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Heads up, this episode contains strong language. Last time on Beyond All Repair. We the jury find the defendant, Sophia S. Johnston, guilty. Being pregnant with him while incarcerated truly saved my life. No sentence would be strong enough for Sophia. I picked up the phone and Therese was excited. And I said, I won, didn't I? She said, you won. A person her height couldn't have done that.
It doesn't mean she wasn't involved. So I'm using this opportunity to just confess that I'm a little nervous. It's autumn 2021. I'm nervously, frantically recording a voice memo while I set up my actual audio equipment in the driveway of the person I'm about to talk to. There are very different narratives about her.
Very different narratives about the woman I'd been talking to for six months at this point. Always on video calls. I knew her side of the story well, but I'd read and heard many other perspectives. People who call her a manipulator, a mastermind, a murderer. I hope that I'm not doing something stupid.
This was the day I'd meet Sophia Johnson in person for the first time. All right, here we go. Hi! Hi, Sophia. Can I give you a hug? Yes, you can. Sophia greets me at the door of a nondescript new construction in a cul-de-sac of two-story stucco houses that more or less look the same.
She's petite. Her full face of makeup says she's ready for anything. Her loungewear and loose ponytail say we're staying in and watching a movie. We're not. We have a lot to talk about. The three of us. This is Morgan, Sophia's partner. Do you think she'll be afraid to come here? She goes, well, why would she be afraid? And I said, I don't know. You were accused. You were convicted. I mean, for all, I mean, it's,
Here I am, in Sophia and Morgan's home, far away from my own, by myself. And you heard how nervous I was before going in. But I don't think I would have let myself get out of the car if I thought Sophia bludgeoned someone to death.
And also, Sophia told me where she is, making me one of two people, including Morgan, who know that information. Or knew that information. I don't know where Sophia is anymore. That's on purpose. These two are in hiding. Today, you'll learn why. Tell me.
I'm Anne-Marie Sievertson. From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair, Chapter 7, Made Up. If you want to change your appearance, browse Lash's lips. I'm a few days into my trip now, and Sophia and I are both feeling comfortable enough that I've asked her for a favor. I'm sitting next to her, and she's sitting in front of a desk devoted entirely to makeup.
There's an assortment of plastic storage containers holding brushes of all sizes, colorful tubes and sticks and jars of creams and serums and glosses. All right, are we ready for my transformation? I'm ready. I think I'm going to learn a lot today. I'm talking about makeup here, but I was hoping to learn about a lot more than brows, lashes, lips. Meeting Sophia IRL was an attempt to understand the whole person.
And while learning more about Sophia's appearance might sound, well, surface level, it was important to me. Because the made-up Sophia who'd been showing up to video calls for months really didn't look anything like the woman convicted of murder that I'd seen in the newspapers from 20 years ago.
And that's not an exaggeration. There were times I wondered if I was talking to a completely different person. If I want to look more Asian, then I could do an Asian look. If I want to look more Middle Eastern, I could do a Middle Eastern look. So I asked Sophia if she'd be willing to show me how she transforms herself and why. I have always had a love for makeup. And that is because I feel so ugly and so small without it.
I have a lot of blemishes on my face. I grew up with really bad acne. When I was in jail, it got worse. I watch as Sophia reaches for products with the consideration of a painter, reaching for different hues to blend and blot and conjure up something you understand much more, having seen the many careful steps it took to construct. You know, the green hides any sort of red blemishes. The yellow brightens and this...
Brick color hides the darkness. Sophia's makeup hides the darkness. It covers actual blemishes and scars and ones beneath the facade that she's collected as a person convicted of murdering someone close to her who lost her husband and only child in the process. The made-up Sophia doesn't let any of that show. Because that person that looks like that doesn't have any problems.
