A Girl Craving Freedom Ends up in Captivity
(“Disrobed,” Forensic Files)
Note: Updated with information from 2020.
“Disrobed” tells the story of a teenagerwho shot her mother and father after they forbid her to seea guy who sounded at best like a waste of time and at worst like a life ruiner.
Bourgeois privilege? Sincea jury convicted Sarah Marie Johnson at age 18 and sent her to prisonfor life for a crime she committed at 16, an epilogue to herstory seems in order.
The justicesystem tends to show mercy to middle-class convicts who committed their crimes — no matter how awful— asminors.
A fair amount has happened since “Disrobed“firstaired in 2008. But before getting into that, here’sa recap of the episode plus some information from internet research.
Diane Johnson, a 52-year-old tax collector, and her husband, Alan, a 46-year-old landscaper,provided a lovely home for Sarah and her older half-brother, Matt, in Bellevue, a city on the outskirts of Sun Valley, Idaho.
By2003, Sarah had taken up with a 19-year-old named Bruno Santos. He was a high school dropout suspected of gang membership and drug activity.
He alsohad a cocky personality. Sarah’s parentsfound him none-too-endearing.
Happy ending. But Sarahhad no intention of letting go of Santos and tried the usual teenage tricks, like telling mom and dadshe was sleeping over at a girlfriend’s when she was really with him.
When theyfound out about one such incident, her parentstook away her car and threatened to file charges against Santosfor statutory rape.
At some point, Sarah decided to quell the controversy by disposing ofher parents.
That way, she and Santos could run off and set up their ownlove-filled affluent household financed by her parents’ $680,000 life insurance payout and the rest of their estate.
Dressed to kill. According toDisrobed,Sarah was a fan oftrue crime entertainment. Perhaps she felt she had picked up enough know-how to pull off a double homicide with impunity.
First, Sarah stole a .264 caliber riflefrom the guesthouse on her family’s property. The Johnsons rented out the structure toMel Speegle, an electrician who was out of town at the time of the crime onSeptember 2, 2003.
That morning, Sarah pulled a shower cap over her blond hair, put a pink plushbathrobe on backward, crept into her sleeping mother’s room, and shot her in the head at close range.
Fall planting. Herfather ran out of the shower to see what happened. Sarahshot him in the chest.
To suggest gang activity, she placed knives at the foot of her parents’ bed and in her brother’s room. (Matt Johnson was away at the University of Idaho in Moscow at the time.)
She put the rifle’s scope on Speegle’s bed and left the rest of it at the crime scene.
Then she made a beeline for a neighbor’s house and said her parents had been shot by an unseen intruder.
Investigators were probably disappointed to rule out their first suspect,Bruno Santos.
He was arrogant and disrespectful, but they couldn’t connect any of the crime scene evidence to him or his DNA.
Mel Speegle, who Sarah had probably hopedto implicate, gave police a solid alibi.
By this time, Sarah’s lack of sorrow over the tragedy had aroused suspicion.
Evidence galore. Her aunt, Linda Vavold, who appeared on Forensic Files, noted that Sarahseemed more interested in having her fingernails painted than grieving her mother and father’s demise.
And a lot more than innuendo was building up against Sarah. It turned out that shehad pretty much left a trail of forensic breadcrumbs for the police to follow.
First, the presence of her mother’s blood and bone fragments on Sarah’s bedroom wall contradicted her story that she was asleep with her door closed when she heard the first shot.
Cap it off. The pink bathrobe that police retrieved from the trash — Sheriff Walt Femling had stopped the garbage truck from picking up the can on the day of the murder — had high-velocity blood splatter from both Diane and Alan Johnson.
Gloves found in the garbage had traces of gun powder residue outside and Sarah’s DNA inside.
Plumbersrecoveredthe shower cap, which Sarahhad flushed down the toilet.
As crime scene investigator Rod Englert said during his Forensic Files interview, “The evidence was yelling and screaming.”
Prosecutors charged Sarah with two counts of first-degree murder.
Family affair. At this point, Sarah probably didn’t need any more proof thather fairy tale had gone awry, but she got some anyway: Bruno Santos decided to testify against herin court.
Santos wanted to prove he had nothing to do with the murders.
Sarah’sbrothertook a turn in the witness chair in the 2005 trial as well, but he didn’t seem to have an agenda.
Matt Johnson said his sisterwas overdramatic and tended to stretch the truth when it suited her, but he loved her just the same.
Defense lawyer Bob Pangburn uncharitably pointed out that Matt would receive Sarah’s portion of their parents’ insurance money if the jury convicted her.
The prosecution brought in one of Sarah’s cellmates, convicteddrug trafficker Malinda Gonzalez,whorevealedthat, during their jailhouseconversations, Sarah seemed toinadvertently confess.
Aunt no help. As reported byEmanuella Grinbergfor Court TV, Gonzalez testified: “One time, she said, ‘When I killed…’ Then she stopped herself and was like, ‘When the killers …'”
Linda Vavold, Diane Johnson’s elder sister, ended up on theprosecution’s side as well. “When we would be discussing Alan and Diane and someone would be upset, [Sarah]would roll her eyes and act disgusted,” Vavold testified.
The five-week trial of the flaxen-haired killer turned into a national sensation. Court TV broadcast the proceedingslive fromIdaho’sAda County courthouse.
Sarah received two sentences of life in jail without parole.
Pin it on someone. As far as what’s happening with her today, my initialguesswasthat Sarah had confessed to the crime already, embraced religion, and was helping inmates in a prison literacy program— and asking the state for mercy since she was young and foolish and evil back in 2003 and regretted her crimes.
Or maybe she would take the Menendez brothers’ route and admit to killing her parents but tell talesabout why they deserved it.
Wrongon all counts.
As recently as 2014, Sarah—now 33years old andprisoner No. 77613 at thePocatello Women’s Correctional Center —wasclaiming someone else killed her parents.
Shemanaged to draw the Idaho Innocence Project into her case. They contended that she had ineffective counsel at the first trial.
Her legal team alsobrought up the fact that the murder weaponcarriedsomeone else’s prints (not Sarah’sor Mel Speegle’s).
BF behind bars. But Speegle said that some prints probably came from afriend whohad helped him move his things from his ranch to the Johnson guesthouse in 2002.
The Idaho Supreme Court denied Sarah’s petition in a six-page decision in February 2014.
Life has been no dream for the motivation for all this misery, either.
Bruno Santos served some jail time related to drug charges around the time of Sarah’s trial in 2005.
Then, in 2010, Blaine County brought him up on new substance-peddling charges, including the sale of a half pound of methamphetamine to an undercover detective.
The following year, he received a 10-year sentence and earned himself a bunk atthe Idaho State Correctional Facility.
Santos, who is allegedly in the U.S. illegally, received parole in May 2018 and could facedeportation to Mexico — possibly in 2024, which the Idaho Department of Correction lists as his sentence satisfaction date.
Finally, it should be noted that Idaho released an inmate named Sarah Marie Johnson-Ploghoft in 2018, but she’s not the Sarah Johnson who killed her parents.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
