Previously on Bearbrook Season 2, A True Crime Story. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to trust him. I think he thought he was Telly Savalas. He had a shaved head, he was sucking on a lollipop, and he was strutting around the courtroom like he owned it. He had a reputation for solving cases. When I first met Jason Carroll inside the prison, I could feel my brain trying to reconcile two different Jasons. There was the 19-year-old I'd gotten a sense of through interviews, police reports, and old tapes. And then there was the 52-year-old in front of me.
Jason's bald, a goatee that's mostly gray, and he's huge, like he's spent the last three decades lifting weights, which is kind of true. Jason's not big on reporters. He remembers how the newspapers covered his trials, how they reprinted again and again the most damning quotes from his confessions. So it took some time for Jason to relax around me, if only a little. There's a lot I could tell you about Jason. He's polite. Despite his obvious physical strength, he has a gentle presence. He's apparently quite good at handball.
He enjoys the woodworking program at the prison. He's made dozens and dozens of bowls and vases and pieces of furniture, a set of wooden lamps with little animal shapes cut out of them. He gives them away to people he cares about, people like Debbie Ricker. I met Jason back in 1989, and we kind of cruised Elm Street. Back in the day, that's kind of what everybody did. Cruising Elm Street. It was something I'd seen references to in the police reports and court testimony. But it wasn't until Debbie explained it to me that I could really picture it. When you cruise Elm Street, people were cruising Elm Street anywhere from 7 o'clock at night until 1 and 2 in the morning. And then you'd go hang out with Dunkin' Donuts. If you've ever been to a car show, okay, that's kind of what it was. But you would have clicks everywhere. You would have people that had louder stereos.
It was on one of these 1989 cruising nights when Americana overflowed that Debbie met Jason. Jason. was known on Elm Street as, I'm going to put it as a pretty boy. Like, oh, wow, he's hot. You know, let's go after him. Because he had the nice brown hair, nice smile, tan. So he was a good-looking kid. He really was.
Unfortunately for both of them, Debbie already had a boyfriend. But Debbie and Jason, who she sometimes calls Jay, struck up a flirtatious friendship anyways. We had a lot in common. My dad was military, Jay was military. We like mechanical things. Yes, I can put the dress on and high heels, but I can also get under and get my hands dirty. And I think that that's why Jason and I became friends, because I wasn't just that little delicate girl. I was somebody he could relate to. It was around the time Jason and Debbie met, in 1989, that Jason says his life was starting to get on track.
Jason's family had moved to New Hampshire a few years before from South Carolina. Jason's stepdad, Jack Carroll, was in the military, so they moved a lot. Jason was 17 when they got to New Hampshire, and he says he quickly realized his new high school was way ahead academically of his old one, so he dropped out. He said money was tight in the family, so he started working. And for a while, he bounced around from job to job. When he was 18, Jason joined the National Guard. He went to boot camp at Fort Dix in New Jersey, then moved back home to New Hampshire. He got a job as a mechanic at the National Guard Armory in Manchester, the same place his stepdad worked.
I was proud to serve my country. I was actually, I was proud as a peacock about it. Jason finally felt like his life had a direction. He was fixing National Guard trucks by day, cruising Elm Street, and making eyes at Debbie by night. But things at home weren't always so great. Jason says he and Jack didn't get along. Jack has since died, but Jason's mom, Karen Carroll, told me he treated Jason differently than the other three kids, who were all biologically his. Jason says with a cop for a mom and a soldier for a dad, the house was strict. A lot of yes sirs and no ma'ams.
According to one of Jason's sisters, the family wasn't great at communicating. She told me things just weren't discussed. Home life was bad enough that Jason says he was considering asking his commanding officer to ship him off to Germany, or really anywhere that wasn't New Hampshire. He was ready for something bigger. Jason's favorite movie was Top Gun. He had dreams of going through the Army's elite ranger school. How long were you there before... Just a year. 1989 was the last time Jason was free. He spent the last 34 years or so in prison. That's longer than I've been alive.
A few more years, and Jason will have an inside prison twice as long as his life before it. 19-year-old Jason was like so many other teenagers, interested in girls, adventure. Jason in his 50s is harder to read, probably because his life today is so profoundly different than most people's. He's separated from the world, literally, physically, but also sometimes emotionally. I got a window into this when I talked with Jason about how he's handling the renewed attention on his case, how after three decades of living in the obscurity of a New Hampshire prison, the spotlight is on him again.