And I feel like I'm hiding, so it makes me feel safe. I'm not scared Sophia at home with no makeup. I am this person that nobody knows, that they think might be confident, that they think might be nice. I keep my eyes on the Sophia in the mirror across from us as layer by layer, I'm
She transforms from the 23-year-old woman from the newspapers into the 43-year-old Sophia from my video calls. Hold on, I'm going to put my lips on now. Okay. Hoping that this exercise will help me hold both Sophias in my head. The woman who's cried countless tears in front of me over the son she hasn't seen since he was born. All right, I'm putting on mascara now. No more tears. Okay.
who's texted me after some difficult conversations to see how I'm doing, who shows the same tenderness and care towards Morgan on our calls that Shane says saved him growing up. Eyeliner, next. And the woman convicted of the brutal murder of her mother-in-law. It's just mask, and I'm just somebody else. I'm not me. ♪
The Sophia from the newspapers and the woman sitting next to me here are the same person. But who is the real Sophia? Boy, this is really harder than I thought it would be. This morning there was like, oh my God, what am I doing? You know, moment. The person who knows Sophia best, the whole Sophia, is her partner in hiding, Morgan.
This is him talking to me on a video call back in May of 2021, on the eve of an anniversary. Tomorrow will be the first day that I meet Sophia. It would be 16 years ago, and I cannot believe it's 16 years ago.
16 years prior, in May of 2005, Sophia was in Clark County Jail awaiting her second murder trial when she met Morgan through someone named Tina. Okay, so I'm new to jail. I don't know this whole, they have a whole different language I've never heard before.
That was Tina. If you're like, wait, no, I thought that was Morgan, you are correct. But when Sophia tells this part of her story, she tells it like it happened back then. And I should say, Morgan doesn't consider Tina a dead name. But let's focus on the story of how the two of them became close. It started with an argument. Tina's cellmate had gotten Sophia in trouble, or so she thought.
So Sophia went to this woman's cell to confront her and said, Tina had been in jail for only about a week at this point. She didn't know Sophia, and she didn't appreciate her arguing with her cellmate while she was trying to sleep.
So Sophia's like,
Who is this new girl? I was talking to Tina. I said, do you know who I am? She said, do you know who I am or something stupid? And I thought, what the hell do I know? She said, no. Who are you?
And I kind of laughed because I knew she took it the wrong way. I didn't mean I was someone special. All I was saying is, do you understand why they would be trying to have your roommate stack things up against me? It's because of my charges. And she said, my name is Sophia Johnson. I'm being tried for killing my mother-in-law or something like that.
And she said, well, did you do it? And she said, no. She's like, oh, because I like my mother. And I'm like, okay. You know, it's just kind of, I mean, what do you say to that? It was so blatant and so funny all at the same time. It was a whole weird experience, you know, where it was like, who is that?
Sophia respected the way Tina looked out for her roommate that day. And she started looking out for Tina, who didn't appear to be eating much or adjusting well to jail. The two became friends, and soon cellmates. Sophia told Tina about her first trial and her upcoming one.
She was debating whether or not to testify in her own defense. Her lawyer, Therese, didn't want her to. And Sophia, having already gotten a taste of what prison was like, was feeling pretty resigned to that life. Tina didn't get it. She came back a few times and said, my attorney said no. I said, tell your attorney, yes, you should have a say. She'd say, I don't understand why you just can't go and tell the truth.
I have a feeling it's going to be your only shot. You're not going to get this again. So why don't you just do what you know you will not regret? And it started lighting a fire in my heart where I thought, well, maybe I do want to go home. Maybe I could get out and meet Ethan. Ethan, her son.
who was already three years old, but none the wiser to the fact that his biological mom was behind bars. But maybe not for much longer. All of a sudden, maybe was a very relevant word in my life where it hadn't been for years at that point. I started becoming hopeful. Near the end of her second trial, Sophia took Tina's advice.
And the stand. Tina wasn't in the courtroom that day. While Sophia was testifying, she was sitting in their cell, waiting to hear how it went. But a couple months before we met in person, Morgan, now, was watching the footage of Sophia on the stand for the first time. Do you know who answered that phone call?
I was sitting in that chair. She was sitting on this couch and I had the laptop on my lap and headphones on because she can't see it. And at a certain point, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He took off the headphones and said, "Did you lie when you testify?" And she said, "Yes." And I immediately headed upstairs and called you. "What the hell?"
