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Crime Story Episode 16: Jason Moon

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to sexual assault. Please take care.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

SOUNDCLIP

JASON MOON: All we have for this case is sort of the different true crime stories as told from different authors. You know, the police, the defence attorneys, Jason, Karen. You know, it's hard to nail any of these down with objective forensic facts. So you have to just listen for am I being manipulated?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Once a story has been constructed, the theory goes, it's very, very hard to move anyone off that narrative. It's something that investigative journalist Jason Moon has discovered over the course of his career, and it's a theme that he unpacks in his latest podcast about the murder of Sharon Johnson. Back in 1988, Sharon was found stabbed and strangled in the small town of Bedford, New Hampshire. She was seven months pregnant. And because of the nature of the killing, police felt intense pressure to solve the crime. As in so many murders of women, Sharon's husband, Ken Johnson, was the prime suspect. Eventually, he was charged along with two young men who investigators said were part of a conspiracy to kill Sharon in order to cash in on her pension money. But in the end, only one of those men ended up being found guilty.

SOUNDCLIP

MOM: You stabbed her, didn’t you?

JASON CARROLL: Yes, I [beep].

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: A 19-year-old man named Jason Carroll with a full confession on tape. Police believed it was an open and shut case. And for some 30 years, that's the story that stuck. But in Jason Moon's podcast, he makes it glaringly clear that so much of what has been considered truth is much more complicated. It's all there in season two of the hit podcast, Bear Brook: A True Crime Story.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Jason, welcome.

JASON MOON: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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

JASON MOON: Sure. It was a really horrific crime that captured the attention of the state in those years. It was, you know, front page news leading the local newscast on TV at night. You know, this was a pregnant woman who had last been seen at the mall who was then found, you know, stabbed many, many times in this rural construction site about 20 minutes away from the mall. It was a really horrific and brutal murder. And I think you said it correctly when you said there was a lot of pressure on police to solve this. You know, for a place like New Hampshire, as I'm sure is true in lots of rural small town places, it didn't feel like the sort of thing that is, quote unquote, supposed to happen around here. And it really shook people's sense of security and safety. And so yeah, it was a big deal. It was a big deal in 1988.

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

JASON MOON: Yeah, it’s a roundabout way. So the husband is, in any case like this, you know, obviously goes on the list of persons of interest. He had trouble accounting for his whereabouts the night of the murder, gave one story and then changed it to another. So he was… basically from day one, police had their eye on Ken Johnson, Sharon's husband. They get to Jason Carroll, who has really no connection to the family, to Ken Johnson or to Sharon Johnson through the other suspect, Tony Puff.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And who's Tony Puff?

JASON MOON: So he's the other 19-year-old that police alleged Ken hired to commit the murder. Tony's connection to the family was that he had dated Ken Johnson's daughter from a previous marriage. And there was an initial suspicion from police that that somehow was involved in the murder. And they get Tony on the phone, this 19-year-old who had dated Ken Johnson's daughter, and they ask him about, you know, how he moved a car for Ken Johnson the night of the murder. And he says he has. That was sort of the first big break in the case as far as police see it. And eventually, they get to Jason because Jason and Tony work together. And the night of the murder, Jason was supposed to show up to work with Tony but didn't. He quit that night, and police found that suspicious. They went to interrogate him about the night of the murder. And according to them, he gives this spontaneous confession. Now, that's one version of the story of what happened. You know, there is a very different version involving a six-hour long interrogation on that first night when they go to talk to Jason, and allegations of interrogation tactics that we now know make false confessions more likely. But that's the basis of how Jason even gets in the picture to begin with.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And really, the story does revolve around these confessions. And what you discover is that there was more than one time where the police had him in a room. And I have to tell you, the thing you hold back until, I think it's episode two or three, is the fact that Jason's mother is not only a police officer on this force, but there is tape of her with him that as a mother myself is the… you know, I've listened to podcasts, you know, for a long time. I've listened to lots of tape, and I actually listened to your podcast twice. And both times, hearing his mother in that room is so distressing. I can't wrap my mind around how that happens. So can you march us through the fact that, one, his mother was there and then what happened?

