Transcript of S2 Episode 9: The Reversal

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Rabia Chaudry, In the Car: My main goal is to raise the concerns around this conviction to the extent that it would encourage the state to revisit the evidence.

Cynthia Mousseau, On the Phone: The clerk, who I know, came over to chat with me, and she said that she had been listening to Undisclosed. She’s like, “You know what, there’s a big box in our basement with Jason Carroll’s name on it.”

Mousseau: Hey. 

Radha Natarajan, Quietly, On the Phone: Sorry–

Mousseau: The fucking nail clippings are here.

Moon: So, the answer to who killed Sharon Johnson is very likely in that envelope right there in front of us?

Mousseau: It is possible that the answer to who killed Sharon Johnson is in this envelope in front of us.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT, SOUND OF CASSETTE TAPE STOPPING]

Jason Moon, Narrating: It’s been about 17 months since that day with the box. The box of evidence from the investigation into Sharon Johnson’s murder.

The box had the clothes Sharon was wearing when she died. The knife police say she was stabbed with. The fingernail clippings from Sharon’s hands with blood on them – blood that might belong to her attacker.

For 17 months, Jason Carroll and his attorney with the New England Innocence Project have been trying to get that evidence DNA-tested. They think there’s a real shot that evidence could exonerate Jason.

But the state of New Hampshire didn’t. You might remember they said there was, quote, “no scenario” where DNA testing could exonerate Jason. So, they objected to Jason’s request for DNA testing.

That is, until just a few days ago.

Moon: So, did you celebrate?

Mousseau, On the Phone: [LAUGHS] Um… yes. I mean, I think, I think… I think I celeb– I guess I would say yes, I celebrated. It's weird to say that you would celebrate separately from Jason, right? So, like, the weird thing was that I wasn't able to see Jason that night, so I, I talked to him on the phone. And so to be able to say, like, celebrating something for someone – It's like celebrating somebody's birthday when they're not there. So, when I was finally able to talk with him about what happened, he was… shocked. Shocked, I would say. And he essentially said to me, “Half of me feels like crying like a baby and half of me feels like throwing up.” 

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Mousseau: Um, and he said, “It's the best news I've had in 35 years.”

Moon: He said that, the best news in 35 years?

Mousseau: He did! He did.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: So, here’s what happened. After Jason’s lawyer Cynthia Mousseau found that box of evidence, she filed a petition with the court under a state law specifically meant for just such a moment. It’s called the “Post-Conviction DNA Testing” law in New Hampshire.

The evidence in question belongs to the court. Remember, the box was hanging out for three decades in their basement. So Cynthia needs a court order to get this stuff tested.

But the prosecutor on the other side of this case, Charles Bucca, objected. By the way, we requested an interview with Bucca, but a spokesperson for the AG’s office declined on his behalf.

So, with the state and Cynthia taking different positions, that set up a hearing. The two sides were gonna duke it out in front of a judge and he would decide if testing was going to happen. That’s where we left off in this series.

Mousseau, On the Phone: So, we were scheduled to have a hearing on this motion in December…

Moon, Narrating: That’s December of 2023.

Mousseau: …And about three days before the hearing was supposed to start, we got a call from the prosecutor. And I didn't, I didn’t actually – I missed the call or he had just emailed me maybe and said, “Give me a call?” And I thought that he was going to agree. And I told my co-counsel at the time, “Oh, I, like, I wonder if this is it. Like, they're going to agree to testing now.” And we called. And it was clear from, like, the first moment, like his – the tone of voice, that it was not a call about agreeing. That it was a call about something else. And I remember that’s when he said, “We found another box…”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: “We found another box.” Another box with more evidence from the investigation into Sharon Johnson’s murder.

Mousseau: I remember just sitting there being like, “I don't even know what to say.” Like, I think the proverbial, you know, your… your jaw hits the floor is really how I was feeling in that moment. And I think… um, that was a huge shock to me.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: This box – let’s call it Box Number 2 – was found in the basement of the former headquarters for the New Hampshire Department of Justice. It just so happens, the New Hampshire DOJ is moving offices and the building is being torn down, right now.

So, in the process of the big move, someone’s down in the basement and they find this box that says, “DO NOT DESTROY (SHARON JOHNSON CASE).”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon: Kind of amazing that the very first box at the courthouse, you stumbled on that because this clerk had happened to have listened to the Undisclosed podcast. And then, the next box is discovered through another sort of happenstance, that, that the, you know, the building in which it's housed is being demolished. And if not for that, you know, maybe this, maybe they wouldn't have found it.

Mousseau: Exactly.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Remember, Cynthia has been asking the state for all the documents and evidence from the investigation for years. And by this point, the state had told her they’d already turned over everything they could find.

In light of Box Number 2, the big hearing that was supposed to happen in December gets postponed. Instead, the two sides meet in front of the judge for what’s called a status conference, basically a check-in to see what the heck needs to happen now.

And at this status conference, Cynthia… she’s a little annoyed. It’s already been more than a year since she found Box Number 1 and filed the petition for DNA testing. And now, things are getting delayed because of some sloppy housekeeping by the state. Cynthia wants assurances from the prosecutor, Charles Bucca, that this isn’t gonna happen again.

Mousseau, In Courtroom: I-I-I’m not asking for a lot. I’m just asking for a reach-out to those three places to ensure that we have everything that exists.

Charles Bucca, In Courtroom: And the three places are Bedford PD…

Mousseau: State police.

Bucca: State – well, state police we know, because they’re the ones that cataloged this and are involved –

Mousseau: They did, but I would double-check and ask because I have asked you for discovery a lot of times and we didn’t know until we knew, right?

Bucca: Sure. But I’ve had those conversations with the state police ad nauseam, so the state police have… [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Charles is like, “Trust me, we’ve gotten everything from state police.”

Bucca: If you’d like me to ask them again, I’d be happy to do that, but we already know the answer to that. So, Bedford PD is easy. We can contact them, and make another inquiry. Um, well, who’s the third?

Mousseau: You! [LAUGHS] Your office is the third. 

Bucca: I… wha-, what – And what would you like me to do?

Mousseau: I’d like you to reach out and confirm that all of the boxes that were in storage have been cataloged and that there’s no longer any remaining boxes… 

Judge William Delker, Off Mic: Yep.

Mousseau: …that have anything to do with the Sharon Johnson homicide investigation.

Moon, Narrating: Maybe you heard that quiet “yep” as Cynthia was talking. That was the judge, William Delker. He basically agrees with Cynthia and tells the state, “Check everywhere again and file a memo with the details of how you did that.”

Mousseau, On the Phone: And so, we were really grateful that the court did that because what ended up happening was that they found, uh, significantly more information.

Moon, Narrating: At the Bedford police department: three more boxes. And from state police? Yep. 400 new pages of lab documents about the forensic evidence from the case.

Moon: And just to be clear, y-you… do you believe there was any sort of willful hiding of this evidence?

Mousseau, On the Phone: No, no.

Moon: Yeah, Okay.

Moon, Narrating: This is bad record-keeping and poor communication, not a coverup.

So, the state turns over all of this new stuff to Cynthia in January and February. And she’s furiously sorting through those boxes and reading through everything to see what it all means. Meanwhile, the big hearing to argue whether the evidence should be DNA tested is rescheduled to the end of April. As in, this April, 2024.

Let’s talk about what was in those new boxes. Some of it was stuff Cynthia already had. Duplicates of police reports from the discovery file – things like that. But it wasn’t just paper.

Inside one of the boxes was a shirt. I’ve seen a photo. It’s long-sleeved, ribbed, three buttons at the top. Looks like a man’s undershirt. It’s white. Or… it was. It’s covered in stains. Some black, some brown, some yellow. It was found in August of 1988, just after the murder. A woman saw it lying on the side of the road in Bedford, about two and a half miles from where Sharon’s body was found, and called the cops.

Moon: But interestingly, when it was tagged in evidence… they…

Mousseau, On the Phone: They labeled it “victim's shirt.”

Moon: Yeah, they… they labeled it “victim's shirt.” Do you have any idea why that happened? Any guess?

Mousseau: I don't know, I, um… I don't know the answer to that. 

Moon: Yeah.

Mousseau: Yeah, I have no way – I have no idea.

Moon, Narrating: I'm not quite sure what to make of this either. You might remember, the location of Sharon's missing shirt was a big focus of the investigation. When state police interrogated Jason, they asked him about it again and again. They never found it.

But we know what shirt was wearing when she left work that day. And this isn't it. 

Remember, Sharon was seven months’ pregnant when she was killed. She was last seen wearing what was likely a maternity t-shirt with teddy bears and baby rattles on it. Again, this one looks like a man’s shirt. According to the police report, the woman who found the shirt and called police thought it might belong to whoever had murdered Sharon.

So, I’m not sure how or why it ended up labeled as “victim’s shirt,” but it did. At any rate, it got added to the list of items Cynthia wants DNA tested. Maybe those stains are blood stains. Or, maybe it's just a painter or a mechanic’s dirty work shirt.

Another item that turned up in the new boxes… a knife.

This knife was also found along the side of a road in Bedford shortly after the murder. It was another civilian who came across it, thought it might be involved in the murder, and called police. Just to be clear, the shirt and the knife were found along two different roads in Bedford, by two different people. The two areas are in opposite directions from the crime scene.

But the knife was found less than a mile from where Sharon’s body was found. It’s described as a long blade, wood handle, similar to what you’d find in a kitchen.

Mousseau: So, those were two big pieces of physical evidence, obviously, that we’re really interested in. And then, obviously the lab file has been really interesting for us. And one of the things that we found in there was that there had been some – a profile generated from Ken Johnson's blood.

Moon, Narrating: Two things I need to point out about this. One, it’s helpful that there’s already a profile of Sharon’s husband Ken’s blood. It’ll make it that much easier to know if any DNA found on the evidence is his. The second, and I think a lot more interesting thing, is when this DNA profile of Ken was generated.

Mousseau: It's a very strange scenario. So, we had noticed and by “we,” I include you in that. We had talked about this a while ago that we had seen custody logs of Ken's blood tube. Ken had his blood drawn at the Department of Corrections when he was arrested for the crime. And, uh, that blood tube had ended up going to the state lab, and you and I had both noted that in 2004, it was sent to the lab and it said “DNA analysis.”

Moon, Narrating: 2004. Sixteen years after the murder and 13 years after prosecutors dropped the charges against Ken Johnson, New Hampshire State Police were generating a profile of Ken’s DNA.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon: But why would they be doing that in 2004?

Mousseau: The only reason I can guess that they were doing it in 2004 is because they were going to try and DNA-test things, um, related to this case. I-I don't know what other reason there would be. Um, the only other thing I can think of is that the national database for DNA was sort of getting online at that time, and perhaps they were trying to put Ken's DNA profile into CODIS, but I don't think, I don't know if they would even be able to do that. Um, Ken hadn't been, you know, at that point, he, he hadn't been convicted of anything.

Moon, Narrating: There’s no record of what, if anything, Ken’s DNA was compared to in 2004. The lab report only shows that a DNA profile was generated. And as far as CODIS goes – that’s the national law enforcement DNA database – only people who are convicted of certain crimes get their DNA put into it. That’s why Cynthia is mentioning that Ken hadn’t been convicted of anything in 2004.

Complicating this further is the fact that Ken was dead by 2004. He died in 2002. I only learned the exact timing of Ken’s death in the months after we published season 2, when a listener reached out to me.

So, why were state police analyzing Ken’s DNA after he was dead? I really don’t know.

One last thing about this minor mystery of Ken’s DNA. It set up a pretty ironic situation where the state was about to argue in 2024 against post-conviction DNA-testing in this case when they had apparently done it themselves, or maybe were about to, in 2004.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia added the white shirt and the knife to the list of items she wants DNA-tested. The full list was now up to about a dozen, depending on how you count them. It includes the fingernail cuttings, some of Sharon’s clothing, cigarette butts from her car, various samples taken from her body, Jason’s pocket knife (the alleged murder weapon), and bloody soil samples from the crime scene.

Then, she prepared for the hearing. Again.

Cynthia assembled a cast of heavy-hitter expert witnesses to explain what might seem like an obvious point – that DNA-testing could reveal who killed Sharon.

There was Tim Palmbach. Twenty-two years in law enforcement. Connecticut state trooper. Detective. Before he retired, he ran the entire forensic lab for the state of Connecticut.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: He’s been called as an expert-witness in lots of high-profile cases, like the murder trial of Michael Peterson – that’s “The Staircase” trial for those who’ve seen the documentary. More recently, Tim testified in the murder trial of former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh.

There was Karl Reich. Twenty-two years’ experience in biochemistry. Cornell, UCLA, Harvard, Stanford. Lawyers for Steven Avery, the subject of the “Making a Murderer” documentary, hired him as a consultant.

There was Hayley Cleary. A psychologist, professor, and expert in juvenile false confessions. She knows this case well. She was on Rabia Chaudry’s podcast Undisclosed to analyze Jason’s confession.

Cynthia even consulted with an expert in genetic genealogy – a woman named Barbara Rae Venter. Yes, that Barbara Rae Venter. The one who identified Terry Rasmussen and three of the victims from season one of this podcast.

Barbara Rae-Venter from Bear Brook Season 1: The challenge is going to be getting, uh, usable DNA because those bodies were out there exposed to the New Hampshire winters for between five and 20 years.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon: You were ready!

Mousseau, On the Phone: I was ready, yeah. I'm still ready. Yeah, I was ready.

Moon, Narrating: And then, just last Thursday, on the eve of the hearing, the state reversed course. 

It is dropping its objection to DNA testing. But it is still reserving the right to argue about whether any results exonerate Jason. Officially, the deal still needs to be okayed by the judge, but there’s not much doubt he will.

By the way, the fact this just happened is the reason you’re not hearing from Jason in this episode. The logistics of getting on the phone with him can be complicated and there just wasn’t enough time.

I asked Cynthia what she made of the timing of all of this.

Mousseau, On the Phone: This is the thing about the court system is that, like, it's not – it doesn't work the way people think it does. So, all of the things that you, you know, think about court, just aren’t – they aren't real, right? So, like, the reality is, is that, like, deals get made on the night before trials all the time. And, uh, it comes down to lots of things. I have no idea what the actual reason in this particular case was. Um, I'd like to think that it's the fact that, like, we were prepared. 

[MUSIC IN]

Mousseau: We had given our reports over. The state looked at those, and they realized that, you know, as they said in their motion, that we're going to be prepared to be able to prove those things. And they thought that we were going to be successful in that, and they decided to agree to testing and save us all the trouble of the hearing. Um, do I wish that this happened… a long time ago? Yeah. You know? It could be 34 years, not 35 years for Jason if we had rewound the clock to when we, you know, originally had filed this petition.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: After the break – after 35 years, what happens next?

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Hey, a quick reminder. Bear Brook Season 2 took a lot of resources and time. I’ve been reporting this story for more than two years now, and as you can hear, I’m still on it. 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, longform investigative reporting.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The agreement between Cynthia and the state is that the state forensic lab will handle the first stage of the DNA-testing. It’s called quantitative testing. Basically, how much DNA is there on any particular piece of evidence to begin with? But even getting there will be complicated.

Mousseau, On the Phone: So, for example the shirt, right? You don't just take the shirt and go, “DNA test the shirt.” There's not, like, a machine where you can put the shirt in and, and then, just type in “DNA, please.” And then it gives you the profiles, right? It doesn't work like that. So, we have to figure out the places on the shirt that we think there's most likely to be DNA that we could even collect in the first place.

Moon, Narrating: Forensic experts from both sides will have to go through each piece of evidence one by one and decide – what’s the best place to try and find DNA on this object?

Mousseau, On the Phone: You know, what parts of this, this stuff are we swabbing or cutting or whatever? And,. uh, then, after we do the quant, we figure out what the right method of testing will be.

Moon: And about what kind of a time frame are, are we talking about here?

Mousseau, On the Phone: It's hard to tell. Um… We asked for a six-month check-in to see, you know, sort of what was going on.

Moon, Narrating: That’s a check-in with the judge in six months. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything will have happened by then. This kind of work can take a long time. Especially if there’s degraded DNA, which is a real possibility given how long this stuff has been sitting around in boxes. There’s also a 10-month backlog at the state lab, the only DNA testing and analysis provider in New Hampshire. So, it could be a while.

Moon: Alright. Um, the last thing I want to do is briefly talk about some scenarios. Give me the best case scenario for you.

Mousseau, On the Phone: I think the best case scenario is we get a profile on some of those items, uh, that doesn't match Jason, Ken, or Tony. We're able to take that profile and enter it into CODIS, which is the national DNA database. There is a match in CODIS to sort of a known, uh, other perpetrator, um, from somewhere else. That obviously has nothing to do with Ken, Jason, and Tony, and we think that that would be pretty clear at that point that Jason wasn't involved.

Moon: And what about, um, a scenario where let's say Tony's DNA is found on some of the items?

Mousseau, On the Phone: Yeah, so there would be a lot of reasons why that could happen that don't have anything to do with Tony being involved, because Tony was involved with the family, right? So, Tony had connections with Sharon's stepdaughter, Lisa. So, there's, like, lots of reasons why we wouldn't be surprised if Tony's DNA was on some things. It's the same with Ken, right? So, like, it wouldn't be a total shock if we found Ken's DNA. Obviously, anything in Sharon's car, because Ken and Sharon were married. So, your DNA can get shed from all kinds of things. It's not just, you know, saliva and, you know, bodily fluids. It's all kinds of stuff. But, you know, those would be trickier scenarios. So, in the event that it's something that, you know, we're gonna have to make an argument about with the state, what would happen is, you know, we would find out some of these things. Possibly some of that stuff would lead us to further investigation, um, or have further investigative leads for us and maybe not. Um, or maybe we would get these DNA results and say, you know, “None of this matches Jason, but there's some things in here that match Ken.” And so, then it's a question of, like, well, what does that mean for the case at large? So, that's gonna be a matter for the court to decide, um, you know, when we get the results back.

Moon: Do you think in that scenario you just mentioned where, you know, Jason's DNA isn't found on anything, is that a strong enough case for you to request a, a retrial?

Mousseau: If Jason's DNA is not on anything at all… This is a very close contact, very intimate, very violent encounter, so the fact that Jason's DNA wouldn't appear on anything of Sharon's or anywhere near her would be, to my… from my perspective, very strange if you were arguing that Jason was involved in this. So, from my perspective, I think it's certainly arguable that the jury should have known at the time. If, if, if this would make a difference to the jury, then the jury should know it, and I think he's entitled to a retrial.

Moon: So, what if… the DNA comes back and it is Jason's? Do you, do you think about that? Do you let yourself think about that possibility?

Mousseau: I-I don't expect it's going to be Jason. It’s such a, It’s such a… That's such a remote possibility for me, from my perspective. Having, like, viewed all the evidence in the case, I just I don't, I don't believe that that's going to be the case. But if that was to happen, to me, that's not even sort of the worst case scenario. I mean, that would be an end of the case. Obviously, it would be the end of that. But the, the practical reality is it's going to be a lot more anxiety producing for me if there's a scenario where, like, you know, Jason's excluded from everything because then it's gonna be an argument over what does this mean? It's not going to be automatically that Jason gets a retrial. It's going to be like, what does this mean? And then, we're gonna have to have an argument over what, you know, what it means. You know, I believe, I believe Jason and I believe in Jason, and I believe this case, and I, and I would be shocked to find that it was Jason's DNA.

Moon: And now, we get a chance to find out.

Mousseau: That's right. Now we get a chance to find out. 

Moon: Hmm.

Mousseau: Yeah, 35 years in the making.

[MUSIC IN]

Mousseau: We didn't go to court and, you know, win in court. We didn't have this dramatic, you know, sort of like, big, like, hearing and, like, a big opinion or any of these things. It's, like, we have this agreement and this agreement is done, right? And that's great. Uh, but it feels really, like, less dramatic than sort of those, like, TV shows or whatever that you get. But this is so massive. Like, this is such a massive, massive win for Jason. There was no guarantees here and now, we're gonna be able to move forward. This is a gate! You know, the gate’s open. The gate was locked.

Moon, Narrating: The gate was locked. When we ended this series last year, I said the only question left was whether our system of justice was willing to keep looking for the truth, if it was willing to revisit its own true crime story.

It’s taken 17 months, but now the system – stumbling, a little reluctant – has given us an answer. Yes.

The gate was locked. Now, let’s find out what’s on the other side.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT, THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Bear Brook Season 2 – A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photography and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 8: The Box

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[SLOW THEME MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Judge William Delker, In Courtroom: To cut you a break would utterly undermine the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.

Lucy Holt: How do you prove something… How do you prove an “I didn’t do it?”

Cynthia Mousseau, On the Phone: There’s this belief that, when you’re Catholic and the priest gives you communion, that the bread turns into the body of Jesus, like literal human flesh. This is essentially the same thing as what happens – Once this conviction happens, it’s like that story is what happened.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: All I– all I could think of was, remember the TV detective, Kojak?

Dr. Fabiana Alceste: 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.

[SLOW THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Jason Moon, Narrating: It’s been seven years since Jason Carroll first wrote a letter to the New England Innocence Project. NEIP, as it’s called, is a small nonprofit – only about a dozen people on staff. 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, NEIP hired Cynthia Mousseau. Jason’s case was on the top of the pile on her desk when she arrived in 2019.

Mousseau: And I remember thinking to myself, even when I started this job, like, how am I ever gonna 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. 

Moon, Narrating: And then, Cynthia read the documents in Jason’s case.

Mousseau: 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, and, and science and observable, objective fact. 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. They got Ken's bank records. Those do not show what they thought they were gonna show. You know, they got the knife. They wanted to prove that that was the knife – that wasn't the knife. It couldn't have been the knife. It's just, they don't – they don't line up.

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[SLOW THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: 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’ve been the fastest way out of the prison walls for Jason. But, as you heard, it didn’t work – 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.

Delker, In Courtroom: You confessed to your participation in, uh, this murder-for-hire plot and you and your accomplice, Mr. Pfaff, kidnapped and murdered a seven and a half month pregnant woman 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.

Moon, Narrating: Despite the fact that Tony Pfaff was acquitted and Ken Johnson was never even tried, in the official version of this true crime story, they’re still killers.

[SLOW THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Innocence claims are almost always a longshot. 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.

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 NEIP are trying to do has simply never been done before.

[SLOW THEME MUSIC OUT, MAIN THEME MUSIC UP]

Moon, Narrating: And so, to help challenge the official narrative, NEIP invited someone from the outside to come tell a new one.

Rabia Chaudry: A lot of times people will say, “Oh, just read the trial transcripts. You’ll see why this person is guilty or innocent.” [SCOFFS] What gets brought into a courtroom and what gets left out sometimes tells the story much more fully.

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC, SOUND OF TAPE STATIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Rabia Chaudry 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.

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. 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.

Chaudry: It’s like everything that happens in a courtroom is like… um, it’s like, you know, a fly trapped in tar from hundreds of years ago. Like, that same rotten piece of tar keeps getting passed from courtroom to courtroom to courtroom, as if noth– 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.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: As you probably know, the true crime genre ranges widely from exploitation of personal tragedies to high-minded journalistic exposes to direct advocacy.

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. 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 reinterview witnesses who may have changed their story, 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 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. He was a free man for the first time in 22 years, though his legal battles still aren’t over yet.

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. He’d also been in prison for 22 years.

Chaudry: I mean, look, true crime has always been big, but when I was growing up, true crime, it was a different angle, right? It was, like, getting the bad guy, and investigators getting it right, and the police getting it right, and you know, everything being resolved. 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.”

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: In the summer of 2021, Rabia arrived in New Hampshire to start investigating…

[SOUND OF MOVING CAR UP]

Moon, Narrating: …and I went with her.

Moon, In the Car: Rabia, do you want to just explain, like, what we’re doing today? Like, what you’re up to?

Chaudry, In the Car: So, today, uh, we’re gonna be trying to find some of the original investigators in the case… [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Rabia brought with her Sarah Cailean, a former police officer turned private investigator, cold case consultant, and true crime personality.

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 backseat of their rental car with my microphone, getting a little car sick.

[SOUND OF MOVING CAR UP]

Chaudry, Driving: Where did you say I was turning again? I’m sorry. Do you remember?

Cailean, In the Car: Oop! Right there where we just passed on the right. [LAUGHS] [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: I recorded Rabia and Sarah as they recorded interviews.

Chaudry, Outside: Yeah. So, I kinda want to start at the top and ask you, like, what your relationship was with the Johnsons.

Unidentified Man, Outside: Well, like I said, I was a coworker with Sharon.

Moon, Narrating: And, of course, we talked about true crime podcasts as we happened to drive past the entrance to Bear Brook State Park.

Cailean: [CAR SOUND FADES UP]…that the idea becomes to produce something that has value to society, not just retelling gorey stories. To me, it’s…

Chaudry: Although, like, the straight reporting also can have, has plenty of value. 

Cailean: Oh! Hundred percent! [CAR SOUND FADES OUT]

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: 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.

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.

Becky Heath: And I kept stopping and going back. I was like, “You know what, listening to this podcast makes me think it is this person – this… these… these girls!”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: This is actually how I first became interested in Jason Carroll’s case. 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, 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.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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 Lamy took it over.

And they talked to Lamy, 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.

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.

After all, more than 30 years had passed in between Sharon’s murder and Undisclosed’s investigation. People’s memories had gotten hazier every passing year. And it was unclear whether the physical evidence in the case still even existed.

But with the facts they did have, Undisclosed put forward a new theory.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Or actually, it was an old theory, the one the original investigators had before Lamy took over the case. Rabia and Sarah think that Ken Johnson was responsible for Sharon’s murder, but only Ken.

Cailean, In the Car: I think he did it and he acted alone. It was just him. 

Chaudry, Driving: Mhmm.

Cailean, In the Car: He killed her by himself and brought her to that site and dumped her there and then couldn’t get his story straight.

Moon, Narrating: 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.

But Undisclosed also points out major oversights in the police’s investigation of Ken. 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.

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. 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.” The Undisclosed theory is that Ken took Sharon to the construction site where her body was found under the pretense they were going there to have sex.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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. But if you weren’t one of those listeners, it would’ve 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.

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

Carroll, On the Phone: And then, you know, like, the response, from people around the world, ya know, on whatever it was, Spotify or Twitter, whatever they were respondin’ to, to have the people out there and them being like, “Holy shit!” You know? “How come we’ve never heard about this before?” Or, “How does this even happen?” Or, like, you know, “It’s horseshit, let him out!”

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: I expected Jason’s lawyer, Cynthia Mousseau, 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. 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.

Mousseau: We’re very appreciative of the attention Jason’s case has gotten from Undisclosed. And I would never underestimate the impact of the support to Jason. I-I think the podcast is on the whole been beneficial for Jason. But I'm always very skeptical of… You know, Jason, you and I have been talking for a long time. You know that I always say it's just like, I'm anti-hunch.

Moon, Narrating: 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 Lamy’s hunch.

And even though Undisclosed’s 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.

Mousseau: And in that way, I don't personally agree with that theory. Um, it’s just not based on concrete, observable facts. It's based on assumptions about human behavior and theories about human behavior.

Moon: You felt that, that their theory was a little too hunchy? If that's a word.

Mousseau: 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, uh, I don't know who did it.

Moon, Narrating: But for Rabia, it seemed only natural that their story provide an answer to what happened to Sharon.

Chaudry: 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. 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 it – you're not telling the whole story then.

Moon, Narrating: What is the whole story? Even for two people who believe in Jason’s innocence, it’s not an easy question to answer.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Meanwhile, for those who don’t believe in Jason’s innocence, it can feel like the whole story is being missed.

Moon: So, can you just start by telling me your name and who you are?

Melonie Eaton: Melonie Eaton. Daughter of Sharon – to me, Eaton – but, Johnson.

Moon, Narrating: Melonie Eaton was 14 years old when her mother Sharon Johnson was murdered. Melonie cherishes the stories she has of growing up with her mom, like the time she says her mom bought her a few pet mice.

Eaton: Well, the people lied to her and it was a boy and girl, not two girls. So, we came home one day and they had babies. And the babies… got out. And then, we saw some on the floor and my mom’s like, “Oh my god!” So, we’re hurrying up, trying to catch ‘em. And we’re like – I found some in my bedroom, in my closet, all over the place. They were everywhere!

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Melonie 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.

Eaton: 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 and when she found out she was pregnant with my sister, who I also never got to meet, um, 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.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Melonie feels like her whole life has been shaped by her mother’s murder. She imagines the different paths it might’ve taken if she’d only had her mom. She’s logged all the moments her mom wasn’t there for.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Eaton: When my son was born, he was born July 24, 1992. Almost exactly four years to the day. And I was petrified I was going to have him on that day. [CRYING] And 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.” My son was born, he was only born with a 2 percent chance of life. It would’ve been really nice to have my mom there, to tell me it’s going to be okay.

Moon, Narrating: For decades, Melonie tried to live with this pain. But now, new stories are reopening the wounds.

In 2021, Melonie got a call from Rabia Chaudry. They talked and Melonie’s voice was included in the Undisclosed season about Jason Carroll. But when the podcast came out, Melonie says she felt duped.

Eaton: She didn’t clarify. She just said, “I’m, I’m working on the case, I’m goin’ 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?” She wasn’t forthright at all, saying, “Hey, I’m actually an attorney trying to get Jason Carroll outta jail and I want you to answer some ques–.” I would’ve been like, “No, screw you, kiss off,” right away. But she wasn’t forthright and then, when I found out later on, it infuriated me.

Moon, Narrating: Rabia disputes this. She says she made it very clear who she was and what her aims were. And Melonie says she didn’t actually listen to Undisclosed. Just like Jason, she said it would be too difficult.

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

Moon, Narrating: My colleague Lauren Chooljian was in the room with me and Melonie for this conversation. And as we talked about Melonie’s experience with another true crime podcast, Lauren asked a question.

Lauren Chooljian, Off Mic: What’s different about what Jason’s doing from what they’re doing?

Eaton: I’m not entirely sure because Jason is, from my understanding, trying to get the entire story, in its whole, out to everybody, which includes how we all feel, the victims.

Moon, Narrating: I’m not playing you this tape of Melonie as a way to suggest my story is somehow morally superior to Rabia’s. And I’m not even sure Melonie would agree that it is.

I did tell Melonie 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… 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.

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.

Moon: Um, so, can you just tell me what happened again?

Mousseau, On the Phone: Yeah, so I went to court today with Jason’s sister, Jackie because… [FADE UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: This was in October 2022, about a month before Jason had his hearing where he requested early release. 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.

Mousseau: So, we were sitting in the courtroom and I haven’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… 

[MUSIC IN]

Mousseau: She’s like, “Uh, you know what, 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!” And so, Jackie and I looked at each other and my mouth was wide open! Like, I was shocked! Ya know, it, it, it is standard practice in criminal cases for the court to issue a letter to the state and the defense after trial’s over, saying, “Come get these evidence exhibits or we’re going to destroy them.” So for them to be there after 30 years is… a small miracle!

Moon, Narrating: A small miracle. For months, Cynthia – and, separately, I – had been asking the state what evidence remained from the investigation into Sharon’s murder. 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. 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.

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?

Mousseau: 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 there is– a-anything that’s evidence in this case is useful to me.

Moon: I’ve never se– I’ve never heard you this excited, Cynthia. [MOUSSEAU LAUGHS]

[MUSIC POST]

After the break… the box.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

A quick reminder: Bear Brook Season 2 took more than a year to report and lots of resources – and as you’re about to hear, this story is not over. 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, longform investigative reporting.

Moon, Narrating: 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.

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. 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.

Moon: [SOUND OF MIC RUBBING ON CLOTHING] Alright. Want to just describe what we’re lookin’ at here?

