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Episode: Bonus: ‘Crime Story’

Author: NHPR
Duration: 00:47:57

Episode Shownotes

It’s been one year since we dropped Bear Brook Season 2. Here’s where things stand with Jason Carroll’s case and a refresher on how we got here – and where the case is going. Host Jason Moon talks with Kathleen Goldhar of CBC’s “Crime Story” podcast about the series. SUPPORT

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Summary

In this bonus episode, host Jason Moon updates listeners on Jason Carroll's ongoing case, emphasizing newly found DNA evidence that may clarify his innocence regarding the murder of Sharon Johnson. The conversation with Kathleen Goldhar from CBC's Crime Story delves into the broader themes of wrongful convictions, the complexities of interrogation techniques, and the challenges posed by emotional familial dynamics. The narrative examines the intricacies of true crime reporting and its impact on public perception, particularly in cases involving coerced confessions.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bonus: ‘Crime Story’) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
Hey, it's Jason Moon. This week marks one year since we dropped Bear Brook season two. A lot has been happening in Jason Carroll's case since we left the story. You'll probably remember that box of evidence from our last episode.

00:00:17 Speaker_02
Well, in the last few months, more boxes like that have turned up with more old evidence that's never been tested for DNA.

00:00:26 Speaker_02
Evidence that could just maybe give us a more definitive answer about whether Jason Carroll was involved in Sharon Johnson's murder. But whether any DNA testing will happen, that is still up in the air.

00:00:41 Speaker_02
The hearing, where the judge will listen to arguments on whether to DNA test the evidence, has been delayed a few times, and now it's set to finally take place later this spring. Once that happens, we'll be back with a more detailed update.

00:00:58 Speaker_02
Today, we are in the feed to bring you a bit of a refresher on Season 2. This is my recent conversation about the series on the CBC podcast Crime Story.

00:01:10 Speaker_02
I talked with host Kathleen Goldhaar about Jason Carroll's case, the growing science of false confessions, and what we were trying to accomplish with Bear Brook Season 2.

00:01:21 Speaker_02
If you left the series with questions, we just might answer them for you in this conversation. Make sure you're subscribed to the Bear Brook feed wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an update. And thanks for listening.

00:01:38 Speaker_00
I'm Kathleen Goldhart. This is Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

00:01:55 Speaker_02
All we have for this case is sort of the different true crime stories as told from different authors, you know, the police, the defense attorneys, Jason, Karen. You know, it's hard to nail any of these down with objective forensic facts.

00:02:10 Speaker_02
So you have to just listen for, am I being manipulated?

00:02:15 Speaker_00
Once a story has been constructed, the theory goes, it's very, very hard to move anyone off that narrative. It's something that investigative journalist Jason Moon has discovered over the course of his career.

00:02:28 Speaker_00
And it's a theme that he unpacks in his latest podcast about the murder of Sharon Johnson. Back in 1988, Sharon was found stabbed and strangled in the small town of Bedford, New Hampshire. She was seven months pregnant.

00:02:42 Speaker_00
And because of the nature of the killing, police felt intense pressure to solve the crime. As in so many murders of women, Sharon's husband, Ken Johnson, was the prime suspect.

00:02:54 Speaker_00
Eventually, he was charged, along with two young men who investigators said were part of a conspiracy to kill Sharon in order to cash in on her pension money. But in the end, only one of those men ended up being found guilty.

00:03:12 Speaker_00
a 19-year-old man named Jason Carroll. With a full confession on tape, police believed it was an open and shut case. And for some 30 years, that's the story that stuck.

00:03:25 Speaker_00
But in Jason Moon's podcast, he makes it glaringly clear that so much of what has been considered truth is much more complicated. It's all there in season two of the hit podcast, Bare Book, a true crime story. Jason, welcome.

00:03:43 Speaker_02
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:03:44 Speaker_00
It's really nice to have you here. So can you just, we talked a little bit in the intro, but give me a little bit more of an understanding of the circumstances surrounding Sharon's death.

00:03:54 Speaker_02
Sure. It was a really horrific crime that captured the attention of the state in those years. It was, you know, front page news leading the local newscast on TV at night.

00:04:08 Speaker_02
You know, this was a pregnant woman who had last been seen at the mall, who was then found, you know, stabbed many, many times in this rural construction site. about 20 minutes away from the mall. It was a really horrific and brutal murder.

00:04:28 Speaker_02
And I think you said it correctly when you said there was a lot of pressure on police to solve this.

00:04:34 Speaker_02
You know, for a place like New Hampshire, as I'm sure is true in lots of rural, small town places, it didn't feel like the sort of thing that is, quote unquote, supposed to happen around here. And it really shook people's sense of security and safety.

00:04:51 Speaker_02
And so, yeah, it was a big deal. It was a big deal in 1988.

