Chapter 2: The Case

Heads up: This show has descriptions of violence and strong language.

Shane Correia: Hey, so my brain always spins after we have a conversation and you introduce so much new information, and oh my goodness, there was a lot of it today.

I’m freshly back from a trip to New York to see Shane Correia… and share the latest with him about his sister, Sophia, who was charged with murdering her mother-in-law back in 2002.

Shane Correia: I am starting to accept that whenever you visit, I am going to have terrible night's sleep.

I am haunting Shane. Just kidding. But I am offering him information on Sophia’s case as it comes in. And he has been offering me his thoughts on ALL of it… in the form of voice memos.

Shane Correia:  I'm just trying to understand like what was going through her head.

We’re several months into revisiting the murder at this point. It had become a sort of obsessive side project for both of us. I was reading documents and talking to Sophia regularly, usually in the early morning hours before my regular work day started.

Sophia Johnson: Hi, good morning. 

Amory Sivertson: Hi, good morning. How you doing? 

Sophia Johnson: Did you get the stuff I sent ya? 

Amory Sivertson: I did, I did

Shane is more of a night owl. Recording himself while he’s unwinding from his day at work…

Shane Correia: For the record, that's wine.

And pouring over his sister’s case file…

Shane Correia: First installment. Lots of pages.

THOUSANDS of pages… witness interviews, call records, crime scene photos…

Shane Correia: This looks like it's an evidence form.

Shane is Sophia’s brother, obviously, but he’s also a lawyer.

Shane Correia: Hmm. Entry number 23. Paper bag with blood flakes

And if he’s ever going to believe — REALLY believe — that his sister did not kill her mother-in-law…

Shane Correia: How many entries are there? Oh, there's a lotttttttttt of entries. 

He’s going to have to go through EVERYTHING.

Shane Correia: Even if she committed murder, I know that I love my sister... But she needs to be held accountable if she committed murder.

I’m Amory Sivertson. From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair.

Chapter two: The Case

Tom Duffy: Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The evidence in this case will show that on January 10th of 2002, Marlyne Johnson was brutally bludgeoned to death in her home.

I’ve fired up the footage of Sophia’s trial. That box of VHS tapes I got in the mail. On screen: a drab courtroom, grainy faces, outfits from 20 years ago, and… the prosecutor, delivering his opening statements.

Tom Duffy: The evidence will show that she was bludgeoned to death by her own daughter-in-law, the defendant in this case, Sophia Johnson.

Shane Correia: All right. So, Clark County Sheriff's Office Enforcement Intelligence Information. 

Meanwhile, Shane is reading through Sophia’s case file…

Shane Correia: January 12th, 2002. This is two days after the murder.  

And we each arrive at someone… VERY important.

Shane Correia: There's Rick Buckner…

Duffy: spell your last name for the record, please.

Rick Buckner: Bu-c-k-n-e-r.

Rick Buckner. Detective Rick Buckner… whose decisions in the days following Marlyne’s murder solidified Sophia as the primary suspect.

Rick Buckner: I've been the lead investigator on probably anywhere from 45 to 50 homicide cases. 

That was Rick on the stand in Sophia's trial in 2003. But this is him talking to ME.

Amory Sivertson: Do you have a reputation in the field? 

Rick Buckner: I'm a total asshole. 

Rick is big. And broad. Bald with a mustache. I’m sitting across from him in a small conference room in downtown Vancouver, Washington, which is near Portland, Oregon in Clark County.

Rick is cordial, but guarded. A little intimidating, if I'm being honest. Part of that may have to do with the polygraph machine I saw in his office next door. That's what he's been up to since retiring from the sheriff’s office -- he runs a private polygraph business. Which feels on brand. Because the thing I'D heard about Rick... is that he was the guy who could get suspects to TALK.

Rick Buckner: I've had people say they don't wanna talk to their attorney, they wanna talk to me. So that's pretty good. 

People like Keith Jesperson… AKA, the "Happy Face Killer," who killed at least 8 women in the 90s and drew smiley faces on letters to police and the media.