Mousseau: 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. [SNIFFS] So we… [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: 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.

Mousseau, Off Mic: [FADES UP] Sorry, do you have a garbage somewhere? 

Female Clerk: Yes.

Mousseau: I’m just gonna… I’m gonna throw out gloves after glove after glove here. 

Clerk: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[ROOM SOUND FADES UP]

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia reaches for one of the large brown paper bags.

Mousseau: I want to know what’s in here. So, we’re going to look at DJE-4. [RUSTLING, PULLING JEANS OUT OF PAPER BAG] That's – that’s the jeans.

Moon: That’s Sharon’s jeans?

Mousseau: That’s Sharon’s jeans.

Moon: Wow. [FADES OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: The room feels heavier. Cynthia becomes methodical. She’s brought with her a large roll of white paper. She rips off big sheets of it to put underneath pieces of evidence to catch any dirt or dust that falls off.

[SOUND OF PAPER RIPPING]

Moon, Narrating: The jeans are just the beginning. 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. 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.

[SOUND OF PAPER RIPPING]

Moon, Narrating: Then, there was Jason’s pocketknife. Small, with a brown handle, like any old pocketknife 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.

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. On one side, every finger was printed individually. On the other side, their full hand print was taken.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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. 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.

Mousseau: [FADES UP] Sand from abdomen… [SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING] Sand from back… [RUSTLING] What are you? [RUSTLING]

Moon, Reading: “Medical specimen. Please rush.”

Mousseau: Alright, we’re gonna look at that in a minute… [RUSTLING]

[MOON, MOUSSEAU GASP]

Mousseau, Quietly: That is the nail clippings!

Moon, Quietly: Oh my gosh.

Mousseau: This is the nail clippings! This is the nail clippings! [GASPS, PAUSES, THEN GASPS AGAIN. VOICE BREAKS ] I need to stop for a second.

Moon, Narrating: 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.

Mousseau: Hey. 

Radha Natarajan, Quietly, On the Phone: Sorry–

Mousseau: The fucking nail clippings are here.

Natarajan, Quietly, On the Phone: What?!

Mousseau: The nail clippings are here.

Natarajan, Quietly, On the Phone: [GASPS] Amazing!

Mousseau: Yeah. [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia abruptly hangs up and then walks back to the table. The nail clippings are in two normal-size paper envelopes – one envelope for the nail clippings from each hand. Each envelope has a strip of red tape with the word ‘EVIDENCE” printed three times in all caps.

Cynthia holds one envelope up to the light. I can see the silhouettes of the nail clippings inside, like tiny crescent moons.

Mousseau: I don’t know if I’m shaking, Jason.

Moon: A little bit.

Mousseau: A lot. [LAUGHS]

Moon: So, the answer to who killed Sharon Johnson is very likely in that envelope right there in front of us?

Mousseau: 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. And we only know where they by a chance encounter in court… [LONG PAUSE. SIGHS, LAUGHS, THEN VOICE BREAKS] I feel like I’m gonna cry.

Moon: These have just been sitting here for 33 years.

Mousseau: Oh! I am gonna cry. [LAUGHS] Yep! These have been sitting here for a long time. [TSK SOUND]

Male Bailiff, Off Mic: Take some tissues?

Mousseau, Off Mic: Yeah, I’m gonna – yeah, I’ll take some tissues. [LAUGHS, SOUND OF CYNTHIA WIPING HER HANDS]

[MUSIC IN]

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. 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. The bailiff says out loud, “This is incredible!”

Bailiff, Quietly, Off Mic: This is incredible!

Mousseau: Yeah, and you guys were here for this. This was history in the making.

Bailiff, Quietly, Off Mic: Yeah, this is like what you see in a movie!

Mousseau: Yeah! Yeah. Maybe your job is boring sometimes… Not today.

Bailiff: No, not today.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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. Those include fingerprint lifts from inside Sharon’s car, the cigarette butts from Sharon’s car, and Jason’s pocket knife.

Cynthia had hopes prosecutors for the state might agree to the testing. After all, it could prove Jason’s guilt or his innocence. She waited days to hear whether they’d agree. Then, weeks.

Finally, the state filed a document with a court. They were objecting to DNA testing.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: 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. 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.

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.

I tried to talk with Charles Bucca, the prosecutor who wrote the objection. I wanted to ask what makes him so absolutely certain of Jason’s guilt. But he declined.

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.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: 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.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 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 lab should do the testing.

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. 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. I talked to Jason again in January of 2023. His lawyer, Cynthia, was in the room with me.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I am tired of bein’ looked at like I’m some fucking kinda animal. And I’m just tired of being looked at like, you know, “Oh yeah, well, you were convicted.” And I get how, how the court systems work, but people, people don’t understand the shoddiness and shittiness that happened with this.

Moon, Narrating: Jason has been riding an emotional roller coaster the past several months. Appearing in court again 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. It’s been a busy time.

Still, Jason seems cleareyed about the road ahead. He says they’ve lost some battles, but the war can still be won. 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.

Carroll, On the Phone: I’m kinda like the, uh, I’m kinda like the plow right now for, for people that are behind the wall... in a, in a sense.

Mousseau: What do you mean by that? Say more about that.

Carroll, On the Phone: Well, for what you and I have got going on, 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. 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. But, like I said, we’re the snowplow that’ll open up a path for everybody else. 

Moon, Narrating: For a few moments, I stopped interviewing and just listened as Jason and Cynthia talk to each other. They’ve known each other a few years now.

Mousseau: Jason, can you talk about, like, how – What’s it been like, like, you put your faith in the system originally, right? And then the system fails you.

Carroll, On the Phone: Of course.

Mousseau: How have you felt about trying to put your faith in the system again? Like, h-how has that been?

Carroll, On the Phone: You know, it’s not putting my faith so much into the system. It’s putting my faith into you.

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia fights back a smile. A look of embarrassment, pride, heartache, and heavy responsibility blooms across her face.

Carroll, On the Phone: That’s what I put my faith into. It’s not the system. System sucks. Let’s just face it. System’s trash. [FADES OUT]

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: 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. 

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. 

In response to our question about this, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Safety said they do consider it, quote, “best practice.” 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. 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. These are units within prosecutor’s offices tasked with revisiting their own convictions to make sure they still hold up. 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. A conviction integrity unit played a role in the exoneration of Huwe Burton, who you heard from in the last episode. There are no conviction integrity units in New Hampshire.

Some law enforcement agencies are abandoning the Reid 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. 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.”

[THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: For now, this is as far as I can take you. 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.

I do know this. In the late 1980s all we had to go on were a few clues and words on tape. 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. The only question left is whether our system of justice is willing to keep looking for it.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photography and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Special thanks to Maria Savarese, Mary McIntyre, Gaby Healy, Sarah Nathan, Dan Tuohy, Zoey Knox, Jeongyoon Han, and Ruby Baer.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 7: This Side of the Line

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Cynthia Mousseau, In Courtroom: I could point out how Jason’s statements were so inconsistent with the undisputed forensic evidence in this case, that it was more probable that he was guessing in response to interrogation questions, than he had any actual knowledge. In fact, looking at these inconsistencies, it is shocking that Jason was ever even a credible suspect, let alone convicted.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I do remember being yelled and screamed at. And any time I answered the wrong way, he’d be like, “Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope.” I remember bein’ so wiped out, I tried to go to sleep under the table. They wouldn’t let me.

Jason Moon, Off Mic: But ultimately, did you find– were you convinced that Jason was guilty of the crime?

Tom Dufresne: Oh yeah, he admitted to… if I recall correctly, he admitted to stabbing her at least once. This was a horrible crime. I mean, that's… [TSK SOUND] why would you say that if you didn’t do it?

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Jason Moon, Narrating: The first known wrongful conviction in the United States was based on a false confession. Actually, two false confessions – one from each of the two co-defendants.

They were farmers in Vermont in 1812. Jesse and Stephen Boorn. They didn’t like their brother-in-law – thought he was lazy, freeloading off the family.

When the brother-in-law disappeared, the Boorn brothers were easy suspects. Witnesses said they heard the Boorns threaten to kill the brother-in-law. The brother-in-law’s personal items were found in the Boorns’ cellar. Bones were found buried in their field.

The Boorn brothers were arrested. A jailhouse informant said one of the brothers confessed to him. Then, Jesse and Stephen Boorn themselves both confessed. In detail, they described murdering their brother-in-law with a club, burying his body, then excavating and moving the remains – twice.

Stephen Boorn was scheduled to be executed on January 28th, 1820. Then, the brother-in-law arrived in town – alive.

[MUSIC IN]

Jason Moon, Narrating: The signs were all there. The bones found in the field were dog bones, the jailhouse informant had every incentive to lie about his cellmate, and the confessions from the Boorn brothers didn’t match with known facts.

But confessions are uniquely powerful as evidence goes. And so, for a very long time, it took something like this to exonerate someone who had falsely confessed to murder. A miracle. The victim come back to life.

[MUSIC POST]

Jason Moon, Narrating: Because of this, for a long time, the known examples of false confessions were very few. From 1820, when the Boorn brothers were set free, to 1989 when Jason Caroll was arrested, just 61 people in the U.S. had been exonerated after falsely confessing. That’s 61 known false confessions in 169 years.

Then, another miracle – DNA testing. In 1989, for the first time, a DNA test proved someone’s innocence after they were convicted and freed them from prison. Three years later, a group of lawyers founded the Innocence Project – a group devoted to doing more of the same. A flood of exonerations followed.

Over the last three decades, that flood has helped expose all kinds of problems in the criminal justice system. Like the unreliability of eye-witness testimony, police using junk forensic science like bitemark or hair analysis, prosecutorial misconduct, and false confessions.

Since 1989 – nearly 400 people have been exonerated after they falsely confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. That’s almost 400 known false confessions in just 34 years. Some of those people had been sentenced to death. More than half of all of them were Black.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT, THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: The same year all that began, 1989, Jason Carroll was confessing to murder.

Jason’s case sits on a bright red line separating what we used to believe, from what we now know about false confessions. And from today’s side of that line, the story sounds different.

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Dr. Fabiana Alceste: People really have a hard time understanding, why would you confess to something that you didn’t commit? Why would you confess to something as horrible as a rape or a murder if you didn’t actually do that?

Moon, Narrating: Dr. Fabiana Alceste has devoted her career to researching and understanding the answers to that question. She’s a professor of psychology at Butler University. 

Alceste: Being wrongfully accused and convicted of a crime that you did not commit on the basis of your own false confession is just about the worst thing that can happen to someone.

Moon, Narrating: I called Fabiana to see what she makes of Jason Carroll’s case. I wanted to know what she hears when she listens to the confession tapes.

I’ll spare you the suspense. There are no simple answers here.

But there is so much we’ve learned. What was once just a rhetorical question – “Why would you confess to a murder you didn’t commit?” – today, it’s actually been answered, thanks to decades of scientific research and the lived experiences of hundreds of exonerees who falsely confessed.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: For the last six episodes, I’ve told you about the ways Jason’s case was argued over as it happened – with the knowledge and ideas people had at the time. Call it another true crime storytelling choice. I wanted you to hear the arguments the way Tony and Jason’s juries heard them.

Now, let’s run the clock forward 30 years. Let’s take a journey into a modern understanding of confession evidence.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Fabiana’s first lesson for this journey… this is not the land of intuition. Hunches and gut feelings about the way people act or how they sound during a confession, it will not help us here.

Alceste: It’s very, very difficult for anyone to distinguish between true and false confessions.

Moon, Narrating: There’s one study that illustrates this so powerfully, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s from 2005. Psychologists videotaped a group of incarcerated men confessing to the crimes they actually committed. Then, they videotaped them confessing to crimes they did not commit.  And they wondered, could anyone tell the difference?

They played the tapes for a group of about 60 police officers and another group of about 60 college students. Both groups felt confident they could tell the difference. Both groups were wrong. Overall, their accuracy rate was no better than if they had guessed at random.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The police officers in the study had an average of 11 years of experience. Many of them had been trained in so-called deception detection.

But it didn't matter. Laypeople, trained detectives, you and me – as much as we might think we’d know a false confession if we heard one, we’re probably wrong.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Alceste: It’s very hard to reliably tell when people are telling the truth versus when people are lying, using the kinds of behavioral cues that are kind of in the general zeitgeist. So, if I asked you, “How do you know when someone is lying?” What kinds of things would you tell me to look for?

Moon, Narrating: Shifting in your seat, looking away, mumbling, making too much eye contact, touching your face. These might be signs of anxiety, but none of these behaviors are reliable ways to tell if someone is lying.

Alceste: But unfortunately, these are the kinds of signs that police officers have been trained to look for for a very long time. And they are often told in these trainings that these are scientifically proven ways to identify liars when they are just unequivocally not. And in fact, a lot of scientific evidence shows that this is not the way to identify liars and truth tellers.

Moon, Narrating: By the way, Fabiana says there is a better way to catch liars. Have them tell the story backwards. People have trouble with the mental effort required to build a false story in reverse.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: So, false confessions are really hard to spot. We can’t rely on our senses or intuition to hear them. But why do they happen in the first place? Well, Fabiana says the answer is not in the confession – it’s in the interrogation.

Alceste: Interrogations are not conversations, right? The interrogation is basically a monologue by the interrogator, uh, until the very end where you finally have the suspect verbalize and write their confession.

Moon, Narrating: Here, Fabiana is describing a particular method of interrogation common in the United States – something called the “Reid technique.”

The roots of the Reid technique go back to the 1950s. It’s named after the police officer who originally developed it, John Reid. He has since died, but today, the Reid Company continues to hone the technique and to teach it to all kinds of law enforcement agencies around the world.

The Reid technique uses a two-pronged approach. Make it hard for the suspect to deny guilt and make it easy for them to confess it.

False confession researchers like Dr. Fabiana Alceste call this maximization and minimization. You might think of it like the carrot and the stick.

[MUSIC POST] 

Moon, Narrating: In Reid, the interrogator tells the suspect up front that the evidence already points to them. The interrogator might do this, even if it’s not true.

Alceste: What’s called the “false evidence ploy.” This is an interrogation tactic in which an interrogator will tell the suspect that there is irrefutable, ironclad evidence of their guilt, like DNA, fingerprints, an eyewitness, CCTV footage, you name it – even though this is actually false.

Moon, Narrating: That’s totally legal in the U.S., by the way. And that’s the first stick. “We already know you’re guilty.” Then, the interrogator cuts off any denials. Another stick.

Alceste: You kinda put your hand up and you say, “Well, hold on a second. Let me finish, because this is really important.” And you don’t actually let them verbalize their denial.

Moon, Narrating: The sticks, or maximization, are meant to make the suspect feel hopeless. Like denying their involvement is a total dead end. “They already know it’s me, they won’t even let me say I didn’t do it, and they say they’ve got proof.”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Now come the carrots – minimization.

Alceste: So, these could be things like blaming the victim, saying that anyone in the suspect’s shoes would’ve done the exact same thing, saying that the crime was committed on the spur of the moment rather than being planned. The interrogator might be using a kinder tone. Uh, maybe sometimes they’re even whispering all of these excuses to the suspect, telling them, “Hey, I-I understand. I would’ve done the same thing. You were just trying to protect your family.”

Moon, Narrating: Carrots can also be implied. Like, “Hey, if you tell the truth, it’ll be better for everyone,” which to a suspect might sound like they’ll get a lighter sentence, even if that’s not true.

Moon, Narrating: If you imagine the suspect is truly guilty, it’s not hard to see how this might work. The suspect feels the jig is up. “And anyways, even the cops are saying it’s not that bad what I did. I’ll confess and make things easier on myself.”

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The carrots and the sticks of the Reid technique do work. The Reid Company once reportedly claimed their technique yields a confession 80 percent of the time. The problem, according to the research, is that it can work on guilty people and innocent ones.

In research settings, when these tactics are used during an interrogation, the rate of true confessions goes up, but so does the rate of false confessions.

The Reid Company responds to these critiques by saying that when false confessions happen, it’s usually because an interrogator has strayed, quote, “outside of the parameters of the Reid technique.”

But Fabiana and other experts on false confession say the Reid technique puts innocent people at risk, especially when you combine it with other risk factors. 

Like younger suspects. Children and adolescents are hugely overrepresented in the pool of proven false confessions. Same goes for people with intellectual disabilities.

The length of interrogations is another risk factor. According to one study, most interrogations last between 30 minutes and two hours. The Reid technique cautions against going for more than four hours. One study of 125 proven false confessions found the average length of those interrogations was over 16 hours.

So, the Reid technique, young or mentally disabled suspects, long interrogations. The research shows these things all make false confessions more likely.

But it can still be hard to wrap your mind around. Surveys show most of us still think we would never falsely confess. 

Maybe the research isn’t enough to convince us. Maybe we need to hear from someone who lived it, like Huwe Burton.

Moon: Have you ever gone back and watched the taped confession you gave?

Huwe Burton: Absolutely. It’s – you know, it’s, it’s still hard to watch it without breaking down. You’re looking – You, I can hear the officer’s voice in the back… 

[INTERROGATION TAPE FADES IN]

Female Prosecutor, On Interrogation Tape: Um, you gave uh, a hand… [FADES UNDER]

[MUSIC IN]

Burton: … And it takes me right back to that room, 1989. And it takes me right back to the – how terrified I was and I can see the fear in my eyes as I’m looking at my 16-year-old self.

[INTERROGATION TAPE FADES BACK UP]

Burton, On Interrogation Tape: …I’m not.

Prosecutor, On Interrogation Tape: Okay, but what you’re telling us now is the truth?

Burton, On Interrogation Tape: Yes, it is.

Prosecutor, On Interrogation Tape: And I’ve treated you fairly?

Burton, On Interrogation Tape: Yes, you have.

Prosecutor, On Interrogation Tape: And the police have?

Burton, On Interrogation Tape: Yes.

Prosecutor, On Interrogation Tape: Okay, anything else you wanna tell us? [FADES OUT]

Moon, Narrating: 1989. The same year Jason Carroll confessed. 

One evening, a 16-year-old Huwe came home to his family’s apartment in the Bronx and noticed his mom’s car wasn’t in their driveway. Then, he went inside.

Burton: And, um, [CLEARS THROAT] I came in. Now, I’m taking my things off. I’m walking towards the back of the apartment, toward the bedrooms. I noticed that my parents’ bedroom was open, the door was open. Um… I went into the room, I looked in there, and that’s where I made the discovery. I’d found my mom.

Moon, Narrating: His mom, Keziah Burton, was lying dead in her bed. She had been stabbed in the neck. 

Burton: Immediately called the police. I’m screaming, crying. I couldn’t stay in the house any longer so I ran outside.

Moon, Narrating: The police arrived. Huwe answered some questions about what he saw and where he was that day. Huwe’s father was away in Jamaica, visiting Huwe’s grandmother. So, Huwe went to stay with his godmother. A few days later, police called Huwe’s godmother. They wanted Huwe to come take a polygraph test.

[MUSIC OUT]

Burton: I was only able to sleep 10, 15 minutes at a time. And I’m, you know, I-I-I’m just waking up, staring at the ceiling. If I try to eat something, as I eat it, it's coming back up. I’m drained. I didn’t, I didn’t even wan– I didn’t even want to get outta the bed. My godmother said, “Well, they just want to do this– same questions they asked you that day, they just want to ask you the same thing again. They just want a polygraph test.” And you know, I’d never heard of it before. I don’t know what a polygraph test is. “Alright, so, let’s go. If it’ll help you find out who did this to my mom, then alright.” So by the time I get to the precinct, I’m, I’m already a mess. I’m already drained.

Moon, Narrating: Huwe went into a room alone with the police. No lawyer. No parents.

Burton: What started as a simple interview, maybe about an hour and a half, two hours into that, um, it turned accusatory, and they told me they had evidence that led them to believe that I was the one who had committed this crime.

Moon, Narrating: Huwe was 16, he’d just found his own mother murdered in their home, and now the police were telling him they knew he did it. Stick.

[MUSIC IN]

Burton: I-I started crying immediately, um, because I still couldn’t process that I just left my mom sitting on the couch and went to school, only to come back and find her murdered in my parents’ bedroom. I don’t know, I don’t know up from down. And in the middle of that, you tell me that, “We know that you’re the one responsible for it. You did this.”

[MUSIC POST]

Burton: The more I told them I didn’t, the more they told me, um, “You did and this is the only way this is going to work for you. We know that, uh, you know, you didn’t mean to do this, we know that this was an accident. But you need to tell us the truth.” Uh, I’m still telling them, “No, I didn’t commit this crime, I didn’t commit this crime, I do not– I didn’t do anything to my mom.”

Moon, Narrating: Huwe was telling the truth. He did not murder his own mother. But at the time, the detectives were following a hunch – a theory of the case, that later turned out to be based on a mistake.

When police first spoke to Huwe the day of the murder, he told them he went to school as normal. But when the police checked with his teacher, she incorrectly said her attendance records showed Huwe was absent that day. So, it looked like Huwe was lying.

Burton: The theory was that I owed a drug – a local drug dealer money. And I tried to pay with my mom’s car. And I left the keys for this, uh, uh, drug dealer and he’s the one who took the car.

Moon, Narrating: The interrogators believed Huwe’s mother confronted him about the car. They figured Huwe was high on cocaine, the argument escalated, and in a rage, Huwe accidentally killed his mother.

After hours of telling 16-year-old Huwe Burton they know he’s guilty and cutting him off when he denies it, the interrogators have succeeded in pushing him to the point of despair. The sticks, the maximization – it’s worked.

Burton: They continued with this over and over and over again, and in my 16-year-old mind it seemed like an eternity. I felt that, um, I could not leave, although no one told me “you can’t leave,” I was made to feel as if I could not get up and walk out of the, the interrogation room.

Moon, Narrating: Now, the carrot – minimization.

Burton: They then began to tell me that, “Look, just tell us that you committed this crime, because, again, we know this was an accident. Um, and if you do, we’ll take you to family court where your dad can come and pick you up and you can put all of this behind you.” So, when they started to suggest that, “This is the only way that this is going to work, because you’re going to go to jail for this one way or not,” when they started talkin’ that language, and now your mind says, “Well, Okay, you have to trust them.”

It’s interesting, the people that you look at as authority figures… You know, you’re taught to respect them and you get to a point where you’re almost trying to do the best that you can to make sure that you appease them and that it’s done right. Even with my confession, after we’re going over and over and over it, in my mind I’m saying, “I have to do it right if I want to just go to family court and see my dad. That’s the only way that I’m going to be released is by doing this thing that they’re asking me to do properly.” You believe that you’re helping, um, your accusers help you.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Huwe started to play along with the detectives’ questions. And remember, the police already had a theory of what happened here. And so they asked Huwe questions based on that theory. Now, this is really important, because it helps explain one of the most puzzling parts of false confessions. Here’s Fabiana again.

Alceste: False confessions aren’t just someone breaking down and saying, “I did it.” Right? They’re actually pretty often rich, detailed narratives. They have statements of motive, they have apologies, they have timelines, they make references to the thoughts and feelings of the confessor, of the victim, of the things going on around them when they’re committing the crime. They sound like stories that come from a person’s memory.

[MUSIC IN]

Alceste: And so, if we know for an absolute fact that someone is innocent, how is it possible that they could give such a detailed confession with real facts about the crime? And the answer to that question is contamination.

Moon, Narrating: Contamination. Basically, when ideas or facts are leaked from the interrogator to the suspect. It’s usually unintentional – and even though interrogators are trained to avoid it, that can be hard to do, especially over a long interrogation.

Alceste: The more frustrated you get or the more convinced that you might become of the suspect’s guilt, kind of the less careful you might be, ‘cause you’re like, “Well, I know that this person did this, why would I care about leaking information to them? Because they already have all the information, because they did it.”

Moon, Narrating: Embedded in the questions from interrogators are often details about the crime and an implied narrative about how the police think it happened.

Burton: And they say, “Okay, so, you were on drugs. So, then what, what did you do? Because she– uh, your mom was stabbed, so what, did you go into the kitchen and then did, did you go get a knife after that?” “Yes, I-I-I went into the kitchen.” So, my answers “yes” or “no” to things is them putting the story together and having me remember this.

[MUSIC POST]

Burton: They fed me a story and I agreed and I agreed and I agreed. And they kept going over it. “So, let’s – back from the top. So, what happened? So, you woke up that morning, and you were still high?” “Yeah I was still high.” And after you do it a few times, now it’s – they’re not saying anything, it’s just you. Now the training wheels are off and you can just roll and do this story yourself.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Contamination in interrogations can be hard to detect, especially when the interrogation itself is not recorded.

That happens a lot in proven false confessions like Huwe’s. The tape recorder isn’t turned on until the end. The interrogation – the contamination – is not captured. But the confession is. And so that’s all the jury hears.

Burton, On Interrogation Tape: So, my mother was arguing with me. I went in, had a knife from the kitchen. I came back into the room where she was at, and she noticed the knife in my hand. And she asked me what was I doin’ with it and said, you know, was I gonna kill her. And I said, “If I was?” She went to smack me and I moved. And as I moved, I went – I stabbed my mother in the neck. [SNIFFS] [TAPE FADES OUT]

Moon: What was that like, um, hearing the verdict from these jurors? I mean, you must’ve been in disbelief.

Burton: No, I collapsed. My legs gave. I was 18. Um, and we stood up and they read the, they read the verdict as guilty, second-degree murder. I-I dropped. I’m cryin’ and screamin’, um, “I didn’t, I didn’t kill my mom! I didn’t kill my mom!” First time I seen my father cryin’, you know… And I can remember the judge dismissing the jury and I’m cryin’, I’m lookin’ at them. They have all of the bailiffs and stuff around in the court around me. And I’m asking the jury – just to show you, I’m still a kid, when I’m 18, I’m askin’ them, where are they going? “Where are y’all going? Like, what about me? Like, what about, what about – you can’t leave. What about me?” I never forget that.

[MUSIC IN]

Burton: I couldn’t believe that someone would actually think that I could harm my mom. I… The shock of that, like, you actually believed that? Um… It was a lot. That day was a lot.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The jury saw Huwe Burton’s videotaped confession and they believed it. Because why wouldn’t they?

Burton: Who in their mind – and go back in a time capsule of 1989 – who says that they killed their mother if they didn’t?

Moon, Narrating: Huwe Burton spent 20 years and eight months in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was released on parole and then finally exonerated in 2019 when he was 46 years old.

Huwe and a team of innocence lawyers uncovered serious misconduct by the police and prosecutors in his case.

The teacher who said Huwe was not at school the day of the murder? She later called police and told them she was wrong. She just looked at the wrong date in her records. Huwe was at school that day. And prosecutors had that information, but never turned it over to Huwe’s defense attorneys – a serious violation of their constitutional duty.

Huwe and his lawyers also uncovered the detectives who interrogated him had extracted false confessions in another investigation just three months before Huwe’s arrest.

But even with what the jury heard at trial, there were plenty of signs. Huwe recanted his confession and told everyone it was coerced. Huwe said in his confession he stabbed his mother once. She’d been stabbed twice. There was no medical or physical evidence that Huwe was high on cocaine or that he’d been involved in a struggle.

There were even signs, obvious in retrospect, that Huwe’s confession was contaminated. Huwe’s story about the murder was littered with police jargon, things most 16-year-olds would never say. Huwe said he was “stimulated” on cocaine, that he was “associating with a friend,” and that he “proceeded” up a road.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: But these warning signs were nothing compared to the power of Huwe’s confession.

Alceste: Confessions seem uniquely positioned as the thing that overpowers all the other factors that you could think of, that you could look at and say, “These things don’t seem right.” The confession overpowers all of those things. There’s some research that shows that confession evidence can be more powerful than DNA that exonerates the confessor.

Moon, Narrating: Confessions are so convincing, they can even spill over into influencing other forms of evidence, including forensic evidence.

Alceste: You would think that the science is the science and it would be really difficult to bias a scientist who is examining some kind of forensic evidence, like, let’s say a fingerprint. Um, but, actually, what we see in the studies that researchers in this field have conducted is that if a fingerprint examiner knows that there was a confession in the case, they’re more likely to say that that person’s fingerprint is a match to the fingerprint that they found at the scene.

Moon, Narrating: Fabiana says this goes for other forensic experts, too, like medical examiners. If they know a confession exists, it can influence their interpretation of the evidence.

Confessions can also derail good police work. Once there’s a confession, there’s a tendency for the investigation to come to a halt. “We found the guy, he confessed. What’s left to do?”

Six days after Huwe’s confession, police pulled over a man driving Huwe’s mother’s car. This man lived downstairs from Huwe’s family. He had a violent criminal history. He was driving the victim’s car. But police already had their guy – someone who’d confessed.

The man who was driving Huwe’s mother car died before Huwe’s trial. No one, besides Huwe, was ever convicted for Keziah Burton’s murder.

[MUSIC IN]

Burton: For many years, I would ask myself, sitting inside there, like, very angry with myself, like, “How did you allow them to trick you like that?” I was very upset, especially in my early 20s. It’s one of those things that, y-you know, you can’t put that kind of pain in-in-into words.

[MUSIC POST]

Burton: You’re screaming at the top of your lungs that you didn’t do something, um, and it’s almost as if the world can’t hear you.

Moon, Narrating: Once Huwe was exonerated, the world did hear him. He spoke out in interviews like this one. He says it was partly a way to begin healing – partly because he feels a duty to tell all of us, “This can happen. This does happen.”

Today, Huwe continues to speak out and to move on with his life. In prison, he picked up long-distance running as a way to cope with the pain. In 2019, he ran the New York City marathon as a free man.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The experience of exonerees like Huwe Burton and the research of psychologists like Dr. Fabiana Alceste, have opened a new world of understanding about how and why false confessions happen.

In fact, according to the legal clinic that helped exonerate Huwe, his case marked the first time a court ruled that new understandings about false confessions can constitute newly discovered evidence of actual innocence.

After the break, we bring those new understandings to Jason Carroll’s case.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: I asked Dr. Fabiana Alceste to review the confessions in Jason’s case. The only real evidence against him. Here’s what she saw – five red flags in Jason’s interrogations. Five things that the research shows make a false confession more likely.

The first red flag – the length of Jason’s interrogations.

Over four days, police interrogated Jason for a long time. Just how long depends on how you count it.

Police actively questioned Jason for at least 13 and a half hours over four days. Five hours the first day, about six hours the second day, and then more sporadically in the following two days.

But if you count up all the time that Jason was with police, as part of the overall psychological burden he was under, the number is 24 hours over four days.

Alceste: The longer the interrogation goes on, you see more and more false confessions.

Moon, Narrating: The second red flag – Jason’s age.

Alceste: Jason was 19 at this time, but, so legally he wasn’t a minor, but we still would classify him as an adolescent. He’s still a person at this point in time where his brain has not fully developed.

Moon, Narrating: Of all people in the U.S. who’ve been exonerated after falsely confessing to murder, their median age at the time they were interrogated was 20 years old.

Red flag number three – Jason’s mom, Karen Carroll. Fabiana says Karen’s aggressive involvement in Lamy’s interrogation of Jason supercharged the carrots and sticks. Karen made it even more stressful for Jason to deny and repeatedly communicated that confessing was the only good outcome.

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: [FADE IN TAPE HISS] The longer you hold off telling the truth… [FADE UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Karen says, “The longer you hold off telling the truth the harder it’s gonna be, and the worse it’s going to be on yourself. You still have a chance to save your ass. My dear, I don’t want to see you go to prison.”

Jason says, “I don’t want to go to prison either, Ma.” Karen says, “Then tell us every goddamn thing you know.”