JASON MOON: Yeah. This is the detail that, you know, usually stops people in their tracks when they hear about this case. So she was a patrol officer in that town, and they bring in Jason for an interrogation. And then she, during one of these interrogations, enters the room. And on the tape, you can hear her shouting, yelling at Jason. It's extremely emotional tape.

SOUNDCLIP

MOM: You stabbed her, didn’t you?

JASON CARROLL: Yes, I [beep].

MOM: How many times did you stab her?

JASON CARROLL: Up to 15 times.

MOM: All right.

JASON MOON: I've listened to it many, many times, you know, putting this podcast together. And it's still… I still find it very moving and distressing, but I think it certainly made it an interrogation unlike any other where you already had at least three other police officers in the room being very aggressive in their questioning, telling Jason that, you know, anytime he would give an answer that they didn't believe was the true answer, they would cut him off. They would tell him that's just not true. They would sort of shout down those answers. And then to have his mother kind of jump in on the back of that.

SOUNDCLIP

MOM: We want the truth out of you. Do you think I will love you any less?

JASON CARROLL: I don’t know. I don’t know.

JASON MOON: I mean, it's just very, very emotional.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm going to get back to asking you more about why she did it, because thankfully, you do at least give us a little bit of reprieve to know that she had something in her mind that wasn't just completely selling her son down the river. But what does Jason admit to?

JASON MOON: Yeah, it's actually kind of a hard question to answer because he gives so many different statements. He was interrogated a lot over a four-day stretch. So he would be interrogated for six hours, they'd send him home. The next morning, in fact, he tries to recant the things he had said the first day. Then they have another interrogation. That's where his mother comes in and yells at him. He makes another but different confession, and then it changes again and then again. Depending on how you count it, he ends up telling like six or seven or maybe even more different versions of his involvement in the crime. On day one, the story is I witnessed the murder from afar. I drove a vehicle there and drove away as soon as I saw the murder happen. And then by day two, you know, he recants, says that wasn't true. And then day two, it changes to yes, I participated. I stabbed her first. And eventually, the sort of the final version of the story was that he was approached by Tony Puff, the other teenager, to kill this woman, Sharon Johnson, for $5,000 paid for by Sharon's husband, Ken. But even with that, the amount that he says that he was paid for the murder changes over the course of his interrogation. So it's an interesting question with, you know, what did Jason admit to? What did he confessed to? Actually, a lot of different and conflicting things. And in the end, police had to sort of pick one version that was sort of based on the later versions of what Jason was saying in the interrogations.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what was that version? Because as you talk about in your podcast, that's a story about what happened that has stuck for all these years. So what do police say happened?

JASON MOON: Yeah. So police say that, as you said in the intro, Ken Johnson wanted his wife dead for insurance money or pension money because he was in gambling debt. And he reached out to Tony Puff, this teenager who had dated his daughter, to help him kill his wife. And then Tony recruited Jason into it, and that they all three killed Sharon at this construction site, and Ken paid each of the teenagers $5,000 for the murder. I mean, they asked Jason what he was going to do with the money. It was to buy a new stereo for his truck and new tires for his truck. But that was also a different answer from earlier, where he said he was going to use it to buy marijuana. But that's what prosecutors said happened when they were at trial.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Even though at trial, they did ask if there were new tires or a new speaker in that truck and there weren't.

JASON MOON: That's correct. Yep. The defence team actually found the guy who he bought the truck from, who actually had to repossess the truck because Jason wasn't making the payments on it. And when he got the truck back, it had the same stereo in it. And actually, two of the tires were flat and he had to tow the truck away. So the police had a lot of problems with that, with, you know, Jason gives these confessions and, you know, they're changing, they're shifting. And I think the police interpretation of that, and it's not totally unreasonable, is that this is a man who is grappling with the gravity of what he's done, and he doesn't want to admit to certain things. And maybe he's trying to deflect responsibility and say, well, I only did this, I only did that. And, you know, as he gets more and more willing to confess, it gets truer and truer. I think that's sort of the narrative that police had about what was going on. But once they got the, quote unquote, final version of the confession, what they should have done, the correct thing, which was to go out and try to corroborate that confession. Let's find some external objective facts that line up with what Jason said. The problem that they ran into over and over and over again was they could not find any way to corroborate his confession.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, what did they find instead?

