Sarah Marie Johnson | Double Parricide by an Adolescent Female

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. Braun day today's question asks if I can discuss the case of Sarah Marie Johnson she was an individual who was convicted of a double parasite which is an extremely rare type of murder so she was a real person so it's important I indicate here that I'm not diagnosing her but rather just speculating on what could have been going on in a situation like this so first I'm going to go through the timeline in this case and then look at some of the mental health personality and human behavior aspects after that I'm going to take a look briefly at the concept of juvenile parasite again a rare type of crime and fairly interesting so this case starts with really three people so other people were involved but it mostly involves three people Sarah Marie Johnson who at the time in 2003 was 16 years old her father Alan Johnson who's 46 years old and Diane Johnson who is 52 years old they lived in Bellevue Idaho and they had been married for 20 years so we see the case really starts early on September 2nd 2003 we see that Sarah Johnson runs out of her home screaming for help she runs over to a neighbor's house and she says that her parents have just been murdered when the police arrived they found Diane Johnson Sarah Johnson's mother lying under the covers in her bed and she was deceased and most of her head was missing they also found Alan Johnson lying next to the bed apparently dead from a gunshot wound to the chest it appears that Alan stepped out of the shower because he was still wet so he stepped out of the shower he was shot and then managed to walk into the bedroom where he collapsed now in a trash can outside the Johnson's home the police recovered a pink bathrobe and two gloves a right-handed latex glove a left-handed leather glove now inside the house they also found a great deal of evidence including biological material blood spatters and tissue and bone fragments that went from the Johnson's bedroom into the hallway and across into Sarah Johnson's bedroom so Sarah Johnson's bedroom was across from her parents bedroom they also recovered a weapon at the scene a 264 winchester magnum rifle which is a rifle that has quite a bit of recoil in this place apart later on in the trial this was found in the master bedroom the police also recovered two butcher knives and the tips of these knives were touching and they were placed at the end of the Johnsons bed there was no evidence of forced entry into the house but the house was never locked anyway so that really didn't contribute much to the investigation when Sarah first talked to the police she gave several different stories five different accounts actually now one of the key ins consistencies here was that she said that her room was closed her bedroom door was closed but they found biological evidence that it was not meaning they found DNA blood splatter and bone tissue in her room from the homicide so it turns out her door must have been opened now this is just one inconsistency but several were discovered in her story she admitted that the pink robe belonged to her but she denied knowing how it ended up in the trash can and when the police first asked about the rug the way Sarah responded was that she did not kill her parents and the police found this to be kind of an interesting way to approach that question so they found it odd now this is an interesting piece here because I find that police often do this in these type of cases they look at the human behavior side and they say well it doesn't really fit based on what was going on so her behavior may have been odd but if her parents were just murdered and she wasn't the perpetrator then it's hard to know how somebody should react people react to stress a lot of different ways but of course this was used against her in the trial later on now the rifle I mentioned just a moment ago that was used to kill the Johnsons belonged to somebody that they rented a garage apartment to his name was Mel Speegle he had an alibi he was away from that area during the time of the murders he did indicate how that it was his rifle and he kept it unlocked in his apartment and Sarah Johnson had access to that apartment when the police interviewed the friends and neighbors they tend to think that Sarah Johnson was infatuated with a 19 year old boyfriend named Bruno Santos so Bruno Santos became kind of key suspect early on these two had been dating for about three months before the murder of the Johnsons and they did not approve of him for a variety of reasons on August 29th which was just a few days before the murders Sara told her parents she'd be spending a night with friends but instead she spent the night with Bruno Santos and when her parents found out her father went to look for the next day and confronted Santos and brought her home and she was grounded from that point on now later on according to a witness testimony we found out that Sarah seemed to take this punishment pretty well unusually well usually she'd be upset when something like this happened and she didn't seem to be upset so later on when the police had an opportunity to analyze the evidence there was DNA testing and other testing done that connected a robe to Sara Johnson and the gloves to Sara Johnson later on they would also find a shower cap that had been flushed down the toilet after this Sara Johnson was charged with first-degree murder during her trial there was a lot of testimony about Sarah Johnson's inappropriate behavior and how she tended to not have emotions that people thought fit the situation she seemed to be more concerned with her boyfriend she also didn't appear to be traumatized and at her parents funeral she talked about how she wanted to play volleyball that night some other people also said that her sadness seemed to be superficial and I think this is important because there's a few aspects here that a mental health professional might be able to detect but a member of the general public might not be able to but yet of course it's still admissible in court for example if she did not seem traumatized well what does somebody who's traumatized seem like what does that look like also what is superficial sadness how did we define that how would we know when somebody's being sad but it's only really at the surface so again kind of how people appear after events like this this is used against them even if the person evaluating that behavior is not really qualified to comment on the nuances that behavior they're not really qualified to assess the person so I think of course as I'll talk about later on I think she was guilty of these crimes but it's interesting how these pieces kind of come together