Rick Buckner: He wouldn't talk to us. And I said, come on Keith, I'll buy you dinner. Come on. But eventually he called me and says, yeah, I killed her. I've probably gotten more confessions than anybody else. 

But Rick NEVER got one… out of Sophia. He remembers her well… all these years later...

Rick Buckber: So, is her position that she didn't do anything, that she didn't have any involvement in the death of, uh, Marlyne Johnson, or?

Amory Sivertson: It is, it is, and I know that, that you probably have a different perspective. 

Rick Buckner: I do.

Despite the fact that Rick’s notes from this 20 year-old murder case are long gone, and it’s clearly one of MANY that he’s worked on, it's stayed with him.

Rick Buckner: I've seen a lot of crimes in my, you know, years as a detective. But to see this one where, I mean, this woman was just beaten, you know, beyond recognition, with, we determined later fireplace tongs. You know, and it was a vicious, vicious assault. Somebody wanted to make sure she was dead.

Buckner and his team started mapping out Marlyne’s movements the day of the murder. She’d gotten home a little before quarter-to-1 on that Thursday in January.

Rick Buckner: I think she came back from a yoga class that day. Yep. Went out grocery shopping. We had the grocery receipts in the bag so we could pretty much pinpoint the time that she actually would've arrived home. And by all, you know, indications, she just parked her car in the garage, came in from the garage into the house carrying groceries and somebody just viciously attacked her. 

Marlyne hadn’t even set the bag in her arms down when she was struck by someone wielding fireplace tongs. She fell to the floor, groceries strewn around her. Marks and swelling on her hands and arms indicated that she'd tried to defend herself. The state’s forensic expert estimated she had been struck at least 9 times.

Marlyne was beaten so forcefully that a piece of the fireplace tongs had broken off in the attack and was found next to her body. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the skull. The time, going by when Marlyne’s watch was broken and stopped, was 12:42pm. She was 58 years old.

Tom Duffy: What steps did you then take, uh, with regard to, shall I say, managing the investigation at that time? 

Rick Buckner: Well, first off, as a lead investigator, it's my responsibility to direct and guide the investigation to evaluate the information that comes in. I'm also responsible for the, the crucial interviews. So obviously we wanted to contact the family.

Roylene Hamilton: Marlyne and I had a very, very tight bond. 

This is Roylene. Marlyne’s sister.

Roylene Hamilton: In fact, we made a pledge that we would never leave the state, we would never be long distance from each other ever. 

Amory Sivertson: Can you just tell me a little bit about your sister, who she was as a person, what things that she loved? 

Roylene Hamilton: Very, very trusting, which was something that I was, I'm very untrusting. 

Roylene Hamilton: The great love for family and nature would be definitely her. I mean, she fed the squirrels, she fed the deer, she fed the birds, she fed everything. Bags of peanuts and bags of bird seed and stuff for the deer. And it's like, oh my gosh. So, um, yes, very, um, loving person. No, not no mean bones in her body. I got 'em all.

Roylene is 15 years YOUNGER than Marlyne, but she often found herself feeling like she needed to look out for her loving, trusting, generous older sister.

Roylene Hamilton: She'd go for long walks, love to walk, love to hike, I stressed about it all the time. I told her always to take protection. She said, there's nothing out there. I said, there's men and wild animals.

Amory Sivertson: She'd go by herself? 

Roylene Hamilton: Yes. Go by herself with a little Yorkshire terrier. Like that's gonna protect anything. I had to protect her from so many people because if you said, geez, I wished I had a dollar. She'd give you 10. I was very, very protective of my sister because she was so kind and thought there was something good in everybody. And to me, I'm the opposite. You have to prove to me that there's something good in you. Otherwise, I don't think you’re good at all. And her, she thinks everybody's good. You have to prove to her that you're not.  

Someone did prove that to Marlyne. Likely, someone she knew. But WHO... that was Detective Buckner's job.

Tom Duffy: And did you conduct a series of interviews over the next day or so? 

