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Episode: Episode 8: The Box

Author: NHPR
Duration: 00:48:09

Episode Shownotes

The true crime media spotlight shines on Jason Carroll. Then, a chance encounter leads to a surprising discovery that changes the course of his case.For more on the case and to see selected data on exonerations, visit bearbrookpodcast.com. To make a donation in support of Bear Brook, click here. To

explore more data, visit The National Registry of Exonerations. SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE TEAM BEHIND BEAR BROOK BY MAKING A DONATION HERE!

Summary

In Episode 8 titled "The Box" of the Bear Brook podcast by NHPR, the focus is on Jason Carroll, who insists he is wrongfully convicted for a murder and the pivotal efforts by the New England Innocence Project, led by attorney Cynthia Musso. The episode delves into challenges faced in seeking justice amid systemic barriers, with a significant discovery of a long-overlooked evidence box offering hope. Despite strains from the legal system and narratives surrounding the case, the story of Jason and the impact of his conviction on victims' families, particularly Melanie Eaton, illustrates the complex fight for truth and justice.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Episode 8: The Box) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_12
previously on Bear Brook season two, a true crime story.

00:00:05 Speaker_09
To cut you a break would utterly undermine the public's confidence in the criminal justice system.

00:00:13 Speaker_08
How do you prove something? How do you prove an I didn't do it?

00:00:21 Speaker_06
There's this belief that when you are a Catholic, the priest gives you communion that the bread turns into. the body of Jesus, like a literal human flesh. This is essentially the same thing as what happens.

00:00:35 Speaker_06
Once this conviction happens, it's like that story is what happened.

00:00:40 Speaker_13
All I could think of was, remember the TV detective Kojak.

00:00:47 Speaker_08
The system, the culture that our detectives live in and are made to operate in, sets them up for this specific kind of failure of not being able to realize that there's an innocent person in front of them.

00:01:28 Speaker_10
It's been seven years since Jason Carroll first wrote a letter to the New England Innocence Project. NEAP, as it's called, is a small nonprofit, only about a dozen people on staff.

00:01:41 Speaker_10
And for the first three years after Jason wrote, they didn't even have an attorney based in New Hampshire who could work on his case full time. Then NEAP hired Cynthia Musso. Jason's case was on the top of the pile on her desk when she arrived in 2019.

00:01:57 Speaker_05
And I remember thinking to myself, even when I started this job, like, how am I ever going to figure out these cases where people are innocent? I was a public defender for a long time. I've only had a few clients claim actual innocence.

00:02:11 Speaker_10
And then Cynthia read the documents in Jason's case.

00:02:15 Speaker_05
The way we want to think about our criminal legal system is that we don't have to rely necessarily on stories that people tell. We want to be able to rely on hard evidence and science and observable, objective fact.

00:02:32 Speaker_05
So my hope is that when there is a statement made, that statement can be verified by objective scientific fact. And in Jason's case, that's just not true. The police tried to do that and could not do it. They tried to focus on the financial aspect.

00:02:48 Speaker_05
They got Ken's bank records. Those do not show what they thought they were going to show. You know, they got the knife. They wanted to prove that that was the knife. That wasn't the knife. He couldn't have been the knife.

00:02:58 Speaker_05
It's just they don't, they don't line up.

00:03:02 Speaker_10
But it's one thing for an innocence attorney like Cynthia to be convinced Jason didn't do it. It's another to get the state of New Hampshire to admit they might have gotten this all horribly wrong.

00:03:22 Speaker_10
Remember back in episode one, that hearing where Jason asked for an early release from prison? That was one of Cynthia's first moves. It would have been the fastest way out of the prison walls for Jason. But as you heard, it didn't work.

00:03:38 Speaker_10
In part, because Jason has always refused to take responsibility for the crime. The prosecutors for the state and the court system that oversaw Jason's convictions both stick firmly to the original narrative.

00:03:52 Speaker_09
— You confessed to your participation in this murder-for-hire plot, and you and your accomplice, Mr. Pfaff, kidnapped and murdered a seven-and-a-half-month pregnant woman.

00:04:09 Speaker_09
And you stood by while your accomplice sexually assaulted her as she lay dying, dead or dying there in that gravel pit. And you were paid $5,000 for those inhuman acts. And I don't say inhumane, but inhuman acts by the victim's own husband.

00:04:29 Speaker_10
Despite the fact that Tony Puff was acquitted and Ken Johnson was never even tried, in the official version of this true crime story, they're still killers. Innocence claims are almost always a long shot.

00:04:52 Speaker_10
The criminal legal system is built on a bedrock of finality. The courts want criminal prosecutions to end at some point, not be endlessly retried. And there are legitimate reasons for that. Dogmatic ones, too.

