperly dismissed, Therese claimed. The judge's response?

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

At this point, but at a different point, merely two years later, a different judge would find otherwise. That judge would also rule that the bailiff in Sofia's 2003 trial had had proper communications with the foreperson of her jury. An injustice had occurred, this ruling indicated. Sophia, amazingly, was getting a second chance, and her lawyer, Therese, would get a second chance at defending her to a new jury, a new judge, in a whole new trial. Mr. Kinne, do you wish to give an open? Yes, sir. It's now November of 2005. Sophia is back in the Clark County Courthouse, facing a new prosecutor, too, Mike Kinne. His prosecutorial presence isn't as commanding as his physical one. He's soft-spoken, measured. The judge often has to ask him to speak up for the recording.

On January 10, 2002, sometime a little after 12:20 in the afternoon, Marlene Johnson had completed her shopping.

Then there's Therese La Valley planting the same seed she hoped would take root in 2003. This entire case hinges on Sean Coraya's credibility. The illegitimacy of Sean, Sophia's brother's testimony. Sean Coraya permeates this trial. But Therese had a couple other tricks up her sleeve this time. Witnesses she didn't have in 2003, including a forensic expert named Kay Sweeney. He won't tell you who committed this murder, but he will tell you who did it. Sir, were you asked to review evidence relating to the death of Marlene Johnson? Yes, I was. Therese hired Kay Sweeney to give the evidence in the case a once over, basically. See if he found anything that other forensic analysts hadn't up to that point. Kay has worked in forensics since the '60s. First, for the Seattle Police Department.

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

K then worked for the State of Washington's crime lab before going out on his own in the '90s. And on In 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. The upstairs is Kay's crime scene reconstruction zone, where he literally rebuilds crime scenes to the exact dimensions and angles to try to figure out how a crime played out. It's Kay's specialty, as Therese tried to highlight during his testimony. How many homicide reconstructions have you participated in?

I've participated in roughly 750.

Kay Sweeni 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 tangs used in the attack. 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. Were you able to render a conclusion as to the likely or the probability of the hand used by the perpetrator to inflict these injuries? Yes. What was your conclusion?

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

Can you explain where you write- Left-handed use of the weapon. This is based on two things, Sweeni says. The first is what are called skip marks, marks left on the wall by the fireplace tons as they were swung, grazing or in some cases impacting Marlene's body was found in a corner between two walls, just on the other side of the door from the garage leading into the basement. Kay showed me pictures of this corner, and lo and behold, the skip marks are on the left wall. Right, on the 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 In addition 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.

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

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 tons. 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 found about 5'11, and Sophia is about 5'3, 5'4. Yeah. Kay points to a particular skipmark 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 skipmark 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? Yes. What was that conclusion?

I could determine that someone my height, around 5,11 11 could do that. A person in the range of 5 feet, 4 inches tall, probably not likely they could do that, make that highest- 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 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. When I was in the crime laboratory working as a forensic scientist, the prosecutors were my friend because they wanted my work. They wanted to use my work. Now, when I find something wrong or something different, they come unglued. I have a lot of, I guess, professional enemies within the prosecutorial group.

K He has 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, 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 Sweeni'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 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.

Can you please be seated? 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 It's 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. Beyond All Repair is a production of WBUR Boston's NPR and ZSP Media. It's written and reported by me, Amarie Sievertsen. It's produced by Sophie Codner. Additional production help on this episode from Ethan Oberman. And thanks to my colleague, Emily Jankowski, for playing Danielle in this episode. Mix Sound Design and Original Scoring by Matt Reid and Production Manager of WBR podcast, Paul Wikus. Theme and Credits Music by me. Our managing producers are Samata Josh for WBR and Liz Stiles of Zsp Media. Our editors and executive producers are Ben Brock Johnson of WBR and Zack Stuart-Pontier of ZSP Media. If you have questions about the case, the people in this story, anything else, We want them. Email beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. Voice message, written message, you know what to do. Beyondallrepairpod@gmail. Com. You can also find pictures and a lot more information on Instagram by following WburPresents. Do me a favor, will you? Consider a nap. Listen to a good song, eat a treat, go for a little walk, tell someone you love them, and then tell them about this show in that order. Thank you for listening. Hell, yeah. Thanks for sticking around. And consider this your sign to join the listeners who've given $25 to support Beyond All Repair, and in turn, have gotten themselves to extra episodes, and to an ad-free feed of the show.

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