Rick Buckner: Yes, I did. I interviewed Brad, Sophia Johnson, Richard Johnson. 

Brad, Sophia's husband, Marlyne's son. And Richard, Marlyne's husband. Now widower.

Rick Buckner: So we asked everybody, you know, what was your day like, what did you do, who were you talking to? Those kind of things. Do you know of anybody that could have done something like this? Anybody that would've wanted to hurt Marlyne. I mean, she was a housewife. 

Amory Sivertson: Do you remember any kind of first reactions from those first conversations that you had with Richard and Brad and Sophia?

Rick Buckner: All of them were very distraught. Brad Johnson was beside himself in the fact that he had just discovered his mother. Brad had gone in through the back door, I think it was cause he couldn't get in through the garage door and found his mother laying there bludgeoned to death.

Early interviews with family members filled out the events of the day, but they weren't all that illuminating in terms of the WHY of it all.

Rick Buckner: So then we were pretty much at square one. You know, who would've done this? I mean, what are we looking at? Is it some kind of a robbery gone bad? Is it a burglary in the house?  

Sometimes in an investigation, you have to seek out all of the leads. And sometimes, as Buckner told the jury, a lead… comes to you.

Rick Buckner:  9-1-1 had received an anonymous phone call from a payphone and the person refused to give their name or anything. 

But they did eventually give a name the detectives could work with... Sean Correia. Not Shane. SEAN. The middle brother of the Correia children. 4 years younger than Sophia, 6 years older than Shane.

Sean, this anonymous caller said… he knew… SOMETHING about Marlyne's murder. Or maybe DID something?

Tom Duffy: How did your investigation proceed based upon what you were told? 

Rick Buckner: Based on what we were told, our investigation focused on Sean Correia at that time and Sophia Johnson.

Sean AND Sophia... because, as Detective Buckner told me.

Rick Buckner: There is no connection between Marlyne Johnson and Sean Correia. The only connection is Sophia Johnson.

And Sean had a story for the detectives that was about to fully connect the dots FOR them.

Rick Buckner: Eventually he said that he didn't actually do it, but he was there when it happened and that his sister is the one that actually bludgeoned Marlyne Johnson to death.

More in a minute.

January 12th, 2002, two days after Marlyne Johnson, Sophia's mother-in-law, was found bludgeoned to death with fireplace tongs in her own home, Sean Correia was in custody. But he didn’t murder Marlyne, he said. His sister did, and he was willing to cooperate with detective Rick Buckner.

Rick Buckner: After Sean was arrested, we decided to go ahead and see if he could skip a call into his sister Sophia and get her to admit something on the telephone. We structured it a little bit.

Structured it a little bit... or as he would tell the jury...

Rick Buckner: We had scripted what we thought Sophia Johnson would believed, and we wrote out what we wanted Sean to say.

And that call, of course, was recorded.

Sophia Johnson: Hello? 

Sean Corria: Hey Sophia. 

Sophia Johnson: Hi. 

Sean Correia: How you doing? 

Sophia Johnson: Doing good. How are you? 

Sean Correia: I'm doing great. Um, hey, uh, like I need to talk to you. Can, like, is it possible for me to talk to you where nobody’s at? 

Sophia Johnson: Yeah. You wanna come over? 

Sean Correia: No, I can't really come over right now.

It was the day of Marlyne's funeral. Sophia and Brad had close family over at their house when this call from Sean came in. And he was, seemingly, falling apart.

Sean Correia: Sophia, I'm tripping out. Okay. I don't want these people to think that I did anything, man. 

Sophia Johnson: Sean, why would anybody think that you did anything? 

Sean Correia: These, these people are asking me questions. 

Sophia Johnson: Sean, everybody's being asked questions.

The recording’s a little hard to understand in places, but Sean tells Sophia he doesn’t want anyone to think he did anything, he’s being asked questions... Sophia tells him, EVERYONE’s being questioned right now.

Sean Correia: What am I supposed to do, Sophia? 

Sophia Johnson: Sean? 

Sean Correia: Yes? 

