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.
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************************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.
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[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.
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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.