00:05:08 Speaker_10
But in New Hampshire, a state that has never exonerated anyone convicted of a murder, it can feel like the hurdles are even higher than usual. What Cynthia and Neep are trying to do has simply never been done before.

00:05:29 Speaker_10
And so to help challenge the official narrative, Neep invited someone from the outside to come tell a new one.

00:05:38 Speaker_14
A lot of time people say, oh, just read the trial transcripts. You know, you'll see why this person is guilty or innocent. What gets brought into a courtroom and what gets left out sometimes tells the story much more fully.

00:05:53 Speaker_10
This is Bear Brook Season 2, a true crime story. I'm Jason Moon. Rabia Chowdhury is an immigration attorney, an author, a podcast host, but there's a good chance you already know her as an advocate for Adnan Syed.

00:07:02 Speaker_10
In 2013, Rabia brought the story of Adnan's murder conviction to the people who made the podcast Serial, a series that alerted millions to the existence of podcasts and arguably created a genre of true crime ones.

00:07:17 Speaker_10
Not long after, Rabia decided to make her own podcast called Undisclosed, all to try and force the court system to revisit its original narrative in that case, a process that so far has taken almost 10 years.

00:07:32 Speaker_14
It's like everything that happens in the courtroom is like, it's like, you know, fly trapped in tar from hundreds of years ago, like that same

00:07:41 Speaker_14
Rotten piece of tar keeps getting passed from courtroom to courtroom to courtroom as if not as if the entire world is static and nothing has changed and no technology has changed and no witnesses have come forward. But we're just like stuck in time.

00:08:02 Speaker_10
As you probably know, the true crime genre ranges widely, from exploitation of personal tragedies, to high-minded journalistic exposés, to direct advocacy.

00:08:15 Speaker_10
I think Rabia's work is probably the best example of what you might call the soft power of true crime. Rabia started her podcast, Undisclosed, with two other attorneys, Susan Simpson and Colin Miller.

00:08:29 Speaker_10
At first, it was all about Adnan's case, but then they started looking at others. In each season of their show, they reinvestigate what they believe is a wrongful conviction. They re-interview witnesses who may have changed their story.

00:08:44 Speaker_10
They track down witnesses police never spoke to. They look for evidence of legal foul play, whatever they can find. By now, they've looked at over 20 different cases.

00:08:54 Speaker_10
And by Rabia's count, they've played a role in overturning convictions in about half of them. About a month before Jason Carroll was back in court in the fall of 2022, Adnan Syed walked out of prison.

00:09:09 Speaker_10
He was a free man for the first time in 22 years, though his legal battles still aren't over yet.

00:09:16 Speaker_10
In another example in Georgia, Undisclosed worked alongside the Georgia Innocence Project and found evidence of juror misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct that recently helped vacate the conviction of Joey Watkins.

00:09:29 Speaker_10
He'd also been in prison for 22 years.

00:09:33 Speaker_14
I mean, look, true crime has always been big, but when I was growing up, true crime, it was a different angle, right?

00:09:37 Speaker_14
It was like getting the bad guy and investigators getting it right and the police getting it right and, you know, everything being resolved.

00:09:45 Speaker_14
But I think after serial, suddenly it's shifted a lot between serial, between movements like Black Lives Matter. Suddenly folks are like, well, maybe it's not all wrapped up in a nice little bow like that all the time.

00:09:57 Speaker_10
undoing nice little bows. That's exactly what the New England Innocence Project had in mind when they invited Undisclosed to look at Jason Carroll's case. In the summer of 2021, Rabia arrived in New Hampshire to start investigating.

00:10:18 Speaker_10
And I went with her. Rabia, do you want to just explain like what we're doing today? What you're up to?

00:10:23 Speaker_14
Yeah. So today we're going to be trying to find some of the original investigators in the case.

00:10:32 Speaker_10
Rabia brought with her Sarah Kalin, a former police officer turned private investigator, cold case consultant and true crime personality.

00:10:41 Speaker_10
The two of them followed Google Maps down winding back roads across New Hampshire to reach some of the witnesses in Jason's case. I sat in the back seat of their rental car with my microphone, getting a little carsick.

00:11:00 Speaker_10
I recorded Rabia and Sarah as they recorded interviews.

00:11:04 Speaker_14
So I kind of want to start at the top and ask you what your relationship was with the Johnsons.

00:11:10 Speaker_01
Well, like I said, I was a co-worker with Sharon.

00:11:15 Speaker_10
And, of course, we talked about true crime podcasts as we happened to drive past the entrance to Bear Brook State Park.