Karen Carroll: Then tell us every goddamn thing you know. [JASON CARROLL SOBS] [TAPE HISS FADES OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Remember, when Jason appealed his conviction to the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 1994, the judges ruled that if Jason’s mom had been acting as a police officer, the confession would’ve been thrown out. But because they said Karen wasn’t a police officer in that room, her conduct wasn’t relevant to them – since the state constitution doesn’t have anything to say about the way relatives question each other. But to a psychologist looking at whether Karen’s involvement made a false confession more likely, it definitely is relevant.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Red flag number four – maximization tactics. The sticks. Jason’s second interrogation especially is full of them.

Alceste: Ah, so, they say things like, “The jury will tear you apart if you’re not telling the truth here.” They repeatedly tell him that he’s not telling them the whole truth and he’s holding out on them and that they know that for sure.

Moon, Narrating: And the fifth red flag – contamination.

Alceste: So, we do see the interrogators revealing key details to Jason. And then, sometimes almost immediately after that, we see Jason incorporate those details into his story.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: We’re going to spend some time on this red flag because Jason’s knowledge of certain details about Sharon Johnson’s murder was a big point of contention at his trials. Remember, the state argued Jason could only have known so much if he was actually involved.

But Fabiana sees clear evidence that for at least some of those details, Jason likely learned them from the interrogators.

Here’s one example. During Jason’s second interrogation, detectives ask him, “Why did Ken Johnson want his wife murdered?” Jason says, quote, “I wasn’t briefed on that.” His mother pushes him for an answer. Then, Jason says, quote, “Because she knew something that Ken had done.”

And then, a detective with the Bedford Police Department, Leo Morency, jumps in and introduces a new idea.

Alceste: So, he asks, “What had he done? What had Ken done, raped his daughter?” And after that, Jason goes on to use this detail repeatedly. But he had never mentioned anything about Ken raping Lisa before Morency brought that up.

Moon, Narrating: Now, you might remember, this was an early theory police had that Ken Johnson had sexually abused his own stepdaughter, Lisa, and that Sharon caught him doing it.

But police later abandoned this theory because there’s no evidence for it. Lisa herself denied it. Tony said he was, in fact, the father of the child. And Tony never mentions it as a motive in his interrogations. By the time of Tony and Jason’s trials, prosecutors say the motive was Ken’s gambling debts, not a rape.

But once the idea is introduced to Jason – it sticks. It’s now a part of his story from that point on. Here he is repeating this idea in his third interrogation.

Unidentified Officer, On Interrogation Tape: Did he give you any explanation as to why she was to be killed?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Uh, he had told me that Johnson, she had caught Johnson raping his daughter and doing some other very – or heard about some very other criminal acts.

Moon, Narrating: Fabiana says it’s important to trace the genealogy of each detail in a confession.

Alceste: Is it something that the police had already thought in their theory before they even questioned anyone? Is it some– a new theory that arose out of the questioning of one of the suspects or witnesses? Where does each thought and fact and detail come from? Who states it first? Is it actually true?

Moon, Narrating: The idea that a rape was the motive for the murder was not reported on in the news. So if that idea isn’t true, and it wasn’t in the news, where else did Jason get it from if not the detectives? And if that happened with this detail, couldn’t it have happened with others?

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: If you trace the origin of other important details in Jason’s confession, you see a similar trajectory – detectives introducing ideas, Jason incorporating those ideas into his story.

Like the murder weapon. Even after Jason has admitted to stabbing Sharon, he gives a handful of different answers about where the murder weapon is. He says he doesn’t know. The detectives say that’s wrong. He says he burned it in a fire. They say that’s wrong. He says he threw it in a river. Wrong again.

And finally, Detective Lamy introduces the idea that the knife is at Jason’s house. Quote, “It’s at your house or you got it,” he says. Then, Karen introduces the idea of the specific knife. “Is it a small brown pocket knife?” Jason simply agrees with them.

Or how about the amount Jason was paid? According to police, before anything was tape-recorded, Jason said he was paid $500. Then, Lamy says, “I suspect that is not the accurate amount you got.” Jason changes his answer to $2,000. Then, later, to $5,000.

There’s Sharon’s bra – which, remember, was cut open in the front with a knife. One of those supposedly hidden details that only the killer would know. But Jason makes no mention of the bra until his third interrogation, when the idea is first introduced by police.

And then, when Jason gets the answer wrong (he says the bra was unsnapped), listen to the detectives give him multiple choice answers to try and help him match up his story to the evidence.

Neal Scott, On Interrogation Tape: [FADE UP TAPE HISS] How was the bra taken off?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: The bra? It was unsnapped.

Scott: Unsnapped or torn? Do you recall?

Unidentified Officer: Cut, torn, unsnapped, pull over her head?

Carroll: To me– to me, the way it was goin’, it seemed like it was unsnapped.

Officer: Snapped in the front or the back?

Carroll: In the back. From what– it seemed like he was reaching around her to the back. [FADE OUT TAPE HISS]

So, not only does Jason not mention the bra until police specifically ask him about it – when he does incorporate the idea into his story, he does so in a way that gets the evidence wrong.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: There’s even evidence that detectives were willing to show Jason pictures of the crime scene. It happens during the interrogation with his mother.

Near the end of the tape, after Jason has already said he stabbed Sharon, Lamy asks Jason about Sharon’s rings. You might remember Sharon’s rings were found lying on the ground at the construction site.

Lamy says, “Who took the rings off of her hand, you haven’t told us anything about that. Why didn’t you tell us about that?”

Jason replies, “Because I didn’t know of any rings being on her hands.”

Lamy says, “Well, they were on her hands. Who took them off? You were there. Think clearly, think clearly now. They were found on the ground. Who took them off and why were they off?” 

And then, Lamy asks, presumably of one of the other detectives, if they have a picture they can show Jason. And from that moment on, the rings are part of Jason’s story.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon: So… [SIGHS] Alright, but so, a jury could hear this and think, “Well, um, whatever, he gets some of the details wrong and the details change and they get more incriminating – not because it’s what cops want to hear, but it’s because it’s the things that he doesn’t want to say.” So, why, why isn’t this evolution of details just a, a kind of slow, like, surrendering to the reality of what he’s done? Why, why can’t we say that’s what’s happening here?

Alceste: I think the hard part is that we can’t say that’s what’s not happening. We can’t prove just by analyzing what is going on in the interrogation – we can’t prove that this is a false confession just by anything that he has said or that the interrogators have said.

[MUSIC IN]

Alceste: All we have are, are the red flags. All we have are the red flags and what they amount to and how they interact with each other. They provide a reason to be skeptical of these interrogation practices and the confessions that resulted from them.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: After all of this, we’re back to the original problem of false confessions – they are so hard to detect, even for the interrogator. Fabiana says they often do not realize they’re planting the details of a false story.

Alceste: The majority of police officers and interrogators and detectives out there, when they’re interrogating someone and they are getting a confession and they are contaminating and they are making this person rehearse the confession over and over again, it’s because they really think that the person did it. And so, that is not always the case. I can point to some very specific people and instances where there have been set-ups by the police and the police knew that they were taking a false confession, and I think that that is rare. I think that that is the exception.

Moon, Narrating: Fabiana says the problem here is not about the intentions of individual interrogators. It’s bigger than that.

In 2012, the Attorney General for the state of Nebraska apologized and offered $500,000 in taxpayer money to a man who’d been wrongfully convicted. Darrel Parker had been coerced into a false confession in 1955 by a detective named John Reid. The most commonly used interrogation technique in the U.S. is named after a detective who extracted a false confession.

Alceste: 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 because it is so guilt presumptive. It is such an accusatory and confirmatory process. And so, I think that they’re just doing what they have been trained to do. They are doing what their police departments have done for decades and decades and decades.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: This is why recording interrogations from start to finish is the number one recommendation from experts like Fabiana to avoid convictions based on false confessions. In total, about an hour and a half of Jason’s interrogations were tape-recorded. That’s about 11 percent of the time Jason was questioned by police.

None of this is to say we should never trust any confession. Confessions can have green flags as well as red ones.

Alceste: One thing that you should be looking for are details that can be independently corroborated that the police did not know about beforehand. So, if a confession leads the police to new evidence, that’s a good sign that this might be a true confession.

Moon, Narrating: For instance, if Jason had led police to the location of Sharon’s shirt or her pocketbook, which were never found, it would’ve been strong evidence he was telling the truth.

But Jason didn’t. In fact, there’s not a single verifiable fact that comes from Jason’s confessions that police didn’t already know about in advance.

In criminal trials, the standard for convicting someone is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s the highest burden of proof in our court system. It’s also notoriously vague. What makes a doubt reasonable? And what if doubts that seemed unreasonable in the early ‘90s, become reasonable 30 years later with new science? What do we do then?

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: In the courts, new doubts are often not enough to undo a conviction. So, what does it take? A new telling of the story?

Rabia Chaudry: My main goal is to raise the concerns around this conviction to the extent that it would encourage the state to revisit the evidence. And we have been lucky with other past cases that, almost in every case, we’ve been able to find somethin’. 

Sarah Cailean: Mhmm.

Chaudry: A witness who’s never talked before – just something. And that could happen, that could happen here, too.

Moon, Narrating: Or does it still take a miracle?

Cynthia Mousseau: What are you? [SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING, GASPS] I need to stop for a second.

Moon, Narrating: That’s next time, on Bear Brook, Season 2: A True Crime Story.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Special thanks this episode to all of the scientists and lawyers whose work we relied on. They include Saul Kassin, Steven Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli Gudjonsson, Richard Leo, Allison Redlich, Brandon Garrett, Emily West, Vanessa Meterko, Jennifer Perillo, Christian Meissner, Rebecca Norwick, Katherine Kiechel, William Crozier, Deryn Strange, Sara Appleby, Lisa Hasel, Kristyn Jones, Timothy Luke, Johanna Hellgren, Aria Amrom, the National Registry of Exonerations …and of course, Fabiana Alceste.

In 2022, 30 people in the U.S. were exonerated after convictions based on false confessions. The median amount of time they spent incarcerated was 24 years.

A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Photos and production help on this episode by Sarah Nathan.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photography and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 6: 'Don't Roll the Dice'

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2: A True Crime Story:

[Roland Lamy] The jury is listening to you! You sound like a criminal, not a guy that made a terrible mistake!

[Jason Carroll] Sergeant, it’s not that easy. I hope you can understand that.

[Karen Carroll] I’m just thinking, this is my son, they’re trying to pin this murder on him and the word immunity is rolling around in my head.

[Mark Sisti] If we could dump it on Jason Carroll to get our guy off, we would’ve, but we didn’t even go in that direction. I mean, that confession was terrible.

…

[Jason Moon] I mean what was the first indication you got that something was going on?

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] First indication was… // Jason was not in the house. And it’s like, where’s Jason? All three of us kids kept asking that.

This is Jackie Carroll Hughes, Jason Carroll’s sister. The youngest of 4 children in the Carroll family. The night her brother was arrested, Jackie was 12 years old.

That night, Jackie didn’t know that police had interrogated her oldest brother over the last four days. She had no idea he’d been accused of murder. No idea he’d confessed.

She just knew something was up. Her parents were acting weird. And her brother wasn’t around.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] It wasn’t until our mom came home the night he was arrested from the Bedford PD, // and we all came up off the couch at the same time and, “Where’s Jason?” She goes, “Just get your jackets on and let’s go” and we went down to the police department.

Jackie says the three kids – about 12, 14, and 16 years old – were led into a room with Jason and state police.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] Jason’s handcuffed in the front, didn’t even take his handcuffs off, said you have five minutes, and we’re trying to give goodbyes as best we could. And, literally, five minutes, that’s all we got. And I want to say it was Roland Lamy that grabbed, you know, Jason by the upper arm and ushered him to a side door to take him out and I followed. You know, I always could go with Jason. And another man grabbed me and said, “No you can’t go.” And he was gone.

[mux in]

Jason’s arrest for the murder of Sharon Johnson and her unborn baby was all over the news. Karen Carroll says people vandalized their house. Jackie says she and her siblings were bullied at school.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] And for me, it was not just the kids, but one of my teachers. // We were having a test and the bell rang and she’s the teacher that wants you to hand her the papers. // I handed her mine. I was one of the last ones and I handed her mine and it was a tug of war. And I’m like, “Fucking just take it,” you know? (laughs) And she just leaned into me and that’s when she said, “I hope he rots in hell.” And that was over with.

According to Jackie, she actually punched her teacher.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I took a couple swings at her.

[mux post]

A few years after Jason’s arrest, the Carroll family moved to South Carolina. Jackie was able to talk with her brother less and less.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I truly felt like we were abandoning Jason. And I still feel that way.

Jackie says her parents didn’t make it easy for her to stay in touch with Jason. It always bothered her. So in 1995, after she graduated high school, Jackie made up her mind to get in her car and visit Jason on her own.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] That was our first physical reunion. My first solo road trip. (laughs)

[Jason Moon] Where did the idea for that come from? Like, how did that happen?

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I just said, “Fuck it. I’m going to see Jason again.” I had friends up here, I could still stay with them. And that’s what I did. //

[Jason Moon] What was it like to see Jason again?

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] It was awesome. It was so awesome. The last time I had touched him - he has this thing he does with his toes to aggravate me. He purposefully will sit beside me, wiggle his toes, and I would just grab and frickin’ twist ‘em. So that was the last contact I had with him until March of ‘95 and it was like – it was awesome. I didn’t want to leave. If I could’ve stayed with him, I would’ve stayed. //  I think I cried all the way back as far as New York.

Through all of this, Jackie says she knew very little of what had actually happened in her brother’s case.

Jackie says this is because her parents, Jack and Karen Carroll, just didn’t really talk to the rest of the kids about what was going on with Jason. According to Jackie, she learned more about her brother’s case from the news on TV.

[Jason Moon] What do you make of that? I think people will be confused to hear that, like–

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I’m confused, too. My mom and I have had discussions as adults. She swears that she spoke to us. My sister and I don’t recall it. We would’ve had a better understanding. // I mean we were always a quiet family. And then when this happened, we moved away, it was even more quiet. It was deafening, it was so silent.

Jackie knew a place where she might find some answers. A place many kids know to look in for the things adults don’t want them to see: their parents’ closet.

Jackie knew there was a copy of the discovery documents from Jason’s case in her parents’ closet. Huge three-ring binders with thousands of pages of police reports and court papers.

Jackie says one day, she marched into her parents’ room and claimed it.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] Back then, the room that’s off-limits is your parents’ bedroom. // And it was me and my dad home that day. And I just got up and I went in there where they kept ‘em in the closet, and he’s watching ‘cause it’s off limits, and I came out and he saw what I had and he didn’t say a word to me. And that’s where it started.

For the first time, Jackie was able to look directly at what led to her brother’s arrest. It was part grieving and part mystery-solving.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I just picked up a book and started reading. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what wasn’t right.

Studying the documents became an obsession. Jackie read and re-read the binders. She took notes and dog-eared pages.

The binders survived year after year, move after move. I got the feeling if the house had ever caught fire, Jackie would’ve saved the binders first. She felt, somehow, the answer to all of this – or at least the breadcrumbs for how to find it, were somewhere in those pages.

[Jason Moon] Was there a part of you that was anxious when you first started looking at the discovery documents that, like, maybe I'm going to find evidence of Jason's guilt in here?

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] I wasn't thinking that way. I don't think my anxiety had even kicked in. I was just reading and laying out the case. // I put the relationship aside and I just started investigating. If he's guilty, he's guilty. If he's not, we're going to prove this.

This is Bear Brook, Season 2: A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[mux up & out]

…

By 1992, pressure was mounting on New Hampshire state prosecutors to hold someone responsible for the murder of Sharon Johnson. Ken Johnson and Tony Pfaff were walking free. Detective Roland Lamy’s credibility was being questioned in the press.

The trial of Jason Carroll might be their last chance to notch a win.

[mux in]

So far, it seemed like everything was going the defendants’ way. But Jason’s lawyers were anxious. They knew the state would learn from what happened at Tony’s trial.

[Cliff Kinghorn] I always thought that the defendant that went first, that was found not guilty, I think the state figures out the problems they had with the case and if you’re second in line, I always thought that was a disadvantage.

[Eric Wilson] I agree. Hung juries, too. The state changes, tweaks their case or they recognize the weaknesses of their case, and they get a practice run.

This is Cliff Kinghorn and Eric Wilson, two of the attorneys who represented Jason.

You met Cliff earlier - he had that big argument with Jason’s mom. Eric, who is also a former marine, worked under Cliff back in 1992.

[Eric Wilson] I was working for Cliff and Steve. I was still in law school at the time. I was in my second year of law school.

The third member of the team was Steve Maynard, Cliff’s partner at their law firm. Cliff once told a reporter, at the end of every day he and Steve would sit down together and have a beer. “And we always only have one beer,” Cliff joked. Steve Maynard died last year, so you won’t hear from him, but you will hear more about him.

So: Cliff, his partner and friend Steve, and Eric the apprentice. Together, they went into Jason’s trial in February of 1992.

[mux out]

In many ways, Jason’s trial was a rehash of Tony’s. Many of the same witnesses testified. And the same lack of physical evidence meant – again – everything would rest on whether the jury believed Jason’s confession tapes.

But it wasn’t exactly the same. There were some key differences that strengthened the prosecution’s hand.

Remember how in Tony’s trial, Jason’s confession was some of the defense’s best evidence? Tony’s lawyers pointed out all the differences between the stories Jason and Tony told about the murder.

Jason’s attorneys wanted to do the same thing. They wanted Jason’s jury to hear Tony’s confession.

[Eric Wilson] We tried to get his statement in // to Jason’s jury so they could see how the two confessions to the same crime just didn’t match // and Judge Murphy ruled it was not admissible.

Tony’s confession was not admissible as evidence in Jason’s trial. It was hearsay.

Remember, the hearsay rule generally does not allow into a trial statements made outside of court. Tony’s lawyers were able to sidestep this because police interrogated Tony after Jason. Tony’s confession was shaped by Jason’s and so Tony’s jury got to hear both. Jason’s lawyers couldn’t use that argument, since Jason’s confessions were taped first.

The upshot of all this is that Jason’s jury did not hear Tony’s confession. They did not learn about the differences in their stories. They heard Jason’s confessions on their own.

[mux in]

Another key difference: Detective Lamy. During Tony’s trial, he played right into the defense’s strategy when he got caught breaking the rule about not speaking to other witnesses. Lamy was not going to make the same mistake twice.

The judge did tell the jurors in Jason’s trial that Lamy had violated a court order in an earlier proceeding, but it didn’t have the same impact.

            [mux post]

Still, Jason’s lawyers tried to run largely the same defense that had acquitted Tony: There’s no physical evidence, the confession can’t be true, and it was all thanks to an intimidating and reckless detective.

[Eric Wilson] How can you undercut that confession? To show the confession was coerced and it was not reliable. That had to be – there really is no other defense to a confession case other than the confession’s a false confession.

There were a number of things Jason said in his confessions that just didn’t line up with the physical evidence.

I’m going to walk you through five of them. Five problems the defense said made Jason’s confessions unreliable.

[mux post]

Problem one: the knife.

The state medical examiner originally estimated that the length of the knife used to murder Sharon Johnson was “probably at least in the neighborhood of four inches. Perhaps could be longer.”

There were two blades on Jason’s pocketknife. The longer one was 2 ⅛ inches long.

[mux post]

Now, the medical examiner made his original estimate based on the depth of the wound in Sharon’s back – the deepest of the 14 stab wounds.

But during Tony and Jason’s trials, he backs out of that estimate. He says his measurement may have been imprecise because Sharon’s lung had collapsed.

And he maintains that the stab wounds in Sharon’s chest are consistent with Jason’s pocket knife.

The implication from Jason’s attorneys: the medical examiner was conveniently changing his scientific opinion to fit the state’s narrative about Jason’s pocket knife as the murder weapon.

[mux post]

Problem two: the lineup.

[Officer] Jason has been shown two folders with eight photographs of eight white males in same, all numbered.

During Jason’s final recorded interrogation, police show him a photo lineup. One of the eight photos is of Ken Johnson.

[Officer] Of the eight people in that lineup, Jason has recognized and pointed out the male subject in number five. And can you tell me again Jason why you focused your attention on the individual in number five?

[Jason Carroll] Because I remember the black beard.

Jason says number five is Ken Johnson. Only number five is not Ken Johnson. Ken did not have a beard the day of the murder. Jason could not identify the man who allegedly paid him to murder his wife. Who Jason told police was there during the murder.

I’ve seen the photo lineup. Ken is number two – the photo right above the one Jason picks.

[mux out]

Problem three: the diagrams.

On the day in between Jason’s two taped confessions, police had him draw a diagram of the area where Sharon’s body was found. Jason drew three.

I’ve seen all three of Jason’s drawings, I’ve seen aerial photographs of the scene, I’ve seen a videotape of the scene. There is just no way to make Jason’s drawings map on to reality. He never draws the pond that Sharon’s body was found at the edge of. He draws a foundation that doesn’t exist. He draws a road running by the area that in reality is more than a mile away from where Sharon’s body was found.

[mux in]

Problem four: the stereo.

You might remember Jason originally said he spent the money Ken paid him for the murder on marijuana. But later, he said he used the money to buy new tires and a stereo system for his truck.

Jason didn’t own his truck, he leased it on a handshake deal with a guy he once worked with. That guy testified at Jason’s trial. He said he had to repossess the truck because Jason couldn’t make the payments. And when he took it back, he said the truck did not have new tires or a new stereo. In fact, he says it was in terrible shape.

[mux out]

And then, there was problem number five: the diary.

[Debbie Dutra] When all this happened and Jason got arrested, I went to my father and I’m like, “Dad, there’s no way – we were gone this weekend.”

Debbie Dutra was friends with Jason in the summer of 1988, the summer of the murder. By the way this is a different Debbie – not the one who met Jason cruising on Elm Street. This Debbie’s best friend was Jason’s girlfriend at the time.

[Debbie Dutra] He hung out with us all the time. I mean, we were always together, all of us.

When the news of Jason’s arrest broke, Debbie could not believe it – at first, because she just couldn’t imagine her friend doing something like that. But then, she really couldn’t believe it because she remembered she was with Jason just a few days after the murder.

[mux in]

Sharon was murdered on a Thursday night. According to the final version of Jason’s confessions, he and Tony went to Ken’s house on Saturday morning to collect their payment.

But Debbie remembered that Saturday, Jason was with her, and two other people, on a trip to a lake about an hour north.

So Debbie, who’s around 18 at the time, tells her father she’s going to call the police.

[Debbie Dutra] I said, “I gotta say something, Dad.” I said, “I can’t not say anything.” And so my father listened on the other end, // we had the landlines, // and I said, “Listen, this is what’s happening. I know he wasn’t there because he was with us.” And that’s why Lamy showed up at our door.

[mux post]

When detectives first questioned her about this trip, Debbie says they tried hard to convince her she was confused. According to Debbie, they kept saying she must be thinking about a different weekend. And she says eventually she caved and said she must’ve been thinking of Labor Day weekend.

But privately, Debbie still thought she was right. And then, she remembered she had proof: her diary. It confirmed - Jason was with her that Saturday morning.

[Debbie Dutra] My biggest concern with it was I didn’t want it being publicized. That’s like a diary, you know, a girl’s diary. It had stuff in there I didn’t want anyone to know.

Debbie eventually did turn over her diary. She was the defense’s first witness at Jason’s trial.

And it wasn’t just Debbie’s diary that undermined Jason’s story about getting paid. In his confession, Jason says he and Tony got to Ken’s house around 11 or 11:30 that Saturday morning to get the money.

But that morning, the police were also at Ken’s house. They were staked out outside, surveilling the house, and making a log of everyone who came and went.

But – prosecutors seized on the fact that the police surveillance didn’t start until 11:30 a.m. And Debbie’s diary didn’t say exactly what time they left for the lake that morning. So in theory, it is still possible that Jason and Tony went to Ken’s earlier in the morning before the police were watching the house and before Jason went to the lake with his friends.

[mux out]

…

The knife, the lineup, the diagrams, the stereo, the diary. Jason’s lawyers made their case for why the confession simply could not be true.

Now, they turned their attention to Detective Lamy.

Steve Maynard tells the jury Lamy fancies himself a QUOTE “Kojak throwback.”

Cliff says you can hear how Lamy coerced Jason right there on the tapes. 

[Cliff Kinghorn] There are so many inconsistencies. // I mean, even in Jason’s statement. “Who stabbed her first?” “Ken did.” “You sure it was Ken?” “No, it was me.” I mean Jason just kept flipping. You could see the pressure he was under. Whatever they wanted to hear, Jason was going to tell them. // They could’ve asked him at that point in time if he believed in Santa Claus, he probably would’ve said yes if he thought that’s what they wanted to hear.

But the defense didn’t rely simply on the tapes. They also had a witness. A person they argued could’ve easily been sitting where Jason was because Lamy used all the same tricks on him.

[mux in]

The witness’s name was George Scott McDonald. George worked with Jason and Tony at High-Tech Fire Prevention, the restaurant exhaust cleaning company. George was a manager at High-Tech. And about 8 years older than Jason and Tony.

George was actually an important witness for both sides. George testifies the night of Sharon’s murder, he thinks he saw Jason drop off Tony for work. The state liked that because it put two of the three alleged conspirators together the night of the murder.

But the defense liked George because of what he had to say about Detective Lamy. George tells a story about Lamy that sounds an awful lot like what Tony’s – and now Jason’s – lawyers say happened to them.

[mux post]

George, like Tony, had some preexisting legal problems when Lamy first talked to him in October of 1989 – the month before police interrogated and arrested Jason and Tony. George had a habit of giving cops fake names when they pulled him over so they wouldn’t arrest him for driving without a license. He was also fraudulently collecting workers’ comp payments.

After their first meeting, Lamy knew all of this about George – told him he knew – but didn’t have him arrested for his outstanding warrants.

The implication from Jason’s lawyers was that Lamy was holding the charges over his head as leverage – just like what Tony’s lawyers said happened to him.

And just like with Tony, Lamy does make some of the charges against George disappear.

[mux post]

George also testifies that before Jason and Tony were arrested, Lamy told him he suspected them both. And if that’s true, it would mean that Lamy already thought Jason was involved in the murder before that first interrogation at the armory. Lamy denies this in his own testimony. He says Jason was not a suspect before their first meeting.

[mux post]

George testifies, eventually, Lamy began to suspect him of being involved in the murder, too. George says over a series of 10 to 12 meetings, Lamy accused him of taking part in the murder. In his testimony, Lamy denies this.

But George says that one time, Lamy even drove him out to the construction site where Sharon’s body was found and asked him if the area looked familiar to him. Lamy denies this.

[mux post]

Even after Jason and Tony gave confessions that do not include mentions of George whatsoever, George says Lamy continued to suspect him of being involved. He says Lamy told him the two boys weren’t smart enough to pull this off on their own. He must’ve helped them plan it.

[mux out]

According to George, Lamy even told him that Jason implicated George in his confession, which is not true. Again, Lamy denies ever accusing George of the murder.

But George says Lamy told him he knew he was guilty, he should confess and things would go easier for him. George says he was scared by all this. But ultimately, he didn’t confess like Tony or Jason.

Jason’s lawyers said that was because George was older, had more experience dealing with cops. In short, they argued he was less vulnerable to Lamy’s pressure campaign than the two 19-year-olds who worked under George.

[mux in]

So that was the defense Jason’s lawyers put on: problems with the confession that made it impossible. And an overbearing detective whose theory of the case always seemed to come before the evidence to support it.

But just as they’d feared, the state had learned from Tony’s trial.

This time around, prosecutors were better prepared to fight back against the onslaught of inconsistencies in the confession. This time, they zeroed in on their own set of moments from the confession tapes.

Prosecutors said there were two moments in particular – two things Jason said that did line up with reality in a way that was so damning, it proved he committed the murder.

[mux out]

It’s important to point out that most of the information about Sharon’s murder was in the news before Jason was interrogated.

And that allowed the defense to argue that that’s where Jason could've gotten the info from. He knew details about the murder, not because he was there, but in the same way you know details about the murder – from a journalist.

But not everything was reported.

Prosecutors said investigators intentionally withheld two facts: that Sharon was stabbed in the back AND that her bra had been opened. Those were things, prosecutors said, only the killer would know. And Jason included both in his confessions.

It is a little more complicated than that.

At first, Jason says there were two stabs in Sharon’s back. So he’s right about a stab in the back, but at least at one point, he’s wrong about the number.

And the bra? Here’s how Jason describes what happened with Sharon’s bra in his final taped interrogation. Keep in mind here the correct answer is that Sharon’s bra was cut open in the front with a knife.

[Neal Scott] How was the bra taken off?

[Jason Carroll] The bra? It was unsnapped.

[Neal Scott] Unsnapped or torn? Do you recall?

[Officer] Cut, torn, unsnapped, pull over her head?

[Jason Carroll] To me– to me, the way it was– it seemed like it was unsnapped.

[Officer] Snapped in the front or the back?

[Jason Carroll] In the back. From what– it seemed like he was reaching around to the back.

[mux in]

What was more convincing? The problems in Jason’s confession, or the allegedly hidden facts in Jason’s confession? Was Jason coerced and intimidated by Lamy and his mother? Or was he coerced and intimidated by his own conscience?

After a trial that lasted about a week, it was now up to the jury to decide. Could they be certain Jason was guilty?

[Tom Dufresne] The deliberation, after the trial with the jurors, that was somewhat tense. We had a couple of people – we had both ends of the spectrum.

Juror Tom Dufresne says, at first, he was somewhere in the middle.

On the one hand, he didn’t find Detective Lamy to be credible at all.

[Tom Dufresne] I still to this day wouldn’t believe him if he told me it was, you know, 11:30, you know? // And just his whole attitude and demeanor, you know… You're dealing with people's lives here and he just acted like he was so nonchalant. That was not credible to me.

But, on the big question…

[Jason Moon] But ultimately, did you find– were you convinced that Jason was guilty of the crime?

[Tom Dufresne] Oh yeah, he admitted to… if I recall correctly, he admitted to stabbing her at least once. This was a horrible crime. //  I mean, that's… why would you say that if you didn’t do it?

Mark Phaneuf was another juror. He didn’t see any problem with Lamy – thought he was entirely credible. And the fact that Jason didn’t have an alibi helped convince him.

[Mark Phaneuf] Maybe at the beginning there were some people who thought that he wasn’t involved, but as we spent more time with the evidence, I think everyone came to the thought that he was there, but couldn’t be definitive whether he physically was involved.

It seems the jury was convinced Jason was involved, but for some reason, they weren’t convinced he was the one who actually stabbed Sharon.

Tom says the way the story read to him, of the three alleged murderers, Jason was the least responsible. To him, it seemed like Jason was a decent kid who got roped into this by the real villains: Tony and Ken.

[Tom Dufresne] We kind of knew that there were other people involved, but they weren't being, they weren't in this trial. And Jason's participation in it was certainly at the least, I guess he did admit to stabbing the woman, but he shouldn't have had the full weight of punishment put on him, I don't think.

Whether it was because they weren’t certain if Jason had actually swung the blade himself, or that they just felt sympathy for him, the jury could not agree on the first degree murder charge.

[Mark Phaneuf]  We went back to the judge // and we asked if we could find him guilty of a lesser crime and we were told no.

The jury didn’t have discretion on the murder charge, but that wasn’t the only thing Jason was charged with. He was also charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder.

And so a conflicted jury came down with a conflicted verdict: Deadlocked on the charge of first-degree murder. Not guilty on the charge of kidnapping. Guilty on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

[mux in]

If you’re confused by this, so am I. The evidence for these charges is the same: Jason’s confession. If you believe Jason’s confession, he was guilty of all three.

