Lucille Johnson
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A 78-year-old grandmother was found dead inside her Salt Lake City, Utah home in February 1999. But for years, her brutal murder baffled investigators. Who would want to kill an elderly lady inside of her very own home? The case remained a mystery for two decades until investigators got the clue they needed from a very unlikely source: a children's Lego piece.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 268, The Murder of Lucille Johnson. ♪♪

It's February 1st, 1991 in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. Holiday.

Described as being a community with a laid-back lifestyle, Holiday, Utah is what many people consider to be a great place to raise a family. It's safe, it's close to the downtown area, and the whole town is surrounded by big green trees. But something about that day in February 1991 was different.

Holiday no longer felt like a quiet and safe suburb. It had become the place of a very brutal murder.

In February 1991, Lucille Johnson was a 78-year-old widow, mom, and grandmother. She lived by herself in what used to be 4284 South Holloway Drive. That address no longer exists. But no one worried about her being alone. She was strong, healthy, and fiercely independent. She also talked to her children every single day over the phone.

So if something ever happened to her, they would know about it.

Lucille was born on Thursday, July 11, 1912, in Eureka, Utah, a town about 80 miles from Salt Lake City. Not long after turning 21, she met and married Howard Johnson in 1933. The two got married in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. The two went on to spend the next 56 years together until Howard passed away on August 5, 1989.

The two also had children together, a son and a daughter. When she was younger, Lucille graduated from the LDS Business College, and for her entire life, she was very active in the LDS Church. She even held several positions in the church, including that of the MIA president. Those who knew her said that she was a kind and loving person who was devoted to her family, friends, and neighbors.

In her almost 80 years on earth, no one had a bad thing to say about her. She enjoyed genealogy and was enthusiastically involved in the next extraction program, an LDS church program for genealogy.

She had also become the president of Southern Utah Broadcasting and president of Investment Center, a family investment real estate group. So that's all to say she was very involved in the community and always kept herself busy, despite living alone and despite being a widow.

On the morning of February 1st, 1991, Lucille's daughter Shirley went over to her mom's house to check on her. She knew almost everything her mom had done the day before. First, she went to the auto mechanic because she was having problems with her car. After that, after dropping off her car at the dealership, she went to the senior center for a while, talked with a few of her neighbors, and went grocery shopping at the market.

Shirley had even thought about stopping by her mom's house the night before so that she could bring her dinner, but she decided against it. She was too tired and just wanted to go home and go to sleep. But when she got up the next morning and called her mom, she didn't pick up.

So that's when she decided to get into her car and drive over to her house just to make sure that everything was okay. They talked every single day over the phone, so it was unusual for her not to answer the phone in the morning. And when Shirley got inside of her mother's house, she knew right away that something was really, really wrong.

Right there in the hallway was Lucille's body. She was lying on the floor with a pillow covering her face and blood was all around her. So that's when Shirley ran to the other side of the living room, grabbed her mom's phone, and dialed 911. One of the first questions they asked Shirley was if she had already started performing CPR, but she told them there wasn't any point. She was very clearly dead and had been so for quite some time, but she didn't know what to do.

probably hours. So there wasn't anything CPR could do for her mom. But then the 911 operators asked a second question. Is there anyone else inside the house with you? Are you alone? That's the moment Shirley says that she realized this was a crime scene. Her 78-year-old mother had been murdered right there in her own hallway. Up until they asked her, are you alone in the house? She

She just thought maybe her mom had some type of accident, a brain bleed or maybe a fall. She never thought someone had actually murdered her. The case was assigned to the Unified Police Department in Salt Lake City. And from the moment officers stepped inside of Lucille's house, they were horrified by what was in front of them. An elderly lady lying on the floor covered in blood with a pillow over her face, crying

Who would do something like that to such an innocent victim? Lieutenant Manfreg Lasig from the UPD became the lead detective on the case, and this is how he described the crime scene. Lieutenant Manfreg Lasig.

Lucille was found in the hallway with her head almost propped up against the wall. There was a large pillow over her face with a lot of blood on the carpet around her. Blood also covered the walls and blood spatter was on the ceiling. There was even a bloody footprint on her chest, like maybe someone had stomped on her.