00:11:22 Speaker_07
That the idea becomes to produce something that has value to society, not just retelling gory stories.

00:11:28 Speaker_14
Although, I mean, although like the straight reporting also can have value.

00:11:34 Speaker_10
It's all very meta, I know. But that's exactly why I was there. Podcasts like Serial, Undisclosed, and lots of others don't just reflect reality. They help change it.

00:11:48 Speaker_10
I had my own experience with this when someone who listened to season one of this podcast discovered the names of three of the people found murdered near Bear Brook State Park.

00:11:59 Speaker_00
And I kept stopping and going back. I was like, you know what? Listening to this podcast makes me think it is this person, these girls.

00:12:17 Speaker_10
This is actually how I first became interested in Jason Carroll's case.

00:12:22 Speaker_10
Before I'd read thousands of pages of police reports and trial transcripts, before I'd heard the interrogation tapes, before I fell down the scientific rabbit hole on false confessions.

00:12:34 Speaker_10
All I knew was a famous true crime podcast with millions of listeners was about to land in my backyard. The official narrative was about to be challenged by a new story. And more than a year later, it is still changing things in ways I never expected.

00:13:00 Speaker_10
Rabia and Sarah ended up speaking to more than a dozen people connected to Jason's case, some of whom you've heard from in this podcast, and some who wouldn't talk to me, like one of the detectives who investigated the case before Roland Lammy took it over.

00:13:16 Speaker_10
And they talked to Lammy, too, who told them he was A, surprised Jason was still in prison, and B, had no problem with the idea of DNA testing in Jason's case.

00:13:28 Speaker_10
But in the end, Undisclosed did not find new evidence to test or new legal grounds for Jason to appeal on. No smoking gun alternate suspect and no airtight alibi for Jason on the night of the murder.

00:13:43 Speaker_10
After all, more than 30 years had passed in between Sharon's murder and Undisclosed's investigation. People's memories had gotten hazier every year, and it was unclear whether the physical evidence in the case still even existed.

00:13:58 Speaker_10
But with the facts they did have, Undisclosed put forward a new theory. Or actually, it was an old theory, the one the original investigators had before Lammy took over the case.

00:14:13 Speaker_10
Rabia and Sarah think that Ken Johnson was responsible for Sharon's murder, but only Ken.

00:14:20 Speaker_07
I think he did it and he acted alone. It was just him. He killed her by himself and brought her to that site and dumped her there and then couldn't get his story straight.

00:14:32 Speaker_10
The theory is partly based on the same things that made police suspicious of Ken back in 1988. Ken changed his story about where he was the night of the murder. His gambling debts were a plausible motive. His ex-wife said he'd been violent with her.

00:14:48 Speaker_10
But Undisclosed also points out major oversights in the police's investigation of Ken.

00:14:54 Speaker_10
Like how in the days following the murder, police got a search warrant for Ken's car, but there's no record they ever made any attempt to search the house Ken and Sharon shared.

00:15:08 Speaker_10
Rabia and her team also offer an alternate explanation for how Sharon ended up at a construction site. It's an idea based on what Ken and others told police about Sharon and Ken's sex life. Ken told police he and Sharon had a very active sex life.

00:15:26 Speaker_10
He said they'd often meet during the middle of the day and drive to a gravel pit to have sex. Ken called it a noonie.

00:15:34 Speaker_10
The undisclosed theory is that Ken took Sharon to the construction site where her body was found under the pretense that they were going there to have sex.

00:15:50 Speaker_10
When the undisclosed season on Jason Carroll came out in the fall of 2021, I waited in the wings, ready to document the fallout. I was a little naive. The podcast came out. Millions of people did listen.

00:16:06 Speaker_10
But if you weren't one of those listeners, it would have been hard to tell that anything had happened. There was no local outcry, no op-eds in the local papers, or local politicians making Jason's innocence their cause, and no pushback from the state.

00:16:23 Speaker_10
all seemed quiet, at least on the outside, but not for the people closest to the story. For Jason, Undisclosed was exciting. It was validating.

00:16:36 Speaker_10
For the first time in decades, a new version of the story had been told, and people believed in his innocence.

00:16:54 Speaker_16
get all the people out there, you know, and then be like, holy shit, you know, how come we've never heard about this before? Or how does this even happen? And like, you know, it's horseshit, let them out.

00:17:05 Speaker_10
Ironically, Jason hasn't actually heard the podcast himself. He doesn't have access to podcasts in prison. But he also told me he doesn't want to hear it, or this podcast for that matter. He doesn't want to relive any of this again.