He told me over the years, most of his family moved out of state and friends drifted away. And sometimes that was because Jason told them to. He says it was too painful to hear about their lives on the outside while he was stuck in there. This is part of how Jason has survived in prison. He withdrew from most other people and from his feelings about what had happened to his life. Of course, he was angry about what he says happened to him. But he couldn't get by in this new, terrifying world of prison and be mad about it every second.
So Jason made a kind of grudging ceasefire agreement with his emotions. Jason adapted. He went forward. He got used to saying, it is what it is, to describe his life. And then Jason heard about the New England Innocence Project from another guy at the prison. It's a nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that works to exonerate people it believes are wrongfully convicted across New England. Jason allowed himself to briefly imagine that his life was not simply what it is. In 2016, Jason wrote the New England Innocence Project a letter.
The innocence lawyers reviewed his case. They believed him. And now they fight for him. And he's back in court. And reporters like me are calling to talk with him. And with each step, Jason's emotional ceasefire gets harder and harder to maintain. This is Bear Brook Season 2, a true crime story. I'm Jason Moon.
By the fall of 1989, Detective Roland Lammy suspects Tony Puff had played him. He thinks when Tony wore a wire and talked to Ken Johnson in Rhode Island, they were both acting. He thinks Tony and Ken must both be involved in the murder. So Lammy starts to dig deeper on Tony's background. And that's how he ends up looking at work records for a place called High Tech Fire Prevention, where Tony worked with Jason Carroll during the time of Sharon's murder. High Tech was one of the several jobs Jason had between dropping out of high school and joining the military.
It was a dirty job. High Tech cleaned commercial kitchen exhaust systems at restaurants and fast food places. One guy who worked there said the chemicals they used could put holes in your skin. And because they only worked when restaurants were closed, the hours could be terrible. Because of all this, it wasn't unusual for people to quit High Tech. An employee would later testify that turnover there was always high. But when Detective Lammy got his hands on Tony Puff's work schedule for the week of Sharon's murder, he noticed something. The night Sharon was killed, Tony and Jason were both scheduled to work together. But Jason never showed.
So this is why Lammy wanted to talk to Jason. Lammy goes to interview Jason when he's at work at the National Guard Armory. Their first meeting lasts five hours. Unfortunately, none of it is tape recorded. But there is another tape about what happened that day. A bizarre, astonishing tape made a few weeks later by an unlikely group of people. Detective Roland Lammy, his partner, Detective Neil Scott, and Jason's parents. Okay, this is Sergeant Lammy. Stay police.
Today, prior to this taping, Simon Scott and I met with Mr. and Mrs. Carroll from Kansas State Police Headquarters voluntarily to meet with us. The Carrolls have expressed a concern about Jason's well-being as well as his safety. In discussing this entire situation with the Carrolls, a joint decision has been made to establish a permanent record of all events that have transpired to date in this case. A joint decision to make a permanent record, says Detective Lammy.
This is another tape I couldn't wrap my head around when I first heard it. In a case that's all about the power of words on tape, these words on this tape might be the most powerful, and certainly the most surprising. This tape was recorded a few weeks after Jason's first meeting with Lammy, after Jason has been arrested for murder. And so here's the lead detective in a murder case, sitting down with the parents of the suspect he just arrested, and they're all working together. Today, we have prepared an outline on a board in a conference room by which the outline will be utilized to present this taped statement. Later, this tape would be dubbed the outline tape because of the way Lammy uses an outline on a chalkboard to structure the discussion. Using that outline, Lammy, his partner Neil Scott, and Jason's parents together narrate the story of Jason's interrogations and arrest. They start that story on November 24, 1989.
The day of that first meeting between Jason Carroll and Detective Lammy. It's a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. That afternoon, police arrive at the armory to talk to Jason. Jason's mom, Karen, also happens to come by the armory that afternoon to drop off some keys for Jason. Here's Karen describing this moment in the outline tape to Detective Lammy. And remember, the outline tape was recorded just a few weeks after the events Karen is describing. I asked where Jason was and...