JASON MOON: The truck stereo and the tires was a big one. You know, if he got paid this money, what did he spend it on? Let's find the receipts. And that could corroborate Jason's confession. And they just can't. You know, as far as all the evidence shows, he did not buy a new stereo and he did not buy new tires for the truck. So what did he spend the money on? They have similar problems. Actually, we haven't talked about it yet, but Tony, the other teenager, also gave a confession with all those same problems. They try to corroborate, you know, what did he do with the money? What other kind of events outside of this crime scene can we link him to to show that he actually did these things that he said he did? And with Tony's confession, they have run into a really big problem, which is that at one point in Tony's confession, he says he was driving a car that turns out to have actually been impounded by the police. At the time, he says he was driving it. So that's an anti-corroboration, I guess you can say. You know, that literally could not have been true, what Tony was saying in that part of his confession. So they just had a real hard time grounding any of the facts in the confession, basing them on anything else outside of the words themselves. And so that really became the whole thrust of the case and the trials was just do you believe what he said? You know, these kind of words untethered to external corroboration. And really, where could the information have come from? That sort of becomes the riddle that is unfortunately kind of unsolvable. You know, Jason says these certain things about the crime. You know, she was stabbed, how they got her to the crime scene. You know, does he know those things because he was there, because they were in the news, because detectives leaked that information to him unintentionally through their questioning? It's really almost impossible to say.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But you do spend some time trying to understand how a wrongful confession happens.

JASON MOON: Yeah. I went down a real rabbit hole on the science of false confession in reporting this piece, so you'll have to cut me off. But basically, what we've learned is that over the last 30 years, psychologists have been studying this question of like why would you ever confess to something you didn't do, especially a murder or a rape? And they've actually devised like lab based experiments where they interrogate people using different techniques and find out what makes people more likely to falsely confess versus other things. And they've also studied a lot of known false confessions and looked for the patterns in them. And, you know, the highlights are that there are on one side, there are demographic factors that make certain people more likely to falsely confess. Age is a big one. Basically, the younger you are, the more likely you are to falsely confess. Teenagers actually are in a particular period of vulnerability because as we sort of all intuitively know, they are the least capable of forgoing short term gains in favour of long term benefit. They're sort of the most impulsive. People with mental disabilities are more likely to falsely confess. And then on the other side is the interrogation techniques themselves. And what the research shows is that the way that… the most common interrogation methods used in the U.S. unfortunately raise the risk of false confession, particularly through the use of something called maximization, which is where interrogators will try to basically communicate that they already know what happened. They already know that you are guilty. And really, this whole exercise of the interrogation is just there to elicit the confession from you. So that can manifest in cutting off denials. So you try to start telling me that you didn't do it. I'll say, I don't want to hear it. We already know that you did it. Just tell us why. Another way that can manifest is through something that's called the false evidence ploy, where detectives can and will lie about evidence that shows the suspect was definitely there, definitely connected to the crime scene, even though that evidence may not exist. So he could say, you know, well, we have your DNA at the crime scene. You know, that might not be true, but you don't know that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And that's perfectly legal.

JASON MOON: Yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Even in both of our countries, that's legal.

JASON MOON: Yes. There are some states that have banned it when interrogating juvenile suspects. But as far as adults go, yeah, that's totally fair game to lie about evidence in the U.S. And then the other big category of things that interrogators will do that increases the risk of false confession is kind of the flip side. They'll make it more socially palatable to confess. It's this process called minimization, where they say things like, well, you know, I get it. You know, if I was in that situation, I would've done the same thing. You know, you were upset. You were drunk. We're both guys. I get it. You know, this sort of lowering the threshold of shame or stigma around the crime. And it's these two sides of the coin that are used in interrogations that work. And they work both to elicit true confessions, but the research shows they also work to elicit false confessions. Because especially when you do it over a long period of time, people just want to get out of the room. And people, you know, are just not often aware of their… what their rights actually are in those situations. You know, I can get up and leave. I can request a lawyer. That may be true, but when you are 19 years old and there are four detectives 30 years older than you sitting across from you at a table, you know, your ability to advocate for yourself probably isn't at its greatest.