00:04:54 Speaker_00
Your podcast really focuses on Jason, but there were three people who were charged with Sharon's murder. So how did Jason get caught up in this?

00:05:04 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's a roundabout way. So the husband is in any case like this, you know, obviously goes on the list of persons of interest. He had trouble accounting for his whereabouts the night of the murder, gave one story and then changed it to another.

00:05:21 Speaker_02
So he was basically from day one, police had their eye on Ken Johnson, Sherrod's husband. They get to Jason Carroll, who has really no connection to the family, to Ken Johnson or to Sharon Johnson, through the other suspect, Tony Puff.

00:05:38 Speaker_00
And who's Tony Puff?

00:05:40 Speaker_02
So he's the other 19-year-old that police alleged Ken hired to commit the murder.

00:05:46 Speaker_02
Tony's connection to the family was that he had dated Ken Johnson's daughter from a previous marriage and there was an initial suspicion from police that that somehow was involved

00:06:01 Speaker_02
in the murder and they get Tony on the phone, this 19-year-old who had dated Ken Johnson's daughter, and they ask him about, you know, how he moved a car for Ken Johnson the night of the murder. And he says he has.

00:06:16 Speaker_02
That was sort of the first big break in the case as far as police see it. And eventually they get to Jason because Jason and Tony work together and the night of the murder Jason was supposed to show up to work with Tony but didn't.

00:06:33 Speaker_02
He quit that night and police found that suspicious. They went to interrogate him about the night of the murder and according to them he gives this spontaneous confession. Now, that's one version of the story of what happened.

00:06:52 Speaker_02
You know, there is a very different version involving a six-hour long interrogation on that first night when they go to talk to Jason and allegations of interrogation tactics that we now know make false confessions more likely.

00:07:11 Speaker_02
But that's the basis of how Jason even gets in the picture to begin with.

00:07:15 Speaker_00
And really, the story does revolve around these confessions. And what you discover is that there was more than one time where the police had him in a room.

00:07:24 Speaker_00
And I have to tell you, the thing you hold back until I think it's episode two or three is the fact that Jason's mother is not only a police officer on this force,

00:07:38 Speaker_00
But there is tape of her with him that, as a mother myself, is the, you know, I've listened to podcasts, you know, for a long time, listened to lots of tape. And I actually listened to your podcast twice.

00:07:52 Speaker_00
And both times hearing his mother in that room is so distressing. I can't wrap my mind around how that happened. So can you march us through the fact that one, his mother was there and then what happened?

00:08:08 Speaker_02
Yeah, this is the detail that usually stops people in their tracks when they hear about this case. So she was a patrol officer in that town. And they bring in Jason for an interrogation.

00:08:20 Speaker_02
And then she, during one of these interrogations, enters the room. And on the tape, you can hear her shouting, yelling at Jason. It's an extremely emotional tape.

00:08:33 Speaker_01
You stabbed her, didn't you?

00:08:44 Speaker_02
I've listened to it many, many times, putting this podcast together, and I still find it very moving and distressing.

00:08:55 Speaker_02
I think it certainly made it an interrogation unlike any other, where you already had at least three other police officers in the room

00:09:05 Speaker_02
being very aggressive in their questioning, telling Jason that, you know, anytime you would give an answer that they didn't believe was the true answer, they would cut him off. They would tell him that's just not true.

00:09:18 Speaker_02
They would sort of shout down those answers. And then to have his mother kind of jump in on the back of that.

00:09:24 Speaker_01
I mean, it's just very, very emotional.

00:09:45 Speaker_00
I'm going to get back to asking you more about why she did it, because thankfully you do at least give us a little bit of reprieve to know that she had something in her mind that wasn't just completely selling her son down the river.

00:09:59 Speaker_00
But what does Jason admit to?

00:10:01 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's actually kind of a hard question to answer because he gives so many different statements. He was interrogated a lot over a four-day stretch. So he would be interrogated for six hours. They'd send him home.

00:10:15 Speaker_02
The next morning, in fact, he tries to recant the things he had said the first day. Then they have another interrogation. That's where his mother comes in and yells at him. He makes another but different confession.

00:10:28 Speaker_02
And then it changes again and then again. Depending on how you count it, he ends up telling like six or seven or maybe even more different versions of his involvement in the crime. On day one, the story is, I witnessed the murder from afar.

00:10:44 Speaker_02
I drove a vehicle there and drove away as soon as I saw the murder happen. And then by day two, you know, he recant says that wasn't true. And then day two, it changes to, yes, I participated. I stabbed her first.

00:10:59 Speaker_02
And eventually the sort of the final version of the story was that he he was approached by Tony Puff, the other teenager, to kill this woman, Sharon Johnson, for five thousand dollars paid for by Sharon's husband, Ken.

00:11:16 Speaker_02
But even with that, the amount that he says that he was paid for the murder changes over the course of his interrogation. So it's an interesting question with, you know, what did Jason admit to? What did he confess to?