One of the officers in the office told me that Jason was in the break room with state police. He then proceeded to take me to the break room. I went in and I saw Jason sitting at the table with three other individuals. Karen sees her son sitting with three cops, Detectives Dana Finn, Neil Scott, and Roland Lamme. They're sitting around a wooden table that feels a little too big for the room.
Remember, Karen's also a cop in the town where Sharon's body was found, Bedford. She already knows two of these guys. Detective Finn is with the Bedford PD, so he's Karen's co-worker. And Detective Scott with state police had interviewed Karen for a job earlier that year. The only person Karen hadn't met was Detective Lammy. In the outline tape, Karen says the detectives told her they were there to talk with Jason about the Sharon Johnson murder. She says they told her she was welcome to stay if she wanted. And do you remember that Jason was asked if he wanted you to stay a night? Yes, he was asked. And do you remember his answer?
I believe he said that he'd be okay. There was no need of me being there. So Karen leaves. Now it's just Jason and the police. According to the police reports and the officer's testimony under oath, here's what they say happens. The interview starts at 1.25 p.m. The detectives tell Jason why they're there. The Sharon Johnson murder. Tony Puff. The night of July 28, 1988. Then Lammy says Jason surprises them all by saying he remembers that night well.
Jason says that night he was hanging out at one of the usual spots, the Meineke muffler on Elm Street in Manchester. Jason says Tony drove up in a green Subaru, the same kind of car Sharon drove. Jason says Tony told him the car belonged to a girl who worked at the mall. Then Jason says Tony asked him if he'd follow him to the mall so he could leave the car there for this girl when she got out of work. Jason agreed. Detective Lammy is hearing what sounds like a first-hand account of Tony driving the victim's car the night of the murder. This is big.
Although it doesn't quite line up with what police know about the movement of Sharon's car. Remember, they didn't find the car at the mall until early Saturday morning. Here, Jason is telling them he helped Tony move the car to the mall on Thursday night. Jason makes a handwritten statement of this story. It's just a few paragraphs long. It's now 3.15 p.m. Almost two hours have passed since the interview began. At this point, Detective Lammy says Jason is acting nervous. He says he looks frightened, shaky. Lammy starts to push Jason for more details. Jason starts to cry. And then Jason changes his story.
According to police, Jason now says the night before the murder, Tony came to him with an idea to play a practical joke on a woman that Tony knew. Jason says Tony wanted him to pretend to be someone named Bob. Jason agreed. Jason says he and Tony met Sharon at the mall. He says Tony convinced her to drive to a construction site. Jason says he drove behind them in his truck. Lammy stops the interrogation. He later testifies that this moment stunned him.
At the mention of a construction site, the type of area where Sharon's body was found, Lammy reads Jason his Miranda rights. Jason waves his rights and continues the story. At the construction site, Jason says Tony and Sharon met with two men. Jason says he stayed back by his truck about 75 feet away and watched. Jason says he saw one of the men with a black beard pull out a knife and stab Sharon in the back. Jason says he panicked. He got in his truck and drove away. According to the detectives, Jason is shaking and crying intermittently as he tells this story.
Detectives ask him to write out the story on paper, but Jason is shaking so badly he can't. So Detective Neil Scott writes out Jason's statement for him. Later, Jason copies the statement again in his own handwriting. It's now almost 6.30 in the evening. Jason's been talking to the detectives for five hours. Jason says he's tired. He wants to go home. The detectives call Jason's parents to come pick him up. When Jason's parents arrive, they talk with police. Here's Detective Lammy and Karen Carroll talking about this moment in the outline tape, recorded just a few weeks later.
Do you remember generally what we told you that Jason had or had not admitted at that point? You told us that Jason had admitted moving the car and was involved somewhat as to what degree at that point. We didn't know. He was involved somewhat with the Johnson murder. It's a Friday night. Jason's parents agree with police to continue the interrogation on Monday. Then they drive him home. Jason Carroll just told police he helped lure Sharon Johnson to the site where she was killed. The next morning, Jason tries to take it back.
Now, on the outline, moving on to the next day, Saturday, the 25th of November. The day after Jason's first interrogation, Saturday, at about 11 a.m., the Carrolls have something of a family meeting. Jason and his parents, Karen and Jack, all sit down at the kitchen table. Jack Carroll, Jason's stepdad, recapped the conversation for detectives Lammy and Scott in the outline tape. We were asking what kind of questions were being asked, and he started telling us. And at that time, he, you know...