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

JASON MOON: Yeah. Jason says he had no involvement in the murder at all. The problem, from Jason's perspective, is that he doesn't really remember what happened that specific night, which, you know, is kind of, I think, a problem that you often run into in these kinds of situations, especially in a world before our lives were so digitally tracked and monitored and put down in devices. You know, so Jason wasn't interrogated until like 14 months after the murder had actually happened. So when they're asking, you know, what were you doing the night of, you know, July 27th or whatever it was? You know, he doesn't know and to this day doesn't. And you can either interpret that as, well, who would remember what they did 14 months ago on a random Wednesday? Or you can interpret that as, well, isn't that convenient that he doesn't remember where he was that night and doesn't have an alibi that, you know, can show he wasn't somewhere else? But when you talk to Jason about it, what he remembers is… basically, he doesn't remember that specific night, but just knows that he didn't kill Sharon Johnson. But that's not a very satisfying answer to people who think that he did.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Including his mom. So can we just get back to that for a minute? So she… we have this tape of her aggressively pushing him. And, you know, he's 19. He's an adult, but I have a 17-year-old son. And I tell you, if I spoke to him the way she spoke to him, he would break too. I mean, mothers know how to do that. I mean, not that you would, but I mean, it just seemed very obvious to me as a mother listening to that that I was like, this is a torture technique on this kid. But why does she do it?

JASON MOON: Yeah. She, you know, at least from her telling, because this is all kind of disputed, but she says that the lead detective on the case had made a promise or a strong insinuation of a promise that if Jason were to testify against the other two suspects, Tony and Ken, that he would be offered immunity. And what Karen says is that that is what was motivating her in that interrogation, where she's thinking, let's get him to say what he needs to say to satisfy these detectives. They'll grant him immunity and they'll go prosecute these other guys who actually did the crime. That promise was, alleged promise was heavily litigated in the run up to the trials. The detective denies ever making any promises like that. And, you know, eventually, Karen, Jason's mother, she for a time, you know, continues to cooperate with the detectives and the prosecutors who are prosecuting Jason. But eventually, she does sort of switch sides, for lack of a better phrase, and becomes a witness for the defence and testifies at length about, you know, this promise of immunity and being manipulated by the detectives and basically says, you know, I was doing what I thought was best for my son at the time. And people often ask me, you know, did she ever believe that he had actually committed the murder? I don't know. I asked her that. She said no, but it's hard to listen to that tape. And well, I guess you can draw your own conclusions, but it is very, it is very aggressive questioning.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's almost besides the point whether she believed him or not. It was so damaging to him psychologically for his case, for everything, that it doesn't matter. But the death penalty was on the table at that point, right? I mean, it has changed in New Hampshire, but she really did think he could be sent to the execution chamber for this.

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

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I think I need to ask you now a little bit about the other two. So Jason goes through this. He is charged. We can talk about his trial. But before he was tried, Ken was tried and Tony was tried. Am I right about that?

JASON MOON: Well, Ken actually wasn't… never tried.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Right. Right.

JASON MOON: Because they really had no evidence against him. So they get confessions from Jason and Tony. The confessions have problems. For one, they don't corroborate with each other very neatly. But as far as Ken goes, there's really no evidence besides these confessions. There's no physical evidence. There's no blood or fingerprints or hairs or shoe prints or tire tracks or anything that proves that any of the three were at that construction site where her body was found. So the whole case is going to be on witness testimony. But the problem for police is that after these confessions, both Jason and Tony recant their confessions and plead not guilty. They're saying that was all a lie. I actually didn't do this. I'm pleading not guilty. I'm going to trial. So they're not going to testify against Ken Johnson based on their confessions, which they say are a lie. Without those confessions as evidence against Ken, the police don't really have anything against him. So they drop the charges on Ken. He walks free. Tony goes to trial first, and a jury finds him not guilty. And it's, you know, the defence is largely based on a false confession. The police were cutting corners, getting out over their skis, acting too aggressively and basically psychologically bludgeoned this kid into confessing to murder. That was basically Tony Puff’s defence, and a jury agreed and acquitted him on all charges. He walked free. And then Jason goes to trial last. And it actually takes two trials, but he's eventually found guilty of second degree murder and a conspiracy to commit murder and is sentenced to life. And he's still in the state prison right now, just a few minutes from where I'm standing.