Sophia Johnson: Calm down. Calm down. Okay.

I've tried to picture what it must have been like being on all sides of this call. Sean with a script and a phone hooked up to some sort of recording device... sweating, maybe. 19 years old, definitely in some kind of trouble, surrounded by detectives on the edge of their seats. Detectives who have nothing on Sophia at this point, EXCEPT… Sean’s word. This call could be their big break. And Sophia, 23 years old, maybe holding her 6-month pregnant belly, tucked away in a corner of her house, with her husband, father-in-law, and the rest of the Marlyne's nearest and dearest grieving close by. Listening to her brother say increasingly troubling things…

Sean Correia: I don't want to be a part of this, Sophia. 

“I don’t want to be a part of this, Sophia,” Sean says.

Sophia Johnon: Sean, what are you saying? You are really scaring me, stop it. Relax. Stop it right now. Okay? You are worrying me and you were scaring me because I'm not understanding what you're saying. 

But Sean doesn't stop. He dances around WHATever, exactly, was done by WHOever for about 4 minutes. Until... finally... he says this.

Sean Correia: If these people find out that we had anything to do with this. 

Sophia Johnson: Excuse me?

“If these people find out that we had anything to do with this…”

Sophia Johnson: What? 

Sean Correia: If these people find out that we had anything to do with this, we’re gonna go to jail. 

Sophia Johnson: Sean, what are you saying? 

Sean Correia: I'm telling you, I think they know.

And then, Sophia asks…

Sean Correia: Sophia, I'm tripping out. 

Sophia Johnson: Do you need me to get you an attorney? 

“Do you need me to get you an attorney?”

Sean Correia: Man, I don't know. I just need some help, man. Look, Sophia, I don't wanna go down for something I didn't do, man. 

“I don’t wanna go down for something I didn’t do,” Sean says.

Sean Correia: Okay. I'm tripping out. Sophia, what am I supposed to do? 

We'll be coming back to this call. Just like the attorneys in this case would keep coming back to this call. In part because of what happened next. Sophia placed a call of her own. To detective Rick Buckner.

Rick Buckner: She said it was, I just received a phone, a strange phone call from my brother, you know, I don't know what's going on. And she kind of downplayed the whole thing.

Sophia Johnson: Well did you do anything? 

Rick Buckner: Wait a minute, do you think he’s involved in the death of Marlyne Johnson? 

Sophia Johnson: You know, I don’t. I really don’t think he’s capable of something like that. I don’t know what his motive would be. He never really knew her.

Rick Buckner: She didn't come right out and say, my brother killed Marlyne Johnson.

But she did say she'd head down to the police station to share more of what she'd heard. Or, at least, that's all she THOUGHT she’d be doing…

Sophia and Brad went down to the sheriff’s office together. They thought they’d be questioned together… as they had been the day of the murder. But this time, Detective Buckner told them he and his team wanted to talk to Sophia… alone.

Sophia Johnson: I am not in there for very long when this thing takes an awful turn. They said, you know, when we're doing these types of investigations, we look into everybody, right? And I said, yes, I do know. And they said, including you? And I said, yeah. And then they started asking me a series of other questions. I would answer, and they would say, well, of course, that's very self-serving. And then when I didn't know the answer, they would say that that's an excellent answer. The perfect answer in a murder investigation is, I don't know. 

When Sophia says "they," she mostly means Rick Buckner. Who took the lead in this interview.

Rick Buckner: Phony, if you will. It sounded phony. The whole thing sounded phony

Sophia JohnsinL I felt like I was being attacked. I felt confused. I was afraid.   The interrogation lasted for probably about four hours. And then they said that they were charging me with murder and Rick Buckner looked at me like, I know you did it. 

Sophia was fingerprinted and booked into Clark County Jail.

Sophia Johnson: This female officer said, I booked your brother in. And he said, you did it. And I thought, what? She said, yeah, he's the one saying you did it. Don't you know this information? He's telling everybody you did it, girl.

Trial footage: Ready for the next witness? Yes. The state calls Sean Correia.