But juries are human. And as much as the court system may claim to be a venue for finding absolute truth, at the end of the day, in a criminal jury trial, the truth is really just what 12 people can agree on.

[mux post]

Jason was now a convicted felon. He would later be sentenced to 6-14 years in prison on this charge. The state had finally held someone at least partially responsible for Sharon’s murder.

But the jury deadlocked on the most serious charge. And that meant the state would retry the case. The stories would be told again. And another jury would get to decide what was true.

[Debra Carr] We took a vote right off the bat and it was pretty much split down the middle.

That’s after the break.

[mux out]

************************MIDROLL***************************

One night in the spring of 1992, after Jason’s first trial, Jason’s lawyers, Cliff and Steve were leaving the jail after talking to Jason. In the car on the drive back, they got into a heated discussion.

[Cliff Kinghorn] Steve and I never had harsh words and Steve told me that night on the way back. He said, “You crossed a line today.” He said, “You really leaned on him pretty hard.” And I said, “You know, Steve, you’re probably right. I probably did cross the line. But it was a line I didn’t mind crossing.”

[mux in]

Cliff and Steve had just told Jason about a major new development. The state was offering him a new last-minute plea deal.

Prosecutors were making another play at getting Jason to testify against Ken.

The lead prosecutor, Michael Ramsdell, wouldn’t talk to me, so I can’t corroborate this. Jason told me he can’t remember much of anything about his trials, including this moment.

But as Cliff remembers it, the state was offering only a handful more years in prison for Jason, if he would just testify against Ken.

Cliff says Jason refused.

[mux post]

Ironically, it was the kind of deal that Karen Carroll says Lamy had promised them in the beginning. But this time, it was official. And Cliff knew - it was by far the best deal Jason would ever get. Losing at trial could cost him another 40 years or more. So he begged Jason – take the deal.

[mux out]

[Cliff Kinghorn] If that’s the truth, what you told Lamy and your mother, if that’s the truth, why would you want to take the risk of spending 30, 40 years in the New Hampshire State Prison? // For the love of god, don’t roll the dice! I’m begging you, don’t roll the dice!

Many defense attorneys don’t worry about the actual truth of their client’s guilt or innocence. Their job is the same either way: provide the best defense for their client. But for Cliff, when Jason refused to take this deal before his second trial – it affected him. He couldn’t shake the thought that the only reason Jason would refuse this deal was if he was really innocent.

[Cliff Kinghorn] And I always said to myself, that statement can’t be true. Something’s wrong here. Something’s… // Why the hell would you not want to testify? “I’m not testifying. I’m not going to do it.” He never, ever changed – and when he made that mind up, he never changed it, in any way shape or form.

[mux in]

Jason’s second trial went much the same as the first. The defense pointed at Lamy, pointed at the problems in Jason’s confession. The prosecutors pointed at the hidden facts in Jason’s confession. And they also actually embraced the errors in what Jason said.

In his closing argument of the second trial, prosecutor Michael Ramsdell says if this was all a set-up by police, why wasn’t the confession more consistent? Why does Jason get things wrong if the cops are telling him what to say? To Michael, it was like the mistakes in Jason’s confessions were the coffee stain on the paper that proved it wasn’t a counterfeit. To him, the hidden facts that Jason knew proved he was there. And the public facts Jason got wrong proved he wasn’t set up by police.

Michael argued the other reason the jurors should believe Jason’s confession: the emotion. He told the jurors to re-listen to the entire tape of Jason confessing to his mother. To really listen. To feel it. Michael said the emotions in the tape make clear what’s going on: a young man admitting a terrible secret to his own mother.

[Karen Carroll] If you put a knife… If you put a knife in that woman, I want to know. You stabbed her, didn’t you?

[Jason Carroll] Yes I did, BLEEP.

[Karen Carroll] How many times did you stab her?

[Jason Carroll] I stabbed her three times.

[Karen Carroll] Alright.

[Roland Lamy] Who else stabbed her? Who else stabbed her, truthfully?

(Jason cries)

[mux in]

Michael Ramsdell told the jury, “That emotion is powerful. It's compelling. It allows you to feel with every fiber in your body he did kill Sharon Johnson.”

[mux post]

Steve Maynard argued the closing for Jason. He pointed to that same emotion as the reason the jury shouldn’t believe the confession. Steve called Jason’s interrogation a “psychological bludgeoning.” He said, “There is no way you can listen to that tape and believe that kid had anything left – any free will left. He was destroyed. He was destroyed by his mother. He was destroyed by Sergeant Lamy.”

[mux out]

[Dan Philie] We listened to that recording many, many times, over and over, that I remember.

The jurors in Jason’s second trial deliberated for four days. Dan Philie was one of them.

As Dan remembers it, he and the rest of the jurors all believed Jason’s confession was the truth. But another juror, Debra Carr, remembers it differently.

[Debra Carr] We took a vote right off the bat and it was pretty much split down the middle.

Debra says some of the jurors had concerns about the way the police interrogated Jason.

[Debra Carr] We did all agree that it was coerced, it was pressured. He had his mother and the, I believe it was the state police detective hounding him, so we didn’t even take that into consideration.

But despite her belief that Jason’s confession was coerced, Debra, like Dan, still thought it was the truth.

[Debra Carr] I don’t think it was false, but I do believe that he was pressured into confessing. // The defendant knew something that wasn’t out in the public eye. // It was something only somebody who had been there would’ve known.

[mux in]

The day before they started deliberating, the judge agreed with state prosecutors that the jury could have the option of finding Jason guilty of second-degree murder – instead of first-degree. First-degree murder is premeditated. Second-degree is not.

Now to the state, the truth was that Jason accepted money to commit a murder – clearly first-degree. But prosecutors were willing to have Jason convicted, even if it wasn’t on their theory of the case.

As jurors like Dan and Debra were trying to come to consensus, Jason waited in a holding cell at the courthouse. When I asked him what he remembered about waiting for the verdict, he told me a story about a spider.

[Jason Carroll] I’d be laying down and then one day I noticed a spider on the floor walking towards me.

Jason says in the long hours of waiting, alone, to find out what was going to happen to his life, a spider kept walking towards him.

[Jason Carroll] So it kept coming my way and I’m not a big fan of spiders. So I got up and went to the bench on the other side of the holding cell. And I’m sitting there and the next thing I know, there’s that damn spider coming at me again from the other direction. 

At first it was just a nuisance, just a spider that he happened to be trapped with. But the longer it went on, the more Jason started to think, “Is this what the rest of my life is going to be?”

[Jason Carroll] And I remember thinking to myself, “What’s this, a sign to come or something? You know, I’m going to counting bricks and spiders all day long?”

…

[Jason Carroll] And then they bring you upstairs because they found a verdict. And then… you stand up and they find you guilty and you’re looking over at them and they’re crying… And…it didn’t even seem like I was standing there… I couldn’t believe it.

[Cliff Kinghorn] Jason took it just the way I would’ve expected him to. He wasn’t shocked. // He took it on the chin, but I mean, he didn’t become emotional about it… I always thought Jason should’ve been in the Marine Corps for god sakes. He could be so stoic sometimes, it drove me crazy. Sometimes it was hard to get him to be emotional.

After 30 hours of deliberation, the jury found Jason Carroll guilty of second-degree murder. Later, a judge sentenced him to 40 years to life in prison – in addition to his earlier sentence.

Here’s juror Dan Philie again.

[Dan Philie] That’s a big accusation for someone to come out and admit that they did something when they didn’t do it. You know, robbing somebody or, you know, stealing something out of a grocery store is one thing, but, you know, the consequences are heavy here, so you want to really think about that. I don’t think that someone would just come out and say, “Yeah, OK, I did it.”

Juror Debra Carr says in the years since Jason’s trial, she’s come to understand that people do falsely confess to crimes they didn’t commit. Debra spoke with my colleague Paul Cuno-Booth at her home. The dog was in the next room.

[Debra Carr] I don’t think that happened here.

[Paul Cuno-Booth] Why not?

[Debra Carr] I just believe that he was part of that. That he was there and he was part of it. They strangled her and stabbed her.

After the jury convicted Jason, they were allowed to learn for the first time that Tony and Ken had not been convicted. For some, it was a shock.

[Dan Philie] It was kinda… It kinda takes you back a little bit. I mean, here’s this one individual who seemed to be like a straight-going guy being convicted of this and the actual person who hired him to do the deed got away. // You know, it was just kind of frustrating to see that somebody like this actually got away with it and this individual got // life in prison or whatever it was, 30 years or whatever.

It’s something I heard from jurors in Jason’s first trial, too. Like Tom Dufresne. A sense of imbalance in the justice that was meted out.

[Tom Dufresne] I remember having a conversation with a couple of gentlemen as we left, and saying, that is, it’s not right, you know? // I remember telling people the kid got screwed. I was not happy with the results after the fact, but given the circumstances, I don’t think I’d change my mind today. But, especially the fact that he’s still in prison – that’s ridiculous. That’s… That ain’t right.

But this was exactly why the jurors weren’t allowed to know this information. In the eyes of the court, justice shouldn’t be relative.

Although - sometimes it can seem arbitrary.

[Cliff Kinghorn] After the jury returned its verdict about a year or so afterwards, the second jury, I was at Southern New Hampshire for a medical, a minor medical procedure and the nurse that was working with me said to me, “Do you remember me?” And I said, “No, I'm sorry. I don't.” She said, “I was one of the jurors on the second Jason Carroll murder case.” // She said, “I was on, I was chosen as an alternate. I didn't take part in the deliberations.” And she said, “I have to tell you, if I had been on that jury, hell would have frozen over before I would have convicted that kid.” I'll never forget that as long as I live. That's the luck of alternates. She said, “I listened to that confession. I listened to him sobbing, and I have a young son and I just said, ‘There's no way I'm going to pay any attention to that.’”

[mux in]

In 1994 the New Hampshire Supreme Court took up Jason’s case on appeal. Jason’s lawyers argued his confession should never have been allowed in because he was coerced by his mother.

[Eric Wilson] And the decision that the Supremes came down would they acknowledge, had Karen been acting as a police officer, then Jason's will would certainly have been overborne. But they… they said that she was acting in the capacity as a mother, not a police officer.

In their decision, the state Supreme Court writes:

“Without Karen Carroll’s frenzied, emotional, and insistent questioning of her son, the defendant may well not have confessed. Consistently, it was her questioning, not Lamy’s, that reduced the defendant to tears and preceded his crucial admissions. Our constitution would not tolerate such conduct by a State actor, but here, Karen Carroll conducted herself in her private capacity as a mother.”

Jason says he was outside on the prison baseball field when he found out in the newspaper that the appeal had failed. His options had run out.

[mux out]

For the next few decades, virtually nothing happened with Jason’s case. Cliff, Steve, and Eric didn’t represent him anymore. He couldn’t afford to hire anybody. As far as Jason could tell, it was over.

But outside the prison walls, it was not. 

[mux in]

Two things were in motion that would lead us to where we are now.

One: Jason’s sister, Jackie.

She helped push Jason to write to the New England Innocence Project. When the lawyers showed interest - Jackie knew what she had to do. The binders of discovery documents. The symbols of what had happened to her family - that Jackie had obsessed, grieved, and pored over. It was time to let them go.

In 2016, Jackie packed the binders in a car and made a road trip from Texas, where she lived at the time, to Massachusetts to meet with the innocence lawyers. She brought her eldest daughter with her.

[Jackie Carroll Hughes] When she finally realized, when these four women approached us in the lobby, she realized just exactly what I was handing over. This was, like, my life’s work and she knew what that meant to me. And she looked at me, and she literally had tears in her eyes. She says, “Mommy, are you sure?”

Jason’s attorney with the New England Innocence Project tells me the fact that Jackie saved the discovery documents was huge. In cases this old, documents often go missing. The binders jump-started the work on getting Jason’s case back into court.

[mux post]

The other thing in motion over the past 30 years: our understanding of confessions.

While Jason sat in prison, a revolution was underway. Alarming evidence - from research and real-life examples - was teaching us how and why and how often, people were falsely confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.

Things we simply did not know when Jason was on trial.

[Dr. Fabiana Alceste] What has to happen? What is the order of events? What kinds of situational pressures do you have to face in order to do something that goes against your own self-interest so much that you confess to a crime – to the police – that you did not actually commit, that you had nothing to do with?

Like genetic genealogy transformed how cold-cases would be solved, this science transformed what we believed was possible about confessions.

Thirty years later, could it amount to new evidence in Jason’s case?

That’s next time on Bear Brook, Season 2: A True Crime Story.

[mux up & out]

A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth. And an extra shoutout to Paul this episode for doing most of the work it took to track down jurors from Tony and Jason’s trials.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photography and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

Transcript of S2 Episode 5: Trial in a Trial

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: [FADE IN TAPE HISS] The jury is listening to you! You sound like a criminal, not a guy that’s made a terrible mistake!

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Sergeant, it’s not that easy. I hope you can understand that. [FADE OUT TAPE HISS]

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I’m just thinkin’, “This is my son. They’re trying to pin this murder on him.” And the word “immunity” is rolling around in my head.

Mark Sisti: We had a co-defendant, and if we could dump it on Jason Carroll to get our guy off, we would’ve, but we didn’t even go in that direction. I mean, that, that confession was terrible!

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Jason Moon: I mean, what was the first indication that you got that somethin’ was going on?

Jackie Carroll Hughes: First indication was… Jason was not in house. And it’s like, where’s Jason? All three of us kids kept askin’ that.

Jason Moon, Narrating: This is Jackie Carroll Hughes, Jason Carroll’s sister. The youngest of four children in the Carroll family. The night her brother was arrested, Jackie was 12 years old.

That night, Jackie didn’t know that police had interrogated her oldest brother over the last four days. She had no idea he’d been accused of murder. No idea he’d confessed. She just knew something was up. Her parents were acting weird and her brother wasn’t around.

Carroll Hughes: It wasn’t until our mom came home the night he was arrested from the Bedford PD, and we all come up off the couch at the same time and, “Where’s Jason?” She goes, “Just get your jackets on and let’s go,” and we went down to the police department.

Moon, Narrating: Jackie says the three kids – about 12, 14, and 16 years old – were led into a room with Jason and state police.

Carroll Hughes: Jason’s handcuffed in the front, didn’t even take his handcuffs off, said,
“You have five minutes,” and we’re trying to give goodbyes as best we could. And, literally, five minutes, that’s all we got. And I want to say it was Roland Lamy that grabbed, you know, Jason by the upper arm and ushered him to a side door [CELL PHONE MAKES NOISE] to take him out and I followed. You know, I always could go with Jason. And another man grabbed me and said, “No you can’t go.” And he was gone.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Jason’s arrest for the murder of Sharon Johnson and her unborn baby was all over the news. Karen Carroll says people vandalized their house. Jackie says she and her siblings were bullied at school.

Carroll Hughes: And for me, it was not just the kids, but one of my teachers. We were havin’ a test and the bell rang and she’s the teacher that wants you to hand her the papers. I handed her mine. I was one of the last ones. I handed her mine and it was a tug of war. And I’m like, “Fuckin’ just take it,” you know? [LAUGHS] And she just leaned into me and that’s when she said, “I hope he rots in hell.” And that was over with.

Moon, Narrating: According to Jackie, she actually punched her teacher.

Carroll Hughes: I took a couple swings at her.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: A few years after Jason’s arrest, the Carroll family moved to South Carolina. Jackie was able to talk with her brother less and less.

Carroll Hughes: I truly felt like we were abandoning Jason. And I still feel that way.

Moon, Narrating: Jackie says her parents didn’t make it easy for her to stay in touch with Jason. And it always bothered her. So in 1995, after she graduated high school, Jackie made up her mind to get in her car and visit Jason on her own.

Carroll Hughes: That was our first physical reunion. My first solo road trip. [LAUGHS]

Moon: Where did the idea for that come from? Like, how’d that happen?

Carroll Hughes: I just said, “Fuck it. I’m going to see Jason.” I had friends up here, I could still stay with them. And that’s what I did.

Moon: What was it like to see Jason again?

Carroll Hughes: It was awesome. It was so awesome. The last time I had touched him… He has this thing he does with his toes to aggravate me. He purposefully will sit beside me, wiggle his toes, and I would just grab and frickin’ twist ‘em. So, that was the last contact I had with him until March of ‘95 and it was like… It wa– it was awesome. I didn’t want to leave. If I could’ve stayed with him, I would’ve stayed. I think I cried all the way back as far as New York.

Moon, Narrating: Through all of this, Jackie says she knew very little of what had actually happened in her brother’s case. Jackie says this is because her parents, Jack and Karen Carroll, just didn’t really talk to the rest of the kids about what was going on with Jason. According to Jackie, she learned more about her brother’s case from the news on TV.

Moon: What do you make of that? I think people will be confused to hear that, like how–

Carroll Hughes: I’m confused, too. I mean, my mom and I have had discussions as adults. Ya know, she swears that she spoke to us. Now, my sister and I don’t recall it. We would’ve had a better understanding. I mean, we were always a quiet family. And then, when this happened, we moved away… it was even more quiet. It was deafening, it was so silent.

Moon, Narrating: But Jackie knew a place where she might find some answers. A place many kids know to look in for the things adults don’t want them to see – their parents’ closet.

Jackie knew there was a copy of the discovery documents from Jason’s case in her parents’ closet. Huge three-ring binders with thousands of pages of police reports and court papers. Jackie says one day, she marched into her parents’ room and claimed it.

Carroll Hughes: Back then, the room that’s off limits is your parents’ bedroom. And it was me and my dad home that day. And I just got up and I went in there where they kept ‘em in the closet, and he’s watchin’ ‘cause it’s off limits, and I came out and he s– he saw what I had and he didn’t say a word to me. And that’s where it started.

Moon, Narrating: For the first time, Jackie was able to look directly at what led to her brother’s arrest. It was part grieving and part mystery-solving.

Carroll Hughes: I just picked up a book, started readin’. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what wasn’t right.

Moon, Narrating: Studying the documents became an obsession. Jackie read and reread the binders. She took notes and dog-eared pages. The binders survived year after year, move after move. I got the feeling if the house had ever caught fire, Jackie would’ve saved the binders first. She felt, somehow, the answer to all of this, or at least the breadcrumbs for how to find it, were somewhere in those pages.

Moon: Was there a part of you that was anxious when you first started looking at the discovery documents that, like, “Maybe I'm going to find evidence of Jason's guilt in here?”

Carroll Hughes: I wasn't thinking that way. I don't think my anxiety had even kicked in. I was just reading and laying out the case. [SOUND OF HAND SLAPPING] I put the relationship aside and I just started investigating. If he's guilty, he's guilty. If he's not, we're going to prove this.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: By 1992, pressure was mounting on New Hampshire state prosecutors to hold someone responsible for the murder of Sharon Johnson. Ken Johnson and Tony Pfaff were walking free. Detective Roland Lamy’s credibility was being questioned in the press. The trial of Jason Carroll might be their last chance to notch a win.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: So far, it seemed like everything was going the defendants’ way. But Jason’s lawyers were anxious. They knew the state would learn from what happened at Tony’s trial.

Cliff Kinghorn: I-I always thought that the defendant that went first, that was found not guilty, I think the state figures out the problems they had with the case and if you’re second in line, I always thought that was a disadvantage.

Eric Wilson: I agree. Hung juries, too. The state changes, tweaks their case or they recognize the weaknesses of their case, and they, they get a practice run.

Moon, Narrating: This is Cliff Kinghorn and Eric Wilson, two of the attorneys who represented Jason. You met Cliff earlier – he had that big argument with Jason’s mom. Eric, who is also a former marine, worked under Cliff back in 1992.

Wilson: I was working, uh, for Cliff and Steve. Um, I was still in law school at the time. I was in my second year of law school.

Moon, Narrating: The third member of the team was Steve Maynard, Cliff’s partner at their law firm. Cliff once told a reporter, at the end of every day, he and Steve would sit down together and have a beer. “And we always only have one beer,” Cliff joked. Steve Maynard died last year, so you won’t hear from him, but you will hear more about him. 

So, Cliff, his partner and friend Steve, and Eric the apprentice. Together, they went into Jason’s trial in February of 1992.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: In many ways, Jason’s trial was a rehash of Tony’s. Many of the same witnesses testified. And the same lack of physical evidence meant – again – everything would rest on whether the jury believed Jason’s confession tapes.

But it wasn’t exactly the same. There were some key differences that strengthened the prosecution’s hand.

Remember how in Tony’s trial, Jason’s confession was some of the defense’s best evidence? Tony’s lawyers pointed out all the differences between the stories Jason and Tony told about the murder.

Jason’s attorneys wanted to do the same thing. They wanted Jason’s jury to hear Tony’s confession.

Wilson: We tried to get his statement in to Jason’s jury so they could see how the two confessions to the same crime just didn’t match and Judge Murphy ruled it was not admissible.

Moon, Narrating: Tony’s confession was not admissible as evidence in Jason’s trial. It was hearsay.

Remember, the hearsay rule generally does not allow into a trial statements made outside of court. Tony’s lawyers were able to sidestep this because police interrogated Tony after Jason. Tony’s confession was shaped by Jason’s and so, Tony’s jury got to hear both. Jason’s lawyers couldn’t use that argument, since Jason’s confessions were taped first.

The upshot of all this is that Jason’s jury did not hear Tony’s confession. They did not learn about the differences in their stories. They heard Jason’s confessions on their own.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Another key difference – Detective Lamy. During Tony’s trial, he played right into the defense’s strategy when he got caught breaking the rule about not speaking to other witnesses. Lamy was not going to make the same mistake twice.

The judge did tell the jurors in Jason’s trial that Lamy had violated a court order in an earlier proceeding, but it didn’t have the same impact.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Still, Jason’s lawyers tried to run largely the same defense that had acquitted Tony: There’s no physical evidence, the confession can’t be true, and it was all thanks to an intimidating and reckless detective.

Wilson: How can you undercut that confession, uh, to show the confession was coerced and it was not reliable? That had to be – there really is no other defense to a confession case other than the confession’s a false confession.

Moon, Narrating: There were a number of things Jason said in his confessions that just didn’t line up with the physical evidence. I’m going to walk you through five of them. Five problems the defense said made Jason’s confessions unreliable.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Problem one – the knife. 

The state medical examiner originally estimated that the length of the knife used to murder Sharon Johnson was “probably at least in the neighborhood of four inches. Perhaps could be longer.” There were two blades on Jason’s pocketknife. The longer one was two and one-eighth inches long.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Now, the medical examiner made his original estimate based on the depth of the wound in Sharon’s back – the deepest of the 14 stab wounds.

But during Tony and Jason’s trials, he backs out of that estimate. He says his measurement may have been imprecise because Sharon’s lung had collapsed. And he maintains that the stab wounds in Sharon’s chest are consistent with Jason’s pocket knife.

The implication from Jason’s attorneys: the medical examiner was conveniently changing his scientific opinion to fit the state’s narrative about Jason’s pocket knife as the murder weapon.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Problem two – the lineup.

Unidentified Officer, On Interrogation Tape: Jason has been shown two folders with eight photographs of eight white males in same, all numbered.

During Jason’s final recorded interrogation, police show him a photo lineup. One of the eight photos is of Ken Johnson.

Unidentified Officer, On Interrogation Tape: Of the eight people in that lineup, Jason has recognized and pointed out the male subject in number five. And would you tell me again Jason why you, you focused your attention on the individual in number five?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Because I remember the black beard.

Moon, Narrating: Jason says number five is Ken Johnson. Only number five is not Ken Johnson. Ken did not have a beard the day of the murder. Jason could not identify the man who allegedly paid him to murder his wife, who Jason told police was there during the murder.

I’ve seen the photo lineup. Ken is number two – the photo right above the one Jason picks.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Problem three – the diagrams.

On the day in between Jason’s two taped confessions, police had him draw a diagram of the area where Sharon’s body was found. Jason drew three.

I’ve seen all three of Jason’s drawings, I’ve seen aerial photographs of the scene, I’ve seen a videotape of the scene. There is just no way to make Jason’s drawings map on to reality. He never draws the pond that Sharon’s body was found at the edge of. He draws a foundation that does not exist. 

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: He draws a road running by the area that in reality is more than a mile away from where Sharon’s body was found.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Problem four – the stereo.

You might remember Jason originally said he spent the money Ken paid him for the murder on marijuana. But later, he said he used the money to buy new tires and a stereo system for his truck.

Jason didn’t own his truck, he leased it on a handshake deal with a guy he once worked with. That guy testified at Jason’s trial. He said he had to repossess the truck because Jason couldn’t make the payments. And when he took it back, he said the truck did not have new tires or a new stereo. In fact, he says it was in terrible shape.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: And then, there was problem number five – the diary.

Debbie Dutra: When Jason – When all this happened and Jason got arrested, I went to my father and I’m like, “Dad, there’s no way. We were gone this weekend!”

Moon, Narrating: Debbie Dutra was friends with Jason in the summer of 1988, the summer of the murder. By the way, this is a different Debbie – not the one who met Jason cruising on Elm Street. This Debbie’s best friend was Jason’s girlfriend at the time.

Dutra: He hung out with us all the time. We were always together, all of us.

Moon, Narrating: When the news of Jason’s arrest broke, Debbie could not believe it, at first, because she just couldn’t imagine her friend doing something like that. But then, she really couldn’t believe it because she remembered she was with Jason just a few days after the murder.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Sharon was murdered on a Thursday night. According to the final version of Jason’s confessions, he and Tony went to Ken’s house on Saturday morning to collect their payment.

But Debbie remembered that Saturday, Jason was with her, and two other people, on a trip to a lake about an hour north. So, Debbie, who’s around 18 at the time, tells her father she’s going to call the police.

Dutra: I said, “I gotta say something, Dad.” I said, “I can’t not say anything.” And so, my father listened on the other end – we had the landlines — and said, “Listen, this is what’s happening. I know he wasn’t there because he was with us.” And that’s why Lamy showed up at our door.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: When detectives first questioned her about this trip, Debbie says they tried hard to convince her she was confused. According to Debbie, they kept saying she must be thinking about a different weekend. And she says, eventually, she caved and said she must’ve been thinking of Labor Day weekend.

But privately, Debbie still thought she was right. And then, she remembered she had proof – her diary. It confirmed Jason was with her that Saturday morning.

Dutra: My biggest concern with it was I didn’t want it publicized. That’s like a diary, you know, a girl’s diary. It had stuff in there I didn’t want anyone to know.

Moon, Narrating: Debbie eventually did turn over her diary. She was the defense’s first witness at Jason’s trial. And it wasn’t just Debbie’s diary that undermined Jason’s story about getting paid. In his confession, Jason says he and Tony got to Ken’s house around 11 or 11-30 that Saturday morning to get the money.

But that morning, the police were also at Ken’s house. They were staked out outside, surveilling the house, and making a log of everyone who came and went.

But prosecutors seized on the fact that the police surveillance didn’t start until 11-30 a.m. And Debbie’s diary didn’t say exactly what time they left for the lake that morning. So, in theory, it is still possible that Jason and Tony went to Ken’s earlier in the morning before the police were watching the house and before Jason went to the lake with his friends.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The knife, the lineup, the diagrams, the stereo, the diary. Jason’s lawyers made their case for why the confession simply could not be true.

Now, they turned their attention to Detective Lamy. Steve Maynard tells the jury Lamy fancies himself a, quote, “Kojak throwback.” Cliff says you can hear how Lamy coerced Jason right there on the tapes. 

Kinghorn: There are so many inconsistencies. I, I mean, even in Jason’s statement. “Who stabbed her first?” “Ken did.” “You sure it was Ken?” “No, it was me.” I mean, Jason just kept flipping. You could see the pressure he was under. Whatever they wanted to hear, Jason was going to tell ‘em. They could’ve asked him at that point in time if he believed in Santa Claus, he probably would’ve said yes if he thought that’s what they wanted to hear.

Moon, Narrating: But the defense didn’t rely simply on the tapes. They also had a witness. A person they argued could’ve easily been sitting where Jason was because Lamy used all the same tricks on him.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: The witness’s name was George Scott McDonald. George worked with Jason and Tony at High-Tech Fire Prevention, the restaurant exhaust cleaning company. George was a manager at High-Tech and about eight years older than Jason and Tony.

And George was actually an important witness for both sides. George testifies the night of Sharon’s murder, he thinks he saw Jason drop off Tony for work. The state liked that because it put two of the three alleged conspirators together the night of the murder.

But the defense liked George because of what he had to say about Detective Lamy. George tells a story about Lamy that sounds an awful lot like what Tony’s – and now Jason’s – lawyers say happened to them.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: George, like Tony, had some preexisting legal problems when Lamy first talked to him in October of 1989 – the month before police interrogated and arrested Jason and Tony. George had a habit of giving cops fake names when they pulled him over so they wouldn’t arrest him for driving without a license. He was also fraudulently collecting workers’ comp payments.

After their first meeting, Lamy knew all of this about George – told him he knew – but didn’t have him arrested for his outstanding warrants. The implication from Jason’s lawyers was that Lamy was holding the charges over his head as leverage – just like what Tony’s lawyers said happened to him. And just like with Tony, Lamy does make some of the charges against George disappear.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: George also testifies that before Jason and Tony were arrested, Lamy told him he suspected them both. And if that’s true, it would mean that Lamy already thought Jason was involved in the murder before that first interrogation at the armory. Lamy denies this in his own testimony. He says Jason was not a suspect before their first meeting.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: George testifies, eventually, Lamy began to suspect him of being involved in the murder, too. George says over a series of 10 to 12 meetings, Lamy accused him of taking part in the murder. In his testimony, Lamy denies this.

But George says that one time, Lamy even drove him out to the construction site where Sharon’s body was found and asked him if the area looked familiar to him. Lamy denies this.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Even after Jason and Tony gave confessions that do not include mentions of George whatsoever, George says Lamy continued to suspect him of being involved. He says Lamy told him the two boys weren’t smart enough to pull this off on their own. He must’ve helped them plan it.

According to George, Lamy even told him that Jason implicated George in his confession, which is not true. Again, Lamy denies ever accusing George of the murder.

But George says Lamy told him he knew he was guilty, he should confess and things would go easier for him. George says he was scared by all this. But ultimately, he didn’t confess like Tony or Jason.

Jason’s lawyers said that was because George was older, had more experience dealing with cops. In short, they argued he was less vulnerable to Lamy’s pressure campaign than the two 19-year-olds who worked under George.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: So, that was the defense Jason’s lawyers put on. Problems with the confession that made it impossible and an overbearing detective whose theory of the case always seemed to come before the evidence to support it.

But just as they’d feared, the state had learned from Tony’s trial.

And this time around, prosecutors were better prepared to fight back against the onslaught of inconsistencies in the confession. This time, they zeroed in on their own set of moments from the confession tapes.

Prosecutors said there were two moments in particular – two things Jason said that did line up with reality in a way that was so damning, it proved he committed the murder.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: It’s important to point out that most of the information about Sharon’s murder was in the news before Jason was interrogated.

And that allowed the defense to argue that that’s where Jason could've gotten the info from. He knew details about the murder, not because he was there, but in the same way that you now know details about the murder – from a journalist.

But not everything was reported.

Prosecutors said investigators intentionally withheld two facts – that Sharon was stabbed in the back and that her bra had been opened. Those were things, prosecutors said, only the killer would know. And Jason included both in his confessions.

It is a little more complicated than that.

At first, Jason says there were two stabs in Sharon’s back. So he’s right about a stab in the back, but at least at one point, he’s wrong about the number.

And the bra? Here’s how Jason describes what happened with Sharon’s bra in his final taped interrogation. Keep in mind here the correct answer is that Sharon’s bra was cut open in the front with a knife.

Neal Scott, On Interrogation Tape: [FADE UP TAPE HISS] How was the bra taken off?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: The bra? It was unsnapped.