people look at somebody they say oh they don't seem to be traumatized or they seemed to have superficial feelings and again that's used in testimony in a similar way we see that her brother testified against her and described her as dramatic a good actress and somebody who lied a lot so there's a lot of people testifying against Sarah Johnson based on her behavior so now in terms of the defense I've talked about what the prosecution had to say in terms of the defense they noted that there was a lack of blood or tissue found on Sarah or her clothing they didn't find anything in her hair or her hands or really anywhere now the mother Diane was shot at close range so really it would be impossible that the murderer wouldn't have been splattered with blood so this became kind of a key part of the case for the defense there were no fingerprints found on the cartridges on the rifle or those knives that were arranged I talked about but there was testimony from one of Sarah Johnson's cellmates usually I think of this type of testimony as extremely unreliable it was admitted and probably didn't help her case of course she was found guilty on two counts of murder in the first degree she was sentenced to two life terms and she will not have the possibility of parole at this point she's out of Appeals there were several appeals that took place and she was unsuccessful so that's the timeline in this case this is an extremely interesting case Sarah Johnson really almost got away with these murders but they were poorly planned for example there was a garbage truck that would have picked up the trash where that evidence was there was one house away when the police arrived so she almost did get away with this parasite now we see that in terms of some of the case characteristics or interesting Bruno Santos seemed like somebody the police should really investigate it was a confrontation between him and the dad a few days before I mentioned that the police found him to be arrogant he had a weak alibi he had been in the house before and he refused to stop seeing Sara Johnson even though the parents told him to stop so he again seemed like a good candidate to consider for this murder but when they investigated him they found no evidence that he was involved so then the case kind of turned toward Sara Johnson and there was quite a bit of evidence that tied her to these murders now I've already talked about the physical evidence that was the robe and the gloves that are connected to her there was some bruising on her shoulder from the recoil of the rifle she tried to explain it away but it was linear and the way it was on her shoulder and it did look like it came from the rifle but in terms of behavioral evidence this became kind of a key part in her case it makes her case kind of interesting her inconsistencies in terms of when she was interviewed by the police initially and none of this looked good this didn't go in her favor so in terms of the mental health personality and human behavior perspective again just speculating on what could have been going on in a situation like this we see that this type of case where you have a young female perpetrator committing a double parasite is exceedingly rare parasites are rare already when a male commits them a female committing a parasite particularly a juvenile female this is something we just don't see the mental health professionals at testify at trial and I'll get to their testimony in a minute they said that she did have clinical depression and a suicide attempt but no history of violence were crime so again double parasite just doesn't seem to fit in this case now I mentioned the parasites are exceedingly rare about two to four percent of all homicides in Western countries are parasites about two percent of homicides the United States are parasites ninety percent of the perpetrators are male when somebody kills both their father and their mother a situation like that it's almost always a male so a parasite all female is very rare especially a double parasite if we look at about the last 25 years or so there are fewer than five cases like this in the United States that I could find and all of them involved abuse and again Sarah Johnson didn't appear to be abused so there's been a lot of fascination and interest in this case because it's unusual it may actually be really the only case of its type again the last 25 years or maybe even more in the United States so now taking a closer look at the mental health piece to mental health professionals testified during the trial really at the sentencing phase and they really were talking about the hope that Sarah Johnson could be rehabilitated and really they said similar things right so the first clinician said that Sarah Johnson had clinical depression for the two years preceding the murders but showed no evidence of psychosis conduct disorder or antisocial personality and evidence of conduct disorder before the age of 15 is required for a diagnosis of antisocial personality but again no evidence was available that supported either of those diagnoses she did not appear to be prone to violence and she was described as being fairly normal now this clinician said that she was amenable to rehabilitation and thought it was very likely that if she was released some day she would never commit another crime like this now the next mental health professional testified really found the same thing except he appeared to have even a more positive image of the chances of rehabilitation he indicated she had a high potential for successful rehabilitation looking at her mental health history and her personality characteristics he concluded there would be a substantial likelihood that she could be reformed completely and not pose any danger to society now interestingly what he really added to this discussion was that she didn't need to accept responsibility at this point in order to be rehabilitated so I guess he was kind of thinking that she wasn't confessing to the crimes at that point at sentencing but maybe she would lay and then that could facilitate her rehabilitation later on so throughout this whole process to the trial and even up till now as far as I know she's never accepted responsibility for these crimes she still says that she's not guilty so in weighing this testimony the court concluded that rehabilitation in her case was possible but there's certain conduct that crosses a line and somebody represents too much of a danger to society so she was again sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole we see in her attempts to appeal that the main argument was that sentencing a child to die in prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and many states have banned this practice and other states are very careful about life sentences for minors but either way the court stayed with the original finding and she's in prison for life so what happened in the case of Sarah Johnson again this is such an unusual case what motivated her to commit these crimes what caused this well she was careful in her planning so of course it did appear premeditated but it also appeared to be driven by kind of an immature emotional reaction with the whole boyfriend thing that she was trying to move forward she wanted to see the boyfriend her parents would let her it's hardly a reason to commit a heinous murder now it stands to reason that impulsivity may have played a part in these murders positive urgency this isn't somebody has positive emotions and they can't resist the impulse to act on them and also negative urgency because she didn't get along with her parents so that could have contributed I think there was PI a degree of fantasy which isn't unusual in people that are narcissistic so it may have been that she had some narcissistic tendencies I think she had fantasies potentially about money the life-insurance money as well as of course a life with the boyfriend now it was brought up at trial that she watched a lot of true crime TV and that's where maybe she got the idea of how to use the robe and the gloves and tried to make it look like she wasn't guilty now that doesn't necessarily speak to why she did it but it's interesting that maybe she kind of learned some of those tactics from television now again we've never seen a confession in this case so really kind of left without knowing what really happened we have little insight into our state of mind and we're just left to speculate based on this restricted amount of evidence so the last part I'll cover here is parasite I'll talk about parasite and some of its characteristics again I mentioned this was a double parasite committed by a juvenile female extremely rare event we see the juvenile parasite is an extremely low base rate behavior to start with and most of the time when we see juvenile parasite it's because of abuse or is connected to abuse in some way meaning a child was abused and then they acted out so they feel trapped they feel like they can't get out of the situation and they have no other way to go so they end up committing a murder about 25 percent of time they will use an accomplice much of the time juvenile parasite offenders have little or no histories in terms of juvenile delinquency or violent behavior and we also see they're not usually involved in mental health treatment although some have had personality disorders juvenile parricidal offenders tend to kill and non-confrontational situations so they killed a parent while the parents back is turned or while they're sleeping or on a computer or something like that so in this case we kind of see this does connect to what happened we see the Sara Johnson shot her mother her mother was asleep at the time and then went toward the bathroom entered the bathroom and shot her father so we don't know if maybe she was trying to kill both of them really quickly without anybody knowing without having to have some sort of confrontation but when she walked in the room I'm sure she could hear that the showers running so she must have known that she was going to kill the mother and then have to confront the father so that was kind of another unusual part of this case of course this case has a lot of unusual features this idea that she confronted the father he was standing up and awake and alert when he was shot now we solved the trial to his speculation that she must have communicated with the father in some way there was this idea that there must have been some sort of short disguise that occurred if she said something to him or she heard something from him but we don't really know she could have shot the mother and operated a bolt-action rifle and then shot the father just that quickly so we don't really know if any communication occurred again she didn't reveal any information about that now because of this element of this type of crime shooting somebody when they're not looking or they're sleeping self-defence is a hard argument for juvenile parasail offenders to make and of course we see with Sarah Johnson she goes through this elaborate process to make it look like somebody else committed the crime we also see in parasites a lot of times a battered child syndrome is used as a defense but again Sarah Johnson wasn't abused so that couldn't be used either so in terms of as a mental health community what can we do about juvenile parasite parasite in general double parasite unfortunately there isn't much we can do juvenile parasite in particular is essentially impossible to predict as are a lot of parasites there is no way to predict something that has such a low base rate especially because there's a little history of delinquent behavior or violence so it's tough to get in front of these types of cases and prevent them we just don't know when they're gonna happen or who's gonna perpetrate them on top of this there are no risk assessment instruments that are currently available that can help us to predict juvenile parasite either so we really have no tools to work with in terms of preventing this type of crime obviously if somebody's working with a client and they say they're gonna do this or there's some clear evidence a counselor can act on that but outside of that we don't really get a lot of warning in these types of cases so this is a very interesting case as I mentioned this is really one of the most rare types of murders that we see really anywhere and I don't think this case really received a lot of attention but it is pretty interesting I think if Sarah Johnson had confessed and told her story that would have attracted a little bit more attention because we could have really received more information about maybe what she was thinking but she didn't so again we're kind of cut off we don't have a lot of information and the case doesn't really generate a lot of interest now so I know whenever I talk about these types of cases like juveniles committing parasite and cases like this there's going to be different opinions if you agree or disagree with me or have other opinions please put those in the comments that always generates a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the Sarah Johnson murder case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 542,599

Keywords: Sarah Marie Johnson, double parricide, murdering parents, female adolescent murderer, Idaho, life sentence for juveniles, premeditated murder, mental health, counseling, superficial sadness, juvenile parricide

Id: 7Nkx2gYOdHM

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019