Season 1 UPDATE: Back To The Beach
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National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary, discounts not available in all states and situations. Hey, CounterClock listeners. I want to take you back four years, actually, all the way to season one, because something's happened.

Today marks 20 years since emergency responders found a murdered woman inside of a burning home in Kill Devil Hills. The victim was 33-year-old Denise Johnson. A podcaster helped shed new light on a cold case. Reached millions of people across the world. She was stabbed to death, and whoever killed her set the house on fire before leaving. I remember seeing heavy black smoke up in the air. I just remember a pool of blood and her laying there.

It's one of those cases that hangs over our head that we really want to get answers for the family. The question that everybody's asking is,

who committed this crime. The CounterClock podcast spurred more enthusiasm. And now they're using new technology on old evidence, looking for DNA. Back then, DNA wasn't as good as it is now. I'm very confident that the Denise Johnson case will be a closed case.

This is the official update episode about my investigation into the unsolved murder of Denise Johnson. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. Over the last four years, many of you have wanted to know if I've been following Denise's case or if there have been any updates. Well, this episode is going to lay it out for you. The truth is, it's never really over for me after a season of CounterClock comes out.

I mean, yeah, I have to move on to new reporting to help other families, but walking away and never looking back is just not something I do. Because it's not over till it's solved. It took most of last year for me to thoroughly investigate several leads in this case. I had to meticulously vet everything I'm going to share with you. And part of that process required me to return to my original reporting and follow up with old sources.

Over these last few years, while producing additional seasons of Counter Clock, I've stayed in touch with Donnie Johnson, Denise's older sister. At this point in my life, Donnie is more than just a source. She's a friend. She's watched me get married, start a family, establish a career. I've watched her subtract and add to the number of her farm pets, try to quit smoking more than once, and grow closer with her sisters.

A lot of things have evolved since season one came out. For starters, the political landscape in the Outer Banks of North Carolina has changed a lot. Andy Womble, the district attorney who responded proactively to the podcast release in 2020 by making Denise's case a priority, well, he's no longer district attorney. But before his departure, he directed law enforcement to explore retesting old evidence in Denise's case.

In November 2022, a guy named Jeff Cruden was elected to Andy's old job. As soon as Jeff took office, I wrote him an email asking what his plan was to make sure Denise's case didn't fall to the wayside or go cold again. A representative for his office responded with the following statement, which I had a voice actor read. Thank you, Mrs. D'Ambra, for your inquiry and concern over this case.

Because the case is an active, pending investigation, Mr. Cruden does not feel that it would be appropriate to comment any further than what has already been provided by Mr. Womble. Any further comment could affect our ability to prosecute this case should criminal charges ever be filed. We assure you that every pending criminal investigation is important and taken very seriously by this office. ♪

A reporter's brick wall. I'm not surprised, though. Getting anything from the official entities in charge had been difficult. Like, for example, Denise's autopsy report. If you've listened to season one, then you know that during my original reporting, I was never able to get my hands on the full report because the investigation into Denise's murder, like Jeff Cruden's office said, is still active.

Well, one day, months after season one ended, an old landlord of mine called to tell me that a package had shown up out of the blue in the mailbox of an apartment I used to rent. She said she knew I probably wanted to have the package because it was from the North Carolina office of the chief medical examiner.

I raced over to my old complex to get it, and sure enough, it was a copy of Denise's full autopsy report. All eight pages. Exactly who inside the medical examiner's office sent it to me and why is something I've never been able to figure out. But someone wanted me to see it. Out of respect for law enforcement's ongoing investigation, I'm not going to go through the report line by line because there may be things in it that only the killer may know.

But what I'll say is that prior to reading the report, I thought I had a good idea of what had happened to Denise the morning of her death. But honestly, I didn't. First responders at the crime scene all told me in their initial interviews in 2018 that Denise's throat appeared to have been cut from side to side. Some folks even told me it looked like the killer had tried to decapitate her.

But according to the forensic pathologist's findings in the autopsy, Denise was stabbed mostly in the rear left side of her head and the back of her neck. Essentially, she died from severe blood loss from seven stab wounds, none of which were particularly deep, and all of them failed to damage vital structures, which surprised me.

At the time of her death, there were no drugs or alcohol in her system, only a substantial presence of carbon monoxide, which I thought from my initial reporting meant the stuff in her house had been set on fire before she was stabbed. The pathologist wrote in the full autopsy report that he found soot in Denise's nasal cavity and respiratory system, which again would indicate she was breathing in smoke. But whether or not the fire was set before the attack or sometime after could be either way at this point.