00:17:25 Speaker_10
I expected Jason's lawyer, Cynthia Musso, would feel excited about the podcast, too. After all, her office pitched Jason's case to Undisclosed. But for Cynthia, it wasn't that simple. Of course, she likes that this new narrative says Jason is innocent.

00:17:43 Speaker_10
But as a former defense attorney, it also raised questions for her about when it's okay for true crime storytellers to say someone else is guilty.

00:17:54 Speaker_05
We're very appreciative of the attention that Jason's case has gotten from Undisclosed, and I would never underestimate the impact of the support to Jason. I think the podcast has, on the whole, been beneficial for Jason. But I'm always very

00:18:17 Speaker_05
skeptical of. You know, Jason, you and I have been talking for a long time and you know that I always say it's just like I'm anti-hunch.

00:18:24 Speaker_10
It's true. Cynthia had told me many times how dangerous she feels hunches can be in the criminal justice system. As far as she sees it, everything that went wrong for Jason was the result of a hunch. Detective Roland Lammy's hunch.

00:18:40 Speaker_10
And even though undisclosed theory includes the idea that Jason had nothing to do with the murder, the way it points the finger at Ken, I think for Cynthia, it feels too close to the way the finger got pointed at Jason.

00:18:56 Speaker_05
And in that way, I don't personally agree with that theory. It's just not based on concrete observable. It's based on assumptions about human behavior and theories about human behavior.

00:19:15 Speaker_11
You felt that their theory was a little too hunchy, if that's a word.

00:19:19 Speaker_05
Yeah, a little too hunchy. Yeah, I think it's based on... Ken is not a good guy, so it must be Ken because there was really nobody else. And I don't... I don't know Ken, and I don't know who did it.

00:19:39 Speaker_10
But for Rabia, it seemed only natural that their story provide an answer to what happened to Sharon.

00:19:45 Speaker_14
For me, every innocence case is also a murder mystery. It is justice that still needs to be served for the victim. And so I think it would be really weird and irresponsible and just bad storytelling to just tell part of it.

00:20:00 Speaker_14
These are the reasons Jason is likely innocent. But also, we're just not going to try to at all figure out what happened to the victim. I think you're not telling the whole story then.

00:20:12 Speaker_10
What is the whole story? Even for two people who believe in Jason's innocence, it's not an easy question to answer. Meanwhile, for those who don't believe in Jason's innocence, it can feel like the whole story is being missed.

00:20:37 Speaker_11
So can you just start by telling me your name and who you are?

00:20:40 Speaker_13
Melanie Eaton, daughter of Sharon, to me, Eaton, but Johnson.

00:20:45 Speaker_10
Melanie Eaton was 14 years old when her mom, Sharon Johnson, was murdered. Melanie cherishes the stories she has of growing up with her mom. Like the time she says her mom bought her a few pet mice.

00:21:00 Speaker_13
Well, the people lied to her and didn't know that it was a boy and a girl, not two girls. So we came home one day and they had babies. And the babies got out.

00:21:13 Speaker_13
And then we saw some on the floor and my mom's like, oh my God, so we're hurrying up trying to catch them. And we're walking, I found some in my bedroom, in my closet, all over the place. I mean, they were everywhere.

00:21:25 Speaker_10
Melanie remembers the time she woke up to an asthma attack and her mom soothed and guided her through it. She remembers the funny little dances she says her mom would do to make her laugh. The time her mom let her drive the car.

00:21:40 Speaker_13
I think of my mom every time I see a yellow rose. My mom planted, she made a garden box on the side of the house and she planted roses.

00:21:50 Speaker_13
And when she found out she was pregnant with my sister, who I also never got to meet, there was one single yellow rose growing. And so every time I see yellow roses I think of my mom because to her that meant something special.

00:22:09 Speaker_10
Melanie feels like her whole life has been shaped by her mother's murder. She imagines the different paths it might have taken if she'd only had her mom. And she's logged all the moments her mom wasn't there for.

00:22:23 Speaker_12
When my son was born, he was born July 24th, 1992. Almost exactly four years to the date. And I was petrified I was going to have him on that day. I can't have a happy day on a bad day. begging the doctors, please, I can't have a happy day on a bad day.

00:22:41 Speaker_12
My son was born. He was only born with a 2% chance of life. Would have been really nice to have my mom there. Tell me it's going to be OK.

00:22:51 Speaker_10
For decades, Melanie tried to live with this pain. But now, new stories are reopening the wounds. In 2021, Melanie got a call from Rabia Chowdhury. They talked, and Melanie's voice was included in the undisclosed season about Jason Carroll.

00:23:10 Speaker_10
But when the podcast came out, Melanie says she felt duped.