What the hell? In a minute. It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime. When you're driving down this road, I plan on killing somebody. A rock. A rock.
A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. Did you think that a war crime had been committed? I don't have any opinion on that. Season three of In the Dark is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Real quick before we get back to the show, I know you listen to Beyond All Repair, but do you follow the show? Are you following the show in your podcast app or subscribe to it or whatever the terminology is in your app of choice? I don't want you missing any new episodes as they come out or having them served up to you out of order. And I don't want you losing your place in an episode if you need to pause it part of the way through. So do me another favor, will you? Look for the little follow button or a plus sign button in your app and
Follow the show officially wherever you listen, and thank you. I got the call from Morgan while I was driving, as in, I wasn't recording. He'd just watched Sophia's testimony for the first time, and he was spiraling. I could barely understand what he was saying. I hadn't seen any of the footage of the second trial at this point. Sophia and Morgan had only just gotten it themselves from a relative.
Just tell the truth, basically.
A bit of a refresher. What Sophia told detectives, and what she's told Morgan, and what she's told me, is that she had nothing to do with Marlene Johnson's murder. That she didn't go to her mother-in-law's house that day until she and her husband Brad went over to check on his mom and found her dead. Sophia's testimony in this second trial told a different story, starting with the night before Marlene's murder. ♪
Sophia had told me about a heated fight her in-laws got into over her father-in-law, Richard's, drinking and gambling. She and Brad got out of there quickly, she said, and drove back to their own house. But this is where Sophia's story on the stand started to stray from her original one. Here's Therese, Sophia's lawyer, asking her about what happened on the way back from her in-laws' house. What did Brad say to you, if anything, on the ride home? That he hated this.
So that it keeps happening. And he wants to protect us. And that Richard was taking everything that she had. He wanted some help to scare her. So he asked me if my brother would be, if I'd be willing to call. Alright, so your husband tells you that he wants help in scaring Marlene? Yes. Did he tell you what he meant by that? He said just horribly scaring her.
Letting her know that Richard had outstanding gambling debts, so it would be enough to persuade her to finally leave him. Did you wonder why Brad would want your brother to be involved in this? Oh, I knew why. Because Sean was, he had been in trouble before, and he probably wouldn't have been at first to doing, to scaring Marlene.
Okay, so according to Sophia on the stand, Brad was devising a plan to scare his mom into leaving his dad with the help of Sophia's brother, Sean. Sophia says she calls Sean that night, as Brad asks her to, and she passes the phone off to Brad, who talks to Sean privately about what would infamously become known in this second trial as the plan. ♪
The morning of the murder, Sophia says, Sean and his girlfriend Susie did come over to work on his divorce paperwork, as she originally told me. But then, in this new version of events, the plan, Susie drove Sophia and Sean over to the Johnsons' house with the vague knowledge that Sean had some sort of job to do there.
Susie left, Brad met them at his parents' house, and Sean and Brad stayed down in the basement, talking, while Sophia went upstairs to Marlene's room. I just got really nervous, and I got up and started pacing in front of the television and to the bathroom area. Now, you keep saying you were nervous. What was your understanding of what was to happen?
Was it your understanding that he was going to do any harm to her? A little bit later, Sophia says Brad came up the stairs and told her it was time to go. How was Brad acting? Were you asking additional questions? No.
Didn't you have a conversation about what was going on with Sean? I asked him where Sean was, and he said he had other plans. That was it. So was it your expectation you'd be seeing Marlene that day? Of course, Sophia says. She would be coming over for lunch that afternoon, just like Sophia's told me. So Marlene not showing up, finding her dead in the basement, all of that was still a horrific surprise, she says on the stand.
But Sophia had already committed to this bit, the plan. And now, she had some explaining to do around what she told detectives the night of the murder. Isn't it true you told the detectives lies that night? Yes. Why did you lie to them? I was in shock. I was scared. Brad was there and he didn't fess up any information whatsoever.
Well, who cares what Brad's saying? Why didn't you tell the police what had happened? I was scared. I didn't know. I know that we were all three there. I mean, this is my husband, and then this is my brother. I didn't even know what happened. What was I to say? So you lied? Yes. This may as well be the definition of a mindfuck. On the stand, Sophia is admitting to lying. Today, Sophia would say she was lying on the stand about lying.
And I'm over here like, could she be lying about lying about lying? Morgan was also caught in a which-story-is-made-up head spin. What the hell? He confronted Sophia right then and there. And she looked up and her head, her just, she just kind of, her shoulders shrunk and she just looked small. I don't know how to describe it.
Remember, Morgan was the one who'd encouraged Sophia to testify, to tell her truth on the stand. And now, he was left wondering if Sophia has been lying to him all along. I would never be okay with it. And knowing her and loving her, to hear that on this long, forever road of a mess. I don't understand why you just can't go and tell the truth. I don't know, I feel like I got punched in the face.
I had a strong reaction watching Sophia's testimony the first time, too. All through her first trial, she'd sat in the courtroom listening to people accuse her of terrible things, hearing her own brother paint her as a greedy, devious, murderous monster. This was Sophia's chance to be heard in her second chance of a trial. And here she was, using this unlikely opportunity to tell a totally different story.
And that story, the plan, Sean scaring Marlene, it's stupid. The whole thing just feels stupid.
Totally preposterous. Detective Rick Buckner knew it. You know, if they want Marlene to leave Richard Johnson, all they've got to do is convince her of it. They don't have to threaten her. The prosecutor, Mike Kinney, knew it. And in his cross-examination of Sophia, he would try to make sure the jury knew it, too. So was the idea that your mother-in-law...
was to know that it was your brother who was making these threats to her or a stranger? I believe it was to be a stranger. Okay. Well, the problem is, though, that a week earlier, on the 3rd, Marlene Johnson had been over at your house looking at wedding videos and Sean Pariah was there along with Suzy Parker.
This is true. Sophia's told me she had just gotten back in touch with Sean after months of estrangement. And she'd asked Marlene to be there when Sean came over because she wasn't comfortable being in her house alone with him. So does it make a whole lot of sense then that she wouldn't identify your brother with
That she wouldn't identify my brother? No, that doesn't make sense. Does it? Does it? No. Okay. But Brad did have ski masks and gloves that he'd taken out of the office closet, and he was bringing them to give to Sean, I suppose. Well, you hadn't mentioned that before. When did you get this information?
Later that night, he was going through the closet. Sophia becomes increasingly frazzled and emotional on the stand as the prosecutor pokes at the details of what she'd laid out. Why did she go along with a plan to scare her mother-in-law, the woman who was her closest friend at this point? Why didn't she call her brother Sean when Marlene didn't show up for lunch to find out what had gone down at the house?
And did she not say anything to the detectives about a plan gone very wrong because she didn't want to get her husband and brother in trouble? You didn't want the police to know anything about them, did you? I didn't know anything myself. What was I supposed to tell them? The truth would have been nice. Wasn't this a woman who you cared for? Wasn't this a woman that you loved? Wasn't this a woman that you respected? Yes. And you saw her body laying in a pool of blood? Yes.
and you know that two people possibly are involved, aren't you going to tell the police about that? I was in fear for my life. Oh, okay. I was involved. Who were you in fear of your life from? Who threatened you? My husband told me to follow his lead, that my mother still lived in Vancouver. Oh, okay. So you're afraid of your husband. Is that who you're afraid of? Yes. I see. I submit, ma'am, that you made up stories to protect the ones you love.
and the people of yourself the most. You know when you watch a movie you've seen before, and even though you know what's going to happen, a little voice in your head wonders, what if somehow it plays out differently this time? That's how I feel pretty much every time I watch Sophia on the stand. Her youngest brother, Shane. Fuck me. Damn it. Okay. He was also grappling with this new story in his way. Because it just means that Sophia's still lying.