Because if none of her vital structures were damaged, then theoretically the killer could have set the fires afterwards as she was bleeding out but still alive. It brings the possibility that the murderer used the fires to cover up what they'd done back into the equation. Of all the revelations I read in the autopsy though, there were two things that really stuck out.

One, the pathologist observed aspects of Denise's body, which he concluded indicated her killer might have tried to strangle her before stabbing her. Two, a sexual assault kit was collected and given to the Kill Devil Hills Police Department just days after Denise's murder in July 1997. Yeah, you heard me right. A sexual assault kit.

One that the pathologist wrote, quote, was collected for potential evidentiary use, end quote. This was the first time I'd ever heard anything about a sexual assault kit in Denise's case. So now I had all the questions. Where the heck did this sexual assault kit end up? Was it ever tested for the presence of semen? Does KDH PD still have this evidence today? Those are questions I can't answer because KDH police won't say.

Captain John Taller has never confirmed if the police department has physical evidence that may hold suspect DNA. But the fact that after season one came out and former district attorney Andy Womble went on television in 2022 saying KDH was going to send off old evidence to have tested with new technology kind of suggests police might have something.

And the reason this is so important is because a new person of interest has recently surfaced in this case. A person whose name didn't come across my desk four years ago, but maybe should have. We would say we know Sam's murdered people. You know what I'm saying? We know Sam's probably murdered somebody. Somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody.

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In February 2022, I opened one of my inboxes to find an interesting message waiting for me. It was from a man who lived and worked in Killdouble Hills in the mid and late 1990s. This guy asked me not to use his real name, so we'll call him Grant. Grant hasn't lived in the United States for years, and prior to 2022, he hadn't listened to season one. In fact, he was totally unaware of it until a friend recommended CounterClock to him.

But after listening, he felt strongly he needed to contact me and police in Kill Devil Hills about a former friend of his who he felt should be investigated. After speaking with Grant a few times to vet his information, I realized that what he was claiming was worth looking into. In the summer of 1997, Grant worked for a church ministry in Kill Devil Hills called Dare Challenge.

That program focused on rehabilitating men with substance use disorders and who often had criminal records. A man named Charles Etheridge ran that ministry. He was a well-known and respected local preacher who Grant was close with, like father figure kind of close. The Etheridge last name was big in the Outer Banks, mostly in the fishing industry, and it still is today.

Charles, the patriarch of the Etheridge family, was a staunch conservative Christian who had 13 children, the youngest of whom was a wayward son named Samuel Etheridge, who most people just called Sam. He was kind of more the one that got into trouble a lot out of the whole bunch. Sam's a fisherman, you know. He's the most of his life just...

on a boat, being here, there, everywhere. He's never really had any kind of like real job. He's never settled down anywhere. He's just lived on those fishing boats and wherever they docked at, he just parties and spends his money and gets back on those boats.

That was Grant. In early May 1997, he remembers Charles, Sam's dad, was noticeably worked up about something. And that something was 31-year-old Sam. His dad told me that his son was coming back to the beach because he had gotten in some trouble in Oregon. And he just kind of told me that Sam was always kind of in trouble all the time. And his dad said something to me like he had beat up

According to Grant, Sam traveled home to North Carolina from Oregon on a bus, which dropped him off at a depot in nearby Virginia Beach, Virginia, about an hour and a half north of Kill Devil Hills.

Charles asked Grant to go pick up Sam, which was an errand Grant had done before whenever Sam would return home via bus. However, when Grant rode with Sam, he never felt at ease. Sam was just a different type of person. You know, he just kind of was, you know, I don't know how you explain it, but he just like, he acted almost like he didn't have a soul or he just was a...

Just different. I don't know how you explain it, but you never felt really comfortable around him. So I would pick him up sometimes and I would just feel real uncomfortable with them all the time on the way back. And I would just talk a lot because I didn't like being silent with them. We would say, we know Sam's murdered people. You know what I'm saying? We know Sam's probably murdered somebody. And we would say it kind of jokingly, but serious too.

Starting in May 1997, Sam took a job working with Grant as a delivery driver for Dare Challenge's community thrift store in Kill Devil Hills. According to Grant, during this time, Sam lived on Fox Street in KDH, in some apartments designated for the program participants of Dare Challenge. The units were conveniently close to the thrift store, which was intentional, because most of the men, including Sam, didn't have their own means of transportation.