All of the blood at the scene told a story for the lieutenants and the rest of the UPD officers. There had been a massive struggle inside of this quiet suburban home. The blood on the carpet suggested that's where the attack happened. The blood spatter on the walls and ceiling suggested that she was struck multiple times by some type of blunt instrument. She was on the ground when she was essentially beaten to death.

But what was the instrument? At the time, the UPD wasn't sure. Several items had been knocked over inside the hallway where Lucille's body was, and they didn't find any of them to be the obvious murder weapons.

The first theory the UPD came up with was a robbery. They thought maybe this poor woman had been attacked inside of her home for money. But oddly enough for investigators, not much had actually been stolen from Lucille's house. The only items that seemed to be missing were a few high-end designer purses and some of her rings. But other valuables were still left behind.

Her necklace was still around her neck, she still had her wallet inside of the house, and right there in the middle of the living room were a bunch of children's toys, including a Lego set. These were the toys that Lucille always kept in her house for when her grandchildren came over to play.

Now, not that these were valuable toys, but it told investigators just the kind of person that this victim was, a grandmother who had been beaten to death.

While searching the rest of the house for evidence, the police noted that the back door was unlocked. And when they spoke with Shirley, Lucille's daughter, about this, she said that was extremely out of character for her mom. Whenever she was home by herself, that back door was always locked. So this seemed to suggest something else to investigators. Lucille let her killer inside.

Otherwise, that door would have been shut and it would have been locked. And if she let her killer inside, that also meant she knew who did this to her. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

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The first thing the medical examiner noticed were multiple blunt force trauma injuries to her head and her face. There were injuries everywhere. The front of her head, the side, the back. There were injuries covering almost her entire head, including several skull fractures.

Then moving down her body to her chest, she had eight fractured ribs that investigators believed she sustained when whoever did this had stomped on her chest, leaving behind that bloody footprint. But what the medical examiner wasn't able to determine from the autopsy was what type of weapon had been used. It could have been a bat. It could have been a stick. They just didn't know.

Beyond the blunt force trauma injuries, there were also signs of strangulation. Then finally, another thing uncovered by the autopsy, this was a rage killing, overkill. Half the amount of injuries that Lucille sustained would have killed her, but it seemed like whoever did this kept going. They just kept on beating her.

So was this over something personal? Revenge? Rage? What was all of this about? It didn't seem to be about high-end purses and everything else that had been taken from the home. This seemed to be a lot more personal than that.

Lucille's funeral was held seven days later on February 7th at one of the local LDS churches. Not only did all of her family and friends show up, but complete strangers from the community were there. Even some of the detectives showed up. A 78-year-old murder victim beaten to death inside of her very own home.

There was also the thought that maybe the killer would show up to the funeral. If investigators were correct about her possibly knowing her killer and even letting him inside, then why wouldn't he also be there? But no one at the church really stood out as suspicious, except for one person, a member of Lucille's very own family.

In the early days of the investigation, the police interviewed all of the victim's family members and some of her close friends to try to figure out if she had any enemies. Was there someone in her life who would want her dead? And fairly early on, a name kept popping up, one of Lucille's nephews.

Here's why. According to some of Lucille's family members, her nephew might have had a reason to do something like this. He might have wanted her dead. They said this particular nephew would spend a lot of time over at Lucille's house. Sometimes he was there every single day. The two of them usually worked on genealogy projects together. They were both very interested in doing these things.

researching their family history, finding photographs of past relatives, creating family trees. Lucille and her nephew liked to do these things together. But genealogy projects weren't the only thing that they did together while at her house.

According to the family, Lucille routinely gave this nephew money. He was sort of having a tough time, and Lucille, being the nice person that she was, often gave him some money. But here's the interesting part.

Just one week before she was killed, she cut him off. She stopped giving him any money. She told him he could still come over and they could spend time together, but she was done helping him out financially, so she stopped giving him anything. This happened just one week before the murder. So now Lucille's family wondered, could this nephew be involved?

He's mad that she stopped giving him money, so he went over there and killed her. That might explain two things. One, Lucille obviously knew her nephew, so if he had come over that night, she would have let him inside. That explains why the back door was unlocked when the cops showed up. And number two, the rage, the sheer brutality of the murder.