00:11:31 Speaker_02
Actually, a lot of different and conflicting things. And in the end, police had to sort of pick one version that was sort of based on the later versions of what Jason was saying in the interrogations.

00:11:46 Speaker_00
And what was that version? Because as you talk about in your podcast, that's the story about what happened that has stuck for all these years. So what do police say happened?

00:11:56 Speaker_02
Yeah. So police say that, as you said in the intro, Ken Johnson wanted his wife dead for insurance money or pension money because he was in gambling debt. And he reached out to Tony Puff, this teenager who had dated his daughter,

00:12:13 Speaker_02
to help him kill his wife, and then Tony recruited Jason into it, and that they all three killed Sharon at this construction site, and Ken paid each of the teenagers $5,000 for the murder.

00:12:26 Speaker_02
And when they asked Jason what he was going to do with the money, it was to buy a new stereo for his truck, and new tires for his truck, but that was also a different answer from earlier where he said he was going to use it to buy marijuana.

00:12:39 Speaker_02
But that's what prosecutors said happened when they were at trial.

00:12:43 Speaker_00
even though at trial they did ask if there were new tires or a new speaker in that truck, and there weren't.

00:12:48 Speaker_02
That's correct. Yep. The defense team actually found the guy who he bought the truck from, who actually had to repossess the truck because Jason wasn't making the payments on it. And when he got the truck back, it had the same stereo in it.

00:13:01 Speaker_02
And actually, two of the tires were flat, and he had to tow the truck away. So the police had a lot of problems with that, with Jason gives these confessions. And, you know, they're changing, they're shifting.

00:13:13 Speaker_02
And I think the police interpretation of that, and it's not totally unreasonable, is that this is a man who is grappling with the gravity of what he's done. And he doesn't want to admit to certain things.

00:13:27 Speaker_02
And maybe he's trying to deflect responsibility and say, well, I only did this, I only did that. And, you know, as he gets more and more willing to confess, it gets truer and truer.

00:13:39 Speaker_02
I think that's sort of the narrative that police had about what was going on.

00:13:43 Speaker_02
But once they got the quote unquote final version of the confession, what they should have done, the correct thing, which was to go out and try to corroborate that confession. Let's find some external objective facts that line up with what Jason said.

00:13:59 Speaker_02
The problem that they ran into over and over and over again was they could not find any way to corroborate his confession.

00:14:07 Speaker_00
Well, what did they find instead?

00:14:09 Speaker_02
The truck stereo and the tires was a big one. You know, if he got paid this money, what did he spend it on? Let's find the receipts and that could corroborate Jason's confession. And they just can't.

00:14:21 Speaker_02
You know, as far as all the evidence shows, he did not buy a new stereo and he did not buy new tires for the truck. So what did he spend the money on? They have similar problems.

00:14:30 Speaker_02
Actually, we haven't talked about yet, but Tony, the other teenager, also gave a confession. with all the same problems. They try to corroborate, you know, what did he do with the money?

00:14:40 Speaker_02
What other kind of events outside of this crime scene can we link him to, to show that he actually did these things that he said he did? And with Tony's confession, they have run into a really big problem, which is that

00:14:54 Speaker_02
At one point in Tony's confession, he says he was driving a car that turns out to have actually been impounded by the police at the time he says he was driving it. So that's a anti-corroboration, I guess you could say.

00:15:08 Speaker_02
You know, that literally could not have been true, what Tony was saying in that part of his confession. So they just had a real hard time grounding any of the facts in the confession, basing them in anything else. outside of the words themselves.

00:15:23 Speaker_02
And so that really became the whole thrust of the case and the trials was just, do you believe what he said? You know, these kind of words untethered to external corroboration. And really, where could the information have come from?

00:15:40 Speaker_02
That sort of becomes the riddle that is unfortunately kind of unsolvable. You know, Jason says these certain things about the crime, you know, she was stabbed, how they got her to the crime scene.

00:15:52 Speaker_02
You know, does he know those things because he was there, because they were in the news, because detectives leaked that information to him unintentionally through their questioning? It's really almost impossible to say.

00:16:07 Speaker_00
But you do spend some time trying to understand how a wrongful confession happens.

00:16:14 Speaker_02
Yeah, I went down a real rabbit hole on the science of false confession in reporting this piece. So you'll have to cut me off.

00:16:23 Speaker_02
But basically what we've learned is that over the last 30 years, psychologists have been studying this question of like, why would you ever confess to something you didn't do, especially a murder or a rape?

00:16:36 Speaker_02
And they've actually devised like lab based experiments where they interrogate people using different techniques and find out what makes people more likely to falsely confess versus other things.

00:16:49 Speaker_02
And they've also studied a lot of known false confessions and looked for the patterns in them. And, you know, the highlights are that there are on one side, there are demographic factors that make certain people more likely to falsely confess.