Was he someone who walked places, biked places? What was your knowledge of the way to get around? He always seemed to be getting around or he was with people. I'm trying to think when he was staying over there at the place how he was getting around. If it serves me, I can't remember right, but either he would just walk around or he had a bike. It seems like I can't remember. But I know he didn't have a car, you know. But he could drive, but I know he didn't have a car.

Grant says Sam's daily job was to drive a truck that picked up and dropped off large appliances and furniture that people would buy or donate to the thrift store. Sometimes he'd work as a handyman, too. So we would go around and, uh...

pick up things you know like people would donate things or people would throw things away or we go around picking up stuff and so he would come with us to do stuff like that sometimes people would call and maybe they want stuff moved or stuff fixed for a donation you know

So Sam would come with us all the time. His dad would make him come because he didn't want him sitting around the house doing nothing. He was a hard worker, though, a very skilled worker. If there was work that needed to be at the ministry there, the places the men stayed, you know, the places needed any fixing, they'd get Sam to do it, you know. So I was around him a whole lot, a whole lot, almost on a daily basis.

For a few weeks at the start of the summer 1997, Grant remembers this arrangement seemed to be going well for Sam. But then, in mid-July 1997, Grant says Sam disappeared. At the time, Grant figured it was just Sam being Sam, going back to his old ways. But then he learned from speaking with folks at DARE Challenge that Sam's departure was actually Charles' idea.

According to Grant, Charles sent Sam away from the Outer Banks to work on a fishing trawler that docked in Hampton, Virginia, a port city near Virginia Beach. Pretty much as soon as Sam got there, he shipped off to Northern Waters and wasn't heard from again for a long time.

Grant thought nothing of it in the summer of 1997. But now, after listening to season one of Counter Clock, Grant sees this entire situation, specifically the timing of Sam's abrupt departure from the Outer Banks in July 1997, in an entirely new light.

And that's because on July 13th, 1997, Denise Johnson was brutally murdered. And at the time, Sam Etheridge was a murderer. It's just that nobody back then knew it yet. This is Detective Meredith Hopper. It is April 30th, Monday, at approximately 2 p.m.

This is audio from April 2012. It was recorded at the Dare County Sheriff's Office in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In the room is Sam Etheridge and two detectives from the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon. The lead investigator driving the conversation is Meredith Hopper. Do you know why we're talking to you here today? Probably because you're curious about something in Oregon. That's right. That's right. I am curious about something in Oregon.

And I think that you should fill in some details for me. - Okay. - Meredith and her partner traveled across the country to speak with Sam about a cold case homicide they were investigating from May 1997 that happened in Portland. Prior to entering the interview room, Meredith coordinated with the Dare County Sheriff's Office to have Sam surveilled. Local deputies had followed Sam that morning from the dock he worked at as a fisherman and pulled him over for failing to use his blinker while making a left-hand turn.

They knew his kind of daily habits. They coordinated with me. I did the overnight flight and as soon as I landed, you know, they had him coming off the fishing boat there at the dock. They followed him to his residence where he was staying. My partner and I got out. They initiated a traffic stop on him. We got out.

And he was very nice, very pleasant. I introduced myself to him and there's always that moment of recognition when I introduce myself as Detective Meredith Hopper with Portland Police, Portland, Oregon. There's kind of that little bit of a, "Uh, what exactly are you here for?" And there's definitely that moment of recognition like, "Hmm." After bringing Sam in for an interview at DCSO headquarters, Meredith began with friendly chit chat.

"Do you have a big family here?" "I'm the 13th child." "13? Okay. So you're the youngest?" "Are you the youngest?" "I'm the baby." "Oh, wow." The two talked about what Sam did for a living and how he traveled so many places as a fisherman throughout his life. Roughly seven minutes into the exchange, Meredith asked Sam a critical question about Oregon. "Did you ever go out to Portland?" "No." "When did you go out there?"

What Sam didn't know is that months earlier, Meredith had zeroed in on him as the prime suspect in a grisly unsolved murder from May 4th, 1997. The victim of that homicide was a 59-year-old man named John Frederick Phillips, who'd been stabbed to death inside his apartment.

On the day of that crime, one of John's roommates had found him covered in blood and lifeless on his mattress. Shortly before the murder, this roommate and several other people in and out of John's apartment had seen a young white man with him who had red hair and who John introduced to some folks as his friend, and other times he referred to this stranger as his nephew.

Minutes before finding John dead, his roommate had watched the red-haired stranger and John have a drink in the apartment's kitchen, then go into John's bedroom together and shut the door. After a few minutes, the roommate heard some noises coming from John's room that he thought were sounds of the two men having sex.