If this nephew was really mad about getting cut off, that could explain the amount of rage in this type of killing. So after investigators heard about all of this, they started to wonder, is there any truth to this theory? Or is it just some family rumors?

As it turned out, this relative had an alibi. He was called into the police station and questioned, but he told detectives he was at home all night of the murder and had absolutely nothing to do with this. Then there was the forensic evidence. His shoe prints were compared to the bloody shoe print found on the victim's chest, and they were nowhere near a match.

This relative had a completely different size shoe than the one found at the crime scene. So after that, this relative was put to the side. He had an alibi, although it was a weak one, and his shoe print didn't match.

So the UPD continued their search for a suspect, and not long after that, they got another tip. Lucille Johnson was murdered in February of 1991, but as we're about to find out, she wasn't the only elderly woman killed inside of her own home across the state of Utah. There were more just like her.

Throughout the 1980s, there were at least nine women who had been murdered across the Salt Lake City area. At least four of them were over the age of 70, and many of them were killed inside of their own homes. Here's just a few of them.

In 1985, the body of 79-year-old Jean Muir was found inside her home. Authorities said she had been stabbed multiple times. Later that same year, Mary DeLuca of Midvale and Drusilla Ovard of South Salt Lake were also murdered. Then three years later in 1981, Wilhelmina Reed was assaulted and killed inside of her house. It was a horrible thing. Not only was she a victim, but she was also a victim of a crime.

but the rest of us were victims, said her granddaughter to ABC4 News. There's more. 81-year-old Bertha Hughes was killed in 1982, Ethel and 71-year-old Flora Rundle in 1989. She was stabbed multiple times, according to authorities.

So with so many murders of elderly women across Salt Lake City, the UPD wondered, could there be a serial killer out there targeting these types of victims, elderly women inside of their homes?

They knew Ted Bundy was murdering women throughout the 1970s, and they knew he was around Utah. In the fall of 1974, Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school, and women began disappearing there as well. But Ted Bundy wasn't the only one. There were at least two other serial killers who passed through Utah during this same time period.

Arthur Gary Bishop, and Henry Lee Lucas. So the UPD kept their minds open to the idea that this might be the work of a serial killer. Without any other suspects or leads, Lucille's murder eventually turned cold by 1992. By that point, there were around 200 cold cases dating back to 1975 in Salt Lake City. So this case just became one of them.

The leads dried up and Lucille's case file was boxed up and put into the cold case room. The lack of progress completely devastated family and friends. Not only is it tragic to find out that your loved one has been murdered in such a brutal way, but imagine not even knowing who's responsible. There's a killer somewhere out there and who knows if they're going to do this again.

That's how it was for years, even decades in this case. It was just an unsolved murder, maybe the work of a serial killer, but maybe not. Maybe it was someone close to Lucille Johnson, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe this was the work of a complete stranger. No one knew at this point.

Fast forward to 2013. The investigation is now around 22 years old. That's a long time for a case file to just be sitting around. But it was around this same time that the police in Utah got some good news. There was new federal funding available, and the funding was for DNA testing. Finally, investigators felt like they might be getting somewhere.

This case was unique for many reasons, but one of the biggest was just how much evidence the police had in their possession. They had a sexual assault kit that had been done on the victim. They had her clothing. They had fingernail scrapings. They had DNA and blood found all over the crime scene. They

They had hair and fibers. They had a lot of forensic and physical evidence at their disposal. But back in 1991, at the time of the crime, there wasn't much investigators could do with the forensic evidence. They could only collect it and hope that testing would eventually improve someday. And that's exactly what the police did back in 1991.

They collected everything and stored it in evidence until it could be tested. So now that it's 2013 and federal funding for this type of testing was available, the police went back to the evidence room to see what was still available.

Step one was deciding what evidence they should submit for forensic testing. There was so much of it, but they needed to use their resources wisely. There wasn't enough time and there wasn't enough money to test everything. They could only send a small amount and hope that there was still usable DNA on it. So they decided on two pieces of evidence, the pillow and the fingernail scrapings.