It's now April of 2003. Sophia has been in jail for the last 15 months. She's given birth to a baby boy nearly a year prior, and hasn't seen him since. Sean has been in jail, too, but he's just gotten out on a deal: His freedom in exchange for his testimony, against his sister… who's on trial for first degree murder.

Trial footage: Come forward please 

A jury of 9 women and 3 men are about to hear what happened the day of Marlyne Johnson's murder

Trial footage: Raise your right hand 

from the brother who says he witnessed it.

Trial footage: Do you swear to tell the truth in today's proceedings?

Sean Correia: Yes, I do. 

Sean is on the stand for three and a half hours... so I’ll summarize his version of events. You’re gonna want to listen closely...

Tom Duffy: Do you recall what time of day you left your residence to go over to Sophia's?

Sean says he had gone to Sophia's house early that morning with his girlfriend, Susie. He was technically married to ANOTHER woman at the time, and Sophia had agreed to help him file for divorce.

Sean Correia: She told me she would help me fill out the paperwork and she would give me the money to file the papers

Money that Sophia suddenly realizes… she doesn’t have on her. She tells Sean that the money is in the pocket of a coat she'd left at her in-laws' house the day before.

Sean says that Susie then drives the three of them over to Marlyne's house to go get the coat.

Tom Duffy: Did you know the way out there? 

Sean Corria: No. 

Tom Duffy: Who was directing the route to be taken? 

Sean Correia: Sophia. 

Susie testifies to that as well, by the way. No one was home at the Johnsons’. Sophia’s father-in-law was at work, Marlyne was at yoga, then the grocery store. Sophia has a key, but after about 10 minutes in the house, she comes out WITHOUT the coat. She can’t find it. So Seans says that he and Susie start driving Sophia back to her house — before he had to go work at Wendy's and Susie had to babysit — when Sophia says...

Sean Correia: Wait a minute, can you pull over so I can think for a second?

Sophia proposes a new plan, according to Sean. Sean, I'll give you more money LATER if you call out of work, come BACK to my in-laws' house with me, and help me clean their carpets.

Sean Correia: I thought about it for a minute. I didn't miss no work before and, you know, I figured I can get the money, go file for my divorce and have it all taken care of in a day. So I said, okay. 

This… is kind of a weird plot point, right? Skipping work to clean carpets... at your sister’s in-laws’ house? It’s a fishy story that either Sophia cooked up for Sean, or that Sean cooked up for detectives. And was NOW feeding to a jury.

Tom Duffy: Did you then in fact, go back to the Johnson residence?

Sean Correia: Yes, we did.

Again, no one was home. Pretty soon after they get there, Seans says, Sophia admits: there are no carpets to clean. I made it up. And she starts looking around for something. Her coat, with the money in the pocket, Sean assumes. But then...

Sean Corria: She said that Marlyne had $10,000 stashed in some, uh, place in her house.

Ten thousand dollars. Sean was sitting on the steps between the main level of the house and the upper level, where he says Sophia was looking around for this hidden stash of cash. But her search was cut short... by the sound of the garage door opening. Marlyne was home.

Sean Corria: Sophia was on the upper level and she hustled by me and she told me, wait right here.

Sean says he did as he was told while Sophia went somewhere downstairs. About 5 minutes went by, and THEN Sean says… he heard a weird noise.

Sean Corria: It was kind of like a low screech in a sense, 

Tom Duffy: Did you hear any words that you understood? 

Sean Corria: Uh, no. I just got a little curious.

So Sean got up and went downstairs, to the ground level of the house where he thought the low screech must have come from. And that, Sean says, is when things really took a turn.

Sean Correia: As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I felt something wet drop on me. I wasn't sure what it was. I wiped my face and I just kind of wiped it on my shirt. And as I was looking and as I turned to the left, I seen someone laying on the floor and there was blood all over the place. And there was someone standing over them. The person had, um, something in their hand, a long object. And as I looked, I seen the person standing over the body on the floor. Uh, strike it one time. 

Tom Duffy: Striking the body on the floor? 