00:17:06 Speaker_02
Age is a big one. Basically, the younger you are, the more likely you are to falsely confess.

00:17:12 Speaker_02
Teenagers actually are in a particular period of vulnerability because, as we sort of all intuitively know, they are the least capable of foregoing short-term gains in favor of long-term benefit. They're sort of the most impulsive.

00:17:29 Speaker_02
People with mental disabilities are more likely to falsely confess. And then on the other side is the interrogation techniques themselves. And what the research shows is that the way that the most common interrogation methods used in the U.S.

00:17:48 Speaker_02
unfortunately raise the risk of false confession, particularly through the use of something called maximization, which is where interrogators will try to basically communicate that they already know what happened.

00:18:02 Speaker_02
They already know that you are guilty. And really, this whole exercise of the interrogation is just there to elicit the confession from you. So that can manifest in cutting off denials. So you try to start telling me that you didn't do it.

00:18:17 Speaker_02
I'll say, I don't want to hear it. We already know that you did it. Just tell us why.

00:18:22 Speaker_02
Another way that can manifest is through something that's called the false evidence ploy, where detectives can and will lie about evidence that shows the suspect was definitely there, definitely connected to the crime scene, even though that evidence may not exist.

00:18:40 Speaker_02
So we could say, you know, well, we have your DNA at the crime scene. You know, that may not be true, but you don't know that.

00:18:46 Speaker_00
And that's perfectly legal, even in both of our countries, that's legal.

00:18:50 Speaker_02
Yes. There are some states that have banned it when interrogating juvenile suspects. But as far as adults go, yeah, that's totally fair game to lie about evidence. in the US.

00:19:02 Speaker_02
And then the other big category of things that interrogators will do that increases the risk of false confession is kind of the flip side. They'll make it more socially palatable to confess.

00:19:13 Speaker_02
It's this process called minimization where they say things like, well, you know, I get it. You know, if I was in that situation, I would have done the same thing. You know, you were upset, you were drunk. We're both guys. I get it.

00:19:28 Speaker_02
You know, this sort of lowering the threshold of shame or stigma around the crime. And it's these two sides of the coin that are used in interrogations that work. And they work both

00:19:42 Speaker_02
to elicit true confessions, but the research shows they also work to elicit false confessions, because especially when you do it over a long period of time, people just want to get out of the room.

00:19:54 Speaker_02
And people, you know, are just not often aware of what their rights actually are in those situations. You know, I can get up and leave. I can request a lawyer.

00:20:04 Speaker_02
That may be true, but when you are 19 years old and there are four detectives 30 years older than you sitting across from you at a table, you know, your ability to advocate for yourself probably isn't at its greatest.

00:20:26 Speaker_00
You do talk to Jason and he's a character throughout and he's such a compelling person to listen to. What does he say he did? Anything at all? Like it actually was something that I was like, well, what did you do?

00:20:41 Speaker_02
Yeah, Jason says he hasn't had no involvement in the murder at all.

00:20:45 Speaker_02
The problem from Jason's perspective is that he doesn't really remember what happened that specific night, which, you know, is kind of, I think, a problem that you often run into in these kinds of situations, especially in a world

00:21:03 Speaker_02
before our lives were so digitally tracked and monitored and put down in devices. You know, so Jason wasn't interrogated until like 14 months after the murder had actually happened.

00:21:17 Speaker_02
So when they're asking, you know, what were you doing the night of, you know, July 27th or whatever it was, you know, he doesn't know. And to this day, he doesn't.

00:21:27 Speaker_02
And you can either interpret that as, well, who would remember what they did 14 months ago on a random Wednesday? Or you can interpret that as, well, isn't that convenient?

00:21:37 Speaker_02
But he doesn't remember where he was that night and doesn't have an alibi that, you know, can show he wasn't somewhere else.

00:21:44 Speaker_02
But when you talk to Jason about it, what he remembers is basically he doesn't remember that specific night, but just knows that he didn't kill Sharon Johnson. But that's not a very satisfying answer to people who think that he did.

00:21:59 Speaker_00
Including his mom. So can we just get back to that for a minute? So she, we have this tape of her aggressively pushing him. And you know, he's 19, he's an adult, but I have a 17 year old son.

00:22:12 Speaker_00
And I tell you, if I spoke to him the way she spoke to him, he would break too. I mean, mothers know how to do that. I mean, not that you would, but I mean, it just seemed very obvious to me as a mother listening to that, that I was like,

00:22:26 Speaker_00
This is a torture technique on this kid. But why does she do it?

00:22:34 Speaker_02
Yeah, she, you know, at least from her telling, because this is all kind of disputed, but she says that the lead detective on the case had made a promise or a strong insinuation of a promise that if Jason were to testify against the other two suspects, Tony and Ken, that he would be offered immunity.

