During her incarceration at the Blaine County Jail, Sarah M. Johnson was said to have been christened with a nickname by several of her Hispanic cellmates.
They called her Pequeña Asesina, "Little Killer," according to Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Thomas in opening statements of Johnson's double murder trial, in which the 18-year-old faces two counts of first degree murder for the Sept. 2, 2003 shooting deaths of her parents.
"She laughed," Thomas said. "She thought it was funny."
Johnson's alleged nickname is only one of the first details to emerge during the first day of proceedings that are predicted to last six to eight weeks in 4th District Court at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise. In his opening remarks on Monday, Feb. 7, Thomas said the vast trail of evidence collected during the investigation of the high-profile crimes clearly only points to one person.
"This case is about evidence left behind, left behind by that lady sitting right there at that table, Sarah Marie Johnson," Thomas said.
Roughly 50 people nearly filled the courtroom to capacity Monday morning during the prosecution's opening arguments. About 20 members of the Johnson family, including Sarah's brother, Matt, were in attendance. Court proceedings were occasionally somber with sobs emerging from members of the audience and from Sarah Johnson. Family members consoled one another during particularly graphic testimony from some of the first people to arrive on the scene of the crimes.
Since the Bellevue murders of Alan S. Johnson, 46, and Diane M. Johnson, 52, investigators and attorneys involved with the case have been tight-lipped about their inquest. Monday, for the first time, they started to reveal the pieces of the puzzle and publicly patch them into a coherent case.
As he settled into his opening argument, Thomas summarized the evidence and pointed specifically to the Winchester .264 Magnum Sarah Johnson allegedly used to shoot her mother in the head while she slept and to shoot her father in the chest while he showered.
He pointed specifically to a magazine of bullets found in Johnson's bedroom, which was directly across a hall from her parents' bedroom. He pointed specifically to a pink bathrobe, a left-handed brown leather glove and a latex glove that police found in a trash can outside the Johnson home at 1193 Glen Aspen Drive in Bellevue. He said Sarah Johnson's DNA was found in the latex glove and on the bathrobe, where her mother's DNA was also found.
Among the elements of the crime scene that puzzled investigators were two butcher knives, wiped completely clean of fingerprints, that were strategically placed at the end of the master bed near the bodies of Alan and Diane Johnson.
"Two knives. What did they mean?" Thomas asked. He said investigators later learned from one of Sarah Johnson's former cellmates—the same cellmate who told investigators about Johnson's nickname and her reaction to it—that the knives had been placed to throw off police.
"And, for a while, it did," Thomas said.
The prosecutor proceeded to describe how investigators discovered footprints leading from the back of the Johnson home to a shed and to a guest house, that the owner of the Winchester rifle, Mel Speegle, rented from the family and also stored his weapons.
The prosecutor's remarks spanned the better part of an hour, and by the conclusion he spoke about evidence, motive and suspects who were not arrested.
Johnson's attorneys did not reveal any of their legal strategies outright, and they reserved the opportunity to make opening remarks at the beginning of the presentation of their case, which will probably occur more than a month from now. The defense did, however, attempt to win the trial practically before it began. At the conclusion of Thomas' opening statement, Defense Attorney Mark Rader made an oral motion for dismissal of the charges. The prosecution's opening slide show, which concluded with a photograph of Sarah Johnson with a "GUILTY" label over it, was "totally inappropriate," he said.
"I was stunned when I saw this. That's not how a trial is supposed to work. You don't do that," Rader said. "This trial shouldn't go on. This jury has been sullied with this."
But 5th District Judge Barry Wood simply offered "I disagree," and encouraged the defense to submit a written motion if they choose to pursue the matter.
The defense team did give a peek at its game plan, however, through cross-examination questions. Through answers to questions, Defense Attorney Bob Pangburn surmised that someone could have escaped the Johnson home on foot following the crime. He said there was no overwhelmingly conclusive evidence that Sarah Johnson showered or cleaned up before she ran into the street following her parents' deaths.