The reason they picked the pillow was because they knew the killer must have touched it. Lucille probably didn't put that pillow over her face on her own, so that meant the killer touched it, possibly leaving behind his DNA. And the fingernail scrapings were also selected because they could also contain the suspect's DNA. If Lucille managed to scratch her attacker, there was a good chance DNA was underneath of her fingernails.

So that was it. The pillowcase and the victim's fingernail scrapings. Both those items would be tested using new DNA technology. A few weeks later, the police in Utah got the results. There was a direct hit from CODIS, the National DNA Database, on the DNA. It belonged to a guy named John Sansing.

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By the time investigators got the results back, 47-year-old John Sansing was already serving a life sentence in an Arizona prison. And not just any life sentence, he was on Arizona's death row for committing another murder, the murder of Trudy Calabrese. That also explains why his DNA was in CODIS and why they were able to get a match in this case. Here's what happened in Arizona.

On February 24, 1998, John Sansing reportedly called the Living Springs Church and asked for a food box to be delivered to his family. That particular church had a program where they would deliver boxes of food to families in need, so that's what John did. After that, he made a second phone call. This time, it was to his wife, Kara Sansing, who was at work.

John told his wife that he had just gotten his hands on some crack cocaine and that the two of them could smoke it together once she got home from work. He also told her about the food delivery box. He said that one of the church members was going to show up at their house, drop off the food box, and that he was going to rob them to get some more money. The money was going to be used to go buy more crack cocaine.

You might have already guessed it, but Trudy was that church member. At around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Trudy left the Living Springs Church in her truck and headed toward the Sansing House. When she got there, she knocked on the front door with two boxes of food.

Trudy then chatted with Kara Sansing in the kitchen for a little while, while John signed the delivery receipt confirming that he received the food. But before Trudy could leave, John grabbed her from behind and threw her onto the ground. Now, if that doesn't sound bad enough, this next part will. John's wife and kids watched as this entire thing happened.

He bound Trudy's wrists while she cried out things like, Lord, please help me. And I don't want to die this way, but if this is the way you want me to come home, I'm ready. She also reportedly asked John and Kara's children to call the police. But by order of their father, they wouldn't do it.

That's also when John ordered the kids to go to the living room and watch TV. After that, he used a club to beat Trudy over the head several times, causing her to pass out. He then took her truck keys and moved it to a nearby business parking lot so that it wouldn't be found out in front of his house. But sometime before he got back, Trudy woke up.

Then as he saw that she was awake, he dragged her into the master bedroom where he sexually assaulted her. Again, Kara Sansing, his wife, witnessed the entire rape and did absolutely nothing to stop it. Their kids were also playing in the living room right next door.

Once the assault was over, Trudy was murdered. John had taken a kitchen knife and fatally stabbed her in the stomach three times. During the attack, he placed a sock inside of her mouth while at the same time securing two plastic bags over her head with cords and a necktie.

When all was said and done, John Sansing took Trudy's jewelry, left her body in his bedroom, covered it with laundry, and then went out for several hours to go buy more crack cocaine.

Later that night, a pastor from the church called the Sansing home looking for Trudy. But instead of getting touch with her because she was already dead, the pastor spoke directly to John. He told him Trudy never showed up with the food boxes and he had no idea where she was and hung up the phone. He even gave the pastor a different address so that he wouldn't know where to go to start looking for her.

After that, John dragged Trudy's body from the master bedroom to the backyard and placed her body in a small space between the back of the shed and the fence on his property. He covered her with a piece of old carpet and some other items that he had lying around. Another chilling detail, at least three of the four Sansing children saw the body behind the shed that night.

The next day, Trudy's truck was found in the parking lot near John and Kara's home. And when they searched the inside of it, the police found a piece of paper with the Sansings' correct address on it. So the police went directly to the house, and that's when they discovered the body behind the shed. Within hours, John signed a full police confession saying that he and his wife had killed Trudy.

On March 4, 1998, a grand jury indicted him on four criminal counts—first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and sexual assault. Then five months later, he pled guilty to all of the charges and received the death penalty.

His wife, Kara, also pled guilty and received a life sentence. So when detectives in Utah got the results of the DNA testing, the testing that suggested John Sansing's DNA was at Lucille Johnson's crime scene, they felt pretty good this could be their guy. Everything lined up. John is clearly a violent person, and he was known to rob and steal for drug money.

but that didn't mean the police's job was done. The police went to speak with John, who was currently on death row in Arizona, but when they asked him about Lucille's murder, he completely denied it, saying that he had nothing to do with it.