00:23:00 Speaker_02
What Karen says is that that is what was motivating her in that interrogation, where she's thinking, let's get him to say what he needs to say to satisfy these detectives. They'll grant him immunity.

00:23:14 Speaker_02
And they'll go prosecute these other guys who actually did the crime. That promise was alleged promise was was heavily litigated. In the run up to the trials, the detective denies ever making any promises like that.

00:23:30 Speaker_02
And, you know, eventually, Karen, Jason's mother, she for a time, you know, continues to cooperate with the detectives and the prosecutors who are

00:23:41 Speaker_02
prosecuting Jason, but eventually she does sort of switch sides, for lack of a better phrase, and becomes a witness for the defense and testifies at length about, you know, this promise of immunity and being manipulated by the detectives and basically says, you know, I was doing what I thought was

00:24:05 Speaker_02
best for my son at the time. And people often ask me, you know, did she ever believe that he had actually committed the murder? I don't know. I asked her that. She said she said no. But it's it's hard to listen to that tape.

00:24:23 Speaker_02
And well, I guess you can draw your own conclusions. But it is it is very It is very aggressive questioning.

00:24:31 Speaker_00
It's almost besides the point whether she believed him or not. It was so damaging to him psychologically for his case, for everything that it doesn't matter. But the death penalty was on the table at that point, right?

00:24:44 Speaker_00
I mean, it has changed in New Hampshire, but she really did think he could be sent to the execution chamber for this.

00:24:53 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's a good point. When they were first charged, they were charged under the capital murder statute in New Hampshire and were facing death. Yes, that eventually came off the table, but that was originally what they were charged with. Yeah.

00:25:20 Speaker_00
I think I need to ask you now a little bit about the other two. So Jason goes through this, he is charged, we can talk about his trial, but before he was tried, Ken was tried and Tony was tried. Am I right about that?

00:25:32 Speaker_02
Well, Ken actually wasn't never tried because they really had no evidence against him. So they get confessions from Jason and Tony. The confessions have problems. For one, they don't corroborate with each other very neatly.

00:25:48 Speaker_02
But as far as Ken goes, there's really no evidence besides these confessions. There's no physical evidence. There's no blood or fingerprints.

00:25:59 Speaker_02
hairs or shoe prints or tire tracks or anything that proves that any of the three were at that construction site where her body was found. So the whole case is going to be on witness testimony.

00:26:14 Speaker_02
But the problem for police is that after these confessions, both Jason and Tony recant their confessions and plead not guilty. They're saying that was all a lie. I actually didn't do this. I'm pleading not guilty. I'm going to trial.

00:26:27 Speaker_02
So they're not going to testify against Ken Johnson based on their confessions, which they say are a lie. Without those confessions as evidence against Ken, the police don't really have anything against him. So they drop the charges on Ken.

00:26:40 Speaker_02
He walks free. Tony goes to trial first, and a jury finds him not guilty. And it's, you know, the defense is largely based on a false confession.

00:26:52 Speaker_02
The police were cutting corners, getting out over their skis, acting too aggressively, and basically psychologically bludgeoned this kid into confessing to murder.

00:27:07 Speaker_02
That was basically Tony Puff's defense, and a jury agreed and acquitted him on all charges. He walked free.

00:27:16 Speaker_02
Then Jason goes to trial last, and it actually takes two trials, but he's eventually found guilty of second-degree murder and a conspiracy to commit murder, and is sentenced to life.

00:27:29 Speaker_02
And he's still in the state prison right now, just a few minutes from where I'm standing.

00:27:34 Speaker_00
So what was different about Tony and Jason's trial? Seems like the evidence is the same. Screwed up contradictory confessions, you know, denials that their confessions were true. What's the difference?

00:27:47 Speaker_02
Yeah, this is something I got really interested in as a window into the criminal legal system in that it is this kind of rare instance of like, okay, same trial, same evidence, different juries, different outcomes.

00:28:04 Speaker_02
and really goes to demonstrate the awesome power that juries have. You know, if one group of people is not convinced by something, another group of people may be. That's one baked-in difference. You just had a different jury pool.

00:28:21 Speaker_02
But another difference was that through the intricacies of rules of evidence and how certain evidence could come in or not come in, In Tony's trial, the jurors heard both Tony's confession and Jason's confession.

00:28:38 Speaker_02
So they were able to compare the two and see that they didn't line up in pretty significant ways. They described the murder weapon like totally differently. They're getting paid on different days for the murder.

00:28:49 Speaker_02
They have different motives for why Ken wanted her dead. Jason says it was because Sharon had caught Ken raping his daughter. Tony says it was because Ken was in gambling debt. So the two confessions just aren't lined up and Tony's jury could see that.

00:29:09 Speaker_02
only listened to Jason's confessions and not Tony's. So they just viewed Jason's confession on its own, didn't have this other version of the events to compare it to, to see those inconsistencies.