Witnesses describe scene
With opening arguments out of the way, prosecutors proceeded to begin building their case in a chronological fashion, first establishing that a crime did indeed occur. They started by calling Kim, Rachel and Timmothy Richards, who lived nearby. The Richards family became involved at about 6:20 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2003, when Rachel Richards woke her parents to alert them that a girl was outside screaming. Rachel Richards was a friend of Sarah Johnson's, and Timmothy Richards was Sarah Johnson's volleyball coach. Timmothy Richards was also one of three local neighbors who made the first post-murder foray into the Johnson home.
When Kim Richards opened the front door of their house, she saw Sarah Johnson running toward her from the top of the driveway.
"She said that someone shot her dad, someone shot her parents," Kim Richards said. "She said it several times. She came in and sat on the arm of the couch. She was acting quite hysterical."
In a taped 911-telephone call made by Kim Richards, Sarah Johnson can be heard in the background sobbing hysterically and breathing very hard. Kim Richards said she feared the then-16-year-old girl might pass out from breathing so hard.
As Kim Richards attempted to console a hysterical Sarah Johnson, her husband quickly left the house "thinking that someone needed my help," he said.
When he and two neighbors entered the Johnson home, he said one of the first things he noticed was a sour smell. Those first three men would become the first in a series of more than 10 people who walked through the crime scene before any evidence was collected.
"I saw pieces of hair and head and blood and things like that," Timmothy Richards said. A crucifix was leaning on a rifle on the bedroom floor.
"In the bed, there was a lump of somebody in the bed," he said. "The covers were pulled all the way over it. I assumed that whoever that was probably didn't need my help. There was not a top part of it under the covers."
In the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom, the shower was still running. The only illumination in the otherwise unlit pre-dawn home emanated from the bathroom and a hallway light one of the men turned on as they entered.
State Police first to arrive
Meanwhile, an Idaho State Police officer by the name of Ross Kirtley was making a routine traffic stop on Highway 75 not more than a half mile from the Johnson home. When he received the radio call announcing the Johnson crime scene, he abandoned the traffic stop and proceeded to Glen Aspen Drive.
When he arrived, Kirtley asked all of the neighbors to stand back, and he entered the home.
He located the naked body of Alan Johnson face down on the bedroom floor. Later, when he returned with Bellevue Marshall Randy Tremble, he located the body of Diane Johnson under a comforter in the bed. When he lifted the blanket, he beheld an uncomfortable sight. Trimble said the woman's head was blown off.
During his Tuesday testimony, Tremble said that when he first questioned Sarah Johnson, her answers were not straightforward.
"She was offering information that was not relative, in my opinion, to the question I had just asked," Tremble said.
To prosecuting attorneys, Johnson's responses to Tremble's questions were deceiving. To defense attorneys, they were disoriented.
At the conclusion of Tuesday's proceedings, prosecuting attorneys indicated they would soon present a number of crime scene photographs. Wood warned members of the audience.
"There is some very graphic evidence that is about to be presented," he said, adding that the photographs might bother some people, and they might want to leave the courtroom. "I understand there's a lot of emotion. I respect that, but we've got a job to do. You folks are adults. You know what's coming."
Later this week, members of the jury will travel to Bellevue to tour the Johnson home.
'Persons of Interest' who were not arrested:
· Mel Speegle: The Johnsons' tenant who rented an apartment above the family's garage. His rifle was the murder weapon, but he was in Boise at the time of the shootings.
· Janet Syiten: A woman who cleaned the Johnson house. According to witness testimony, Sarah Johnson initially indicated that the cleaning lady engaged in an altercation with the Johnson family and might have committed the crimes. Thomas said there was no evidence linking her to the murders.
· Bruno Santos Dominguez: Sarah Johnson's older boyfriend, a relationship that spurred a family disagreement. He was home on the evening of Sept. 1, 2003. Around 9 a.m. on Sept. 2, the morning of the murders, he drove to the Johnson home to inquire about the crimes after a friend telephoned him. "You're going to see there is absolutely no physical evidence linking him to this crime," Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Thomas said.
Sarah Johnson