Sean Correia: Yes.

Sean says he didn't recognize the person standing over Marlyne's body at first. But as he ran towards a sliding door to get away, he heard the person yell his name.

Sean Correia: And when I turned around, I saw the person that was standing over the body coming toward me. And then the person kind of took, it was like stalking off their face and it turned out to be my sister.

This day in court, Sophia told me, was the first time she was hearing Sean tell this story.

Sean Correia: And I looked at the jury and I could see that they were listening to what he was saying. But I couldn't move, I couldn't cry, I couldn't scream. I was paralyzed.

And THIS…

Recording: It turned out to be… my sister. 

THIS was the first time Shane was hearing his brother’s testimony… on my laptop in his apartment, during that particular visit that left him restless.

Amory Sivertson: Are there any initial kind of gut reactions one way or the other? 

Shane Correia: Um, I mean, really? This person is so unrecognizable that you see their outline committing a brutal crime, and you're like, who is that? Like that's, that's odd, right? Like it doesn't seem to pass the smell test.

We kept watching…

From there, Sean says Sophia told him to get into the passenger's seat of Marlyne's van and keep his head down.

Sean Correia: I was really scared. I, she told me just to stay quiet and not say anything, and I, you know, I was crying. I didn't know what else to do.

Sophia drove them back to her house, Sean says. She could see blood on his undershirt and pants. So Sophia took the shirt and gave Sean a pair of her husband Brad's pants to change into. Then Sean says, she instructed him to drive the van to a particular parking lot where he'd be able to catch a bus home.

Sean Correia: She also let me know that my daughter lived not too far from where she was. 

Tom Duffy: Did you take that as an implied threat? 

Sean Correia: You know, I wasn't sure how to take that. I didn't know what to do at this point. I just figured I better just listen.

Sophia Johnson: I wanted to tear his head off his body. Just the blatant lies with me in the courtroom with him. He could say such awful things about me. I don't know when it was over.  But I knew my life was over. I knew they made him out to be this weak, sweet Boy Scout. And I was Satan's sister. 

Tom Duffy: Sean, did you kill Marlyne Johnson? 

Sean Correia: No. 

Tom Duffy: Thank you. No further questions at this time. 

Amory Sivertson: Anything about the way that he's speaking that jumps out at you? 

Shane Correia: He sounds coached, which makes sense. You have to prepare for trial. So that's just good work. 

Shane told me… that hearing his brother’s version of events, finally… left him MORE confused.

Shane Correia: There are a lot of details. To me, the story doesn't make a ton of sense.  It sounds like something you would see on TV for someone who's coming up with a story.

Sean’s audience in the courtroom that day… didn’t get much insight into WHO the Correia siblings were…

Sophia Johnson: The way Sean was presented to a jury, it was as if he had never been in trouble.

Or, who they were to EACH OTHER, and how they got that way.

Shane Correia: I don't know if I'm just, because I'm so close to them that I would be shocked, but— 

BUT… that’s where I’m going. And I’m taking you with me. To places the jury didn’t get to go. To people they never heard from.

Cynthia Molina: I have no doubt in my mind that he killed that woman. I have no doubt because he almost did it to me.

That's next time.

Beyond All Repair is a production of WBUR, Boston’s NPR, and ZSP Media.

It’s written and reported by me, Amory Sivertson, and produced by Sofie Kodner.

Mix, sound design and original scoring by Paul Vaitkus, production manager of WBUR Podcasts.

Theme and credits music by me.

Our managing producers are Samata Joshi for WBUR and Liz Stiles of ZSP. The show is edited and executive produced by Ben Brock Johnson of WBUR and Zac Stuart-Pontier of ZSP Media.

If you have questions about the case, the real people at the center of this story, or anything else about this series, we want to hear ‘em. Email beyondallrepairpod@gmail.com. Voice message or written message. beyondallrepairpod@gmail.com.

Do me a favor, will ya? Tell someone else you love ‘em, and then tell them about this show. In that order.

I’ll be back with Chapter 3… next week. THANK YOU for listening.