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

JASON MOON: Yeah. This is something I got really interested in as a window into the criminal legal system in that it is this kind of rare instance of like, okay, same trial, same evidence, different juries, different outcomes, and really goes to demonstrate the awesome power that juries have. You know, if one group of people is not convinced by something, another group of people may be. That's one baked in difference. You just had a different jury pool. But another difference was that through the intricacies of the rules of evidence and how certain evidence could come in or not come in, in Tony's trial, the jurors heard both Tony's confession and Jason's confession. So they were able to compare the two and see that they didn't line up in pretty significant ways. They described the murder weapon like totally differently. They are getting paid on different days for the murder. They have different motives for why Ken wanted her dead. Jason says it was because Sharon had caught Ken raping his daughter, and Tony says it was because Ken was in gambling debt. So the two confessions just aren't lined up. And Tony's jury could see that. Jason's jury only listened to Jason's confessions and not Tony's. So they just viewed Jason's confession on its own, didn't have this other version of the events to compare it to to see those inconsistencies. And, you know, we'll never really know. But that always seemed to me to be a significant difference in the way the evidence was laid out for the jury, because it's one of the few things that I think could have… could plant those doubts for a jury in the late 80s, early 90s, when, you know, the science on False Confessions isn't really developed. It's not really in the zeitgeist. There's not true crime documentaries about false confessions, you know, like there are today. And so I think it was a real stretch for people to imagine that you would falsely confessed to a murder that you didn't commit. But I think if you had another confession from a guy who says he was also there and they don't match, I think it raises some questions. But Jason's jury just… they only had the one confession. And so, you know, why would they doubt it?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So when do the appeals start? Like now? You tell us in the podcast that the… is it the New Hampshire Innocence Project?

JASON MOON: It's the New England Innocence Project. Yeah.

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

JASON MOON: Yeah. So there is a direct appeal after he is convicted to the state Supreme Court, but that runs out in the early 90s, I think 94. The state Supreme Court denies his appeal. And then basically, from then until about maybe 2016, you know, not much happens. Jason is just serving out his sentence. But around 2016 is when Jason decides to write a letter to the New England Innocence Project and says, hey, look, you know, I've been in here for something I didn't do, for confession I made as a 19-year-old kid. You know, can you help me? And I think to his surprise, they wrote him back. There's like a dedicated innocence lawyer looking at New Hampshire cases. Her name is Cynthia Musso, and she's now representing Jason Carroll. And they have been, you know, actively trying to get him out for a couple of years now. The first thing they tried to do was to get Jason released on early parole. That request wasn't really about his guilt or innocence. It was more just Jason's been a very well-behaved inmate, and he should be able to have early access to parole under this New Hampshire state law. He was denied that. Jason's attorney says it was because he refuses to take responsibility for the crime, which in the Innocence Project world, that is something that is referred to as the parolees dilemma. Parole boards, they like to hear remorse. They like to see people take responsibility. But if you have been wrongfully convicted, which, you know, of course, Jason says he has been, that is a real pickle for you because you don't want to admit to something you didn't do. You do want to get out of prison, and it's kind of a hopeless situation.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I chatted on this show with Gilbert King from Bone Valley, and it was the same problem that Leo Scofield dealt. You know, people always say, you know, everyone insists they're not guilty in prison. But it does seem like it gets to that point after all of those years, it would be a lot easier to say you did it and get out, at least, than not. So it makes you wonder, you know, what's the principle that they're holding on to when it's a lot to admit to something like that?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the nicest things for me in the podcast is when you and Cynthia go to the courthouse and discover some evidence. What was that like for you? What was that all about?

JASON MOON: Yeah. So getting Jason out of prison, from the New England Innocence Project’s perspective, you know, the best thing for them is to find new evidence. Forensic evidence, ideally. There was a bit of a question as to where and whether the original evidence from the investigation still existed. I was asking the state police, you know, do you still have this stuff? Cynthia was also asking about it. And then there's a whole other, you know, aspect of the story was that there was another true crime podcast involved called Undisclosed, that had done a season about Jason Carroll. And a clerk at the courthouse happened to listen to it, knew that Cynthia was representing Jason Carroll. The clerk bumps into Cynthia in the courthouse and says, hey, there's this box in the basement I think you probably want to look at. It's got Jason Carroll's name on it. And, you know, I think Cynthia's jaw probably hit the floor. And then, you know, she called me. And then I think it was like two days later, we were there in the courthouse, and it was the box with all of the trial exhibits from his original trials in the early 90s. And so it was kind of surreal to see some of the evidence in-person. You know, it was very solemn. It was the clothes Sharon was wearing when she was murdered, photographs of the crime scene as it was discovered, videotape of the crime scene, the alleged murder weapon, which Jason says was his pocket knife. Tony says it was a different knife. And crucially, there was a piece of evidence that was of great interest to the New England Innocence Project, and that was nail clippings from Sharon Johnson's hands. And so when the medical examiner did the autopsy of Sharon's body, they found there was blood underneath her fingernails. She had defensive wounds on her hands, so she was most likely fighting back, may have scratched this person and gotten their blood under her fingernails. Those fingernails were preserved in an envelope, sealed, and they were inside that box. And Cynthia kind of rediscovered them in the courthouse that day. And it was the best thing that could have happened from an evidence standpoint that that evidence, a, still existed, and here it was. And, you know, it's still in a sealed envelope. And who knows? But it could well hold the answer to, you know, who was actually the attacker of Sharon Johnson.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So they can now test that blood for DNA.

JASON MOON: So that is exactly what Cynthia and the New England Innocence Project are trying to get done right now. They filed a request to get it tested through the court about, say, a month after we found the box. And the state of New Hampshire objected to that request and says that the court shouldn't order it because there's really no scenario under which DNA testing would exonerate Jason Carroll. And actually, as we’re talking, we're about a month away from a court hearing where the two sides will argue about that in court, and a judge will ultimately decide whether to even DNA test the evidence. So that's kind of the next step for Jason and the innocence, the New England Innocence Project on his behalf.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: They can't get that done privately?

JASON MOON: No. Because the evidence is in the possession of the court, it has to be through a court order. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How is Jason processing all of this?

JASON MOON: Yeah. I mean, when you talk to Jason, he is hopeful. He is. He is anxious. He is also realistic. He's been in prison for longer than I have been alive, which I think is just helpful to put it in perspective. So he is not thinking, I'm going to get out tomorrow or this is going to be quick and easy. On the other hand, you know, this is probably the best shot that Jason's ever going to get, to be totally blunt about it. You know, if the blood under Sharon's fingernails comes back and it's like a known serial killer who, you know, was in the area at the time, you know, that's going to radically change our understanding of the true crime story. That could be huge, but it may tell us nothing.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Or what if it's her husband? Is he still around? Can they charge him again?

JASON MOON: Ken has died, so he's not around anymore to be charged. Tony is also dead. So yeah, I think that's a realistic possibility. It could just be Ken's DNA, and that wouldn't necessarily be very helpful for Jason's case. I mean, it's not bad for his case, but I don't think that Ken's DNA being under her nails would be enough for a judge to say you get a new trial, Jason. You know, I think that would be probably the end of the road as far as this avenue goes for him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How is the relationship between Jason and his mom now? That's so complicated too.

JASON MOON: Yeah. When I asked Jason about this last year, he said, you know, they are still close. They talk fairly often, but as Jason put it, you know, it's never… it will never be the same. And he did say that if and when he ever gets out of prison, that, you know, there's a long, painful conversation that needs to happen between he and his mom. And he said, you know, there's going to be some things that I need to say that she's not going to want to hear. So I think it's complicated. It's fraught. I think, you know, from what I can tell, they still love each other. It's still a mother and son relationship. But as you could imagine, it is profoundly been shaped and scarred by what happened in this case.

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

SOUNDCLIP

MOM: You stabbed her, didn’t you?

JASON CARROLL: Yes, I [beep].

MOM: How many times did you stab her? Yes.

JASON CARROLL: Up to 15 times.

MOM: All right.

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

JASON MOON: Yeah. I did that because I was thinking a lot about the choices that true crime storytellers make and how influential those can be. And I mentioned earlier I had gotten interested in covering this case at all because I heard another true crime podcast was coming to New Hampshire to do a season about this. And I think it was spending time with them and thinking about the choices of true crime storytellers made me realize, well, actually, it's not just the, you know, the podcasters and the documentarians who do this. It's also the police and it's the prosecutors and it's the defence attorneys, and it's sort of at every stage of the process, you have kind of different authors of the story taking, you know, the same evidence, the same dots on a map, so to speak, but connecting the strings, you know, in different… at different points. And depending on how you do that and the order of how you do that can radically change, you know, how you hear, how you internalize a story like this. And so we sit on the fact that Jason's mom was part of the interrogation because we wanted it to change your perception of the interrogation. You know, we just tell you he confessed to a bunch of cops, then we tell you one of them was his mom who was yelling at him. And but then we wanted to point out that we did that so that you could understand that like, okay, we just manipulated you, because I wanted the listener to be on guard for that throughout the rest of the series, because, you know, all we have for this case is sort of the different true crime stories as told from different authors. You know, the police, the defence attorneys, Jason, Karen. You know, it's hard to nail any of these down with objective forensic facts. So you have to just listen for am I being manipulated?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I mean, you do it to us again by then telling us that she thought she was saving his life.

JASON MOON: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Yeah.

JASON MOON: You're not safe from me, right? But I hope that people come away with it with a sense that like, oh, this happens. This is how like not just in this case, but in prosecutions and other criminal trials everywhere, anywhere, this is how it actually happens. It's not, you know, it's not cut and dry. It's actually really messy and very human and everyone does things that don't really make sense. And, you know, write a true crime story based on things that like don't quite add up but sort of add up, but then one of those ends up winning and becoming the official version of the truth.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, it's complicated.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Crimes have such a wide radius of impact, right? And so much of your story is about Jason and what seems to be a wrongful conviction. But Sharon lost her life and she was seven months pregnant. She had had children, and you spent a bit of time talking to her family. And so how are they responding to this? Because it must be very difficult when there's like what seems to be the tide turning in favour of the one person who you can put the blame on for taking this woman away.

JASON MOON: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then you're sort of left as the child of a victim, and that is such a complicated place to be.

JASON MOON: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very hard. You know, you talked in the opening about how there is a story that sticks in these kinds of situations. And in a way, that's what the whole criminal legal system is about. What's the official story about what happened and what's the punishment going to be? And unfortunately, you know, things can be a lot more complicated than that, and we may not know what the actual truth of the matter is. But when for 30 years, you have lived with one version of the story of how your mother was killed or how your friend was killed, and then all of a sudden, people come and start challenging that, I think it's very painful. I mean, I can only imagine that I would, if I were in that situation, would not be totally friendly to that idea. It's painful for a lot of people, and that's real. And that's, you know, that's part of the story of what's happening right now. So we wanted to… we wanted to honour that as well and, you know, just make sure that people don't, you know, lose sight of the fact that whatever is the true story and whatever's the official story, someone did really die here. True crime is notorious for not always acknowledging the human reality of that and turning these kinds of cases into a pulpy whodunit, and you're more interested in everything that happens after the murder. But, you know, it's like the one thing that we can be absolutely certain of in this case. You know, I can't tell you, was Jason wrongfully convicted? Did he falsely confess? I don't know. I think there's a legitimate question about whether or not he did. But I do know that Sharon Johnson did not deserve what happened to her. And, you know, that needs to be a part of the story too, so we wanted to make sure it was.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, you did a great job. I really appreciate the work that you did.

JASON MOON: Thank you.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the work that you're still doing.

JASON MOON: Thanks a lot.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Thanks for joining us.

JASON MOON: Happy to do it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: After speaking to Jason, we learned that the office of New Hampshire's Attorney general discovered a second box of evidence related to Jason Carroll's case. A judge has ordered a full review of the box’s contents, and the hearing over whether to test the first box of evidence is still to come. Jason is eligible for parole in 2029, but his attorneys hope that DNA testing could lead to him being released from prison much sooner.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We drop a new episode every Monday. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts’ YouTube channel or by subscribing to the CBC Podcast true crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to Early Access, subscribers to our true crime channel also listen ad free. Crime Story is written and hosted by me. Our producers are Alexis Green and Sarah Claydon. Sound design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard. Our YouTube producer is Jon Lee. Executive producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is CBC Podcasts’ senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 16

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