00:23:15 Speaker_13
She didn't clarify. She just said, I'm working on the case. I'm going through it. I have your transcripts from when you talked to the police. Do you mind looking at it and then talking to me about it?

00:23:28 Speaker_13
She wasn't forthright at all saying, hey, I'm actually an attorney trying to get Jason Carroll out of jail. And, you know, I want you to answer some questions. I would've been like, no, screw you. Kiss off right away. But she wasn't forthright.

00:23:42 Speaker_13
And then when I found out later on, it infuriated me.

00:23:46 Speaker_10
Rabia disputes this. She says she made it very clear who she was and what her aims were. And Melanie says she didn't actually listen to Undisclosed. Just like Jason, she said it would be too difficult.

00:23:59 Speaker_13
For me, Jason Carroll is where he belongs, where he deserves to be, and he needs to stay there. He has no, why should he be out? Why should he be out and have his life to live when he was part of taking away my mother's?

00:24:13 Speaker_13
He took away my mother's life, my life. He took away the chance for all my children to meet their grandmother, took it all away. Why should he have a life?

00:24:24 Speaker_10
My colleague Lauren Chooljian was in the room with me and Melanie for this conversation. And as we talked about Melanie's experience with another true crime podcast, Lauren asked a question.

00:24:36 Speaker_12
What's different about what Jason's doing from what they're doing?

00:24:41 Speaker_13
I'm not entirely sure because Jason is from my understanding, trying to get the entire story and its whole out to everybody, which includes how we all feel, the victims.

00:24:56 Speaker_10
I'm not playing you this tape of Melanie as a way to suggest my story is somehow morally superior to Rabia's. And I'm not even sure Melanie would agree that it is.

00:25:07 Speaker_10
I did tell Melanie that I thought what she and others who loved Sharon are going through was an important part of this story. And I hope I've honored that. But no matter how carefully we craft our stories, we can't fully control how people hear them.

00:25:24 Speaker_10
Or what they'll lead to. By the fall of 2022, about a year after the undisclosed season on Jason's case came out, I had begun to think that the impacts of the newest version of this true crime story had all played out.

00:25:42 Speaker_10
Undisclosed had brought new attention to the case. It had reopened wounds and stirred hopes. And maybe that would be it. And then I got an unexpected call from Jason's lawyer, Cynthia. So can you just tell me what happened again?

00:26:00 Speaker_06
Yeah, so I went to court today with Jason's sister Jackie.

00:26:07 Speaker_10
This was in October 2022, about a month before Jason had his hearing where he requested early release.

00:26:15 Speaker_10
Cynthia explained that this day she took Jackie Carroll, Jason's sister, to the courthouse for a kind of dry run, just to show Jackie the courtroom, the judge, so it wouldn't be all new to her the day of Jason's hearing.

00:26:28 Speaker_06
So we were sitting in the courtroom and I hadn't been there in years because I, you know, I was a public defender years ago. So the clerk who I know came over to chat with me and she said that she had been listening to Undisclosed.

00:26:42 Speaker_06
She's like, you know, you know what? Like there's a big box in our basement with the Jason Carroll's name on it. And I was like, like an evidence box in the basement? And she said, yes.

00:26:55 Speaker_06
And so Jackie and I looked at each other and my mouth was wide open. I was shocked.

00:27:04 Speaker_06
You know, it is standard practice in criminal cases for the court to issue a letter to the state and the defense after a trial is over saying, come get these evidence exhibits or we're going to destroy them.

00:27:16 Speaker_06
So for them to be there after 30 years is a small miracle.

00:27:21 Speaker_10
A small miracle. For months, Cynthia, and separately I, had been asking the state what evidence remained from the investigation into Sharon's murder.

00:27:33 Speaker_10
The fingerprints taken from the car, photos and video of the crime scene, Sharon's belongings, the alleged murder weapon. And especially important, Sharon's fingernail clippings. The nails with blood under them.

00:27:47 Speaker_10
Blood that could belong to Sharon's attacker. Blood that was never DNA tested. I asked the state in June of 2022 if those fingernail clippings still existed. They still haven't responded.

00:28:02 Speaker_10
But what public records requests did not reveal, a true crime podcast had. A mystery box of evidence in a courthouse basement. What was inside?

00:28:14 Speaker_06
My pie-in-the-sky hope is that the fingernails are there. My realistic belief is that they are not. But my hope is that they are. But anything that's evidence in this case is useful to me.

00:28:28 Speaker_10
I've never heard you excited, Cynthia. After the break, the box. A quick reminder, Bear Brooks season two took more than a year to report and lots of resources. And as you're about to hear, this story is not over.