After a while, the noises stopped, and the roommate who'd gone into his own bedroom by that point heard someone leave John's room. So he went into the living room to check in with the men, but didn't see anyone. Then he looked out of the apartment's kitchen window and saw the red-haired stranger walking down the street in a hurry, carrying luggage.

Curious where John was, the roommate opened John's bedroom door, and that's when he discovered John on his mattress covered with blankets. He pulled back one of the blankets and saw John's head, neck, face, and arms were covered with blood. A flathead screwdriver and several other items scattered on the floor in John's room had blood on them. The roommate attempted to chase after the stranger with red hair who'd been with John but couldn't find him. After about 20 minutes, he used a nearby payphone to dial 911.

In the days after the murder, a forensic pathologist in Portland determined that John had been stabbed more than 14 times in the head and neck with a flat, thin instrument, which detectives believed was the bloody screwdriver found in the victim's room. John's spinal cord had been punctured repeatedly, and the attack had mostly taken place on the back of his head.

In May 1997, when this happened, Portland Police's number one suspect was the unknown man who'd been with John right before his death. But at the time, all they could determine about the stranger, based on interviews with John's roommates and friends, was that the man was white, 26 to 34 years old, 6'3", somewhere in the ballpark of 240 pounds, and had noticeable short red hair.

The only other detail John's roommate could provide investigators was that he thought the stranger's last name might have rhymed with "Swear Bridge." Portland authorities had a composite sketch made, but unfortunately, even with that, no leads came in.

To make matters worse, forensic evidence in the case was slim. There were a few cigarette butts found beneath John's body, mugs from the kitchen the killer was believed to have drank from, and the flathead screwdriver, but no usable fingerprints were found on those items in 1997. After that, the case went cold until March 2011. That's when homicide detective Meredith Hopper got assigned to the case.

Turns out, in 2004, prior to her arrival in the department's cold case unit, another detective had submitted some of the physical evidence from the crime scene to the Oregon State Crime Lab for DNA testing. An unknown male profile was retrieved, but at the time, no matches showed up in the National Offender Database, known as CODIS.

When Meredith took over the case in 2011, she had the DNA profile that had been developed in 2004 resubmitted into CODIS. And that's when everything changed. It came back as a DNA hit to Samuel Etheridge. Mr. Phillips was murdered in his bedroom. On really close proximity to his body was a cigarette butt. And if I recall correctly, the cigarette butt had a drop of Mr. Phillips' blood on it.

When they did a DNA swabbing of that cigarette, that's where the DNA profile came from. In 2010, Sam Etheridge had been found guilty of a felony in North Carolina, and a stipulation of that conviction was that he had to have a swab of his DNA taken and submitted into CODIS. This is the reason why, when Oregon officials in 2004 entered the unknown DNA profile from the John Phillips case into CODIS, they didn't get a hit.

But when Meredith did the same thing a year after Sam became a convicted felon, she got a match. Essentially, it came down to timing. After testing a few more items from John's crime scene, which confirmed Sam's DNA was present in more than one place, Meredith got to work building the rest of her case. Once you get a DNA hit, it's not that you run out and put handcuffs on someone. A lot of DNA can be explained. Just because the presence of DNA is

Because at the crime scene, you have to do a lot of investigative work to get to the point that you believe that this DNA sample was connected to the murder of that subject. She worked for another few months re-interviewing original witnesses in Oregon and speaking with the initial homicide detectives. With every turn, she kept finding more and more clues that pointed directly at Sam for the murder of John Phillips.

A retired detective realized there was a hat that was seized from a location that the victim and the suspect met up at. This bartender at this bar says, hey, the guy that was with Mr. Phillips left this hat behind and I saved it.

And what's interesting about this hat, and at the time it didn't make any sense, it had the name Etheridge on it. I think it was like Etheridge Motor or something to that effect. And, you know, at the time in 97, that doesn't mean anything. We didn't know anything about that. So the retired detective sends that hat in to be analyzed for DNA. We find the same profile on that hat as the cigarette butt.

Then we get the hit, it's Samuel Etheridge, on top of that is Etheridge. So it all kind of linked up that way. Fast forward to April 30th, 2012, inside the interview room in Dare County. And I would like to hear about what happened in Portland, Oregon in 1997. I think you remember, and I want to know what happened that led up to this big event. Do you know what I'm talking about?

- I'm not falling in as a death. - Not as of yet, okay. Did you get any arguments or fights with anybody in Portland? - Don't think, I can't say exactly, probably was. - Probably was. - Because I'm guessing that's why you flew all the way out here. - And I wanna know what happened in this man's room in 1997. - I've never been in anybody's room. I don't do nothing like that with men. - Okay. - That's something I don't do. - And I believe you.