00:29:24 Speaker_02
And, you know, we'll never really know, but that always seemed to me to be a significant difference in the way the evidence

00:29:30 Speaker_02
was laid out for the jury, because it's one of the few things that I think could have could plant those doubts for a jury in the late 80s, early 90s, when, you know, the science on false confessions isn't really developed.

00:29:46 Speaker_02
It's not really in the zeitgeist. There's not true crime documentaries about false confessions, you know, like there are today. And so I think it was a real stretch for people to imagine that

00:29:58 Speaker_02
you would falsely confess to a murder that you didn't commit. But I think if you had another confession from a guy who says he was also there and they don't match, I think it raises some questions.

00:30:09 Speaker_02
But Jason's jury just they only had the one confession. And so, you know, why would they doubt it?

00:30:15 Speaker_00
So when did the appeals start? Like now you're you tell us in the podcast that the is it the New Hampshire Innocence Project?

00:30:22 Speaker_02
So the New England Innocence Project, yeah.

00:30:24 Speaker_00
The New England Innocence Project starts to get involved. There are other advocates for wrongful convictions that get involved. When does that start to shift for Jason?

00:30:34 Speaker_02
Yeah. So there is a direct appeal after he is convicted to the state Supreme Court, but that runs out in the early 90s. I think 94, the state Supreme Court denies his appeal. And then basically from then until about maybe 2016, not much happens.

00:30:51 Speaker_02
Jason is just serving out his sentence. But around 2016 is when Jason decides to write a letter to the New England Innocence Project and says, hey, look, I've been in here for something I didn't do, for a confession I made as a 19-year-old kid.

00:31:10 Speaker_02
You know, can you help me? And I think to his surprise, they wrote him back. There's like a dedicated innocence lawyer looking at New Hampshire cases. Her name is Cynthia Musso, and she's now representing Jason Carroll.

00:31:24 Speaker_02
And they have been actively trying to get him out for a couple of years now. The first thing they tried to do was to get Jason released on early parole. That request wasn't really about his guilt or innocence.

00:31:37 Speaker_02
It was more just, Jason's been a very well-behaved inmate, and he should be able to have early access to parole under this New Hampshire state law.

00:31:47 Speaker_02
He was denied that, and Jason's attorney says it was because he refuses to take responsibility for the crime. which, in the Innocence Project world, that is something that is referred to as the parolees' dilemma.

00:32:03 Speaker_02
Parole boards, they like to hear remorse. They like to see people take responsibility.

00:32:09 Speaker_02
But if you have been wrongfully convicted, which, you know, of course, Jason says he has been, that is a real pickle for you, because you don't want to admit to something you didn't do.

00:32:18 Speaker_02
You do want to get out of prison, and it's kind of a hopeless situation.

00:32:23 Speaker_00
I chatted on this show with Gilbert King from Bone Valley, and it was the same problem that Leo Schofield dealt.

00:32:29 Speaker_00
You know, people always say, you know, everyone insists they're not guilty in prison, but it does seem like it gets to that point after all of those years. It would be a lot easier to say you did it and get out at least than not.

00:32:43 Speaker_00
So it makes you wonder, you know, what's the principle that they're holding on to? And it's a lot to admit to something like that. One of the nicest scenes for me in the podcast is when you and Cynthia go to the courthouse and discover some evidence.

00:33:09 Speaker_00
What was that like for you? What was that all about?

00:33:11 Speaker_02
Yeah. So getting Jason out of prison from the New England Innocence Project's perspective, the best thing for them is to find new evidence, forensic evidence, ideally.

00:33:24 Speaker_02
There was a bit of a question as to where and whether the original evidence from the investigation still existed. I was asking the state police, do you still have this stuff? Cynthia was also asking about it.

00:33:39 Speaker_02
And then there's a whole other aspect of the story was that there was another true crime podcast involved called Undisclosed that had done a season about Jason Carroll. And a clerk at the courthouse happened to listen to it.

00:33:55 Speaker_02
knew that Cynthia was representing Jason Carroll. The clerk bumps into Cynthia in the courthouse and says, hey, there's this box in the basement I think you probably want to look at. It's got Jason Carroll's name on it.

00:34:07 Speaker_02
And, you know, I think Cynthia's jaw probably hit the floor. And then, you know, she called me and then I think it was like two days later, we were there in the courthouse.

00:34:17 Speaker_02
And it was the box with all of the trial exhibits from his original trials in the early 90s. And so it was kind of surreal to see some of the evidence in person. It was very solemn. It was the clothes Sharon was wearing when she was murdered.

00:34:39 Speaker_02
Photographs of the crime scene as it was discovered. Videotape of the crime scene. The alleged murder weapon, which Jason says was his pocket knife. Tony says it was a different knife.