Scott: Unsnapped or torn? Do you recall?

Unidentified Officer: Cut, torn, unsnapped, pull over her head?

Carroll: To me– to me, the way it was goin’, it seemed like it was unsnapped.

Officer: Snapped in the front or the back?

Carroll: In the back. From what– it seemed like he was reaching around her to the back. [FADE OUT TAPE HISS]

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: What was more convincing? The problems in Jason’s confession, or the allegedly hidden facts in Jason’s confession? Was Jason coerced and intimidated by Lamy and his mother? Or was he coerced and intimidated by his own conscience?

After a trial that lasted about a week, it was now up to the jury to decide. Could they be certain Jason was guilty?

Tom Dufresne: The deliberation, after the trial, uh, with the jurors, um, that was somewhat tense. We had a couple of people, uh… We had both ends of the spectrum.

Moon, Narrating: Juror Tom Dufresne says, at first, he was somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, he didn’t find Detective Lamy to be credible at all.

Dufresne: I still to this day wouldn’t believe him if he told me it was, you know, 11:30. [LAUGHS] You know? And just his whole attitude and demeanor, you know… You're dealing with people's lives here and he just acted like he was no nonchalant. That was not, uh, credible to me.

Moon, Narrating: But, on the big question…

Moon, Off Mic: But ultimately, did you find– were you convinced that Jason was guilty of the crime?

Dufresne: Oh yeah, he admitted to… if I recall correctly, he admitted to stabbing her at least once. This was a horrible crime. I mean, that's… [TSK SOUND] why would you say that if you didn’t do it?

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Mark Phaneuf was another juror. He didn’t see any problem with Lamy – thought he was entirely credible. And the fact that Jason didn’t have an alibi helped convince him.

Mark Phaneuf, On the Phone: Maybe at the beginning there were some people who thought that he wasn’t involved, but as we spent more time with the evidence, I think everyone came to the thought that he was there, but couldn’t be definitive whether he physically was involved.

Moon, Narrating: It seems the jury was convinced Jason was involved, but for some reason, they weren’t convinced he was the one who actually stabbed Sharon.

Tom says the way the story read to him, of the three alleged murderers, Jason was the least responsible. To him, it seemed like Jason was a decent kid who got roped into this by the real villains, Tony and Ken.

Dufresne: We kind of knew that there were other people involved, but they weren't bein’, they weren't in this trial. And, um, Jason's participation in it was certainly, at the least – I guess he did admit to stabbing the woman, but he, he shouldn't have had the full weight of punishment put on him, I don't think.

Moon, Narrating: Whether it was because they weren’t certain if Jason had actually swung the blade himself, or that they just felt sympathy for him, the jury could not agree on the first-degree murder charge.

Phaneuf, On the Phone: So, we went back to the judge and we asked if we could find him guilty of a lesser crime and we were told no.

Moon, Narrating: The jury didn’t have discretion on the murder charge, but that wasn’t the only thing Jason was charged with. He was also charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder.

And so, a conflicted jury came down with a conflicted verdict. Deadlocked on the charge of first-degree murder. Not guilty on the charge of kidnapping. Guilty on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: If you’re confused by this, so am I. The evidence for these charges is the same – Jason’s confession. If you believe Jason’s confession, he was guilty of all three.

But juries are human. And as much as the court system may claim to be a venue for finding absolute truth, at the end of the day, in a criminal jury trial, the truth is really just what 12 people can agree on.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Jason was now a convicted felon. He would later be sentenced to six to 14 years in prison on this charge. The state had finally held someone at least partially responsible for Sharon’s murder.

But the jury deadlocked on the most serious charge. And that meant the state would retry the case. The stories would be told again and another jury would get to decide what was true.

Debra Carr: We took a vote right off the bat and it was… pretty much split down the middle.

Moon, Narrating: That’s after the break.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: One night in the spring of 1992, after Jason’s first trial, Jason’s lawyers, Cliff and Steve, were leaving the jail after talking to Jason. In the car on the drive back, they got into a heated discussion.

Kinghorn: Steve and I never had harsh words and Steve told me that night on the way back, he said, “You crossed a line today.” He said, “You really leaned on him pretty hard.” And I said, “You know, Steve, you’re probably right. I probably did cross the line. But it was a line I didn’t mind crossing.”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Cliff and Steve had just told Jason about a major new development. The state was offering him a new, last-minute plea deal. Prosecutors were making another play at getting Jason to testify against Ken.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The lead prosecutor, Michael Ramsdell, wouldn’t talk to me, so I can’t corroborate this. Jason told me he can’t remember much of anything about his trials, including this moment. But as Cliff remembers it, the state was offering only a handful more years in prison for Jason, if he would just testify against Ken. Cliff says Jason refused.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Ironically, it was the kind of deal that Karen Carroll says Lamy had promised them in the beginning. But this time, it was official. And Cliff knew, it was by far the best deal Jason would ever get. Losing at trial could cost him another 40 years or more. So, he begged Jason, “Take the deal.”

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Kinghorn: If that’s the truth, what you told Lamy and your mother, if that’s the truth, why would you want to take the risk of spending 30, 40 years in the New Hampshire State Prison? For the love of God, don’t roll the dice! I’m beggin’ you, don’t roll the dice!

Moon, Narrating: Many defense attorneys don’t worry about the actual truth of their client’s guilt or innocence. Their job is the same either way – provide the best defense for their client. But for Cliff, when Jason refused to take this deal before his second trial, it affected him. He couldn’t shake the thought that the only reason Jason would refuse this deal was if he was really innocent.

Kinghorn: And I always said to myself, that statement can’t be true. Something’s wrong here. Something’s… Why the hell would you not want to testify? “I’m not testifying. I’m not going to do it.” He never, ever change– and when he made that mind up, he never changed it, in any way shape or form.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Jason’s second trial went much the same as the first. The defense pointed at Lamy, pointed at the problems in Jason’s confession. The prosecutors pointed at the hidden facts in Jason’s confession. And they also actually embraced the errors in what Jason said.

In his closing argument of the second trial, Prosecutor Michael Ramsdell says, “If this was all a setup by police, why wasn’t the confession more consistent? Why does Jason get things wrong if the cops are telling him what to say?” To Michael, it was like the mistakes in Jason’s confessions were the coffee stain on the paper that proved it wasn’t a counterfeit. To him, the hidden facts that Jason knew proved he was there. And the public facts Jason got wrong proved he wasn’t set up by police.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Michael argued the other reason the jurors should believe Jason’s confession was the emotion. He told the jurors to relisten to the entire tape of Jason confessing to his mother. To really listen. To feel it. Michael said the emotions in the tape make clear what’s going on – a young man admitting a terrible secret to his own mother.

Jason Carroll, Sobbing, On Interrogation Tape: [FADE UP TAPE HISS] I can’t…

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: If you put a knife – if you put a knife in that woman, [JASON CARROLL SOBS] I want to know! You stabbed her, didn’t you?! 

Jason Carroll, Crying: Yes, I did, BLEEP.

Karen Carroll: How many times did you stab her?!

Jason Carroll, Sobbing: I stabbed her three times!

Karen Carroll: Alright!

Lamy: Who else stabbed her? [JASON CARROLL SOBS] Who else stabbed her, truthfully? [FADE OUT]

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Michael Ramsdell told the jury, “That emotion is powerful. It's compelling. It allows you to feel with every fiber in your body he did kill Sharon Johnson.”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Steve Maynard argued the closing for Jason. He pointed to that same emotion as the reason the jury shouldn’t believe the confession. Steve called Jason’s interrogation a “psychological bludgeoning.” He said, “There is no way you can listen to that tape and believe that kid had anything left – any free will left. He was destroyed. He was destroyed by his mother. He was destroyed by Sergeant Lamy.”

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Dan Philie: We listened to that recording many, many times, over and over, that I remember.

Moon, Narrating: The jurors in Jason’s second trial deliberated for four days. Dan Philie was one of them. As Dan remembers it, he and the rest of the jurors all believed Jason’s confession was the truth. 

But another juror, Debra Carr, remembers it differently.

Debra Carr: Um, we took a vote right off the bat and it was… pretty much split down the middle.

Moon, Narrating: Debra says some of the jurors had concerns about the way the police interrogated Jason.

Carr: We did all agree that it was coerced, it was pressured. He had his mother and the, I believe it was the state police detective hounding him, so we didn’t even take that into consideration. 

Moon, Narrating: But despite her belief that Jason’s confession was coerced, Debra, like Dan, still thought it was the truth.

Carr: I don’t think it was false, but I do believe that he was pressured into confessing. The defendant knew something that wasn’t out in the public eye. It was something only somebody who had been there would’ve known.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: The day before they started deliberating, the judge agreed with state prosecutors that the jury could have the option of finding Jason guilty of second-degree murder instead of first-degree. First-degree murder is premeditated. Second-degree is not.

Now, to the state, the truth was that Jason accepted money to commit a murder – clearly first-degree. But prosecutors were willing to have Jason convicted, even if it wasn’t on their theory of the case.

As jurors like Dan and Debra were trying to come to consensus, Jason waited in a holding cell at the courthouse. When I asked him what he remembered about waiting for the verdict, he told me a story about a spider.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I’d be layin’ down and then one day, I noticed a spider on the floor walkin’ towards me.

Moon, Narrating: Jason says in the long hours of waiting, alone, to find out what was going to happen to his life, a spider kept walking towards him.

Carroll: So, it kept comin’ my way and I’m not a big fan of spiders. So, I got up and went to the other si– to the other bench on the other side of the holding cell. And I’m sitting there and the next thing I know, I notice that damn spider coming at me again from the other direction. 

Moon, Narrating: At first it was just a nuisance, just a spider that he happened to be trapped with. But the longer it went on, the more Jason started to think, “Is this what the rest of my life is going to be?”

Carroll: And I remember thinkin’ to myself, “What’s this, a sign to come or somethin’? You know, I’m gonna countin’ bricks and spiders all day long?” And then, ya know, they bring you upstairs ‘cause they found a verdict. And then… y-y-you stand up and they find you guilty and you’re lookin’ over at them and they’re cryin’… And… it-it didn’t even seem like I was standing there… I couldn’t believe it.

Kinghorn: Jason took it just the way I would’ve expected him to. Um, he wasn’t shocked. He took it on the chin, but I mean, he didn’t become emotional about it… Um, I always thought Jason should’ve been in the Marine Corps, for God sakes. He could be so stoic sometimes, it drove me crazy. Sometimes it was hard to get him to be emotional.

After 30 hours of deliberation, the jury found Jason Carroll guilty of second-degree murder. Later, a judge sentenced him to 40 years to life in prison, in addition to his earlier sentence.

Here’s juror Dan Philie again.

Philie: That’s, that’s a big accusation for someone to come out and admit that they did something when they didn’t do it. Ya know, robbing somebody or, ya know, stealin’ something out of a grocery store is one thing, but, you know, the consequences are heavy here, so you want to really think about that. I don’t think that someone would just come out and say, “Yeah, okay, I did it.”

Moon, Narrating: Juror Debra Carr says in the years since Jason’s trial, she’s come to understand that people do falsely confess to crimes they didn’t commit. Debra spoke with my colleague Paul Cuno-Booth at her home. The dog was in the next room.

Carr: I don’t think that happened here. [SOUND OF DOG BARKING]

Paul Cuno-Booth, Off Mic: Why not?

Carr: I just believe that he was part of that. That he was there and he was part of it. [DOG BARKING] They strangled her and stabbed her.

Moon, Narrating: After the jury convicted Jason, they were allowed to learn for the first time that Tony and Ken had not been convicted. For some, it was a shock.

Philie: It was kinda… It kinda takes you back a little bit. I mean, here’s this one individual who seemed to be like a straight-going guy and, um, bein’ convicted of this and the actual person who hired him to do the deed got away. Ya know, it was just kind of frustrating to see that somebody like this actually got away with it and this individual got life in prison or whatever it was, 30 years or whatever.

Moon, Narrating: It’s something I heard from jurors in Jason’s first trial, too. Like Tom Dufresne. A sense of imbalance in the justice that was meted out.

Dufresne: I-I remember havin’ a conversation with a couple of gentlemen as we left, and sayin’, that is, it’s not right, you know? I remember tellin’ people the kid got screwed and uh, I was not, not happy with the results after the fact, but, ya know, given the circumstances, I wouldn’t, I don’t think I’d change my mind today. But, uh… especially the fact that he’s still in prison – that’s ridiculous. That’s… That ain’t right.

Moon, Narrating: But this was exactly why the jurors weren’t allowed to know this information. In the eyes of the court, justice shouldn’t be relative. Although, it sometimes can seem arbitrary.

Kinghorn: After the jury returned its verdict – about a year or so afterwards, the second jury – I was at Southern New Hampshire for a medical, a minor medical procedure and the nurse that was working with me said to me, “Do you remember me?” And I said, “No, I'm sorry. I don't.” She said, “I was one of the jurors on the second Jason Carroll murder case.” She said, “I was on, I was chosen as an alternate. I didn't take part in the deliberations.” And she said, “I have to tell you, if I had been on that jury, hell would have frozen over before I would have convicted that kid.” I'll never forget that as long as I live. That's the luck of alternates. She said, “I listened to that confession. I listened to him sobbing, and I have a young son and I just said, ‘There's no way I'm going to pay any attention to that.’”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: In 1994, the New Hampshire Supreme Court took up Jason’s case on appeal. Jason’s lawyers argued his confession should never have been allowed in because he was coerced by his mother.

Wilson: And the decision that the Supremes came down with, they acknowledge, had Karen been acting as a police officer, then Jason's will would certainly have been overborne. But they… they said that, um, she was acting in the capacity as a mother, not a police officer.

Moon, Narrating: In their decision, the state Supreme Court writes, “Without Karen Carroll’s frenzied, emotional, and insistent questioning of her son, the defendant may well not have confessed. Consistently, it was her questioning, not Lamy’s, that reduced the defendant to tears and preceded his crucial admissions. Our constitution would not tolerate such conduct by a State actor, but here, Karen Carroll conducted herself in her private capacity as a mother.”

Moon, Narrating: Jason says he was outside on the prison baseball field when he found out in the newspaper that the appeal had failed. His options had run out.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: For the next few decades, virtually nothing happened with Jason’s case. Cliff, Steve, and Eric didn’t represent him anymore, and he couldn’t afford to hire anybody. As far as Jason could tell, it was over. But outside the prison walls, it was not. 

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Two things were in motion that would lead us to where we are now. One – Jason’s sister, Jackie.

She helped push Jason to write to the New England Innocence Project. And when the lawyers showed interest, Jackie knew what she had to do. The binders of discovery documents, the symbols of what had happened to her family that Jackie had obsessed, grieved, and pored over. It was time to let them go.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: In 2016, Jackie packed the binders in a car and made a road trip from Texas, where she lived at the time, to Massachusetts to meet with the innocence lawyers. She brought her eldest daughter with her.

Carroll Hughes, On the Phone: When she finally realized, when these four women approached us in the lobby, she realized just exactly what I was handing over. This was, like, my life’s work and she knew what that meant to me. And she looked at me, and she literally had tears in her eyes. She says, “Mommy, are you sure?”

Moon, Narrating: Jason’s attorney with the New England Innocence Project tells me the fact that Jackie saved the discovery documents was huge. In cases this old, documents often go missing. The binders jump-started the work on getting Jason’s case back into court.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The other thing in motion over the past 30 years – our understanding of confessions.

While Jason sat in prison, a revolution was underway. Alarming evidence, from research and real-life examples, was teaching us how and why and how often people were falsely confessing to crimes they didn’t commit. Things we simply did not know when Jason was on trial.

Dr. Fabiana Alceste: What has to happen? What is the order of events? What kinds of situational pressures do you have to face in order to do something that goes against your own self-interest so much that you confess to a crime – to the police – that you did not actually commit, that you had nothing to do with?

Moon, Narrating: Like genetic genealogy transformed how cold cases would be solved, this science transformed what we believed was possible about confessions. Thirty years later, could it amount to new evidence in Jason’s case?

That’s next time on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth. And an extra shoutout to Paul this episode for doing most of the work it took to track down jurors from Tony and Jason’s trials.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photography and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 4: 'Promises Have Been Made'

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

[SOUND OF CASSETTE TAPE TURNING ON]

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: You told us that Jason had admitted moving the car and was involved somewhat.

[SOUND OF TAPE STOPPING, THEN RESTARTING]

Roland Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: …the truth? The essence of the truth! I have not seen the breaking point in you!

[SOUND OF TAPE STOPPING, THEN RESTARTING]

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape, Sobbing: I can’t…

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: If you put a knife – if you put a knife in that woman, [JASON CARROLL SOBS] I want to know! 

[SOUND OF TAPE STOPPING, THEN RESTARTING]

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: He stood up and he just said it was a bunch of bullcrap and that anything that he had said wasn’t true.

[SOUND OF TAPE STOPPING]

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Jason Moon, Narrating: It’s November 27th, 1989, the Monday after Thanksgiving. Tony Pfaff lands at the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire. Tony walks off the plane and waves hello to Detective Roland Lamy and the other officers who are waiting for him.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Tony has no idea that just two days ago, on Saturday, Jason Carroll confessed on tape to murdering Sharon Johnson. And Tony has no idea that while he was in the air, police taped a second confession from Jason.

Neal Scott, On Interrogation Tape: Alright, from the top again, Jason. When were you first contacted?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: July 27th, 1988.

Scott: To do what?

Carroll: Kill Sharon Johnson.

Scott and David Eastman: By whom?

Carroll: Tony Pfaff.

Moon, Narrating: And Tony has no idea that on both of those tapes, Jason says Tony is guilty, too. When Tony got on the plane in North Carolina that morning, he thought he was coming to team up with detectives again. Just like he had several months earlier, when he wore a wire and tried to get Ken Johnson to admit to the murder.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy and the other cops lead Tony outside to Lamy’s car. It’s November and there’s snow on the ground. Tony is wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

He sits in the front seat. And Lamy says, as a precaution, he’s gonna read Tony his Miranda rights – you know, just since they’re going to be talking about the murder. Tony says he understands, it’s just a precaution.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: After about 15 minutes, they pull into a construction site. The construction site where Sharon’s body was found. Detective Lamy tells Tony, "There's someone here that has something to say to you.”

It’s Jason. He’s standing there in the construction site, surrounded by about a dozen cops. Police cruisers are parked all over.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: It’s at this moment that Tony must have realized – this trip to see the New Hampshire State Police was not gonna be like that last one. Last time, Tony was one of the guys. This time, he’d walked right into a trap – a scene staged by Detective Lamy on the very spot where Sharon Johnson’s body was found.

That day, Lamy hoped he could turn one confession into two – and finally use that evidence to take down Ken Johnson. 

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP, THEN ABRUPTLY WARPS OUT]

Moon, Narrating: According to the police reports, Detective Lamy and Tony get out of the car and walk over to Jason. Lamy stands in between Jason and Tony in case it gets physical. He tells them, “I don’t want this turning into a freak show.”

Detective Lamy then has Jason repeat his confession to Tony. He’s betting the surprise of being confronted by a co-conspirator confessing to the crime at the spot where Lamy says they committed crime, surrounded by a dozen cops – it will all convince Tony that the game is over.

It was the kind of scene that would make for the perfect climax in a TV cop show. But it doesn’t go according to plan. Tony says he doesn’t even know who Jason is, even though they worked together at High-Tech. He says Jason is crazy.

Tony asks, “What’s going on?” Lamy says if he wants to talk about it, he’ll have to come with him to the police station. Tony is standing in a snow-covered construction site in rural New Hampshire, wearing just shorts and a t-shirt. He was flown here on the state police’s dime, he has no car of his own, and no way to reach anyone else. He agrees, and gets back in the car with Lamy.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Once they get to the Bedford police station, Tony spends three hours in an interrogation room with Detective Lamy and other officers. And then Lamy’s partner turns on a tape recorder.

Scott, On Interrogation Tape: This is Sergeant Neal Scott, New Hampshire State Police speaking. The time is 1900 hours. The date is November 27, 1989. The following recorded conversations are that of Anthony “Tony” Pfaff. Present is Sergeant Roland Lamy of New Hampshire State Police and myself, Neal Scott. Tony, are you aware that this is being recorded?

Pfaff: Yes.

Scott: Would you speak up, please?

Pfaff: Yes!

Scott: Thank you.

Moon, Narrating: It’s taken detectives a lot of work to get there. But Tony now tells them he’s finally ready to make a confession.

Lamy: You have indicated to me, prior to us turning this tape on, that you are now ready to tell the whole truth, so help you God, about your involvement in the killing of Sharon Johnson on July 28, 1988. Is that correct?

Pfaff: Yes.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Tony begins to tell a new story about his involvement in Sharon’s murder. Tony says the story starts with a conversation between him and Ken one week before she was killed.

Pfaff, On Interrogation Tape: He asked me if I could help him figure out a way to kill his wife. And I thought–

Lamy: And her name is?

Pfaff: Sharon Johnson

Lamy: Okay.

Pfaff: At first, I thought he was kidding. And I suggested a few ways, just playin’ along, and then he told me he wasn’t joking, he was serious.

Lamy: Mmhm.

Moon, Narrating: Tony says Ken offered him $10,000 to kill his wife. Tony says he thought about it for a day, then agreed to the job. Tony says he then reached out to Jason and offered him half the money – $5,000 – to help him carry it out.

Tony says it was his idea for Jason to play the role of “Bob.” He says he and Jason met Sharon at the mall.

Pfaff, On Interrogation Tape: We met her in the mall. And we asked her to go outside – come outside with us.

Lamy: Where in the mall?

Pfaff: In the middle of the mall by the food court, somewhere around there, I don’t remember nothin’, I don’t…

Lamy: Okay.

Moon, Narrating: The mood of Tony’s interrogation could not be more different than what happened with Jason and his mom. There’s no shouting on the tape. In fact, it’s so quiet you can hear what sounds like a clock ticking throughout the whole thing.

And Tony… I’m not sure what the right word is to describe his affect. Flat? Unremorseful? Resigned? Exhausted? 

Tony can’t seem to remember all that much about the day of the murder. The interrogation is a halting, tedious process. But Lamy, who yelled at Jason to reach his breaking point as Jason sobbed, is patient… even gentle, as he coaxes Tony to keep talking. At one point, Lamy tellsTony, “Don’t be ashamed to cry.”

Pfaff, On Interrogation Tape: Then we drove. I don’t remember the places we drove. 

Lamy: Mmhmm.

Pfaff: Jason told you where we drove.

Lamy: Mmhmm.

Pfaff: And then… we went down… to uh… [MUMBLES] I don’t remember the road.

Lamy: Tell you what–

Pfaff: I don’t remember. It’s hard for me to remember things, alright?

Lamy: Well, do your best. This is very serious, as you know… [SIGHS] I mean, there has to be, you have to explain how it is that that site was chosen ‘cause Johnson shows up there and he has to know where it’s going to be. Who chooses that place and how’d he get there?

Pfaff: He’s the one that chose it ‘cause I didn’t know where it was.

Lamy: How do you– you don’t just accidentally run into him. I mean, how do you people get out there? [LONG PAUSE] Come on, Tony. [LONG PAUSE]

Moon, Narrating: Tony is not giving police the kind of detailed play-by-play they’re looking for. But still, he is confirming the broad strokes of Jason’s confession.

Tony says after they meet Sharon at the mall, they force her into her car. Then, Tony says he holds Sharon at knifepoint and makes her drive to the construction site.

Pfaff, On Interrogation Tape: Anyway, we got there, she struggled. Jason drove a knife in her back, stabbed her again. I choked her. She fell to the ground. And I, I – her shirt was pulled off, but I didn’t pull it off. I don’t know how it got pulled off, but I didn’t pull it off.

Lamy: Mhmm, okay. How many times did you stab her, truthfully? Truthfully, now, Tony. This is a one-time shot to tell the truth, ‘cause that’s what you want to be doing. You don’t have to have the exact number of times. I want to know how many times that you think you may have stabbed her.

Pfaff: A coupla times.

Moon, Narrating: Tony tells police the knife used in the murder belonged to Lisa Johnson. Ken’s adopted daughter, the mother of Tony’s child. Tony says she might’ve known about the plot to kill Sharon, but can’t say for sure. Tony says he got the knife from Ken and then gave it to Jason.

That’s all a pretty significant difference from Jason’s confession, where he eventually says the knife was his and never mentions Lisa. Lamy, no doubt recognizing this discrepancy, asks Tony, “Were there two knives used or just one?” Tony says, “Just one.”

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: W-was Johnson there? Explain how – Where’s Johnson?

Pfaff: Ken Johnson, he did show up. I don’t know where he came from, but he was… I mean, I didn’t see which direction he came from, but he was there. 

Lamy: Okay and did he come before this began or after? Or during?

Pfaff: He must’ve been there, already, because he came out right after it was over.

Lamy: Oh, he came out after it was over?... Okay…. Okay, continue. And now, what was said? Was Sharon, uh, beggin’ you to stop? Was she cryin’?

Pfaff: She was c– of course, she was crying, she was in hysterics.

Lamy: Tell me things that she was saying.

Pfaff: Why are we doing this to her?

Lamy: What did you say?

Pfaff: I don’t remember.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: That’s another difference from the story Jason told. Jason said Ken and Sharon had a whole argument before she was stabbed. And now, Tony is saying Ken emerged from somewhere nearby only afterwards.

Tony says after they killed Sharon, he and Jason drove her green Subaru back to the mall and left it in the parking lot. Then, he says they both drove in Jason’s truck to Ken’s house where he paid them the $10,000. At that point, Tony says he and Jason parted ways.

Near the end of the interrogation, Lamy uses a technique on Tony that he also used on Jason. He invokes the presence of a theoretical jury that will one day listen to the tape they’re making.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: I want you to explain to the jury, if you will, and I know it’s very difficult to do this, but I must ask you to express how you feel as a human being, as Tony Pfaff – how does Tony Pfaff feel about having participated in the murder of Sharon Johnson?

Pfaff: I feel bad, and I’m sorry it took place. And I wish it’d never even happened. And if there was any way if I could switch, I could switch places, I’d do it. [TAPE FADES OUT]

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Tony’s taped interrogation finishes around 8 p.m. Tony landed at the airport at 3, so he’s spent five hours with the cops by this point. And it’s not over. Police keep talking to him that night, periodically, though they never turn on another tape recorder.

Two hours later, Tony changes his story. Now, he says Lisa Johnson was involved in the murder. He says she was there and saw Sharon die.

Then, 40 minutes later, Tony tries to recant everything. He says none of it is true. Not even what he told Detective Lamy months ago about moving Sharon’s car as a favor for Ken.

It’s somewhere around 11 p.m. Finally, according to the police report, Tony says, “Look, everything I told you on the tape was the truth. I feel bad. I’m tired. That’s why I went backwards. Don’t bother asking me anything more because I don’t remember anything more.”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: All this time Jason has been at the police station, too. He recorded that second taped confession while Tony was flying in. Then, after the showdown at the construction site, police also brought Jason back to the Bedford PD. For the rest of the day, Lamy has been bouncing back and forth between questioning Jason and Tony.

Around midnight, Tony and Jason are both arrested. Tony has been with the police for nine hours this day. Jason, for about 12 hours. By the way, you can see a timeline of all the interrogations on our website bearbrookpodcast.com.

But Lamy is not done with Jason yet. He has one last scene to stage with him. This one, down in Rhode Island, with Ken Johnson.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The next morning, just after 10 a.m., police in Warren, Rhode Island arrive at the Country Inn Restaurant. Ken is apparently at work inside.

The Warren police chief told the newspapers, Ken showed, quote, “no surprise or shock whatsoever” at being arrested. Ken is brought to the local police station. And not long after he gets there, Detective Lamy arrives from New Hampshire. He’s brought Jason with him.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy brings Jason into the room where Ken is being held. According to Lamy’s police report, Ken stares at Jason.

Lamy then has Jason repeat his confession again to Ken. He gets as far as the part where he says he saw Ken at the construction site. At the mention of this, Ken flings his arms out in disgust and tells Lamy to get Jason out of his sight.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Over a year after Sharon was murdered, Lamy’s investigation had produced two confessions and an alleged murder weapon – Jason’s pocket knife. And it all pointed to the original prime suspect, Ken, as the mastermind behind the plot to kill Sharon.

It was front page news. Tony Pfaff, Ken Johnson, and Jason Carroll were all charged with capital murder. At the time, the penalty was death.

Detective Roland Lamy had lived up to his reputation. He’d solved the case. He’d crafted the narrative about who killed Sharon Johson.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Thanks for listening to Bear Brook Season 2. This podcast took more than a year to report and a lot of resources. One way to show how much you value local journalism and longform investigative reporting is by giving to New Hampshire Public Radio. It takes just a few minutes and makes a big difference. To give now, click the link in the show notes. And thank you.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: You’ve now heard the official narrative of Sharon Johnson’s murder. How it was put together out of a few clues and a tangle of changing and sometimes conflicting confessions from two 19-year-olds. To recap, here’s what the police say happened.

Ken Johnson wanted his wife dead because he was deep in gambling debt and Sharon’s pension would cover that debt and then some. He hired Tony Pfaff, the 19-year-old who dated his daughter, to kill Sharon. Tony recruited his coworker Jason Carroll to help. The three of them used a story about a fictional “Bob” to lure Sharon to the mall. Tony and Jason kidnapped her there and brought her to a construction site where Ken was waiting. And then, Jason and Tony stabbed Sharon with Jason’s pocket knife and Ken and Tony strangled her.

If some of that sounds different than what Jason and Tony confessed to, that’s because it is. Jason made yet more changes to his confession during his final taped interrogation, including that Ken choked, but never stabbed Sharon.

But if the state was gonna take these confessions to trial, they had to settle on a single narrative. Did Ken stab her or didn’t he? Was Lisa involved or wasn’t she? And so, they made some storytelling choices. They made choices about when to use the details from one confession over another when those details conflicted. And they made choices about what statements were true or false when Jason and Tony gave multiple different answers to the same question. So, some things got cut, like Ken stabbing Sharon himself or Lisa being involved.

And to be clear, as far as Lisa goes – there is no evidence besides Tony’s brief statement that she had anything to do with Sharon’s murder. Lisa wasn’t even living in New Hampshire at the time. She’d moved to Rhode Island a few months before Sharon’s murder. We reached out to Lisa, but never heard back.

Together, those storytelling choices add up to the narrative the state still stands by to this day.

But of course, it was not the only version of the story to be told. The official narrative was challenged, just as soon as Jason Carroll got a lawyer.

Moon: Can you talk to me about your first introduction to the case?

Kinghorn: The, the first thing that happened was Jason’s mom came in to meet with me and I knew right away there was gonna be a problem.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: This is retired judge and criminal defense attorney Cliff Kinghorn. He’s an ex-marine. Got a purple heart in Vietnam.

Until Cliff was appointed to represent Jason, no one outside law enforcement really knew what role Jason’s parents had played. How his mom Karen and his stepdad Jack allowed Jason to be questioned by police without an attorney for at least 13 and a half hours over a four day period. How Karen Carroll actively and aggressively participated in one of Jason’s interrogations.

When Cliff learned what had happened, he was horrified. Then he took a meeting with Jason’s parents that stunned him even more.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: In Cliff Kinghorn’s office, Karen and Jack Carroll share a detail no one else knows about. Something allegedly left off the police reports. Something that would help explain why Karen and Jack did what they did. 

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Karen tells Cliff a deal for Jason’s cooperation has already been worked out with police. As long as Jason testifies against Ken, Karen says Jason has been promised a very light sentence – something like seven or eight years at a federal prison where he could even get a college degree while inside. Karen says she and Jason’s stepfather had been promised this by Detective Roland Lamy.