Later, Jack would say he tried to identify with Jason in this moment by saying that, as a Vietnam veteran, he had killed people. And that if Jason had killed someone, he should get it off his chest. Jack says Jason became furious at this, slammed his fist on the table, stood up, and said he had nothing to do with it. So we got concerned. So at that time, we tried to call. As a matter of fact, Jason tried to call the state police. We talked to either one of you two. Jason calls Detective Lammy, but it's a Saturday and he's not in. So Jason tries the local police department in Bedford. Captain Leo Morenci comes to the Carroll's house. Jason tells him the story about being there when Sharon Johnson was murdered was, quote, a bunch of shit. Jason says he made it up from the questions the detectives asked him. Jason says the only part of it that was true was that he helped Tony move a green Subaru to the mall.
Captain Morenci tells Jason he doesn't believe him. Then the phone rings. It's Detective Lammy. Lammy learns what's going on, and then he suggests they all meet up at the Bedford Police Department to talk it over. Jason agrees. Jason and his mom, Karen, drive over to the police station together. Jason is brought into a room with detectives. Karen waits out by her desk. The second interrogation of Jason Carroll begins at 1.30 that Saturday afternoon. It starts with Jason telling detectives most of what he told them the day before was a lie.
Here's Detective Neil Scott, Lammy's partner, describing that moment in the outline tape. For about an hour, Jason tries to convince the detectives that the story he gave them was false. But it's not working. And then Jason tells the detectives he wants to see his mom. Lammy leaves the room to go talk to Karen Carroll.
In the outline tape, Lammy says Jason's request put him in a tough spot. This is a situation that if we allowed her to come into the room, we'd be open to scrutiny. And if we didn't allow her to come into the room, we'd be open to scrutiny. Lammy decides it's better to bring Karen in than not. She enters the room just before 3 p.m. According to police, Jason's denials have started to waver just before Karen came in. And then...
Police interrogated Jason for a total of six hours this day, but only a little more than half an hour was recorded. You'll remember the audio quality of that recording is not great, and occasionally people's names are bleeped, so I'll read some parts of it. From almost the minute the tape recorder is turned on, Karen takes an active role in the interrogation. Karen asks her son, will you tell these three men every last detail, everything?
Then Detective Lammy jumps in. You don't look willing to tell the truth. You don't look as if you've concluded that you've got to let it go. There is that breaking point. Jason says, I've got to let it go. I've got to. Lammy tells Jason again and again. He knows Jason isn't telling the truth. Lammy yells at Jason to tell him how the whole thing started. Jason says, the whole fucking thing started when I was supposed to be to play a practical joker at Bob, to some woman by the name of Sharon Johnson, who you guys know.
Jason says Tony offered him $500 to do this. He says he and Tony met Sharon at the mall, and then Tony talked Sharon into going to the construction site. Jason says Tony and Sharon rode in her green Subaru, and Jason followed in his truck. But this time, Jason says when they all arrived at the construction site, he didn't stay back by his truck. Jason says Ken Johnson met all of them there. He says Ken and Sharon had a big argument. He says Ken accused Sharon of cheating on him. Then he says Sharon turned away, and Ken pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the back.
Jason says he watched as Ken continued to stab Sharon, while Tony took off her shirt and fondled her breasts. Lammy asks if anyone else stabbed Sharon. Jason says Tony did. Lammy doesn't believe it. He tells Jason he keeps making himself look like an angel in the story. He says, the jury will tear you apart if you're not telling the truth here.
Jason says, I'm telling the truth, Sergeant. I don't want to go through no more bullshit. I just want to get this over and out of my life. Still, Lammy doesn't buy it. He says, but okay, you can help us out more than this. Where is the shirt and where is the knife? Police hadn't been able to find either. Jason says he doesn't know. Lammy asks, who moved the car? Why did the car show up Saturday morning at Sears? Jason doesn't have an answer. He says, I want so much to get this over with.
Lammy is getting frustrated. Jason says after Sharon was killed, Ken threatened to do the same to Jason if he told anyone.