00:34:53 Speaker_02
And crucially, there was a piece of evidence that was of great interest to the New England Innocence Project, and that was nail clippings from Sharon Johnson's hands.

00:35:03 Speaker_02
And so when the medical examiner did the autopsy of Sharon's body, they found there was blood underneath her fingernails.

00:35:10 Speaker_02
She had defensive wounds on her hands, so she was most likely fighting back, may have scratched this person and gotten their blood under her fingernails. Those fingernails were preserved in an envelope, sealed, and they were inside that box.

00:35:24 Speaker_02
And Cynthia kind of rediscovered them in the courthouse that day. And it was the best thing that could have happened from an evidence standpoint, that that evidence A still existed, and here it was, and, you know, it's still in a sealed envelope.

00:35:42 Speaker_02
And who knows, but it could well hold the answer to, you know, who was actually the attacker of Sharon Johnson.

00:35:51 Speaker_00
So they can now test that blood for DNA?

00:35:53 Speaker_02
So that is exactly what Cynthia and the New England Innocence Project are trying to get done right now. They filed a request to get it tested through the court about, say, a month after we found the box.

00:36:07 Speaker_02
And the state of New Hampshire objected to that request and says that the court shouldn't order it because there's really no scenario under which DNA testing would exonerate Jason Carroll.

00:36:21 Speaker_02
And actually, as we were talking, we're about a month away from a court hearing where the two sides will argue about that in court. And a judge will ultimately decide whether to even DNA test the evidence.

00:36:35 Speaker_02
So that's kind of the next step for Jason and the New England Innocence Project on his behalf.

00:36:42 Speaker_00
They can't get that done privately?

00:36:44 Speaker_02
No, because the evidence is in the possession of the court. It has to be through a court order.

00:37:02 Speaker_00
How is Jason processing all of this?

00:37:04 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean, when you talk to Jason, he is hopeful. He is anxious. He is also realistic. He's been in prison for longer than I have been alive, which I think is just helpful to put it in perspective.

00:37:22 Speaker_02
So he is not thinking, I'm going to get out tomorrow, or this is going to be quick and easy. On the other hand, you know, this is probably the best shot. that Jason's ever going to get to be totally blunt about it.

00:37:35 Speaker_02
If the blood under Sharon's fingernails comes back and it's a known serial killer who was in the area at the time, that's going to radically change our understanding of the true crime story. That could be huge, but it may tell us nothing.

00:37:52 Speaker_00
Or what if it's her husband? Is he still around? Can they charge him again?

00:37:56 Speaker_02
Ken has died. So he's not around anymore to be charged. Tony is also dead. So yeah, I think that's another realistic possibility. It could just be Ken's DNA. And that wouldn't necessarily be very helpful. for Jason's case.

00:38:11 Speaker_02
I mean, it's not bad for his case, but I don't think that Ken's DNA being under her nails would be enough for a judge to say, you get a new trial, Jason. I think that would be probably the end of the road as far as this avenue goes for him.

00:38:27 Speaker_00
How is the relationship between Jason and his mom now? That's so complicated, too.

00:38:32 Speaker_02
Yeah, when I asked Jason about this last year, he said, you know, they are still close. They talk fairly often. But as Jason put it, you know, it's never, it will never be the same.

00:38:49 Speaker_02
And he did say that if and when he ever gets out of prison that, you know, there's a long painful conversation that needs to happen between he and his mom.

00:39:05 Speaker_02
And he said, you know, there's going to be some things that I need to say that she's not going to want to hear. So I think it's complicated. It's fraught. I think, you know, from what I can tell, they still love each other.

00:39:19 Speaker_02
It's still a mother and son relationship. But as you could imagine, it is profoundly been shaped and scarred by what happened in his case.

00:39:32 Speaker_00
Why did you wait to tell us about Jason's mom's involvement in the confession? You lead us down a little bit of a path where you hear the confession.

00:39:52 Speaker_00
At the next episode, you sort of lay down that you've actually not told us one of the most interesting things. Why did you do that in terms of the way you wanted the story to unfold?

00:40:01 Speaker_02
Yeah, I did that because I was thinking a lot about the choices that true crime storytellers make. and how influential those can be.

00:40:11 Speaker_02
I mentioned earlier, I had gotten interested in covering this case at all because I heard another true crime podcast was coming to New Hampshire to do a season about this.

00:40:25 Speaker_02
And I think it was spending time with them and thinking about the choices of true crime storytellers made me realize, well, actually, it's not just the podcasters and the documentarians who do this.

00:40:43 Speaker_02
It's also the police and it's the prosecutors and it's the defense attorneys and it's sort of

00:40:50 Speaker_02
At every stage of the process, you have kind of different authors of the story taking the same evidence, the same dots on a map, so to speak, but connecting the strings at different points.

00:41:09 Speaker_02
And depending on how you do that and the order of how you do that can radically change how you hear how you internalize a story like this.

00:41:21 Speaker_02
And so we sit on the fact that Jason's mom was part of the interrogation because we wanted it to change your perception of the interrogation. You know, we just tell you he confessed to a bunch of cops.

00:41:35 Speaker_02
Then we tell you one of them was his mom, who was yelling at him. But then we wanted to point out that we did that so that you could understand that, like, okay, we just manipulated you.

00:41:47 Speaker_02
because I wanted the listener to be on guard for that throughout the rest of the series.

00:41:54 Speaker_02
Because, you know, all we have for this case is sort of the different true crime stories as told from different authors, you know, the police, the defense attorneys, Jason, Karen,

00:42:10 Speaker_02
You know, it's hard to nail any of these down with objective forensic facts. So you have to just listen for, am I being manipulated?

00:42:20 Speaker_00
I mean, you do it to us again by then telling us that she thought she was saving his life. Right.

00:42:25 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

00:42:26 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:42:27 Speaker_02
And you're not safe from me. Right. But I hope I hope that people come away with it with a sense that like, oh, this happens. This is how like not just in this case, but in in prosecutions and other criminal trials. everywhere, anywhere.

00:42:45 Speaker_02
This is how it actually happens. It's not, you know, it's not cut and dry. It's actually really messy and very human. And everyone does things that don't really make sense.

00:42:56 Speaker_02
And, you know, write a true crime story based on things that, like, don't quite add up, but sort of add up. But then one of those ends up winning and becoming the official version of the truth.

00:43:07 Speaker_00
Yeah, it's complicated. Crimes have such a wide radius of impact, right? And so much of your story is about Jason and what seems to be a wrongful conviction. But Sharon lost her life and she was seven months pregnant.

00:43:37 Speaker_00
She had had children and you spend a bit of time talking to her family. And so how are they responding to this?

00:43:44 Speaker_00
Because it must be very difficult when there's like what seems to be the tide turning in favor of the one person who you can put the blame on for taking this woman away. And then you're sort of left as the child of a victim.

00:43:58 Speaker_00
And that is such a complicated place to be.

00:44:01 Speaker_02
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very hard. You talked in the opening about how there is a story that sticks in these kinds of situations. And in a way, that's what the whole criminal legal system is about. What's the official story about what happened?

00:44:22 Speaker_02
And what's the punishment going to be? And unfortunately, things can be a lot more complicated than that. And we may not know what the actual truth of the matter is.

00:44:34 Speaker_02
But when for 30 years you have lived with one version of the story of how your mother was killed, or how your friend was killed, and then all of a sudden people come and start challenging that, I think it's very painful.

00:44:52 Speaker_02
I mean, I can only imagine that I would, if I were in that situation, would not be totally friendly to that idea. It's painful for a lot of people and that's real and that's part of the story of what's happening right now.

00:45:10 Speaker_02
So we wanted to honor that as well and just make sure that people don't lose sight of the fact that whatever is the true story and whatever is the official story, someone did really die here.

00:45:25 Speaker_02
True crime is notorious for not always acknowledging the human reality of that and turning these kinds of cases into a pulpy whodunit and you're more interested in everything that happens after the murder.

00:45:43 Speaker_02
But, you know, it's like the one thing that we can be absolutely certain of in this case. You know, I can't tell you, is Jason wrongfully convicted? Did he falsely confess? I don't know. I think there's a legitimate question about whether or not he did.

00:45:54 Speaker_02
But I do know that Sharon Johnson did not deserve what happened to her. And, you know, that needs to be a part of the story, too. So we wanted to make sure it was.

00:46:05 Speaker_00
Well, you did a great job. I really appreciate the work that you did and the work that you're still doing.

00:46:12 Speaker_02
Thanks a lot.

00:46:13 Speaker_00
Thanks for joining us.

00:46:15 Speaker_02
Happy to do it.

00:46:22 Speaker_00
After speaking to Jason, we learned that the Office of New Hampshire's Attorney General discovered a second box of evidence related to Jason Carroll's case. A judge has ordered a full review of the box's contents.

00:46:35 Speaker_00
And the hearing over whether to test the first box of evidence is still to come. Jason is eligible for parole in 2029, but his attorneys hope that DNA testing could lead to him being released from prison much sooner.

00:47:00 Speaker_00
You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We drop a new episode every Monday. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel or by subscribing to the CBC Podcasts True Crime channel on Apple Podcasts.

00:47:16 Speaker_00
In addition to early access, subscribers to our True Crime channel also listen ad-free. Crime Story is written and hosted by me. Our producers are Alexis Green and Sarah Clayton. Sound design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner.

00:47:34 Speaker_00
Our video producer is Evan Agard. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is CBC Podcast Senior Manager and Arif Noorani is the Director of CBC Podcasts.