Yes, he was a convicted murderer, but he denied committing this one. He even told detectives that his lawyer had advised him not to speak with them if they had any questions about Lucille Johnson's murder. So instead of asking him questions about the case, the police asked him just other general questions, trying to place him in the state of Utah at the time of the crime.

They asked questions like, where were you living in February 1991 and where did you work? And that's when the police found out that John Sansing actually worked at a car dealership in the Salt Lake City area, essentially placing him in the state at the time. So investigators took this information and discovered that John actually worked at the same car dealership where Lucille dropped her car off the day that she was killed.

So now there's a connection. He lived in Utah at the time, and he worked at the same car dealership where the victim took her car to get fixed. It's really not looking good for him at this point. This discovery explains how and where they might have met.

The next step for detectives was to figure out exactly how he got inside her house that night. They knew the victim, Lucille, wouldn't just open up the door for anyone. They felt pretty strongly that she must have known her killer and that's why she let him inside.

Back in 1991, crime scene investigators collected several children's Lego pieces from Lucille's living room. They were just lying on the living room floor when they arrived and they searched the house. This made sense because Lucille always had children's toys out for when her grandchildren would come over and play with them. And on this particular night, there was a set of Legos.

Investigators had collected the Legos and put them into evidence just like everything else. So now, in 2013, the Legos were brought out to be tested. And when they were, they found a fingerprint on one of the pieces. A fingerprint that didn't belong to Lucille or any of her grandchildren. So the police wondered, could that fingerprint belong to one of John's children?

They knew his children had witnessed the murder of the church worker, so could they have also witnessed this murder? Would John really bring his children to commit yet another murder?

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When the prints from the Lego pieces were compared to one of John's sons, they came back as a perfect match. To answer my own question, yes, John really did bring at least one of his children to murder Lucille Johnson that night. And while he committed that murder, his son played in the living room with her Legos, leaving behind his fingerprint.

Confronted with a mountain of forensic evidence against him, John Sansing eventually confessed. He said he met Lucille earlier that day when she dropped off her car. He worked at the dealership and he was the one in charge of the repairs.

He said he gave her a ride home back to her house, and on the way there, he told her that he would love to stop by later on so that she could meet his kids. The two just seemed to get along, and John used the family card to gain her trust. He even used his children as bait. Later that night, John and his five-year-old son at the time returned to Lucille's house and knocked on the back door, the door that was later found unlocked.

Whatever reason he gave, she let him inside, probably because of his five-year-old son. Once he was inside the house, he said he left his kid in the living room while he went to the bathroom. But on his way, he stopped and looked around, trying to find things that he could steal. And as he was looking around, Lucille confronted him in the hallway. She knew what he was doing. He wasn't going to the bathroom. He was trying to rob her.

So that's when John said he grabbed a crystal vase from the hallway and started beating her over the head until she eventually passed out. He said he only hit her twice, but the autopsy and forensic results suggest otherwise.

He also said he only hit her because he, quote, just panicked and he didn't know what to do. He also said that she surprised him when he was trying to steal from her. And again, he just didn't know what to do. So he grabbed the vase and started hitting her.

He did this, murdered Lucille Johnson, at the same time that his five-year-old son was playing with Legos in the living room. He left behind his fingerprint on one of the pieces, and his dad, John Sansing, left his DNA underneath of Lucille's fingernails. His DNA was also found on the pillow that was used to cover her face.

For more than two decades, Lucille Johnson's murder baffled Utah investigators. But in 2014, 47-year-old John Sansing was officially charged in the case. Felony first-degree murder. At the time, he was already on death row in Arizona for murdering another woman. No one but John Sansing knows the motive. Was it robbery? Or was the motive something else?

If it weren't for two critical pieces of forensic evidence, a convicted murderer may have gotten away with it, leaving Lucille Johnson's family without closure. His DNA was found on the pillow covering her face, and his DNA was found underneath her fingernails, and the Lego pieces found by the front door scattered across the living room had John Sansing's five-year-old son's fingerprints all over them.

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