Jason says that's the reason he's been scared to tell the whole story. He's afraid for his life. Detective Lammy and Jason's mom, Karen, tell him that they can protect him. But they keep saying they need the truth. Jason says, I am trying to be so fucking truthful. Lammy fires back. Why don't you skip trying and just be truthful? Lammy says, come on, Jason. If you were paid $500 by Ken Johnson, you did a lot more than what you told us. Then Lammy adds, and I suspect that is not the accurate amount you got. Jason says, that's right. And then says, I got about two grand.
Then Karen jumps in and asks what Jason did with the money. Lammy says, tell us that. Make something believable. Jason tells them he spent it on marijuana. And here, it seems like Lammy just totally loses his patience. He starts to raise his voice, telling Jason to imagine that a jury is listening. And meanwhile, judging by the sound of Jason's voice, it feels like that breaking point that Lammy keeps mentioning is just around the corner. At one point, Jason is crying on his knees, arms wrapped around his mother's legs.
The jury is listening to you. You sound like a criminal, not a guy that's made a terrible mistake. Sergeant, it's not that easy. I hope you can understand that. I understand it one way. I don't know what you're saying to you. It's not that easy. It's just like if you understand it out. I can't. I want you so much. Then do it. Why can't you? What do you want from there? I'm scared. Are you fucking scared? I'm going to freaking scare you. These guys are going to hell. I feel like I'm going to jump on my head and die down now. Who wants the truth out of you? Nobody is going to be able to help you anywhere until you come forth with all the information that they need. Do you think I'll love you any last time? I don't know. I don't know. And I'm going to stand by you through this.
Just a few weeks later, Karen described her role in that interrogation in the outline tape.
Jason Carroll started the day recanting one confession about witnessing a murder. By the end of the day, he's given a second confession about committing the murder. It's one of the many ways Jason's story changes during his second interrogation. With each change, the story gets more and more incriminating.
Detectives ask Jason again and again about the murder weapon. At first, Jason says he destroyed the knife in a fire, along with the shirt Sharon was wearing, the one police never found. Then he says he threw the knife in a river. He says the knife belonged to Ken Johnson. Finally, he says it belonged to him. Jason's mom asks, is it a small brown pocket knife? Jason says yes. Karen realizes she has the knife at home. She'd recently found it in the laundry. Jason also changes his story about who stabbed Sharon first.
By the end of his second interrogation, after being questioned by police for about 11 hours over two days, Jason says he stabbed Sharon first. When asked why Ken wanted to kill Sharon, at first Jason says he doesn't know. Then he says it was because Sharon had caught Ken raping his adopted daughter, Lisa. Then he adds to that that she caught him raping his daughter and discovered that Ken had murdered someone else. For the police, all these changes in Jason's story were evidence of its authenticity.
They saw a young man who didn't want to admit what he'd done, who was fighting at every stage to not admit, to the cops, to his mother, maybe to himself, the full extent of his involvement in a horrific killing. Almost a year after Detective Lammy took over the Sharon Johnson investigation, he finally had the evidence he needed to take down the person he felt was most responsible, Ken Johnson. At one point during Jason's second interrogation, Lammy even airs his frustration about how Ken had so far eluded him.
He tells Jason, Ken Johnson is on the street in Warwick, Rhode Island, laughing in our face with his lawyer, coaching him on how to avoid proper police homicide investigative technique. And that's a fact of life. That's what we in the police department have to put up with today. Detective Lammy let Jason's parents take him home again that night after the interrogation. A pretty remarkable thing for a police officer to do. Two nights in a row, Jason had admitted to some level of participation in a murder, and police didn't arrest him. They let him go home.
The thing is, when people get arrested, the Constitution guarantees them lawyers. The first piece of advice any defense lawyer gives to a client who's held in police custody, shut up, stop talking to the cops. Lammy, of course, would have known all this. So Lammy let Jason go home that Saturday night, November 25th, 1989. It was one of the last nights Jason was free. It took several conversations before Jason would really talk to me about what happened during his interrogations. I know this is a dumb question, but were you scared during that interrogation? Are you fucking kidding me? You took care to be her on the side. Now you didn't do nothing?