Has anybody ever tried anything like that with you? Never successfully. Never successfully. Okay. Because you're not with that, right? You're not. You don't want to be part of that. No. Okay. So that would make you angry if somebody were to try something like that with you. I'd fall out. Yeah. Tell me about it. Just fall out? You're familiar with DNA. Mm-hmm. That's why we're here. I want to know your side of the story. And I want to know the whole story.

Over the course of their two and a half hour interview, Meredith chipped away at Sam. Eventually, he confessed to being in John Phillips' room and attacking him on May 4th, 1997. But he denied anything sexual went on between them.

Meredith wasn't really concerned with why Sam had done what he'd done to John all those years ago. Her goal was to basically elicit one thing, a confession. I mean, he had to confess because essentially, yes, we have his DNA. But again, what would the defense be? He could say, well, he was alive when I left. Yeah, I smoked a cigarette and I left it there near the bed and whoever killed him came in and that's how blood got on it. So there

There's definitely a lot of room for, you know, defense challenges. And we want to try to structure our questioning to eliminate those challenges and hopefully get him to tell us what happened. You know, overall, he was pretty friendly throughout the conversation. I did see, though, that the more I pushed him, when I pushed him harder, he definitely got a little bit more tense. I mean, you could see that he...

A few days after that interview, Sam, who was 46 years old at that point, was indicted for the murder of John Phillips and extradited to the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon.

A year later in April 2013, while he was scheduled to go to trial, Sam did an about-face and decided to take a plea deal instead of having a jury trial. State prosecutors allowed him to plead no contest to first-degree manslaughter. In July 2013, he was sentenced to 16 and a half years in prison. He's still serving his time at Oregon State Penitentiary and is scheduled to be released in August 2027.

Sam's arrest and John Phillips' murder in Oregon are interesting to me in regards to Denise Johnson's case for two reasons, timing and similarity. And I wasn't the only person who felt that way. Whatever evidence they have or not have, I think eliminating Sam would be a good idea. ♪

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That's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash counterclock. Tryfirstleaf.com slash counterclock. Rewind with me for a moment. It's clear, based on everything that came out in court during Sam's conviction in 2013 for John Phillips' murder, why he returned so quickly to the Outer Banks in May 1997.

He'd just brutally stabbed a man to death in Oregon, and he needed to get as far away from there as possible. So he went to the one place he knew best, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and into the welcoming arms of his dad, Charles. According to Grant, when Sam returned, Charles knew his son had gotten into some kind of trouble in Oregon, but he tried to set Sam on a new course by giving him a place to live and a job in his ministry.

But just a month or so after Sam's return to Kill Devil Hills, something horrific happened in the Outer Banks community. A beautiful, well-known local woman named Denise Johnson was stabbed to death inside her house, and the killer also set it on fire. Now, according to Grant, shortly after Denise's murder, Sam's father sent Sam to work on a fishing boat that shipped out of Virginia. He wasn't seen or heard from for a while after that.

A few years later, in 2002, police records show that Sam returned home to the Outer Banks and got arrested for breaking and entering, but only spent a month in jail. In 2005, Sam went back to Virginia where he and another man were arrested for disposing of a corpse in public.

News reports from the Daily Press and the Coastland Times state that Sam and his friend were doing drugs with a guy in a motel room in Hampton, Virginia, and that other man allegedly suffered some kind of medical event and died as a result. Instead of calling police to get the man help, Sam and his friend wrapped up the dead guy in some sheets and transported him to a Little League field where they dumped him out in the open and left.

Within hours, families with kids showed up and found the corpse, and Sam and his friend were quickly arrested, but only charged with a misdemeanor. Now, in 2005, Grant remembers learning about the body dumping story and wasn't surprised that Sam was involved. I think Sam could do anything and not act any different, just go along doing what he's doing. He never changed or ever, you know, had any real remorse or anything like that.

After that, Sam returned to North Carolina for good, or at least until Meredith Hopper showed up, took his DNA, then took him back to Oregon. So the timing was interesting, to say the least. But the details of the crimes, that's where things get chilling. First, the injury patterns seen in John Phillips and Denise's cases are almost identical. Both victims were attacked with sharp objects in the same general area of the back of their heads.

The big difference between Denise's murder and John Phillips is that multiple spot fires were set inside Denise's house during her attack. Many of the experts I interviewed for season one told me that the random locations of these spot fires indicated that whoever set them didn't really know what they were doing. They were just in a panic and used whatever was in front of them to get the fires going.

The second thing that jumped out at me was something mentioned in a letter Donnie Johnson got. If any Gold Star Counter Clock listeners are out there, you might remember this.

Years after Denise's murder, an anonymous author wrote two letters about the case and sent them off in the mail. One went to John Taller at KDHPD, and the other went to Donnie Johnson. I never found out what was in Taller's letter, but I interviewed Donnie about hers. And in it, the author specifically said that the person police should be looking for was intimately familiar with Kill Devil Hills, but that this person had not grown up in that specific town.

Now, that could describe Sam Etheridge. You see, Sam grew up living in the fishing village of Wanchese, a community 25 minutes southwest of Kill Devil Hills. Wanchese is on the same island as the town of Manio, where I grew up. It wasn't until Sam was in his teens and early 20s that his father, Charles, got heavily involved in the Kill Devil Hills community through his ministry and church.

Third, I keyed in on the fact that Grant told me Sam used to walk and bike most places in order to get around in Kill Devil Hills. It seems like I can't remember, but I know he didn't have a car.

Now, the reason this detail piqued my interest so much was because of what the very first witness on scene of Denise's house fire told his girlfriend shortly after the crime in 1997. If you remember, this man was the person authorities initially pegged as a suspect, but eventually the cops stopped pursuing him after he got a lawyer. Well, according to his girlfriend, Vicky Broadus, who later went on to become his wife and then ex-wife... He told on the street there was someone on the bicycle

Yeah, because who on a bicycle would pass by a burning house and not stop? Right. Correct. Exactly.

Now, at the time of Denise's murder, Sam drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, and used cocaine, the very same drug that Eric, Denise's next-door neighbor, who I focused heavily on in my original reporting, was rumored to deal, or at least held a conviction for dealing. But other than that, I wasn't able to find any other connection between Eric and Sam. Well, I guess other than the fact that they both also lived in Kill Devil Hills in July 1997.

And the reason I know so much about Sam's substance use is because he revealed his history of it to Meredith Hopper during his 2012 interview. Though at the time, Meredith had no clue Denise Johnson's case even existed, or that arson was a critical component of her chaotic crime scene. Have you ever smoked? Cigarettes? Yeah. Pretty much. Did you have a drug problem back then? Yeah. What was your drug? Cocaine. Cocaine? Crack cocaine? Cocaine and heroin.

Did you ever commit any other crimes while you were behind drugs? There's no judgment here. I'm just saying like some people in order to get their drug of choice, they'll, you know, they'll stop or whatever. I've worked, I mean I got good work ethics. I work and I'm proven that pretty much everywhere I go I work hard. Yeah, that's good. I mean, I got cows, I'm going to buy a pen. During that time did you drink alcohol quite a bit? What? Yeah.

Towards the end of this conversation, Meredith and her colleague left Sam in the interview room by himself so they could take a break. On her way out the door, Meredith playfully instructed Sam not to smoke while they were gone. She jokingly quipped,

In case you didn't catch that, she asked Sam, "You're not going to smoke or light the house on fire, are you?" But Sam didn't immediately reply to this question. Instead, he didn't say anything and just nervously laughed. When the detectives left, he settled into his chair and stared at a spot on the floor.

I've watched and rewatched this clip probably a dozen times, and there's just something about it that gives me the chills. Maybe it's just the way Sam stares blankly, or how he chuckles in response to Meredith's comment.

I don't know. There's just something about it that makes me cringe. The whole interaction made me reevaluate more of the old interview clips I'd gathered. Sound bites like this one from former North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation agent Donnie Varnell, who worked on Denise's case from the very beginning. We spoke to so many people. You know, did we speak, you know, did we speak to the person that's responsible for her death?

I needed to know the answer to that question. I also needed to know if Sam Etheridge knew Denise Johnson when she was alive. Could he have been one of the many people authorities looked at initially? Here's Grant again.

Did you notice any change in behavior in Charles, his dad, after the Denise Johnson murder? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was kind of, you know, upset. One thing I learned, too, is his dad was kind of scared of Sam, too. You know, after a time of being around him, I could tell his dad was a little afraid of Sam.

Grant mentioned something else in his interview that gave me pause. It was a random memory he brought up about working with Sam in the thrift store delivery truck shortly before Denise's murder. The woman that you have on there that you're interviewing who lived next door to her? It's Donna Egan. It was Donna Smith. Donna Egan was her name back then. And we went over there and we, I don't know if she remembers or not, but we went over there a couple of times, once or twice to either pick up something or fix something.