00:29:01 Speaker_10
If you're in a position to do so, please consider making a donation to New Hampshire Public Radio. To give now, click the link in the show notes. And thank you for supporting local long-form investigative reporting.

00:29:18 Speaker_10
In my mind, I pictured Cynthia brushing aside cobwebs and blowing off years of dust in a dank basement to see what was inside the box.

00:29:28 Speaker_10
Instead, when we arrive, we're shown to a quiet, mostly empty courtroom, and the mystery box had already been unpacked, its contents spread across the two tables attorneys would sit at during a trial.

00:29:42 Speaker_10
There's a clerk and a bailiff in the room keeping an eye on us. This evidence is in their custody, so it's not like Cynthia can take anything with her.

00:29:56 Speaker_05
Yeah, so when we got here, the box was open and the exhibits are out. So we're taking a look at all the stuff that's on the table.

00:30:04 Speaker_10
There were stacks of documents, a pile of plastic Ziploc bags with things inside, large brown paper bags, photographs, a VHS tape, more than I ever expected.

00:30:15 Speaker_05
Are you doing garbage somewhere?

00:30:16 Speaker_04
Yes. I'm going to throw out gloves after glove after glove here.

00:30:21 Speaker_10
Cynthia knows DNA is Jason's best shot. She doesn't want to contaminate anything, so she wears gloves and changes them between each piece of evidence that she touches. The clerk brings over a trash can. I decide I'm not touching anything.

00:30:38 Speaker_10
Cynthia reaches for one of the large brown paper bags.

00:30:43 Speaker_05
I want to know what's in here. So we're going to look at DJE4. That's the genes.

00:30:52 Speaker_10
That's Sharon's jeans.

00:30:53 Speaker_05
That's the Sharon's jeans.

00:30:57 Speaker_10
Wow. Sharon's jeans, with an elastic waistband and an 80s acid wash, still covered in the dried mud her body was found in. I wasn't expecting this, to be this intimately close to Sharon's death. The room feels heavier. Cynthia becomes methodical.

00:31:23 Speaker_10
She's brought with her a large roll of white paper, and she rips off big sheets of it to put underneath pieces of evidence to catch any dirt or dust that falls off. The jeans are just the beginning.

00:31:40 Speaker_10
Inside another bag is the bra Sharon was wearing when she died. Cut open in the front, still stained with blood. There were Sharon's shoes. Tan, moccasin-style slip-ons. There was the watch she was wearing.

00:31:56 Speaker_10
Bits of paper found in Sharon's car, like a shopping list for coffee and Cheez-Its. A Ziploc bag full of cigarette butts from Sharon's car. Then, there was Jason's pocket knife.

00:32:14 Speaker_10
Small, with a brown handle, like any old pocket knife you might take camping or have in a junk drawer. Cynthia carefully placed it on a new sheet of white paper, unfolded the blade, and then photographed it next to a ruler.

00:32:29 Speaker_10
There was a yellow spiral notebook that belonged to Ken Johnson, full of handwritten scores to sports games from the 80s, evidence of Ken's gambling habit. There were the fingerprint cards taken from Jason and Tony at age 19.

00:32:44 Speaker_10
On one side, every finger was printed individually. On the other side, their full handprint was taken.

00:32:57 Speaker_10
For about 30 minutes, Cynthia has been making her way through each piece of evidence, examining them, taking pictures of them, carefully placing them back how they came.

00:33:08 Speaker_10
Then she opens a large Ziploc bag with a bunch of other Ziploc bags inside of it. Inside each of the smaller bags are tubes and slides and other things that look like they belong in a lab.

00:33:21 Speaker_05
Sand from abdomen. Sand from back. What are you?

00:33:39 Speaker_10
Medical specimen, please rush.

00:33:43 Speaker_05
Alright, we're gonna look at that in a minute. That is the nail clippings. This is the nail clippings. This is the nail clippings.

00:34:02 Speaker_10
I need to stop for a second. Cynthia walks away from the table. Her eyes are filling with tears. She takes out her phone and calls her boss at the New England Innocence Project.

00:34:17 Speaker_05
Hey. The fucking nail clippings are here. The nail clippings are here. Yeah.

00:34:26 Speaker_10
Cynthia abruptly hangs up and then walks back to the table. The nail clippings are in two normal-sized paper envelopes, one envelope for the nail clippings from each hand.

00:34:38 Speaker_10
Each envelope has a strip of red tape with the word EVIDENCE printed three times in all caps. Cynthia holds one of the envelopes up to the light. I can see the silhouettes of the nail clippings inside, like tiny crescent moons.

00:34:52 Speaker_05
I don't know if I'm shaking, Jason.

00:34:55 Speaker_10
A little bit.

00:34:57 Speaker_05
A lot.

00:35:02 Speaker_11
that the answer to who killed Sharon Johnson is very likely in that envelope right there.

00:35:06 Speaker_05
It is possible that the answer to who killed Sharon Johnson is in this envelope in front of us. These two envelopes. And we have been looking for these. And now we know where they are. We only know where they are by a chance encounter in court.

00:35:32 Speaker_05
I'm gonna cry.

00:35:32 Speaker_11
He's been sitting here for just 33 years.

00:35:41 Speaker_05
I am gonna cry. He's been sitting here for a long time. Some tissues? Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, take some tissues.

00:35:54 Speaker_10
The bailiff, who's been looking over with an interested expression ever since Cynthia found the envelope, comes over to offer a box of tissues. The clerk is on her feet, too.

00:36:04 Speaker_10
She's writing down the exhibit number of the nail clippings to make sure they're preserved. The courtroom is now filled with excitement, a feeling that's reaching across the professional boundaries in the room.

00:36:17 Speaker_10
The bailiff says out loud, this is incredible.

00:36:22 Speaker_05
Yeah, and you guys were here for this. This was history in the making.

00:36:25 Speaker_03
This is like what you see in a movie.

00:36:27 Speaker_05
Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe your job is boring sometimes. Not today.

00:36:34 Speaker_03
No, not today.

00:36:55 Speaker_10
A few weeks after that day at the courthouse, Cynthia filed a motion with the court for DNA testing. She asked the court to order testing for the nail clippings and six other pieces of evidence found in the box that have also never been DNA tested.

00:37:11 Speaker_10
Those include fingerprint lifts from inside Sharon's car, the cigarette butts from Sharon's car, and Jason's pocketknife. Cynthia had hopes prosecutors for the state might agree to the testing. After all, it could prove Jason's guilt or his innocence.

00:37:28 Speaker_10
She waited days to hear whether they'd agree, then weeks. Finally, the state filed a document with the court. They were objecting to DNA testing.

00:37:43 Speaker_10
The state's objection to DNA testing in Jason Carroll's case begins with yet another retelling of the official narrative. The state then argues, there is no scenario under which DNA testing would exonerate Jason.

00:37:59 Speaker_10
I had to reread that sentence a few times when I first saw this document. No possible scenario where DNA testing proves Jason's innocence.

00:38:10 Speaker_10
This means that even if DNA tests on the evidence came back and there was no DNA of Jason's, and there was, say, DNA from a known serial killer, the state's position is that that would not exonerate Jason.

00:38:27 Speaker_10
I tried to talk with Charles Buca, the prosecutor who wrote the objection. I wanted to ask him what makes him so absolutely certain of Jason's guilt, but he declined.

00:38:38 Speaker_10
It seems, for Charles and the state of New Hampshire, they already know what happened. Jason is guilty. He confessed. And it seems nothing, not even a DNA test, can undo that story. Like bread becomes flesh, that story is now their truth.

00:39:03 Speaker_10
As of this moment, the decision on whether or not DNA testing will happen is in the hands of Judge William Delker, the same judge who denied Jason's request for early release.

00:39:19 Speaker_10
Even if DNA testing is granted, it will likely still take a long time to play out. There could be fights over which items get tested, which kinds of tests get run, and which labs should do the testing.

00:39:33 Speaker_10
Then, of course, the results could be argued over. If the DNA tests come back as not Jason, but don't point to anyone else, a judge might decide that's not enough.

00:39:44 Speaker_10
If the DNA tests come back as Ken Johnson, the state could argue that confirms Jason's conviction. It could all take months, if not longer. And in the meantime, Jason Carroll is inside the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. About five minutes from me.

00:40:04 Speaker_10
I talked to Jason again in January of 2023. His lawyer, Cynthia, was in the room with me.

00:40:10 Speaker_15
I am tired of being looked at like some fucking kind of animal.

00:40:15 Speaker_15
And I'm just tired of being looked at like, you know, oh, yeah, well, you were convicted, you know, and I get how the court systems work, but people, you know, people don't understand the shoddiness and shittiness that happened with this.

00:40:27 Speaker_10
Jason has been riding an emotional roller coaster the past several months, appearing in court for the first time in decades, having his request for early parole denied, learning about the discovery of the evidence box, and now finding out the state is objecting to DNA testing.

00:40:43 Speaker_10
It's been a busy time. Still, Jason seems clear-eyed about the road ahead. He says they've lost some battles, but the war can still be won.