I get the feeling that Jason's emotions about it, even after 34 years, are so raw, so vivid, that he figures it's just best not to go there. But Jason also knows, for his innocence claim to have a chance, he's going to have to talk about it. People want to know, if you're innocent, why did you say all of that? Still, it's really hard for Jason. The first time he and I talked about the interrogation, I asked him a question that kind of set him off.
I'm not going to tell you what the question was, only because it's about something we haven't gotten to yet. But just know, the way I asked it, listening back, I get why it got under Jason's skin. The spotlight that has swung back onto Jason's case. The possibility of finally being believed. My casual-sounding questions about possibly the most traumatic event in his life. It all finally broke the ceasefire. There was an awkward silence. I suggested we talk about something else. And we did, or tried to for a few minutes. But then, Jason wanted to explain more about how he was feeling.
The prison phone system, with its terrible timing, reminded us our hour was almost up. The next time we spoke, Jason apologized again, even though I kept telling him he didn't need to. He told me the anger comes from a place of feeling humiliated by what happened to him.
According to Jason, Detective Lammy started bending his will from almost the moment they sat down together at the National Guard Armory back in 1989. How did it turn to that? What did they say about tire tracks? Jason says Detective Lammy told him police found his tire tracks at the construction site, which is not true. At trial, Lammy denied ever telling Jason this. But either way, Jason says that was the dynamic of the interrogations. Lammy had all the answers, and he was just guessing at what was right and what was wrong.
After his parents took him home from the armory that Friday, Jason says his mom gave him a Valium to help him sleep. The next morning, when Jason tried to take back his confession at the kitchen table, he says his parents didn't really believe him. Then Lammy called, and Jason and his mom went to the Bedford Police Department for Jason's second interrogation. Jason describes the experience as having his world turned upside down. It didn't make sense to him.
He was a soldier, with a soldier for a dad and a cop as a mom. He was conditioned to revere authority. But now, he says, they were forcing him down a path he knew wasn't right. Jason says the interrogations were more intense than anything he'd ever been through, including basic training in the military. Here's what Jason says he remembers about what actually happened the night Sharon Johnson was murdered. Jason and Tony were scheduled to work together that night at high tech. They had a Burger King in Boston to clean out.
Tony needed a ride to work, so Jason gave him one. But Jason decided that night he was done with high tech. He decided to quit. So he dropped Tony off, but he didn't go in himself. I hated that job. And that's why I remember that part, because I've never quit a job. I hated that job. Jason says it's possible he gave Tony a ride to the mall that night to help him move a car, but he's not sure. And that's pretty much all he can remember. Which is either suspicious or totally reasonable, depending on whether you buy his confession. But if Jason didn't do it, why would he remember that night?
The first time he was interrogated about that night was almost a year and a half after the fact. There would have been no particular reason to keep a detailed timeline or to have an alibi handy. Or, of course, Jason could simply be lying. Or, of course, Detective Lammy could simply be lying. But almost always, the word of a cop wins out.
On the next episode of Bear Brook Season 2, A True Crime Story, another interrogation seems to add to the evidence against Jason and Ken Johnson. And Karen Carroll shares an alleged secret that changes everything. Jason's mom came in to meet with me, and I knew right away that there was going to be a problem. A True Crime Story is reported and produced by me, Jason Moon. It's edited by Katie Culinary. Additional reporting and research by Paul Cuno Booth.
Editing help from Lauren Shulgin, Daniela Ali, Sarah Plourd, Taylor Quimby, Mara Hoplamazian, and Todd Bookman. Our news director is Dan Barrick. Our director of podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie. Fact-checking by Dania Suleiman. Sarah Plourd created our original artwork as well as our website, barebrookpodcast.com. Additional photos and videos by Gabby Lozado. Original music for the series was created by me, Jason Moon. Barebrook is a production of The Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
Behind every success story, there are vulnerable moments and difficult lessons. My new podcast, Confession, pulls back the curtain so that you can hear those lessons directly from tech veterans like Satya Nadella, Dara Khazarshahi, and more. I'm Ali Partovi, and I've had my share of painful learnings. I once screwed up a $50 million negotiation with Steve Jobs. I had so much shame after losing that deal, it was 10 years before I could share the whole story. Today, I run NEO, a venture fund and mentorship community for startup founders. Follow my new podcast, Confession with Ali Partovi, wherever you get your podcasts.