I fact-checked this with Donna Smithson. She told me that she did frequent the Dare Challenge thrift store in the summer of 1997, and even said it's possible their delivery guys picked up or dropped off an appliance at her house on Norfolk Street. She knew the ministry well because she and her husband were actually married by Charles Etheridge, Sam's father, and they attended his church at the time.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that within weeks of committing a brutal stabbing in Oregon and then coming home to Kill Devil Hills, Sam Etheridge could have been on Denise's street shortly before she was killed in an eerily similar manner.

In July 1997, Sam would have been the same age as Denise too. So I asked Grant if Sam was known to hang out in the Avalon Pier area. You know, could Sam and Denise both been part of the same crowd? Would she have been his type? But Grant's response was not what I expected.

I never seen him with a girlfriend. I never even seen him like say, "Hey, that's a good looking girl over there," or "She's attractive," or anything like that. But most of his talk was always in a negative way about women. I never seen him really show any interest in any woman. And if they ever said anything, it's always just kind of negative.

His dad was the type of guy, he was a very strict holiness type preacher, you know, so he could be kind of judgmental too towards women. Most guys who are that way have that anger. They're more that way towards a beautiful woman or a pretty woman. You know, they're usually the, they have that more of an anger towards that.

"I knew from seeing pictures of Denise that she was a beautiful woman. Everyone I've ever interviewed who knew her has told me she was outgoing, popular, well-liked, the type of woman Grant indicated Sam would have spoken negatively of. There's also something else I discovered about Sam which concerned me." In 1997, his older brother, Phillip Etheridge, who Grant says was Charles' favorite son, worked as a sergeant deputy at the Dare County Sheriff's Office.

His daddy was really proud of Philip. He really talked good about Philip. Philip went on to have a distinguished career with that agency and even graduated from the FBI National Academy before retiring in 2011, just a year before his youngest brother was interrogated and arrested by Meredith Hopper.

I couldn't help but wonder: had Philip's reputation and influence in local law enforcement back in 1997 shielded Sam from being looked at as a suspect in relation to Denise's case? Grant sure thinks so.

His daddy used to tell me, he goes, Sam's gotten away with a lot of stuff because of my name. Like a lot of people would give Sam a pass because of his daddy. Daddy was a good man and they would just, you know, just, I ain't going to press charges because of your father. Or I'm not going to do this to you, Sam, because of your daddy. I know your daddy good. Even Meredith Hopper, the detective who arrested Sam for John Phillips' murder, had concerns about Sam's family influence interfering with her investigation in 2012.

I did research on him and his family prior to talking with him when I contacted the Deer County Sheriff's Office. I mean, they knew the Etheridge family. I was a little concerned. I mean, I'll be honest with you. He did have family members in law enforcement, and I was thinking, you know, if

They figure out that he's being questioned by detectives. Are they going to stop the interrogation? Is he going to say, I want an attorney? You know, so there's always that fear when you're interviewing somebody. But because his family did have those connections, I did think about it. Unfortunately, Philip Etheridge died in 2020 before I was able to interview him on this topic. So I can't ask him for myself any of the questions I have about this.

What I can tell you is that in my original reporting, I pressed Kill Devil Hill's police department to give me the name of the person Denise Johnson had filed harassing phone call reports about prior to her murder. If you remember, in the months leading up to her death, dating all the way back to Thanksgiving of 1996, she'd been complaining to her friends and family that a man had been calling and harassing her. She'd also found notes left on her car.

-She saw this guy on the hill a couple times, like a couple of dates was it. And then he just kept on just kind of wanting to stay in contact and kept calling and calling. And I think he left a couple of notes on her vehicle

In 2019, KDH police gave me the police report Denise filed about this person, but all of the information was redacted. John Taller said the individual being complained about was someone who'd been questioned in relation to the homicide investigation, which is why they wouldn't release his name. Now, police have the right to redact this person's name if, in fact, they really are a person who was questioned in relation to the murder case. But what I would like to know is, is if the name is Sam Etheridge.

The real aha moment for me, though, came when I investigated whether Denise and Sam could have known one another from years before the crime. You know, like during the years Denise lived in Florida. Donnie still has letters that her sister sent her, which indicate Denise lived in a few different cities on the east coast of Florida. One was 3204 Northeast 16th Street, apartment 4, Pompano. 2311...

Southeast Rainier Road in Port St. Lucie. Well, in Sam's 2012 interview with Meredith Hopper, he mentioned offhand a few times that he'd lived in Florida while working on fishing vessels in the early 1990s. I've been in Florida. I've been here. I've been there. Which was the same time frame Denise lived there.