Kinghorn: And, and I’m thinkin’ to myself, “What la-la-land are we living in? That’s never goin’ to happen.”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Cliff and Jason’s parents start to argue.

Kinghorn: Karen basically said to me, “We’re going to do this my way. All kinds of promises have been made to him and I trust Roland Lamy explicitly,” and we got into kind of a heated discussion.

Moon, Narrating: Karen and Jack Carroll actually described this meeting with Cliff in the Outline Tape – the conversation Karen and Jack recorded with Detective Lamy just 11 days after this meeting with Cliff. And Karen tells Lamy just how terribly the meeting went.

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: He just, he really started in very hard on me. My being in law enforcement seemed to be quite an issue. Um, how could I possibly sit there and let my son spill his guts and tell everything without consulting an attorney? Um, whose side was I on? Ya know, was I on Jason’s side or was I on the police’s side?

Kinghorn: I mean it was basically, you know, “I know he needs a lawyer, I suppose, but we’re– I’m calling the shots, we’re calling the shots. We know what we’re doing and this is the way it’s going to be.” And I said, “I’m sorry Karen, but you need to understand somethin’. I don’t represent you, I don’t represent your husband. We’re gonna represent Jason and that’s our job!”

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: We walked out very upset. I don’t think we said three words together, to each other all the way home. This was supposed to be our defense attorney for our son and we felt that he was going to hang him out to dry. He was out for his own glory and we didn’t want that. We, we told him…

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: Yup.

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: We told him that Jason wanted to turn state’s evidence and he insisted not.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The argument in Cliff Kinghorn’s office was an epic clash of worldviews. A cop and a defense attorney, each with fundamentally different understandings of how the criminal justice system works. Both believing their approach was in Jason’s best interest.

A little context here. Generally speaking, cops don’t have the authority to make promises of immunity. An offer like that can only come from a prosecutor. And it’s also risky for the police. A promise of immunity could render a suspect’s confession involuntary in the eyes of the court.

But it matters exactly what is said. A detective who makes an explicit promise of immunity? That’s usually not ok. But a detective who suggests that cooperation might lead to leniency? That’s not uncommon and it’s a legal gray area.

Detective Lamy, for his part, flatly denied ever making promises of any kind to Jason or his parents. But the Carrolls would later testify to a jury that Lamy made the promise the morning after Jason’s first interrogation.

In that testimony, the Carrolls say immunity for Jason became their objective. And to make that happen, they needed to make sure he cooperated.

So, later that same day, when Karen is brought into the room during Jason’s second interrogation, and Detective Lamy is yelling at him that he’s not telling the truth, Karen said, it scared her. If Jason held something back, he wouldn’t get immunity. He needs to talk. He needs to tell them everything for his own good.

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: These guys are gonna help you! We’re not going to sit and jump on your ass and shoot you down!

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: But I feel like I’m getting jumped on my ass and shot down now!

Karen Carroll: We want the truth outta you! 

Jason Carroll: I–!

Karen Carroll: Nobody is going to be able to help you any more [JASON CARROLL SOBS] until you come forth with all of the information that they need! 

Moon, Narrating: Later in the interrogation, you can hear Karen tell her son, “You still have a chance to save your ass. My dear, I don’t want to see you go to prison.”

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: The longer you hold off telling the truth…

Roland Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: Come on…

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: …the harder it’s going to be and the worse it’s going to be on yourself. You still have a chance to save your ass. My dear, I don’t want to see you go to prison. [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Jason says, “I don’t want to go to prison either, Ma.” [INTERROGATION TAPE FADES OUT] 

Here’s what Karen told me about what she was thinking during Jason’s interrogation.

Karen Carroll: What was going through my mind was, if Jason had something to tell them, then he was going to tell them. But it was that word “immunity” rolling around in my head. I’m not thinkin’ that that’s got to come from the AG’s Office. I’m just thinkin’, “This is my son. They’re trying to pin this murder on him.” And the word “immunity” is rolling around in my head.

Moon, Narrating: As Jason’s confessions change and becomes more and more incriminating, the Carrolls say Lamy’s promise changes, too – from full immunity to a short prison sentence. Still, to Karen and Jack, it felt like the best option for Jason who otherwise could face the death penalty.

When Jason’s attorney Cliff Kinghorn told the Carrolls that Lamy’s promises were a fantasy, they simply didn’t believe that. Karen trusted Lamy, a fellow police officer, the one many considered the best.

And so, for weeks after that meeting, Karen continued to collude with Detective Lamy. 

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: She actively worked to undermine Jason’s attorneys.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Karen would talk to Jason in jail, learn what his attorneys were telling him, then she’d call Detective Lamy and relay that information to him.

She even convinced Jason to write a letter in jail to the prosecutors. In the letter, Jason says he wants to testify for the state, but his attorneys weren’t letting him. Karen dictated the letter to Jason over the phone. With the help of Lamy, Karen delivered the letter by hand to the Attorney General’s office – to the lawyers who were prosecuting her son.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: And then, there’s the Outline Tape.

Roland Lamy, On Outline Tape: Today, uh, we have prepared an outline, uh, on a board in a conference room by which, uh, uh, uh, the outline will be utilized to present this, um, taped statement.

Moon, Narrating: Lamy hoped the tape would undermine any potential argument from Jason’s attorneys that the confessions were coerced. And Karen and Jack Carroll helped make it. They recorded it with police in December of 1989, just weeks after Jason’s arrest and 11 days after the Carrolls’ big fight with Jason’s lawyer.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: Uh, you understand that the reason we’ve made this tape today is because, uh, we know by other forces and, uh, uh, their activity that in the long road ahead, that, uh, there are going to be continued and repeated attacks that the police coerced, intimidated, promised, threatened, made deals with Jason at any time during the confession taking or the confession, uh, decision making process.

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy knew the voluntariness of Jason’s confessions would be an issue – possibly from the intel he was getting from Karen about the legal strategy of Jason’s lawyers. And so, to protect his investigation, Lamy got Jack and Karen Carroll on record, saying that the police made no promises or threats to Jason. 

The thing Cliff and Karen would later say the whole fight at his office was about – Karen tells Lamy, it never happened. Jack tells Lamy in the Outline Tape a promise to Jason wasn’t so much as insinuated. And Karen agrees that when she took part in Jason’s second interrogation, she was acting as Jason’s mother – not as a police officer.

These were all statements that would later help the state fight off challenges by Jason’s lawyers to the validity of his confession.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: For Lamy, the Outline Tape was a rare instance of two people putting their personal and familial relationships aside in the interest of justice.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: Uh, uh, I must tell you that it’s extremely re– rewarding to sit here and listen to two parents who are as conscientious and as fair in their judgment and appraisal of this entire situation as you two have been and we do appreciate that.

Moon, Narrating: For people who believe Jason is innocent, the Outline Tape is tragic. Here are Jason’s parents – the people supposed to protect him – helping police put the finishing touches on his wrongful conviction.

Maybe most damning of all, from this point of view, is how Karen and Jack both describe Jason calling them from jail and again, trying to tell them he didn’t do it, to which his parents basically say, “Knock it off.”

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: He went on to tell us that he wasn’t guilty, and again, his father and I stressed to him the importance of telling the truth.

[MUSIC IN]

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: He said – He tried to compromise with the truth. He says, “Well, what would happen if I, if I am really innocent of this and I just go and try to make a deal on that statement?” And he says, “Down the road a year or two, say the state investigators find the real man who did this, ya know, what would they do then?” And we tried to explain that to him. At that point, we both knew that he was just pussyfootin’ around.

[MUSIC POST]

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: And it’s my opinion – I’m not going to speak for my wife, but it’s my opinion that the boy is guilty.

Lamy: Right.

Jack Carroll: And I’ve known him for 19, 20 years now. And it’s my – he is guilty and he needs to be punished.

Lamy: Right. 

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: People in Jason’s camp today have a lot to say about what his parents did. Most of the criticism is directed at Karen because of her role in the interrogation.

Debbie Dutra: She was a cop! She of all people knows better. My, my children are 30 and 26. If they were ever hauled off to a police department, first thing I would say is, “Lawyer up.” Done.

Debbie Richer: I’ve told Jason this, there’s a part of me that doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for his mom. He had nobody on his side to protect him. Where were his protectors?

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: For Jason, the feelings are more complicated.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I mean, I still, I still talk to her… but it’s… it’s not quite the same, nor will it ever be.

Moon, Narrating: Jason says he and his mom have never really been able to talk about what happened freely. Their only contact since the arrest has been in jail and prison visiting rooms with guards watching. Or on prison phones where they could be listening. Not the best environment for a painful heart-to-heart.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: The story and the saga is not done between her and I. It’s, it’s far from it. For now, it’s just on hold. What’s going to ha– What’s gonna happen is, if I walk out of here, her and I are going to sit down and have a long, long talk. And she’s probably not gonna like some of the things I got to say.

Moon, Narrating: Jack Carroll died in 2006. Karen, for her part, now acknowledges the role she played and says she deeply regrets it. But she also lays much of the blame at the feet of Detective Roland Lamy.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I was not only a police officer, but I was a mother. You know? And mothers will do whatever they have to do to try to protect their kids. And things affect everybody differently. And I think he just took full advantage of… my noodle just slipped off the plate into the abyss.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Cliff Kinghorn, Jason’s lawyer who argued with Karen that day in his office, who once questioned whose side Karen was on, today says that this was not her fault.

Kinghorn: Y-You know, Karen helped them, but in my heart I always thought she felt she was doing the right thing for Jason. Um, and, I mean, Roland knew what he was doin’. And he realized he had someone who had a great deal of influence on her son that he could use to get what he wanted. I never doubted for a minute that she was made promises. Lamy made promises to her that he could never possibly keep.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: About seven weeks after the Carrolls had their blowup with Cliff, the reality of Jason’s situation takes hold. Lamy’s alleged promises of leniency do not come to pass. The state of New Hampshire indicts Jason on charges of capital murder. Lamy and the prosecutors Karen had put her trust in are now trying to execute her son.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Meanwhile, Jason is back to denying any involvement in the murder – a position he will maintain for the next 34 years. Jason refuses to testify against Ken or Tony.

Karen and Jack start to cooperate with Jason’s attorneys. Eventually, they will testify several times as witnesses for the defense.

On the stand, they will say that the Outline Tape was a huge lie, orchestrated and scripted by Detective Lamy. They will beg a judge and jury, sometimes through tears, to believe them that Detective Lamy promised their son immunity.

But it won’t work. The prosecutor will simply point out that the Carrolls are admitting they are willing to lie if they think it will help Jason. And the prosecutor will say, that’s exactly what they’re doing now.

Jack and Karen Carroll will be too late to stop what they helped start. Jason Carroll will be convicted of murder.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I am like, why did I let this happen? Why wasn’t I stronger? Why couldn’t I see what he was doing? Why, why, why, why?

[THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Coming up in the second half of A True Crime Story…

Jackie Carroll Hughes: I was just reading and laying out the case. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know what wasn't right. 

Moon, Off Mic: And what did you think it was leading to? Like, did you have an objective in mind as you were doing this?

Jackie Carroll Hughes: The truth.

Dan Philie: That’s a big accusation for someone to come out and admit that they did something when they didn’t do it.

Robert Hoglund: I thought he was guilty. I thought there was no question about whether he was guilty or not.

Mark Sisti: I mean, one of the best things that came out of Pfaff’s mouth was when they were filming him coming out of the police station in the morning and they were like, “Do you have anything to say?” or somethin’, and he says, “Yeah, not guilty.”

Huwe Burton: When they started to suggest that this is the only way that this is going to work, your mind says, “Well, Okay, you have to trust them.” You believe that you’re helping your accusers help you.

Fabiana Alceste: People have a really, really hard time reconciling with the fact that someone would confess to something that they didn’t do. And they assume that if they say that they did it, it’s because they actually did it.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Photos and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 3: The Breaking Point

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I wanted to trust him… I wanted to trust him.

Tom Dufresne: I think he thought he was Telly Savalas. He had a shaved head. He’s suckin’ on a lollipop, and he’s struttin’ around the courtroom like he owned it.

Eric Wilson: He had a reputation for solving cases.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Jason Moon, Narrating: When I first met Jason Carroll inside the prison, I could feel my brain trying to reconcile two different Jasons. There was the 19-year-old I’d gotten a sense of through interviews, police reports, and old tapes, and then, there was the 52-year-old in front of me.

Jason’s bald, a goatee that’s mostly gray. And he’s huge, like he’s spent the last three decades lifting weights, which is kinda true.

Jason’s not big on reporters. He remembers how the newspapers covered his trials. How they reprinted, again and again, the most damning quotes from his confessions. So, it took some time for Jason to relax around me, if only a little.

There’s a lot I could tell you about Jason. He’s polite. Despite his obvious physical strength, he has a gentle presence. He’s apparently quite good at handball. He enjoys the woodworking program at the prison. He’s made dozens and dozens of bowls and vases and pieces of furniture – a set of wooden lamps with little animal shapes cut out of them. He gives them away to people he cares about. People like Debbie Richer.

Debbie Richer: I met Jason back in 1989 and we kinda cruised Elm Street. [LAUGHS] Back in the day, that’s kinda what everybody did.

Moon, Narrating: Cruising Elm Street. It was something I’d seen references to in police reports and court testimony. But it wasn’t until Debbie explained it to me, that I could really picture it.

Richer: When you cruised Elm Street, people were cruising Elm Street from anywhere from 7 o’clock at night to until 1 and 2 in the morning. And then you’d go hang out at Dunkin’ Donuts!

[‘80S VERSION OF THEME MUSIC IN]

Richer: If you’ve ever been to a car show, okay? That’s kinda what it was. But you would have cliques everywhere. You would have people who have louder stereos. 

[‘80S GUITAR RIFF]

Richer: If you had Jeeps, all your Jeeps were over here to the right. If you had a Camaro, they were to the left. It was, the guys would hang out at Meineke and they would wait for the hot lookin’ girls to come on cruisin’ by.

Moon, Narrating: It was on one of these 1989 cruising nights, when Americana overflowed, that Debbie met Jason.

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I’m in the passenger seat and there she was, blond hair flowin’ with California girl blue eyes, smilin’ a big smile, and we’re goin’ down the road and I about broke my neck lookin’ at this woman.

Richer: Jason was known on Elm Street as, um, I’m going to put it as a pretty boy. Like, “Oh, wow, he’s hot. Let’s go after him.” ‘Cause he had the nice brown hair, nice smile, tan. So, he was a good looking kid. He really was.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Unfortunately, for both of them, Debbie already had a boyfriend. But Debbie and Jason – who she sometimes calls Jay – struck up a flirtatious friendship anyways.

Richer: We had a lot in common. My dad was military, Jay was military. We like mechanical things. Yes, I can put the dress on and high heels, but I can also get under and get my hands dirty, and I think that that’s why Jason and I became friends because I wasn’t just that little delicate girl. I was somebody he could relate to.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: It was around the time Jason and Debbie met, in 1989, that Jason says his life was starting to get on track. Jason’s family had moved to New Hampshire a few years before from South Carolina. Jason’s stepdad, Jack Carroll, was in the military, so they moved a lot.

Jason was 17 when they got to New Hampshire, and he says he quickly realized his new high school was way ahead academically of his old one, so he dropped out. He said money was tight in the family, so he started working. And for a while, he bounced around from job to job.

Carroll, On the Phone: I tried going back to school – it just wasn’t happenin’. Nothin’ was working for me. So, I was like, “Okay, military it is.” And that was the best thing I ever did. And I would’ve made a career out of it.

Moon, Narrating: When he was 18, Jason joined the National Guard. He went to bootcamp at Fort Dix in New Jersey, then moved back home to New Hampshire. He got a job as a mechanic at the National Guard Armory in Manchester – the same place his stepdad worked.

Carroll: Uh, I was proud. I was proud to serve my country, even in what little capacity I did. I was actually, I was proud as a peacock about it.

Moon, Narrating: Jason finally felt like his life had a direction. He was fixing National Guard trucks by day, cruising Elm Street and making eyes at Debbie by night.

But things at home weren’t always so great. Jason says he and Jack didn’t get along. Jack has since died, but Jason’s mom, Karen Carroll, told me he treated Jason differently than the other three kids, who were all biologically his.

Jason says with a cop for a mom and a soldier for a dad, the house was strict. A lot of “yes sirs” and “no ma’ams.” According to one of Jason’s sisters, the family wasn’t great at communicating. She told me things just weren’t discussed.

Home life was bad enough that Jason says he was considering asking his commanding officer to ship him off to Germany, or really anywhere that wasn’t New Hampshire. He was ready for something bigger. Jason’s favorite movie was “Top Gun.” He had dreams of going through the Army’s elite Ranger School.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon: And how long were you, were you there, before…

Carroll: Just a year. I was only in a year, and then all this happened.

Moon, Narrating: 1989 was the last time Jason was free. He’s spent the last 34 years or so in prison. That’s longer than I’ve been alive. A few more years and Jason will have been inside prison twice as long as his life before it.

Nineteen-year-old Jason was like so many other teenagers – interested in girls, adventure. Jason in his 50s is harder to read. Probably because his life today is so profoundly different than most people’s. He’s separated from the world – literally, physically – but also sometimes emotionally.

I got a window into this when I talked with Jason about how he’s handling the renewed attention on his case. How, after living three decades in the obscurity of a New Hampshire prison, the spotlight is on him again.

He told me, over the years, most of his family moved out of state. And friends drifted away. And sometimes, that was because Jason told them to. He says it was too painful to hear about their lives on the outside, while he was stuck in there.

Carroll: I said, “Listen, you know. Listen, you got kids, you got a wife, and I love you to death, you’re my friend, but, go be with your family.” And unfortunately, I’ve pushed a few people away like that. It was easier for me and, like, in a sense, selfish, now that I think back on it, because I don’t, I don’t have to live out there. I don’t have to know what’s going on. I don’t have to hear about, “Oh yeah, we went out and did this, ya know, got the motorcycles out, did the–” I don’t want to have to hear about that ‘cause all it does is brings back… It puts a pit in your stomach.

Moon, Narrating: This is part of how Jason has survived in prison. He withdrew – from most other people and from his feelings about what had happened to his life.

Of course, he was angry about what he says happened to him. But he couldn’t get by in this new, terrifying world of prison and be mad about it every second. So, Jason made a kind of grudging ceasefire agreement with his emotions.

Carroll: You know, you kinda realize after a while nothing’s going to be done, nothin’ can be done, nobody has – you don’t have the money to do anything, you can’t fight anything, nobody tells you anything… So, you know, you just adapt to the situation you’re in and you go forward.

Moon, Narrating: Jason adapted, he went forward. He got used to saying, “It is what it is,” to describe his life.

And then, Jason heard about the New England Innocence Project from another guy at the prison. It’s a nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that works to exonerate people it believes are wrongfully convicted across New England.

Jason allowed himself to briefly imagine that his life was not simply what it is.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

In 2016, Jason wrote the New England Innocence Project a letter. The innocence lawyers reviewed his case. They believed him. And now, they fight for him. And he’s back in court. And reporters like me are calling to talk with him.

And with each step, Jason’s emotional ceasefire gets harder and harder to maintain.

Carroll: I never knew an– what an anxiety was, and now I have it. Eh, there’s just a lot going through my mind – it’s just a whirlwind. Because I thought that you know, this was it, you know, this was done. Um… this is what I’m faced with. And now, to have hope for an opportunity to, to live…? But it’s hard. You know, you want to, you want to invest and put yourself into everything that’s goin’ on, but in the back of your mind you know you can’t.

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: By the fall of 1989, Detective Roland Lamy suspects Tony Paff had played him. He thinks when Tony wore a wire and talked to Ken Johnson in Rhode Island, they were both acting. He thinks Tony and Ken must both be involved in the murder.

So, Lamy starts to dig deeper on Tony’s background. And that’s how he ends up looking at work records for a place called High-Tech Fire Prevention. Where Tony worked with Jason Carroll, during the time of Sharon’s murder.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: High-Tech was one of the several jobs Jason had between dropping out of high school and joining the military.

It was a dirty job. High-Tech cleaned commercial kitchen exhaust systems at restaurants and fast food places. One guy who worked there said the chemicals they used could put holes in your skin. And because they could only worked when restaurants were closed, the hours could be terrible.

Because of all this, it wasn’t unusual for people to quit High-Tech. An employee would later testify that turnover there was always high.

But when Detective Lamy got his hands on Tony Pfaff’s work schedule for the week of Sharon’s murder, he noticed something. The night Sharon was killed, Tony and Jason were both scheduled to work together, but Jason never showed.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: So, this is why Lamy wanted to talk to Jason.

Lamy goes to interview Jason when he’s at work at the National Guard Armory. Their first meeting lasts five hours. Unfortunately, none of it is tape-recorded. But there is another tape about what happened that day.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: A bizarre, astonishing tape made a few weeks later by an unlikely group of people: Detective Roland Lamy, his partner, Detective Neal Scott, and Jason’ parents.

[MUSIC OUT]

Roland Lamy, On Recording: [FADES UP] [COUGHS] Okay, this is Sergeant Lamy, State Police. Today, prior to this taping, Sergeant Scott and I met with Mr. and Mrs. Carroll, who came to state police headquarters voluntarily to meet with us. [CLEARS THROAT] The Carrolls have expressed a concern about Jason’s wellbeing, as well as his safety. In discussing this entire situation with the Carrolls, um, a joint decision has been made, uh, to establish a permanent record of [CLEARS THROAT] all the events that have transpired to date in this case.

Moon, Narrating: “A joint decision to make a permanent record,” says Detective Lamy.

This is another tape I couldn’t wrap my head around when I first heard it. In a case that’s all about the power of words on tape, these words on this tape might be the most powerful – and certainly, the most surprising.

This tape was recorded a few weeks after Jason’s first meeting with Lamy, after Jason has been arrested for murder. So, here’s the lead detective in a murder case, sitting down with the parents of the suspect he just arrested – and they’re all working together.

[MUSIC IN]

Lamy, On Recording: Today, uh, we have prepared an outline, uh, on a board in a conference room by which the outline, uh, uh, will be utilized to present this, um, taped statement.

Moon, Narrating: Later, this tape would be dubbed “the Outline Tape” because of the way Lamy uses an outline on a chalkboard to structure the discussion. Using that outline, Lamy, his partner, Neal Scott, and Jason’s parents together narrate the story of Jason’s interrogations and arrest. They start that story on November 24th, 1989. The day of that first meeting between Jason Carroll and Detective Lamy.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: It’s a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. That afternoon, police arrive at the armory to talk to Jason.

Jason’s mom Karen also happens to come by the armory that afternoon to drop off some keys for Jason. Here’s Karen describing this moment in the Outline Tape to Detective Lamy. And remember, the Outline Tape was recorded just a few weeks after the events Karen is describing.

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: I asked where Jason was and one of the officers in the office told me that Jason was in the break room with state police. He then proceeded to take me to the tape – to the break room. I went in and saw Jason sitting at the table with three other individuals.

Moon, Narrating: Karen sees her son sitting with three cops – Detectives Dana Finn, Neal Scott, and Roland Lamy. They're sitting around a wooden table that feels a little too big for the room.

Remember, Karen’s also a cop in the town where Sharon’s body was found, Bedford. And she already knows two of these guys. Detective Finn is with the Bedford PD, so he’s Karen’s coworker. And Detective Scott with state police had interviewed Karen for a job earlier that year. The only person Karen hadn’t met was Detective Lamy.

In the Outline Tape, Karen says the detectives told her they were there to talk with Jason about the Sharon Johnson murder. And she says they told her she was welcome to stay if she wanted.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: And you remember that, uh, uh, Jason was asked if he wanted you to stay or not?

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: Yes, he was asked.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: And do you remember his answer?

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: I believe he said that he’d be okay. There was no need of me being there.

Moon, Narrating: So, Karen leaves. Now, it’s just Jason and the police. According to the police reports and the officers’ testimony under oath, here’s what they say happens.

The interview starts at 1-25 p.m. The detectives tell Jason why they’re there. The Sharon Johnson murder. Tony Pfaff. The night of July 28th, 1988. Then, Lamy says Jason surprises them all by saying he remembers that night well.

Jason says that night, he was hanging out at one of the usual spots – the Meineke Muffler on Elm Street in Manchester. Jason says Tony drove up in a green Subaru – the same kind of car Sharon drove. Jason says Tony told him the car belonged to a girl who worked at the mall. Then, Jason says Tony asked him if he’d follow him to the mall so he could leave the car there for this girl when she got out of work. Jason agreed.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy is hearing what sounds like a firsthand account of Tony driving the victim’s car the night of the murder. This is big.

Although, it doesn’t quite line up with what police know about the movement of Sharon’s car. Remember, they didn’t find the car at the mall until early Saturday morning. Here, Jason is telling them he helped Tony move the car to the mall on Thursday night.

Jason makes a handwritten statement of this story. It’s just a few paragraphs long. It’s now 3-15 p.m. Almost two hours have passed since the interview began.

At this point, Detective Lamy says Jason is acting nervous. He says he looks frightened, shaky. Lamy starts to push Jason for more details. Jason starts to cry. And then, Jason changes his story.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: According to police, Jason now says the night before the murder, Tony came to him with an idea to play a practical joke on a woman that Tony knew. Jason says Tony wanted him to pretend to be someone named “Bob.” Jason agreed.

Jason says he and Tony met Sharon at the mall. He says Tony convinced her to drive to a construction site. Jason says he drove behind them in his truck.

Lamy stops the interrogation. He later testifies this moment stunned him. At the mention of a construction site, the type of area where Sharon’s body was found, Lamy reads Jason his Miranda Rights. Jason waives his rights and continues the story.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: At the construction site, Jason says Tony and Sharon met with two men. Jason says he stayed back by his truck about 75 feet away and watched.

Jason says he saw one of the men with a black beard pull out a knife and stab Sharon in the back. Jason says he panicked. He got in his truck and drove away.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: According to the detectives, Jason is shaking and crying intermittently as he tells this story.

Detectives ask him to write out the story on paper, but Jason is shaking so badly he can’t. So, Detective Neal Scott writes out Jason’s statement for him. Later, Jason copies the statement again in his own handwriting.

It’s now almost 6-30 in the evening. Jason’s been talking to the detectives for 5 hours. Jason says he’s tired. He wants to go home. The detectives call Jason’s parents to come pick him up.

When Jason’s parents arrive, they talk with the police. Here’s Detective Lamy and Karen Carroll talking about this moment in the Outline Tape, recorded just a few weeks later.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: Do you remember generally, uh, what we told you that Jason had or had not admitted at that point?

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: You told us that, uh, Jason had admitted moving the car and was involved somewhat, as to what degree we didn’t know, but he was involved somewhat with the Johnson murder.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: It’s a Friday night. Jason’s parents agree with police to continue the interrogation on Monday. Then, they drive him home.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Jason Carroll just told police he helped lure Sharon Johnson to the site where she was killed. The next morning, Jason tries to take it back.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Lamy, On Outline Tape: [FADES UP] Okay, now, on the outline, moving on to the next day, Saturday, the 25th of November.

Moon, Narrating: The day after Jason’s first interrogation, Saturday, at about 11 a.m., the Carrolls have something of a family meeting. Jason and his parents, Karen and Jack, all sit down at the kitchen table. Jack Carroll, Jason’s stepdad, recapped the conversation for Detectives Lamy and Scott in the Outline Tape.

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: We just asked him what kinda questions were being asked and he started tellin’ us. And, uh, at that time, he, uh, he stood up and he said it was a bunch of bullcrap, to keep it clean. And that anything that he had said wasn’t true. He just said it because he felt that’s what the police wanted to hear, basically.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Later, Jack would say he tried to identify with Jason in this moment by saying that, as a Vietnam veteran, he had killed people and that if Jason had killed someone, he should get it off his chest. Jack says Jason became furious at this – slammed his fist on the table, stood up, and said he had nothing to do with it.

Jack Carroll, On Outline Tape: So, we, um, we got concerned. So, at that time we tried to call, as a matter of fact, Jason tried to call the state police to talk to either one of you two.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Jason calls Detective Lamy. But it’s a Saturday and he’s not in. So, Jason tries the local police department in Bedford. Captain Leo Morency comes to the Carrolls’ house.

Jason tells him the story about being there when Sharon Johnson was murdered was, quote, “a bunch of shit.” Jason says he made it up from the questions the detectives asked him. Jason says the only part that was true was that he helped Tony move a green Subaru to the mall.

Captain Morency tells Jason he doesn’t believe him. Then, the phone rings. It’s Detective Lamy.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy learns what’s going on. And then, he suggests they all meet up at the Bedford Police Department to talk it over. Jason agrees. Jason and his mom, Karen, drive over to the police station together. Jason is brought into a room with detectives, Karen waits out by her desk.

The second interrogation of Jason Carroll begins at 1-30 that Saturday afternoon. It starts with Jason telling detectives most of what he told them the day before was a lie. Here’s Detective Neal Scott, Lamy’s partner, describing that moment in the Outline Tape.

Neal Scott, On Outline Tape: Jason was still, uh, uh, standing by his recanted statement insomuch that what he had told us the previous day was a bunch of bull. We knew that he was now lying.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: For about an hour, Jason tries to convince the detectives that the story he gave them was false. But it’s not working. And then, Jason tells the detectives he wants to see his mom. Lamy leaves the room to go talk to Karen Carroll. In the Outline Tape, Lamy says Jason’s request put him in a tough spot.

Lamy, On Outline Tape: This is a situation that, if we allowed her to come into the room we’d be open to scrutiny. And if we didn’t allow her to come into the room, we’d be open to scrutiny.

Moon, Narrating: Lamy decides it’s better to bring Karen in than not. She enters the room just before 3 p.m. According to the police, Jason’s denials started to waver just before Karen came in. And then…

Neal Scott, On Outline Tape: Approximately 3:05, uh, Captain Morency activates a, uh, microcassette recorder and, uh, Jason’s, uh, statement and the activities in that room are recorded from that point on.

[CASSETTE TAPE HISS IN]

Lamy, On Recording: …a willingness. It’s not fair!... [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Police interrogated Jason for a total of six hours this day. But only a little more than half an hour was recorded. You’ll remember the audio quality of that recording is not great, and occasionally people’s names are bleeped. So, I’ll read some parts of it.

From almost the minute the tape recorder is turned on, Karen takes an active role in the  interrogation.

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: It’s over and it’s done with… [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Karen asks her son, “Will you tell these three men every last detail? Everything!”

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Everything!

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: You don’t look willing…

Moon, Narrating: Then, Detective Lamy jumps in: “You don't look willing to tell the truth. You don't look as if you've concluded that you have got to let it go. There is that breaking point.” Jason says, “I’ve got to let it go, I’ve got to.”

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: I've got to let it go.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: Well, let it go! [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy tells Jason again and again he knows Jason isn’t telling the truth.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: You’ve got to tell it!

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: That night… no. How do you want me to start it?!

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: How did it start?! How did the whole deal start?! [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy yells at Jason to tell him how the whole thing started. Jason says, “The whole fucking thing started when I was supposed to be, to play a practical joker, as ‘Bob’ to some woman by the name of Sharon Johnson, who you guys know.” Jason says Tony offered him $500 to do this. He says he and Tony met Sharon at the mall and then, Tony talked Sharon into going to the construction site.

Jason says Tony and Sharon rode in her green Subaru and Jason followed in his truck. But this time, Jason says when they all arrived at the construction site, he didn't stay back by his truck.

Jason says Ken Johnson met them all there. He says Ken and Sharon had a big argument. He says Ken accused Sharon of cheating on him. Then, he says Sharon turned away and Ken pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the back.