00:40:54 Speaker_10
He tells Cynthia he's ready to keep fighting, ready to be the first man in New Hampshire to ever be exonerated after being convicted of murder.

00:41:03 Speaker_15
I'm kind of like the, I'm kind of like the plow right now for this, you know, for, for people that are behind the wall, in a sense.

00:41:10 Speaker_05
What do you mean by that? Say more about that.

00:41:13 Speaker_15
Well, for what we, for what you and I have got going on with, you know, with your organization, which has never been done before, there are people in here who need it. There are people in here like me that don't belong here.

00:41:24 Speaker_15
There's not many, but there are some here. And the thing is, the state's never had it before. So, I mean, you and I are like, you know, we're trying to make history. It's tough.

00:41:35 Speaker_15
But I know, like I said, with the snowplow, it'll open up a path for everybody else.

00:41:40 Speaker_10
For a few moments, I stopped interviewing and just listened as Jason and Cynthia talked to each other. They've known each other a few years now.

00:41:48 Speaker_05
Jason, can you talk about like how, like, what's it, what's it been like, like, you know, you, you put your faith in the system originally, right? And then the system fails you.

00:41:57 Speaker_16
Of course.

00:41:58 Speaker_05
How have you felt about like trying to put your faith in the system again? Like, how has that been?

00:42:03 Speaker_15
You know, it's, it's not, it's not putting my faith in too much into the system. It's putting my faith into you.

00:42:10 Speaker_10
Cynthia fights back a smile. A look of embarrassment, pride, heartache, and heavy responsibility blooms across her face.

00:42:20 Speaker_15
That's what I put my faith into. It's not the system. The system sucks, let's just face it. The system's trash.

00:42:38 Speaker_10
A word about that system that Jason just mentioned. The public institutions that are supposed to act on our behalf. The ones we pay for with our taxes. That system is not always built on science.

00:42:53 Speaker_10
The number one recommendation of false confession experts is that interrogations should be recorded in their entirety. More than half of all states in the U.S. now require police to do this. New Hampshire is not one of them.

00:43:09 Speaker_10
In response to our question about this, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Safety said they do consider it, quote, best practice.

00:43:17 Speaker_10
We talked to more than a dozen defense attorneys and local police officials who told us interrogations with suspects in New Hampshire are often recorded, though not universally.

00:43:28 Speaker_10
A bill to require recording police interrogations in most circumstances is pending in the state legislature. Since 2002, close to 100 so-called conviction integrity units have opened across 27 states.

00:43:44 Speaker_10
These are units within prosecutors' offices tasked with revisiting their own convictions to make sure they still hold up.

00:43:52 Speaker_10
Less than half of those units have actually recorded exonerations, but across those who have, 668 people have been cleared of crimes they did not commit.

00:44:03 Speaker_10
A conviction integrity unit played a role in the exoneration of Hugh Burton, who you heard from in the last episode. There are no conviction integrity units in New Hampshire.

00:44:14 Speaker_10
Some law enforcement agencies are abandoning the read technique because of the risk of false confessions. In 2015, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, sort of the Canadian FBI, said they were switching to a less accusatory technique.

00:44:30 Speaker_10
And believe it or not, a sergeant with the RCMP described the new technique to a reporter this way, quote, less Kojak and more Dr. Phil. For now, this is as far as I can take you.

00:44:50 Speaker_10
The road to answering who killed Sharon Johnson and whether Jason Carroll will be exonerated ends here for the moment. In my true crime story, I can't tell you whether Jason is truly innocent. The truth is, I don't know, at least not yet.

00:45:10 Speaker_10
I do know this. In the late 1980s, all we had to go on were a few clues and words on tape.

00:45:19 Speaker_10
Today, in 2023, with a box full of evidence that can now be DNA tested and more than 30 years of science on confessions, we finally have a real shot at getting to the truth.

00:45:33 Speaker_10
The only question left is whether our system of justice is willing to keep looking for it. A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon. It's edited by Katie Culinary. Additional reporting and research by Paul Kuno Booth.

00:46:41 Speaker_10
Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniella Ali, Sarah Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. Our news director is Dan Baric. Our director of podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie. Fact-checking by Danya Suleiman.

00:46:57 Speaker_10
Sarah Plord created our original artwork, as well as our website, barebrookpodcast.com. Additional photography and videos by Gabby Lozada.

00:47:07 Speaker_10
Special thanks to Maria Savarese, Mary McIntyre, Gabby Healy, Sarah Nathan, Dan Tuohy, Zoe Knox, Jung Yoon Han, and Ruby Bear. Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

00:47:23 Speaker_10
Bear Brook is a production of The Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.