Be it a stupid lie or an actual admission to having known more about Marlene's murder than Sophia originally said. God damn it, Sophia! All right, so she's at the scene of the crime, in the bathroom, while the murder might happen. Now, again, Sophia today says she was not at the scene of the crime, that the story she told on the stand was a lie. So why did she do it? I feel nervous on the stand.
I feel defeated. I thought, "Fuck, I'm going down anyway. I'm going back to prison for something I know I didn't do." One of these two people did it, either Brad or Sean. And at the time, I didn't know, but they were pointing the finger so much at me that it didn't make sense. Three days after testifying, Sophia was called from her cell. There was a verdict in her second trial. We, the jury, find the defendant, Sophia Johnson, not guilty of the crime of murder in the second degree.
Stupid or not, the plan had helped create just enough reasonable doubt to acquit Sophia. Was she innocent? Not necessarily. But in the eyes of the law, she was and is not guilty of Marlene's murder.
Sophia has told me many times, in many ways, that she knows lying on the stand was wrong. It's also illegal, for the record. It's called perjury, and the statute of limitations for it in Sophia's case has long since passed.
Still, I'm embarrassed by my lies that I told on this stand. I'm embarrassed that I went to that level. But ask her if she regrets it. And the answer is a lot more complicated. What would have been okay to say? Because the truth wasn't. And I did tell them I was never there in the beginning. They didn't hear it. That came out at the first trial and I was convicted. What should scare the shit out of every person listening is that the truth did not matter.
And that the lie is what set me free. That is our justice system. Marlene's family was reeling. It's like, it's over? Detective Rick Buckner was reeling. What the hell are we going to do now? You know, she just got away with murder. The prosecutor, Mike Kinney, was probably reeling himself. But he had also prepared.
Moments after Sophia's not-guilty verdict was read, Kinney piped up. Not so fast, Your Honor. Your Honor, there is an INS hold on her. There's an INS hold on Sophia, Kinney says.
Today, it would be called an ICE detainer. Or, in other words... We have papers for her deportation. Wow. Before you've even left the courtroom. Before I even left the courtroom. And this memo then directs the jail staff to hold Ms. Johnson in custody until federal authorities remove her. Sophia would be sent to Guyana.
A place she hadn't been since she was very young, but one she was legally tethered to having not become a US citizen before being arrested for murder at age 23. But it was not the murder she was now not guilty of that would get her deported. It was the plea she had taken in her embezzlement case. The one I mentioned would come back to bite her. Sophia had served her time for the embezzlement, but taking a plea at all for it had made her a convicted felon.
And if the state of Washington couldn't remove her from society, they'd remove her from the country she'd grown up calling home. A few months later, in early 2006, they did. You just let me know when you're ready. I'm ready whenever you are. Okay, let's do this and then... Fifteen years later, in 2021, I'd be sitting across from Sophia in person. But we were not in Guyana. We were somewhere she isn't technically welcome.
Because, Sophia says, she didn't feel all that welcome in Guyana either. They asked me if I knew someone named Anthony Snow. I thought, you've got to be kidding me. Yeah, I know who that is. And you do, too. Good morning, is this Anthony Snow? Next time. I've been expecting a call, actually. I talk to Sophia's brother, Sean Anthony Snow Correa.
And his story about the day of the murder changes, too. And the only person who could really address that could be the one person who knew everything, and that was Sophia.
Beyond All Repair is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR, and ZSP Media. It's written and reported by me, Amory Severson. It's produced by Sophie Codner. Mix and sound design by Paul Vycus, production manager of WBUR Podcasts, and original scoring by Paul Vycus and Matt Reed. Theme and credits music by me. Our managing producers are Samata Joshi for WBUR and Liz Stiles of ZSP Media. Our
Our editors and executive producers are Ben Brock-Johnson of WBUR and Zach Stewart-Pontier of ZSP Media. If you have questions of any kind, we're already collecting them for a future listener Q&A. Send them along to beyondallrepairpod at gmail.com. You can send a voice memo, you can send a written message, you can send it however you want, really. beyondallrepairpod at gmail.com.
You can also find pictures and a lot more information on Instagram by following WBUR Presents. Do me a favor, will ya? Drink some water, 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. ♪