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: And she turned her back and he pulled out a knife. [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Jason says he watched as Ken continued to stab Sharon, while Tony took off her shirt and fondled her breasts. Lamy asks if anyone else stabbed Sharon. Jason says Tony did.

Lamy doesn’t believe it. He tells Jason he keeps making himself look like an angel in the story. He says, “The jury will tear you apart if you’re not telling the truth, here.”

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: The jury will tear you apart if you’re not telling the truth, here.

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape, Crying: I’m telling the truth, Sergeant. I don’t want to go through no more bullshit. I just want to get this over and out of my life. [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Jason says, “I’m telling the truth, Sergeant. I don’t want to go through no more bullshit. I just want to get this over and out of my life.” 

Still, Lamy doesn’t buy it. He says, “But, Okay, you can help us out more than this. Where is the shirt and where is the knife?” Police hadn’t been able to find either. Jason says he doesn’t know. 

Lamy asks, “Who moved the car? Why did the car show up Saturday morning at Sears?” Jason doesn’t have an answer. He says, “I want so much to get this over with.” Lamy is getting frustrated.

Lamy, Interrogation Tape: Why, in God’s name, would you tell us this much and still leave out the truth? The essence of the truth! I have not seen the breaking point in you! What in God’s name is the matter with you? Your mother’s sitting right here! The captain of detectives of the Bedford Police Department is here, Sergeant Scott is here, and I’m here! What is it going to take?!

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape, Crying: I was threatened! I was told that if I opened my mouth I would be dead!

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: By whom?

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Johnson! [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Jason says after Sharon was killed, Ken threatened to do the same to Jason if he told anyone. Jason says that’s the reason he’s been scared to tell the whole story. He’s afraid for his life. Detective Lamy and Jason’s mom Karen tell him they can protect him. But, they keep saying, they need the truth. Jason says, “I am trying to be so fucking truthful.” Lamy fires back, “But why don’t you skip trying and just be truthful?”

Lamy says, “Come on, Jason! If you were paid $500 by Ken Johnson, you did a lot more than what you told us.” Then, Lamy adds, “And I suspect that is not the accurate amount you got.” Jason says, “That’s right” and then says, “I got about two grand.”

Then, Karen jumps in and asks what Jason did with the money. Lamy says, “Tell us that. Make something believable.” Jason tells them he spent it on marijuana.

And here, it seems like Lamy just totally loses his patience. He starts to raise his voice, telling Jason to imagine that a jury is listening. And meanwhile, judging by the sound of Jason’s voice, it feels like that “breaking point” that Lamy keeps mentioning is just around the corner. At one point, Jason is crying on his knees, arms wrapped around his mother’s legs.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: The jury is listening. The jury is listening to you! You sound like a criminal, not a guy that’s made a terrible mistake!

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Sergeant, it’s not that easy. I hope you can understand that.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: I understand that, but what I don’t…

Jason Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: It’s not going to be just, like, I can spit it out. I can’t. I want to so much.

Karen Carroll, On Interrogation Tape: Then do it! Why can’t you?! What are you holding back?!

Jason Carroll: I’m scared! I’m fucking scared!

Karen Carroll: Of course, you’re freakin’ scared! These guys are gonna help you! We’re not gonna sit and jump on your ass and shoot you down!

Jason Carroll: But I feel like I’m getting jumped on my ass and shot down now!

Karen Carroll: We want the truth outta you! 

Jason Carroll: I–!

Karen Carroll: Nobody is going to be able to help you any more [JASON CARROLL SOBS] until you come forth with all of the information that they need! Do you think I’m gonna love you any less?!

Jason Carroll, Sobbing: I don’t know! I don’t know! 

Karen Carroll: And I’m going to stand by you through this! [JASON CARROLL SOBS] You are the link that they need to put Johnson and Pfaff behind friggin’ bars! [JASON CARROLL SOBS] 

Jason Carroll, Sobbing: I can’t…

Karen Carroll: If you put a knife – if you put a knife in that woman, [JASON CARROLL SOBS] I want to know! You stabbed her, didn’t you?! 

Jason Carroll, Crying: Yes, I did, BLEEP.

Karen Carroll: How many times did you stab her?!

Jason Carroll, Sobbing: I stabbed her three times!

Karen Carroll: Alright!

Lamy: Who else stabbed her? [JASON CARROLL SOBS] Who else stabbed her, truthfully?

Carroll, Crying: Johnson! Johnson and Pfaff stabbed her… [SOBS]

Lamy: How many times?... [JASON CARROLL SOBS] [TAPE FADES OUT]

[MUSIC IN]

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: I-I… I just wanted him to be truthful. 

Moon, Narrating: Just a few weeks later, Karen described her role in that interrogation in the Outline Tape.

Karen Carroll, On Outline Tape: And the only way that anyone could help him get over these fears was they had to know the truth so they would know what they were, uh, were dealing with. And I showed him that no matter what happened, that, um, [VOICE BREAKS] I still loved him.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Jason Carroll started the day recanting one confession about witnessing a murder. By the end of the day, he’s given a second confession about committing the murder. It’s one of the many ways Jason’s story changes during his second interrogation. With each change, the story gets more and more incriminating.

Detectives ask Jason again and again about the murder weapon. At first, Jason says he destroyed the knife in a fire, along with the shirt Sharon was wearing – the one police never found. Then he says he threw the knife in a river. He says the knife belonged to Ken Johnson. And finally, he says it belonged to him. Jason’s mom asks, “Is it a small brown pocket knife?” Jason says yes. Karen realizes she has the knife at home. She’d recently found it in the laundry.

Jason also changes his story about who stabbed Sharon first. By the end of his second interrogation, after being questioned by police for about 11 hours over two days, Jason says he stabbed Sharon first.

When asked why Ken wanted to kill Sharon, at first, Jason says he doesn’t know. Then, he says it was because Sharon had caught Ken raping his adopted daughter, Lisa. Then he adds to that she’d caught him raping his daughter and discovered that Ken had murdered someone else.

For the police, all these changes in Jason’s story were evidence of its authenticity. They saw a young man who didn’t want to admit what he’d done. Who was fighting at every stage to not admit to the cops, to his mother, maybe to himself, the full extent of his involvement in a horrific killing.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Almost a year after Detective Lamy took over the Sharon Johnson investigation, he finally had the evidence he needed to take down the person he felt was most responsible: Ken Johnson.

At one point during Jason’s second interrogation, Lamy even airs his frustration about how Ken had so far eluded him. He tells Jason, “Ken Johnson is on the street in Warwick, Rhode Island laughing in our face with his lawyer, coaching him on how to avoid proper police homicide investigative technique. And that’s a fact of life. That’s what we in the police department have to put up with today.”

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy let Jason’s parents take him home again that night after the interrogation. A pretty remarkable thing for a police officer to do. Two nights in a row, Jason had admitted to some level of participation in a murder, and police didn’t arrest him. They let him go home.

The thing is, when people get arrested, the constitution guarantees them lawyers. The first piece of advice any defense lawyer gives to a client who’s held in police custody, “Shut up. Stop talking to the cops.” Lamy, of course, would’ve known all this.

So, Lamy let Jason go home that Saturday night, November 25th, 1989. It was one of the last nights Jason was free.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: It took several conversations before Jason would really talk to me about what happened during his interrogations.

Moon: I know this is a dumb question, but were you scared during that interrogation?

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: Are you fucking kidding me? You’re being accused of first degree homicide. Wouldn’t you be scared, knowing you didn’t do nothin’?

Moon, Narrating: I get the feeling that Jason’s emotions about it, even after 34 years, are so raw, so vivid, that he figures it’s just best not to go there.

But Jason also knows, for his innocence claim to have a chance, he’s gonna have to talk about it. People want to know, if you’re innocent, why did you say all of that?

Still, it’s really hard for Jason. The first time he and I talked about the interrogation, I asked him a question that kind of set him off. I’m not going to tell you what the question was, only because it’s about something we haven’t gotten to yet. But just know, the way I asked it – listening back, I get why it got under Jason’s skin.

Carroll, On the Phone: When you’re fuckin’ – You’re constantly being told, you know, “You did this and you did this,” when you know you didn’t, but you’re being told you did, after and after – See now you’re pissin’ me off. See, this is where the PTSD kicks in, Jay. I cannot – I get so frustrated and I get so fuckin’ angry because of what’s been done to me. And nobody gives a fucking shit what this fuckin’ punk bitch did to me! And to sit here and try to describe it and explain it to you?! I fucking can’t.

Moon, Narrating: The spotlight that has swung back on to Jason’s case, the possibility of finally being believed, my casual sounding questions about possibly the most traumatic event in his life. It all finally broke the ceasefire.

There was an awkward silence. I suggested we talk about something else. And we did, or tried to, for a few minutes. But then, Jason wanted to explain more about how he was feeling.

Carroll On the Phone: So I want to go back to my little outburst. And I guess I want to apologize for that. Sometimes, this is what happens when I try to talk about it. It’s the scars that I have, and I don’t know – I don’t know any other way… It just frustrates me so much. It just… [SIGHS] I don’t know. I don’t how to – and it only lasts for a quick second… It just…

Automated Voice On Prison Phone System: You have one minute remaining.

Moon, Narrating: The prison phone system, with its terrible timing, reminded us our hour was almost up.

Carroll, On the Phone: This lady is going to cut us off, so, before she does, I hope you have a good day. And again, I apologize. [SOUND OF PHONE HANGING UP]

Moon, Narrating: The next time we spoke, Jason apologized again, even though I kept telling him he didn’t need to. He told me the anger comes from a place of feeling humiliated by what happened to him.

Carroll, On the Phone: For me, it’s an embarrassing time in my life because, like I told you last time, I let somebody else take my will and bend it to theirs. And I, I feel embarrassed and I feel fuckin’ ashamed. You know, they took a fucking kid and, and they bent it to what they wanted. You don’t know how fucking ashamed I am of that. 

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: According to Jason, Detective Lamy started bending his will from almost the moment they sat down together at the National Guard Armory back in 1989.

Carroll, On the Phone: I’m at the armory and they come, they come in. And I’m stuck in a tiny ass breakroom. And I remember them talking to me about Anthony Pfaff. I said, “Okay.” And then the next thing you know, I’m being accused of murder.

Moon: How did it turn to that? Like, take me…

Carroll, On the Phone: I have no idea! You know, I don’t remember, they turn it to… “Your tire tracks down.” I’m like, “That’s impossible!”

Moon: What did they say about tire tracks?

Carroll, On the Phone: Yeah, they tried to say they found my tire tracks. I’m like, “That’s impossible!”

Moon, Narrating: Jason says Detective Lamy told him police found his tire tracks at the construction site, which is not true. At trial, Lamy denied ever telling Jason this. But either way, Jason says that was the dynamic of the interrogations. Lamy had all the answers and he was just guessing at what was right and what was wrong.

Carroll: They were already dead set – In my opinion, they were already dead set on tearin’ me a new ass. I’m in there on my own. I got no help, no nothing – nothing. I’m trying to dig myself out of something I didn’t do, and nobody’s listening. I was already in over my head.

Moon, Narrating: After his parents took him home from the armory that Friday, Jason says his mom gave him a valium to help him sleep. The next morning, when Jason tried to take back his confession at the kitchen table, he says his parents didn’t really believe him. Then, Lamy called and Jason and his mom went to the Bedford Police Department for Jason’s second interrogation.

[MUSIC OUT]

Carroll, On the Phone: I do remember bein’ yelled and screamed at. I do remember that asshole asking me questions and any time I answered the wrong way, he’d be like, “Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope.” And it just kept going on and on and on. I remember bein’ so wiped out, I tried to go to sleep under the table. They wouldn’t let me.

Moon, Narrating: Jason describes the experience as having his world turned upside down. It didn’t make sense to him. He was a soldier, with a soldier for a dad and a cop as a mom. He was conditioned to revere authority. But now, he says they were forcing him down a path that he knew wasn’t right. Jason says the interrogations were more intense than anything he’d ever been through, including basic training in the military.

Carroll, On the Phone: It was nothing. Nothing! Because you figure, you know, they take a person, they break you down, and they build you back up. But what I went through with these fucking people… ssshhhit. Military got nothing on that.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Here’s what Jason says he remembers about what actually happened the night Sharon Johnson was murdered.

Jason and Tony were scheduled to work together that night at High-Tech. They had a Burger King in Boston to clean out. Tony needed a ride to work, so Jason gave him one. But Jason decided that night he was done with High-Tech. He decided to quit. So, he dropped Tony off, but he didn’t go in himself.

Carroll, On the Phone: I hated that job. And that’s why I remember that part of it because I’d never quit a job… I hated that job.

Moon, Narrating: Jason says it’s possible he gave Tony a ride to the mall that night to help him move a car, but he’s not sure. And that’s pretty much all he can remember… which is either suspicious or totally reasonable, depending on whether you buy his confession.

But if Jason didn’t do it, why would he remember that night? The first time he was interrogated about that night was almost a year and a half after the fact. There would’ve been no particular reason to keep a detailed timeline or to have an alibi handy.

Or, of course, Jason could simply be lying. Or, of course, Detective Lamy could simply be lying. But almost always, the word of a cop wins out.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT, THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: On the next episode of Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story, another interrogation seems to add to the evidence against Jason and Ken Johnson.

Tony Pfaff, On Interrogation Tape: I need some help ‘cause I can’t remember everything that happened.

Lamy, On Interrogation Tape: Okay, well, what you do remember–

Pfaff: I don’t – The specific things you want to know I can’t remember.

Lamy: Okay, and tell us what you do remember, then, okay? Let’s continue what you’re doin’–

Pfaff: I remember stabbin’ her and chokin’ her, that’s the only thing I remember doing, okay?

Moon, Narrating: And Karen Carroll shares an alleged secret that changes everything.

Cliff Kinghorn: Jason’s mom came in to meet with me. And I knew right away that there was going to be a problem.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Additional photos and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 2: The Pursuit

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

[MUSIC IN]

Lauren Chooljian, Narrating: Previously on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story…

Judge William Delker: To cut you a break would utterly undermine the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.

Cynthia Mousseau, On the Phone: Convictions take on this mythical power. Once this conviction happens, it’s like that story is what happened.

Connie Howard: Who came up with that version of the story, you know what I mean? Then how do we – Who said that, that that’s how it happened? Somebody had to say that that’s how it happened, so, obviously, it happened.

[MUSIC OUT]

Jason Moon, Narrating: The larger-than-life detective. It’s such a crime story trope. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Elliot Stabler. Their personalities are as much a part of the story as the crime itself. But as often happens, life imitates art. And in this case, the line separating them is especially blurry.

Detective Roland Lamy made an impression on almost everyone I talked to about the Sharon Johnson case. Thirty-odd years later, people forget a lot of the finer points, but they remember the lead investigator. And over and over again, people would compare Lamy to the same guy.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: All I, all I could think of was… remember the TV detective, Kojak?

Moon, Narrating: Maybe you remember Kojak. I didn’t. But thanks to YouTube, I now know that Kojak was a TV detective in the 1970s.

[KOJAK THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Kojak was big, bald, wore nice suits, and seemed to always have a lollipop in his mouth. He was a cop with an attitude. The kind who liked to grab the crooks by their lapels, who didn’t seem too concerned about their civil liberties.

Male Voice: This is private property!

Kojak: Ah, put a zipper on your mouth and shut up!

Moon, Narrating: Kojak, and a thousand other shows like it, do their own kind of mythmaking. What some today might call “copaganda.” Sure, Kojak skirts the line, he roughs up suspects, but in the show, he’s always the good guy. The ends always justify the means.

Kojak: Every foot soldier! Every hit man! Every streetwalker! They sneeze in the subway – bust their chops! If they ask you for the time of day, you lock 'em up! Let the word go out loud and clear! That’s the way it’s gonna be until Eddie Ryan’s killer is in the tombs!

Male Voice: Right on, man! [FADES OUT]

Debbie Dutra: [SLAPS TABLE] That is him! Bald guy, glasses… ass.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: I get why people make the comparison. Lamy even looks a lot like Kojak. He’s big, he’s bald…

Tom Dufresne: He had a shaved head. He’s suckin’ on a lollipop, and he’s struttin’ around the courtroom like he owned it. “I’m comin’ in to straighten you all out and this is the way it went down!”

Moon, Narrating: Honestly, I sometimes couldn’t tell if people’s memories of the TV character, played by Telly Savalas, and the real-life detective had all mixed together. Either way, that’s kinda the point. Roland Lamy was a certain detective – he was also a certain brand of detective.

Jim Lawson: I could see why he would just scare the hell out of somebody. I think he could intimidate anybody with his bald head. He didn’t look nice.

Moon, Narrating: At the center of Lamy’s legend was the idea that he was one of the best. Roland Lamy – though most people just call him “Lamy” – was the guy New Hampshire State Police put on the cases the other detectives couldn’t solve. By 1989, Lamy had been a New Hampshire State Police detective for 17 years. He’d worked on roughly 40 homicide investigations – eight as lead investigator.

Eric Wilson: He had a reputation for solving cases.

Cliff Kinghorn: Yeah, he had a reputation for s– He got things done. He had a reputation for getting to the bottom line.

Moon, Narrating: You might remember in season one, when a barrel was found in the woods near Bear Brook State Park in 1985, Lamy was one of the detectives not assigned to the case. A fact some people pointed to when we asked why that case took so long to solve.

Kevin Flynn: Probably the, the best detective of that era on the state police was a guy by the name of Roland Lamy. And they were over in Hooksett. They weren’t over in Allenstown.

Moon, Narrating: And while some people read Lamy as arrogant and intimidating, others saw the attitude of a tough, do-what-it-takes veteran. As in, he didn’t care about being liked. He cared about solving the crime.

A newspaper article from 1989 quotes Sharon Johnson’s brother as saying, “Lamy could get a rock to talk if he wanted to. I would not want the man after me.”

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: That same article describes a moment between Lamy and his partner with the state police, Neal Scott. Scott had written a quote by Daniel Webster on the chalkboard in their office. “There is nothing so powerful as the truth.”

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Not Lamy’s style, apparently. He erases the quote, and writes over it his own philosophy. A line from the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles. “He escapes who is not pursued.”

This is Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: It was a story, true or false, that convicted Jason Carroll. It matters where that story came from, how it was created, who created it. So, before we get to why some people are convinced that Jason Carroll is innocent, we need to know the story of why some people are convinced that he’s not.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Sharon Johnson’s body was discovered in July of 1988. A construction worker found her around 8-30 on a Friday morning. The area was in the early stages of a transformation from forest into housing development. A large clearing had been cut, dirt roads connected a series of housing plots. In some places, the ground was freshly chewed by excavators.

Sharon’s body was found at the end of the construction site furthest from the main road, at the edge of a small pond that workers were digging.

She had been stabbed 14 times and strangled, probably by a light rope or something similar, according to the medical examiner. She was naked from the waist up. Her bra was still draped over her shoulders, but it had been sliced open in the front with a knife. Her shirt and purse were missing. But her watch and three rings were found nearby. 

Each detail was its own mystery. Why were her rings off? Why was her shirt missing? Why this construction site?

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The day before Sharon’s body was discovered, a Thursday, Sharon left work at 6-30 p.m. She went to a gas station and cashed some lottery tickets at 6-58 p.m. That’s her last confirmed location. And it’s pretty much all we know for sure about Sharon’s whereabouts after she left work that night.

One of Sharon’s coworkers told police she said she was going shopping at the Mall of New Hampshire – a big mall in Manchester, about 30 minutes from her job. But another co-worker later testified Sharon said she was going shopping at the Bedford Mall, a different mall only a few miles away from the Mall of New Hampshire.

To make things more complicated, witnesses at both malls told police they saw Sharon, or someone who matched her description, the night of the murder.

So, on Thursday, Sharon left work, cashed a few lottery tickets, and then, maybe went to one or two malls. The construction site, where Sharon’s body was found, is in Bedford, about 15 minutes from the two malls.

Whatever happened to Sharon, happened between 7 p.m. on a Thursday, and 8 a.m. on a Friday. By the way, you can see a timeline of Sharon’s last day on our website bearbrookpodcast.com.

The early investigators were puzzled by two things in particular.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: The first mystery was about a guy named Bob.

One of Sharon’s coworkers said Sharon was going to the mall that day, not just to shop, but also to meet a guy named Bob. According to this coworker, Bob owed Sharon and her husband Ken Johnson $4,000. The coworker said Sharon and Bob had been trying for a few weeks to arrange a time to meet to talk about the money.

Bob was an obvious first suspect. But all police had was a first name. Detectives spent months looking for Bob. They put a sketch of him in the newspaper. But they never found him.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The second mystery was about Sharon’s car, a green Subaru.

Sharon didn’t come home on Thursday night. The next day, Friday, her brother said he went and looked for her car at both malls. He told police he scoured the parking lots – looked in every aisle, but didn’t find Sharon’s green Subaru anywhere.

Then, Saturday morning, police found the car at the Mall of New Hampshire. The car was undamaged, a bit of dirt around the tires, and it was locked.

It was parked in an unusual spot at the Mall of New Hampshire. It was parked in a narrow strip of parking spaces in front of the Sears automotive entrance. You might park there if you were leaving your car for an oil change, but probably not if you were just going shopping inside the mall.

A Sears mechanic told police on Thursday, the day Sharon went missing, when he left at 9:30 p.m., there were no cars parked there. On Friday night, he said there was a car there, but couldn’t say for sure if it was a green Subaru.

Three different Manchester police officers, who all patrolled the mall parking lot on Thursday and Friday, said they didn't see the car.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: And so, Sharon went missing on Thursday night, her body was found Friday morning, and yet, police were confident her green Subaru wasn’t back at the Mall of New Hampshire until Friday night at the earliest.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Who was Bob? Was someone moving Sharon’s car after she was murdered?

The early investigators couldn’t answer those questions. But they believed they knew someone who could. Sharon’s husband, Ken Johnson.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Ken was always the prime suspect. First of all, he was the husband. But police also thought he was faking his grief. And then, he didn’t have a solid alibi. And then, he changed his story about where he was the night of the murder. And also, he had a lot of mud on his car – as in, maybe he’d been driving in an unpaved construction area recently.

It wasn’t just the police. Sharon’s family and many of her friends also suspected Ken. They’d been skeptical of him for years. Many of them didn’t understand what Sharon saw in him.

[MUSIC OUT]

Lucy Holt: Nobody liked him. Nobody. Nobody liked him.

Moon, Narrating: Lucy Holt was close with Sharon. But when Sharon and Ken were married, Lucy refused to go to the wedding.

Holt: A lot of her friends did not go. One of them sent her a sympathy card.

Moon, Narrating: The police reports are full of interviews with people who do not like Ken Johnson. People thought he was rude, a deadbeat who couldn’t hold a job. Some said he had a drinking problem.

And Ken always seemed to have some new scheme to make money that rarely panned out. Like, in 1985, when the New England Patriots were in the superbowl, Ken went all in on an idea to resell Patriots t-shirts. Then, the Pats lost, and apparently, Ken lost a lot of money.

But Sharon’s friends and family also said he could be controlling of Sharon. If she was at their house, they say Ken would always call and ask when she’d be leaving.

Police tracked down Ken’s ex-wife. She told them he had once grabbed her by the throat, and that when she decided to leave Ken, he said, “It’s too bad the kids will never see you again,” which she took as a threat on her life.

So, when Sharon was killed, everyone from Ken’s ex-wife, to Sharon’s friends like Lucy Holt were telling the cops, “Look at Ken.”

Holt: And I remember the detectives coming and they said, “Do you think he had anything to do with it?” And I said, “If he didn’t, hands on, then he, he made sure it got done.”

Moon, Narrating: Another friend of Sharon’s, Connie Howard, says after the murder, police asked her to wear a wire and have Ken over for dinner to see if he would incriminate himself. Connie says she was too nervous to wear a wire, but she had her own questions for Ken, so she did invite him over. She remembers being anxious just to have him in her house.

Connie Howard: I didn’t know what he would do or how – what, you know, what kind of reaction he would have to the questions I was asking him. Just asking him to, about, questions about, “How come you didn’t know Sharon was home? And what do you think about everything?” He didn’t have any answers. He was a black, black hole. And I really didn’t get answers from him, except that I don’t ever want to see this man again. And I never did. Never talked to him after that.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Unfortunately, you won’t hear from Ken in this story. He died, according to multiple people who knew him. Though, I’ve never found an obituary, so I can’t tell you exactly when.

But back in 1988, Ken started off in a bad place as far as the investigation into his wife’s murder went. He was the husband no one liked, with no alibi, and mud on his car.

And then, police discovered a possible motive. 

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Ken had a gambling habit. Ken’s ex-wife described it as an addiction. She said on their honeymoon, Ken took her to Atlantic City and then gambled the whole time. Ken was into sports betting, which was illegal back then. And police began to suspect he was deep in the hole.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: When police first asked Ken about Bob, the guy who apparently owed him and Sharon $4,000, Ken said he had no idea what police were talking about.

The next day, Ken called the police to say he had lied. Police had asked Ken about Bob in front of one of Sharon’s friends, and Ken said he didn’t want to reveal that Bob was actually someone he knew from gambling.

Now, Ken told the police yes, he knew Bob, and yes, Bob owed him money – actually $7,000. And yet, Ken had no way of getting in touch with Bob. Didn’t even know his last name.

Police were suspicious. They talked to another guy who Ken gambled with, who told them that Ken owed him $5,000. This other guy said he’d heard Ken talk about Bob before, would even place bets on his behalf, but he’d never met him.

And eventually, police began to suspect that Bob was simply an invention of Ken’s. A fake character that Ken used to hide his gambling habits, and now maybe to help him get away with murder.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Out of this tangle of gambling relationships, alleged debts, and possibly fake characters, the original investigators developed a theory – Ken was in much more gambling debt than he was letting on, and he was desperate to get out of it. And his wife Sharon had a pension that would go to him if she died.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: But police didn’t have any direct evidence pointing to Ken. They had no murder weapon. They had no witnesses placing him at the site where Sharon’s body was found or at the mall that night. The forensic lab couldn’t link the mud on Ken’s car to the mud at the scene. There was no blood in Sharon’s car. And key evidence – Sharon’s shirt and pocketbook – were still missing.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: There were some clues from the scene where Sharon’s body was discovered. Drag marks led from Sharon’s body to a pool of blood near some tire tracks. To the original investigators, the marks suggested Sharon’s body had been removed from the trunk of a car, and then dragged to the spot where she was ultimately found. As in, the murder had happened elsewhere and the construction site was simply a place to hide the body.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: There were also clues from Sharon’s autopsy. Her bra had been cut open with a knife in the front before she was stabbed. There was evidence of a fierce struggle. Sharon had a split lip and bruises on her face, and she had defensive wounds on her hands. She also had blood under her fingernails, which could mean Sharon wounded her attacker.

But without more, the police didn’t really have a case – against Ken or anyone else. And they were stuck with those two lingering questions. Was Bob real? And who was moving Sharon’s green Subaru after she was killed?

The investigation stalled. After six months, it was turned over to a new detective – Roland Lamy. Within a year, he would have a story that explained it all.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Before we take a quick break, a reminder that this podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. You do that by listening, by telling your friends and family to listen, too – and if you can, by donating to New Hampshire Public Radio. You can click the link in the show notes to give now – and thanks, really.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy takes charge of the investigation into Sharon’s murder in January of 1989. By March, he’s chasing a lead. A 19-year-old named Tony Pfaff.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Tony Pfaff was tangentially connected to the Johnson family. He used to date Ken Johnson’s daughter, Lisa Johnson. Lisa was 17. She was Ken’s adopted daughter from his first marriage. And she had just had a baby.

As Detective Lamy reinterviewed witnesses and searched for a thread to pull on, he later testified that some people made a disturbing suggestion about Lisa’s pregnancy. Lamy said some people told him they thought Ken had gotten his own adopted daughter pregnant. 

Lamy later testified, “There was a feeling at some point that perhaps Ken Johnson could be the father of Lisa Johnson's baby.”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: It was a salacious accusation. But maybe, Lamy thought, it was the real motive. Maybe Ken wanted Sharon dead because she’d found out.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: So, this is why Detective Lamy wants to talk to Lisa’s ex-boyfriend, Tony Pfaff. Maybe Tony will know something about this. Lamy tracks him down in North Carolina. He gets him on the phone. But Tony quickly pours cold water on this theory. Tony says he is the father of Lisa’s child – not Ken. He says Lisa never said anything about being sexually abused by her father.

[MUSIC OUT]

Moon, Narrating: The phone call is a dead end for Lamy. But then… something happens. I’m going to read straight from Lamy’s police report here. It’s written in third person. “Sergeant Lamy asked him if there was anything at all about Sharon Johnson's murder that he had not reported to the police. Sergeant Lamy told Tony what the possible charges were for any individual who holds back information in a homicide case. Pfaff hesitantly and nervously told Sergeant Lamy the following information.”

And then, Tony drops a bombshell. Tony Pfaff tells Lamy the Friday Sharon’s body was found, he moved the green Subaru.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Tony says Ken called him at his apartment and asked him to do it as a favor before Tony knew Sharon was dead. Tony says Ken asked him to move Sharon’s car from the parking lot of a sporting goods store, to the parking lot of the mall, where it was discovered by police.

It was Detective Lamy’s first break. The mystery of the car was finally unraveling.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy wastes no time. Lamy arranges for Tony to fly up to New Hampshire. He wants Tony to wear a wire and help police ensnare Ken. Tony agrees.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy’s trap for Ken will be set in Rhode Island. That’s where Ken moved after his wife’s murder.

So, Detective Lamy, Tony, another state trooper, and a prosecutor with the Attorney General’s Office pile into a few cars and drive the two and a half hours from New Hampshire to Warwick, Rhode Island.

During the trip to Rhode Island, according to the police reports, Tony seems like he’s havin’ a great time. Detective Lamy would later say that Tony would sing, or he would tell the cops his favorite movie is “Scarface,” and he can quote the whole thing – and then, Lamy says, he kinda does the whole trip.

At one point during the drive down, Tony grabs the police radio and does an impression of an old TV cop show called “Highway Patrol.”

Broderick Crawford: [FADES UP] [LOW SOUND OF SIRENS] Have 31-70 stay one mile below at junction 40. Alert the emergency crews. Do not approach the station. 10-4?

Voice on the Radio: 10-4. [FADES OUT]

Moon, Narrating: I wish I could tell you more about how Tony Pfaff saw all this. How he saw himself. He died in 2021. But from what people told police about Tony in 1989, and Tony’s own words, a picture emerges.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Family friends told police Tony’s father had a drinking problem. They said Tony would sometimes call them or move in with them when things got bad.

As Tony got older, he developed his own problem with alcohol. He started getting arrested for things like trespassing, driving without a license. At 16, according to police, he took part in an armed robbery for $500. But also according to police, Tony quickly confessed and gave cops the name of the person who had held the gun.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Tony lived in Manchester, New Hampshire before he moved to North Carolina. And he had a reputation around town.

Debbie Richer: Tony had a big mouth. 

Moon, Narrating: Debbie Richer was around the same age as Tony, and knew him back in the ‘80s. She told me what many teenagers told police in 1989: Tony wanted people to think of him as the big-man-on-campus.

Richer: Anything he did, if he went into a store and he called somebody a jerk, he’d be down to Supreme Roast Beef – “Oh yeah, I saw this guy and I called him a jerk and tut-tut-tut…” He was a loudmouth. He was just somebody who liked to insert himself in things to make himself feel bigger, larger than life.

Moon, Narrating: But as you can maybe tell from Debbie’s voice, Tony's desire to be respected didn’t always pan out. In the police reports, people called Tony “weird.” One high school senior told police Tony was, quote, “heavily into ninja stuff.”