Sam told Meredith that after graduating from Bible College, he'd hitchhiked in Florida in 1989 or 1991. In fact, he went on to tell her this long story about how he once assaulted a cab driver who tried to come on to him sexually while he was thumbing along the interstate.

Unfortunately, Highway Patrol had no record of this incident that they could find, so I'm not sure how true it is. But I did find burglary arrest reports for Sam in Florida counties directly next to the counties Denise would have lived in. However, these reports were from the year 2000, not the early 1990s.

So even though Sam admitted in his 2012 interview with Meredith Hopper that he was in Florida during the late 80s and early 90s, I can't find any documentation, like an arrest report, that proves he was there the same time as Denise. All of the things I've just mentioned are why I decided to put out this episode. There are just too many coincidences to ignore at this point.

After fully reviewing everything in Denise's case and comparing it to the John Phillips case file, Meredith Hopper, who still works for the Portland Police Bureau, took it upon herself to contact John Taller at the Kill Devil Hills Police Department. She inquired if they would look into Sam as a potential person of interest in Denise's case. She even offered her assistance as an investigator.

It's all those little things like you just said, you know, like the Florida connection and the, you know, Gare County connection and all that. It all leads to like, well, maybe we should look at this person. Like all those little things lead you to that direction. The problem is, is you don't know what you don't know. I will say it is difficult in my experience to confront somebody, particularly after a lot of years of

unless you have something to confront them with. And a lot of times, you know, it could be a witness statement, like what you've relayed to me. It could be physical evidence. It could be, you know, eyewitnesses that have come forward that didn't come forward in the past. There could be many factors. But if you don't have one of those factors, just ask him, "Hey, Sam, did you kill this lady in '97?" He's going to be like, "No." I mean, there isn't going to be a lot of conversation past that.

So it's just important to have those investigative leads kind of lined up before you confront someone to, like you said, rule them in or out. Because he exists, right? And he's more than what, from what I understand, more than what's around now. So, I mean, sure, it's whatever evidence they have or not have, I think eliminating Sam would be a good idea. I mean, obviously he has a history of extreme violence towards people. Yeah, I think it's worthwhile looking into it.

So this is what we all need to make loud and clear to the Kill Devil Hills Police Department and the new district attorney over Dare County. Compare Sam Etheridge's DNA to any physical evidence in Denise Johnson's case. It's as simple as that. Sam is sitting in prison until 2027. His DNA has already been obtained multiple times and exists in CODIS.

Meredith Hopper has offered to work with KDHPD to facilitate interviewing him in prison in Oregon. I even wrote Sam a letter in 2023 asking for him to correspond with me. But months went by and I never got a response. To date, I've still never heard from him. To my knowledge, Meredith Hopper's department in Oregon is now in communication with KDH on the matter. But what we need to do is keep the pressure on.

Now, some of you might also be wondering if I've dug any more on whether Mike Brandon, the person of interest in Stacey Stanton's murder from season two, could be involved in Denise's murder. And the answer is, yes, I have been looking into that. And it's still possible to find out once and for all. After more than three years of trying to track down and find Mike Brandon's son, Mike Brandon III, he reached out to me via social media in the summer of 2023.

We got on the phone and discussed a lot of things, most notably the fact that his dad was a prime suspect in Stacey's death, alongside Clifton Spencer, the black man railroaded by the state of North Carolina for Stacey's murder before being released from prison in 2007.

Mike Jr. told me he learned a lot from listening to season two. He believes Clifton was likely wrongfully convicted, but maintains that his dad wasn't Stacey's killer. As far as whether his father could have known Denise Johnson or been involved in her murder, he doesn't think so. Mike Jr. believes any confessions his dad allegedly made in relation to Denise's death were likely just ramblings he made up while using drugs or withdrawing from drugs.

Mike Jr. doesn't think for a second that his father is connected to what happened to Denise. He told me that if law enforcement ever needs a sample of his DNA for evidence comparison in either Stacey or Denise's case, since his father is dead now, he'd be more than willing to give it if it comes down to that.

Right now, Donnie Johnson is aware of the investigation I've done into Sam Etheridge, and though she's hesitant to get too hopeful, she understands why he's worth considering and would like law enforcement to at least rule him in or out with DNA. If there's anyone listening right now who recognizes anything or anyone I've mentioned in this episode or thinks they may know something that would be helpful to police, please contact the Kill Devil Hills Police Department.

You can also send me a tip too. Until there's more to report, stay tuned for updates and make sure you follow the show. One day, I hope not too long from now, Denise's case will finally be solved.

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