A few people told police this one story about how one night, Tony was humiliated during a fight on the street in downtown Manchester. According to one person who said they saw it, the other guy was making Tony kiss his shoes, but when Tony would try to, the guy would kick him in the face. A crowd of 20 or 30 kids watched.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Later, a friend of Tony’s turned over to the police two letters that Tony wrote when he was 19. They’re addressed only to, quote, “Whom It May Concern.” The letters are a window onto Tony’s anguish. Maybe they were cries for help that Tony didn’t know who to send to. In the letters, Tony is reeling – from teenage heartbreak, substance abuse, and ongoing problems with the law.

He writes, “I guess it is hard for me to understand and I want to, but I don’t know how to ask for help. Why? Because everytime I let someone get close, they end up hurting me. Sometimes, I feel like blowing my brains out. One day, I will get fucked up enough to do it. I feel sorrow all of the time and I am tired of feeling it all the time and also getting into trouble, too. Well, that’s it for now, thank you for listening. Yours truly, Tony Pfaff.”

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: So, this is the 19-year-old Detective Lamy has brought with him to Rhode Island. Who keeps quoting “Scarface” at them and grabbing the police radio.

Once they arrive, they set up shop at a motel in Warwick, Rhode Island. Here’s Lamy’s plan. Tony will call Ken and try to set up a meeting. And Tony has a script. Lamy wants him to tell Ken that police have found Tony’s fingerprints on Sharon’s car. That’s not true, but Lamy wants to see if Ken will react and maybe incriminate himself on the phone.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Tony dials the number. Detectives listen in on another line.

But things get off to a bad start. Lisa answers, not Ken. And Lisa is not happy with Tony. They argue about the child support Tony owes. Lisa hangs up.

Tony calls several more times over two days. A few times, he does manage to get Ken on the phone. But again, things don’t go the way detectives hope. I don’t have the audio of these calls, but I do have the transcript. Here’s an excerpt of one of the conversations between Tony and Ken. It starts with Tony.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Reading Transcript: 

“Hey Ken.

Hey what.

Uh, I've got to talk to you.

About what?

Uh, about a car.

About what?

About the car…

About what?

About the car.

What car?

About the car that you asked me to move.

Who's this?

It's Tony.

What car I asked you to move?

Sharon's car.

What are you talking about?

What am I talking about?

Yeah.

Okay, look, you and I both know exactly what I’m talking about. Uh, they got my prints on the car.

Excuse me?

They have my fingerprints on the car.

Yeah…

Yeah and I want to know, you know, what to do, I just drove all the way down here to talk to you about it.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

You don’t understand.

No, I don’t. I have no idea.

Well, on, uh, Friday night, uh, I believe you asked me to move the car for you.

I don't, I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. The car is sitting right here.”

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: It goes on like this for a while. Ken gets mad, tells Tony to stop calling, threatens to get a restraining order against him. Tony, who, remember, is 19 years old, sitting in a motel room with cops all around him, keeps pushing. And eventually, he gets Ken to agree to meet him in a motel parking lot.

Ken shows up and Tony meets him outside. Detectives, hiding in cars nearby, are filming. But the conversation goes the same as before. Ken says he has no idea what Tony is talking about.

After meeting with Tony, Ken goes home and calls the New Hampshire State Police. He tells them what just happened. As in, this 19-year-old who had a baby with my daughter just showed up in Rhode Island and is telling me he moved Sharon’s car. You guys should look into this.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy’s sting operation with Tony Pfaff is a total bust. Lamy goes back to New Hampshire and Tony eventually goes back to North Carolina, and the two don’t speak again for months.

Until, eventually, Detective Lamy has a thought. Was Ken Johnson really so clever and disciplined as to not incriminate himself when Tony called? To not react at all? Or… was he tipped off?

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Detective Lamy thought he’d been using Tony to fool Ken. But now he wondered, what if the whole time Tony had been playing him?

Lamy thought Tony must have slipped word to Ken before they drove down to Rhode Island. The whole thing was a farce – the call from the motel room, the meeting in the parking lot. Tony and Ken were both acting.

To Detective Lamy, it was the only explanation. As far as I can tell, Lamy never entertained the possibility that Ken was simply telling the truth on the phone.

Remember that quote Lamy wrote on the chalkboard? “He escapes who is not pursued?” Lamy wasn’t about to stop pursuing Ken.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: But the thing about that quote is, just like the evidence in this case, there are different ways to interpret it.

The line comes from the play “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles, written more than 2,400 years ago. The play is a kind of ancient Greek murder-mystery. The king, Oedipus, sets out to discover who killed the previous king whose murder unleashed a plague on the kingdom.

Oedipus gets some advice passed to him from the Oracle, and this is where the line comes. Here’s another translation of it. “Search reveals things that escape an inattentive man.”

In the story, it’s a subtle bit of foreshadowing. By the end, Oedipus discovers he was the murderer all along. Oedipus was looking for a suspect, when he should’ve been looking at himself.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: But I’m going to go out on a limb and say Detective Lamy was probably not thinking about the overtones of “Oedipus Rex” when he wrote that quote on the board. I could see how this line – which is also used in some law enforcement agencies’ wanted posters by the way – seemed pretty straightforward to him.

I asked Lamy to tape an interview, to tell his own story about what happened here. And there were times when he told me he would. But in the end, he didn’t. He didn’t want to be recorded or talk about the details of the Sharon Johnson case on the record. And after I left a message for Sergeant Neal Scott – Lamy called me back, saying he heard I was trying to reach his old partner.

But still, Lamy and I ended up talking a lot over the last year or so – in phone calls and in person over breakfast at a diner he frequents. Enough to get an impression.

Lamy is in his 80s now. He wears a state police baseball cap. The Kojaky attitude everyone told me about? That’s still there. He told me other detectives were too cautious, too concerned about covering their asses, as he put it. He still carries a big chip on his shoulder about that. Lamy told me, you have to know how to walk up to the line without crossing it.

For Lamy, it wasn’t about being reckless, it was about really caring. He said if a detective arrives at a murder scene and isn’t moved by what he sees, he should be out on the highway catching speeders. Sometimes he would gently poke my hands to emphasize a point like that.

It all fit with the Detective Lamy I’d gotten to know in the police reports. A guy who led with his intuition, who wasn’t concerned about stepping on toes. A guy who hates to let a case go.

In 1989, Lamy had hit a roadblock, but he trusted his gut.

Ken Johnson had motive and opportunity. And now, to Lamy it seemed he had a co-conspirator – Tony Pfaff. In the fall of that year, Lamy sets about trying to find Tony again. But it’s been months since their sting operation. Tony is in the wind.

Still –

[MUSIC ABRUPTLY STOPS]

Moon, Narrating: Lamy keeps pursuing and eventually, he finds what he's looking for.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Roland Lamy, On Recording: This is a situation that, if we allowed her to come into the room we’d be open to scrutiny. And if we didn’t allow her to come into the room, we’d be open to scrutiny.

Karen Carroll, On Recording: I, I just wanted him to be truthful. 

Jason Carroll, On the Phone: I’m trying to dig myself out of something I didn’t do. And nobody’s listening. I was already in over my head.

Moon, Narrating: That’s next time on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com.

Photos and videos by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Special thanks this episode to Paul Christesen, professor of Ancient Greek History at Dartmouth College, Francis Dunn, professor of Classics at UC Santa Barbara, and Kirk Ormand, professor of Classics at Oberlin College, for their help with the Sophocles translation.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Transcript of S2 Episode 1: Extraordinary

Note: episode transcripts are radio scripts - please keep that in mind as you come across notations and errors in the text.

Jason Moon, Narrating: A lot of stories have been told about Sharon Johnson. My favorite ones are the ones told by her friends.

Connie Howard met Sharon in 1977. Probably, Connie says, in the laundry room of their apartment building in Manchester, New Hampshire. Connie was 17 and living on her own with a newborn baby. Sharon was 25, another young single mom.

Connie Howard: I think I thought I could maybe learn a lot from her. She was just really smart and had her act together. 

[MUSIC IN]

Howard: You know, she had a good job, she had a nice apartment, and seemed to be climbing the ladder.

Moon, Narrating: Sharon was an engineer at a computer manufacturing company. Connie says back then, in the late ‘70s, she’d never met a woman who was an engineer. Sharon had her own car, was saving to buy her own house. To Connie, Sharon just seemed confident, in control of her own life.

Howard: Made you think that you could do it. You know, a 17-year-old girl with a baby, I didn’t have any direction, so it, you know, really was a good thing to see another woman like that.

Moon, Narrating: The two of them hit it off. Connie felt herself nestling in under Sharon’s wing.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Connie needed a driver’s license. So. Sharon let her borrow her car to take the test. Connie needed a job. So, Sharon got her one at the computer company. Connie felt aimless in life. So, Sharon gave her a shove.

[MUSIC OUT]

Howard: She said, “If you don’t have a career, you’ll amount to nothing, so you need to do something.” It was blunt. At first, I was kinda hurt by it, but then it motivated me.

Moon, Narrating: Connie went to school and became a hair stylist. Made a long career of it.

Howard: So, I think I did her hair even before I had a license. I think that [LAUGHS] we kind of, maybe had a bottle of wine, and I cut her hair. Yeah. But I think about her a lot. I’ve thought about her a lot over the last 30 years.

Lucy Holt: The absolute laughter that we had when I was learning the computer. I was terrified of that thing!

Moon, Narrating: Lucy Holt was another friend of Sharon’s.

Holt: She would call me up, twice to three times a week, and we would go over another aspect of using the computer. She showed me where to go to play solitaire and I said, “Oh, my gosh, it’s in color!” [LAUGHS] And so, I called her the next day and said, “Sharon, guess what? I set up the printer all by myself!” We just, we were just rolling on the floor, laughing so hard. 

Moon, Narrating: Lucy, like Connie, viewed Sharon with a mix of admiration and fascination. Sharon could do things that just seemed out of reach to Lucy.

Holt: I thought she was funny. I thought she was brash. She was, she was one of the guys. She could tell a raunchy joke. She could just relax with the guys, and they accepted her like that. She was, uh, more… and I can’t say masculine, because she wasn’t. It’s just a different – It’s just different than what everybody had been brought up to be at the time. And I was… I was such a… um, I could hide in plain sight. Did my entire life – I hid in plain sight, so somebody that open was extraordinary. I wish I had known her better. I wish I had known her longer. Yeah.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: In 1988, Sharon Johnson was pregnant with her second child. Her friends were planning a baby shower. Then, one day in July, Sharon didn’t come home from work.

The next morning, Sharon’s body was found in a wooded, rural construction site in Bedford, New Hampshire. She’d been stabbed and strangled.

Howard: When I heard the news, it was devastating. I had nightmares. I couldn’t sleep. It was horrible. And then, I think about the horror that she must have been going through at the time, when that is being done to you… I can’t imagine what was going through her… her mind.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: For the people close to Sharon, it was the beginning of an excruciating time. Over the next few years, as police investigated and news stories were written, and court hearings were held, they learned what happened: Sharon had been killed by her own husband, with the help of two teenagers.

Howard: I always think about how happy she was and how tragic that that happened at the happiest time of her life.

Moon, Narrating: Connie and Lucy grieved. For years, then for decades. It’s now been 35 years. Sharon’s friends each figured out, in their own way, how to come to terms with the fact of her death, with the story of how she was killed.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: And now, people are telling them they’re wrong. They don’t know how their friend died.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Only one of the three men charged with Sharon’s murder is still alive. Jason Carroll. At 19 years old, he confessed to the crime. But for the three decades since, he’s maintained his innocence from inside prison.

And now, Jason has a new team of lawyers and advocates, and his case is back in court.

For people close to Sharon, it’s a hard thing to swallow. For some, it’s offensive. For some, it’s confusing. I think for all of them it feels like a violation. This is their story. Who are these strangers to rewrite the history of a person they loved?

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Lucy Holt is wrestling with all of that – and also wrestling with the part of her that’s open to another version of this story. A version where Jason Carroll was not involved.

[MUSIC OUT]

Holt: I don’t want him to be guilty. If he says, “I really didn’t do it…” I mean… We, we, we all expect proof for things. You know, we expect proof. How do you prove something… How do you prove… an “I didn’t do it?” And then, of course, we hear, we hear that everyone in prison is innocent. Everyone says, “I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it.” Um, so, he really has an uphill fight. You know?

I hope he understands that it’s not just for himself. We have been under the understanding that the person who did it was in prison, and we didn’t have to think about it anymore. Um, but if he didn’t… you know, we have, uh, we have to share that guilt… that the wrong person is there. And we can’t be satisfied anymore. We can’t be satisfied with the endings.

Moon: So, the stakes are high for you, too.

Holt: The sta– yes, they are. It’s our guilt. And it has been right along, we just didn’t know it. We were satisfied – some very happy. Some like, “Yes, we got him!” But what if we didn’t?

Moon, Narrating: As for Connie Howard, she’s pretty blunt about how she feels.

Howard: They think none of that ever happened?

Moon, Off Mic: Yeah.

Howard: Hmm…

Moon, Off Mic: Yeah, how does that make you feel?

Howard: Disgusted. 

Moon, Narrating: Connie aims that disgust right at Jason Carroll.

Howard: What are you gonna – nothing ever happened? What happened? She just… died? I think it’s wrong. ‘Cause it did happen. And you were involved.

Moon, Off Mic: Why do you believe in that, that version of the story?

Howard: [LONG PAUSE] I, I don’t know why I believe that. As opposed to… what? As opposed to… [LONG PAUSE] Who came up with that version of the story? You know what I mean? Then, how do we – who said that, that that’s how it happened? Somebody had to say that that’s how it happened, so, obviously, it happened.

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: In the late 1980s, police and prosecutors told a true crime story about what happened to Sharon Johnson.

Tony Pfaff, On Recording: We got there, she struggled. Jason drove the knife in her back.

Moon, Narrating: For 35 years, that story has profoundly shaped the lives of many people – from Jason Carroll, to Sharon’s friends and family, to the people who worked on this case.

Roland Lamy, On Recording: There are going to be continued and repeated attacks that the police coerced, intimidated, promised, threatened…

Mark Sisti: Psychologically, I think they ripped him to shreds. It was just sending a shark out on a bloody piece of bait.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: What happens when the official story is challenged after all these years? When alternate versions are told by new storytellers?

Rabia Chaudry: I just hope there's less complete and utter trust in the system after this series.

Melonie Eaton: Jason Carroll is where he belongs, where deserves to be, and he needs to stay there. He took away my mother’s life – my life!

Cynthia Mousseau, On the Phone: This story has been told about Jason for 33 years and he cannot escape it. It’s just a… story! It’s just a story!

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: This is Bear Brook Season 2 – A True Crime Story. I’m Jason Moon.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

[SOUND OF COURTROOM FADES UP, PEOPLE TALKING IN LOW VOICES]

Moon, Narrating: Last November, Jason Carroll was appearing in court for the first time in three decades. I was there, sitting in the back of the courtroom.

For over a year-and-a-half, I’d been poring over thousands and thousands of documents in Jason’s case and interviewing many of the people involved – the ones who are still alive. I’d gotten used to thinking of the case as something that had already happened, a story from the ‘80s that I knew all the endings to.

But today… was uncharted. Something new was about to happen in Jason’s case.

[COURTROOM SOUND UP, SOUND OF THROAT CLEARING, DOOR CLOSING]

Moon, Narrating: The courtroom was full. Jason’s family and friends. Sharon’s family and friends. It was a kind of tense reunion. Many of them were just kids the last time Jason was before a judge.

Before the hearing, the court staff did their best to make sure the two sides didn’t bump into each other in the hallways. But now they’re sitting in the same small, modern looking courtroom, divided only by the center aisle.

Bailiff: All rise for the honorable court. [SOUND OF PEOPLE STANDING UP]

William Delker: Good morning, this is the matter of State of New Hampshire vs. Jason Carroll. This is a hearing… [FADE OUT]

Moon, Narrating: We’re all here because Jason has applied for early release from prison. You can do that in New Hampshire after you’ve served at least two-thirds of your sentence.

The judge who will decide is William Delker. He’s soft-spoken, wears glasses and a bowtie. You could mistake him for, say, a prep-school debate coach. But in reality he’s a former prosecutor, who handled some of the most serious homicides in recent New Hampshire history – including the case involving the state’s only death-row inmate.

Delker: So, why don’t I have both sides introduce themselves for the record, please?

Delker, Quietly: Good morning.

Charles Bucca: Good morning, your honor. Charles Bucca, appearing on behalf of the state.

Cynthia Mousseau: Cynthia Mousseau, your honor, on behalf of Jason Carroll who appears to my left.

Delker, Quietly: Morning.

Moon, Narrating: Jason is dressed in a forest green prison jumpsuit. One arm is in a sling from a recent surgery; the other arm is handcuffed to a leather strap around his waist. His bald head reflects the fluorescent lighting.

Jason’s lawyer, Cynthia Mousseau, is with the New England Innocence Project. Cynthia is a former public defender. And she’s no stranger to this courtroom. Half the bailiffs and clerks seem to recognize her. Her hair is dyed with deep red streaks. One side of her head is buzzed.

Cynthia is the first to speak.

Mousseau: This is an extraordinary hearing, for the court to consider whether an extraordinary person, who was involved in an extraordinary case, should be given extraordinary relief. [FADE UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: It only takes her a few minutes to tell the court: Jason was wrongfully convicted. And the state is not telling the whole story.

Mousseau: …However, this narrative that the state has woven is inaccurate and incomplete. [FADE UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia says this is a clear case of a coerced, false confession.

Mousseau: I could point out how Jason’s statements were so inconsistent with the undisputed forensic evidence in this case, that it was more probable that he was guessing in response to interrogation questions, than he had any actual knowledge. In fact, looking at these inconsistencies, it is shocking that Jason was ever even a credible suspect, let alone convicted.

Moon, Narrating: But, Cynthia says, today is not about Jason’s guilt or innocence. It’s about whether he’s ready and whether it’s safe to reintegrate him into society.

Jason has a series of witnesses here who say, yes. One of them is a corrections officer, Joseph Laramie, who supervised Jason for over 20 years in the prison.

Joseph Laramie: It was during my time in the North Unit that I began to notice that Jason has become a leader and a mentor. Not the type that preaches to people, but the type that leads by example, through his actions. One of my duties in the visiting room was purchasin’ toys. And Jason would put all the toys together. Groaning and grumbling the whole time he was doing it because he didn’t want to be puttin’ together doll houses, but I could tell he liked it, he enjoyed it, because he knew the kids were going to enjoy it.

Moon, Narrating: Another witness for Jason is a man who was incarcerated with him for 13 years, Joseph Lascaze. He’s now a respected advocate with the ACLU of New Hampshire. Joseph says Jason was a mentor to him, who left him with a powerful message the night before Joseph left prison.

Joseph Lascaze: He said, “I want you to promise me that you will never come back here. I want you to promise me that you will spend as much time with your family as you can because they are the most important thing. And I want you to promise me that you’re gonna go out there and make a difference with who you’ve become.”

Moon, Narrating: As he says this, he motions to the pews on Jason’s side of the room, where a few young men that Joseph mentored are sitting.

Lascaze: Jay, I’m doin’ that. I promise you I’m doing everything that you asked me to do. This is proof that it’s working.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: When Joseph finishes his statement, the prosecutor for the state, Charles Bucca, cross-examines him. Charles wears black-framed glasses, his dark hair just graying at the edges. And he uses the moment to make a point that he’ll make again and again during this hearing.

Bucca: Based on what you’ve told us here today, uh, you were convicted of some criminal offenses?

Lascaze: Correct.

Bucca: And you did your time?

Lascaze: I did.

Bucca: And you took responsibility for your actions.

Lascaze: I did.

Bucca: And in fact, you even actually just told us you apologized to one of the victims of your criminal offenses.

Lascaze: Correct.

Bucca: And that was helpful to you in taking responsibility, right?

Lascaze: Yes, that came from the counsel of Jason.

Bucca: Right. And that was helpful for you to move on with your life and become the man you’ve become today.

Lascaze: That is correct.

Bucca: And be successful reintegrating into society. Is that correct?

Lascaze: That is correct.

Bucca: Okay, and do you think that it would be detrimental for someone who’s trying to reintegrate into society to not accept responsibility for their criminal conduct?

Mousseau, Interrupting: I would object to that, judge. He can speak to his personal experience, which he’s done… [FADE OUT]

Moon, Narrating: Jason Carroll will not accept responsibility for the crime. In the face of that fact, Charles, the prosecutor – and some in Sharon’s family – say Jason’s achievements in prison ring hollow. Thomas Eaton is Sharon’s nephew.

Thomas Eaton: I’ve heard all day how good somebody’s doin’ in jail and how good they’re helping others. And I can appreciate that. That’s great. But that whole time all that’s been going on, there are two people that are no longer with us. There’s a woman, a young woman, with all the promise in the world, that never had a chance to display any of that. I was raised to have accountability and responsibility. I have not been perfect in my life, but I certainly would not do this to someone. And if someone does this to somebody, they should take some accountability and responsibility. Thank you.

Delker, Quietly: Thank you.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: After both sides have had their say, Judge Delker calls a recess. And he says he’ll come back in a few minutes with his decision. He’s going to decide Jason’s fate right then and there.

I was shocked by this. I think everyone was. The attorneys had written motions that were  hundreds of pages, there was more than two and a half hours of testimony. It wouldn’t be unusual to wait weeks or longer for a decision on something like this. Instead, we waited just 15 nervous minutes. [PAUSE]

Finally, the bailiff tells us to rise. Judge Delker comes back to his seat. He tells Jason to remain standing to receive his ruling.

Delker: Um, this is, to this date, one of the most notorious crimes in recent New Hampshire history. You confessed to your participation in, uh, this murder-for-hire plot and you and your accomplice, Mr. Pfaff, kidnapped and murdered a seven and a half month pregnant woman 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.

[MUSIC IN]

Delker: Your failure to accept responsibility and to cooperate when you had the opportunity to do so meant that your co-conspirators have escaped justice for this brutal, brutal murder that has taken Sharon Johnson from her family and her loved ones. To cut you a break would utterly undermine the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.

[MUSIC POST]

Moon, Narrating: Jason Carroll’s petition for early release is denied. Judge Delker orders him back to prison. The hearing is over.

Sharon’s half of the room lets out a sigh of relief and silent celebration. Just outside the courtroom, Sharon’s daughter Melonie Eaton speaks tearfully to local reporters. Her cousin stands by her, his arm wrapped protectively around Melonie’s shoulder. Melonie says in the run-up to the hearing, too much attention had been paid to Jason and his innocence claims. She feels like her mother had been forgotten.

Melonie Eaton, Tearfully: People need to see the other side of the story. They need to understand, she was a good person – more than anybody will understand. And she deserved to be here, but, unfortunately, she’s not.

Moon, Narrating: Meanwhile, Jason’s side of the room is also in tears. Most of them leave quickly and silently after the ruling comes down. When I try to talk to Jason’s lawyer, Cynthia, she tells me, “Not today.” Later though, we did talk on the phone.

Mousseau, On the Phone: Jason has never been believed in court ever. Ever. Not once.

Moon, Narrating: Cynthia was heartbroken. And angry. Cynthia says the ruling was punishment for Jason maintaining his innocence. She says he could’ve lied and shown remorse and he may well have been let out.

Mousseau, On the Phone: People perceive that everyone in prison says that they’re innocent, which is not true. And also, that it’s this, like, thing that selfish people do. Jason just lost this hearing because he maintains his innocence.

Moon, Narrating: As an innocence lawyer, Cynthia is used to people not believing her clients. But it still stings – the utter confidence many judges, prosecutors, or just people in general have in criminal convictions. For Cynthia, the odds can feel insurmountable – even metaphysical.

Mousseau, On the Phone: Convictions take on this mythical power. You know, I, I was raised Catholic, and although I’m not now, I will reference a Catholic… [LAUGHS] There’s this belief that when you are Catholic and the priest gives you communion that the bread turns into the body of Jesus, like, literal human flesh. This is essentially the same thing as what happens. Once this conviction happens, it’s like that story is what happened.

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: Is the state of New Hampshire’s story, the one Judge Delker just retold, the one that led to Jason Carroll’s conviction, is that what really happened to Sharon Johnson? Or is it just an illusion? To find out, we have to go back to the beginning. That’s after the break.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: I’ll never forget the first time I heard the tape. I’d read the transcripts, but they didn’t hold a candle to actually hearing the words.

The tape is a partial recording of a police interrogation of Jason Carroll in 1989. I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half studying it, wondering about it, thinking – even dreaming about it. The tape is memorable partly because of its intensity. Two of the detectives who were there called it one of the most emotional interrogations they’d ever seen.

But here’s the biggest reason I’m fascinated by it. For over 30 years, Jason Carroll has been locked in a prison because of the power of the words on this tape. And only the power of words on tape. There is no other evidence that ties him to the murder of Sharon Johnson. So, the question of whether you believe what he’s saying in the tape, becomes everything. 

Jason is held in a state prison in Concord, New Hampshire that’s about five minutes from where I live. Whenever I drive by the prison, I wonder, is every passing day that Jason wakes up inside there adding to the weight of a staggering injustice? Or is Jason simply guilty?

Sometimes I think, if I just listen hard enough to the tape… [CASSETTE TAPE TURNS ON, HISS] I’ll be able to tell.

Male Officer, On Recording: [FADES UP] …You’re not really – you’ve got to – I’ve told you before, when you tell the truth, you have to want to tell the truth.

Jason Carroll, On Tape Recording: I want so much to get this over with.

Male Officer, On Tape Recording: But you’re not doing it!

Carroll, On Tape Recording: It’s not that easy. [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: The audio quality of the tape isn’t great. So, I’ll repeat some parts of it as we go. The tape has also been partially redacted. Sometimes people’s names are bleeped out.

In the tape, you can hear Jason being interrogated by four officers. They’re at the police station in Bedford, the town where Sharon Johnson’s body was discovered. The day before, police interrogated Jason for five hours. By this point in the tape, they’ve been at it for another three hours.

Female Officer: [FADES UP] Jason, if you had the friggin knife in your hand and you stabbed her, tell ‘em!

Male Officer: Yeah, he’s hiding something.

Female Officer: If you got back with Tony and you guys moved the car later on that night, tell ‘em! [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: Over the many hours of interrogations, Jason has gone from denying any involvement, to now saying he witnessed Sharon Johnson’s murder. But the police still believe Jason is holding something back. They’re frustrated. They don’t understand why Jason won’t just spit it out. One of the detectives launches into a monologue.

Male Officer: What is it going to take? [FADES UNDER]

Moon, Narrating: The detective asks, “What is it going to take? On tape – now listen to me clearly. One day in the future, this tape, which can never be destroyed or altered, will be played before a jury of people that will have, on tape – listen to me clearly – that will have understood the horror of the type of killing that Sharon Johnson was subjected to…”

[TAPE FADES BACK IN]

Male Officer: …the horror of the type of killing that Sharon Johnson was subjected to… [FADES OUT]

Moon, Narrating: “They will hear a voice that we will identify as Jason Carroll. A person that we are looking to to help us bring forth those people…” Jason jumps in and finishes the detective’s sentence. He says, “Who did it.”

Then, the detective goes on. “Who actually did this entire, uh, ugly, unforgivable, horrendous act. And they will have to conclude if Jason Carroll has the decency…” [FADES OUT]

[MUSIC IN]

[TAPE FADES BACK IN]

Male Officer: …to express any remorse and that expression must come forth by a willingness to be truthful. Why, in God’s name, would you tell us this much and still leave out the truth! The essence of the truth! I have not seen the breaking point in you!

Moon, Narrating: “I have not seen the breaking point in you!” the detective shouts.

[MUSIC POST]

Female Officer: If you put a knife in that woman, [CARROLL SOBS] I want to know! You stabbed her, didn’t you?!

Carroll, Crying: Yes, I did, [BLEEP].

Female Officer: How many times did you stab her?!

Carroll, Crying: I stabbed her three times!

Female Officer: Alright! [CARROLL SOBS]

Male Officer: Who else stabbed her? [CARROLL SOBS] Who else stabbed her, truthfully?

Carroll, Crying: Johnson! Johnson and Pfaff stabbed her… [SOBS]

Male Officer: How many times? Don’t tell me any of your funny stories… 

Carroll, Crying: I don’t know that… [TAPE FADES OUT]

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: If you had to pick one moment that started all of this, that was it. Depending on what you believe, this was the moment the truth was wrenched free, or the moment a lie that refuses to die was born.

For the rest of this series, we’re going to unpack that moment. And believe me, there is so much to unpack… including one thing I haven’t told you yet. One of the cops you heard interrogating Jason Carroll… was his mom.

Karen Carroll, On Recording: We want the truth out of you! Do you think that I’m going to love you any less?!

Jason Carroll, On Recording, Sobbing: I don’t know! I don’t know!

[MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: People who tell true crime stories – people like me – do this kind of stuff all the time. We save a surprising detail for when we need to make sure you stay interested. It can make for better storytelling. It can be manipulative.

In this case, I did it, and I’m telling you I did it, as a demonstration, because journalists are not the only people who tell true crime stories.

Detectives, lawyers, witnesses, suspects – they all tell stories about what happened in a given case. And like every storyteller, they make choices about what to put in and what to leave out, what to emphasize and what to ignore. And sometimes, those choices can change everything.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: How did Officer Karen Carroll end up extracting a murder confession from her own son? In Karen’s version of the story, it’s a lot more complicated than just what you hear in the tape.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: Ugh. It’s been a nightmare. A total nightmare.

Moon, Narrating: Karen told me, I needed to understand that she was caught between two roles.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I was not only a police officer, but I was a mother. Ya know? And mothers will do whatever they have to do to try to protect their kids.

Moon, Narrating: Karen became a police officer in 1984, a few years before Sharon Johnson’s murder. Karen was a patrol officer in Bedford. Back then, it was a mostly rural town in southern New Hampshire.

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: I enjoyed it. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was, um… It was different. I am not one that can sit behind a desk at a computer. That’s not for me.

Moon, Narrating: Her husband, Jack Carroll was in the National Guard. A Vietnam vet. Together, they were raising four kids. Jason was the oldest, Karen’s son from a previous relationship.

Then, in July of 1988, Karen’s job at the police station got really interesting. The biggest case the town had ever seen – the murder of Sharon Johnson. The first homicide in Bedford in at least 20 years, maybe more.

Karen had a front row seat. The gossip around the station, the flood of tips coming in, the reporters descending on the town. These were dramatic times in Bedford – even if it didn’t have all that much to do with Karen. She was a patrol officer, not a detective. So, she didn’t have a part to play…

[THEME MUSIC IN]

Moon, Narrating: …until she met the detective in charge of solving the case – that other voice you heard on the tape. A man named Roland Lamy.

Roland Lamy, On Recording: [FADES UP] …The truth, the essence of the truth! I have not seen a breaking point in you!

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: Sergeant Lamy, I wanted to trust him. I wanted to trust him.

Moon, On the Phone: What do you think of Lamy now?

Karen Carroll, On the Phone: [LAUGHS] I can’t say what I think of him… He’s just a bald headed, big feelin’ motherfucker.

Moon, Narrating: That’s next time, on Bear Brook, Season 2 – A True Crime Story.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]

Moon, Narrating: A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon.

It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.

Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno-Booth.

Editing help from Lauren Chooljian, Daniela Allee, Sara Plourde, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, Jeongyoon Han, and Todd Bookman. 

Our News Director is Dan Barrick. Our Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.

Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.

Sara Plourde created our original artwork, as well as our website, bearbrookpodcast.com, where you can see pictures of Sharon Johnson and other materials from the case.

Additional photography and video by Gaby Lozada.

Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon.

Bear Brook is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

[THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT]