Transcription
(dramatic music) - I thought the world of Jackie Johns. It was an extremely personal case to me. It haunts me to this day. I had known her for a number of years. She was the sweetest person you'd ever meet. And I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to harm her. It was the only case in my career that I just never could shake. There was a tremendous amount of pressure. The family was desperate for answers. It's something you can't, you can't put into words until you feel that it's your personal responsibility. And I was afraid I was gonna die with this one unsolved.
(dramatic music) - It was really, really foggy out. Jackie was at work. It was about five or six o'clock and she wasn't getting off till like nine or 10. And she called the house and asked if she could pick me up when she got off work. And when I went and asked my mother, she said, it's foggy enough, there's libel to be a murder tonight. And you're not going anywhere. Jackie was my very best friend. To this day, I'll be honest with you. I feel like maybe it wouldn't have happened if my mom had let me go that night.
[Narrator] In June of 1985, Jackie Johns has just turned 20 years old and lives in the tiny town of Nixa, a rural cattle ranching community nestled in the Ozarks.
She was just a typical 20 year old with a bevy of friends. Everyone in the area knew her, and she was a friendly, charming, outgoing young girl.
Jackie worked as waitress in the Nixa sale barn cafe. It used to be attached to what we called the sale barn, where they had cattle auctions and so forth.
It was a very casual restaurant. That's where I met Jackie years before. She'd been a waitress there for some time.
A bunch of Cowboys. They come in with dirt and probably cow or horse manure, or whatever on their boots. And we would serve them. Jackie always served them with a smile. All of a us girls probably flirted at one point, Jackie and me both, I mean, probably more so her.
Jackie would work at the cafe and her boyfriend Cody actually worked at the sale bar. He was a very quiet type guy, a few years older. In the process of getting a divorce, but it wasn't final yet. And she just fell head over heels for him. Oh, I'll never forget that day. My dad called and he says, oh, they found Jackie's car along the highway. And I thought, oh gosh, that silly girl has run outta gas.
I thought she probably had spent the night with someone and just left her car over there because that was something she would do. She was really spontaneous about just, oh, I'm gonna have fun, I'll just go do this.
I get a phone call from my friend, Dana. She was at the cafe and she says, Jackie with you? And I said, no, but I could hear something in her voice. And I'm like, why, what's up? And then she's like, they found her car on 160 and she's not in it. And I lost it. I was just numb.
[Narrator] The call goes out to Christian county, sheriff Dwight McNeil, who was just 33 years old and new to the job.
I lived approximately four miles east of there. So I hurriedly dressed and drove directly to where the car was sitting. The interior of the car was clearly a crime scene. There was blood that had spattered about the inside of the vehicle. There were a pair of jeans located that had one leg turned inside out. There were some women's undergarments. The steering wheel was bent. A seat was bent. It was clear from the volume of blood that someone had been seriously injured, and, or, died as a result of the activity in that car.
[Narrator] News of the gruesome discovery quickly spreads through this quiet town. Which is usually best known for its annual summer festival known as sucker day, held just a few weeks before.
Most of the small towns in Southwest Missouri have some kind of local festival. I'm not sure how Nixa ended up with the sucker fish being sort of the, the mascot of their festival. But every year the residents in town would spend months catching sucker fish for this big festival. It's a big deal.
It's just a celebration that's gone on for many years in the Nixa community.
[Narrator] Each sucker day festival has its own queen. And in the early 80s, Jackie Johns wins the crown and leads the parade.
I was very proud when Jackie was crowned sucker day queen, cause back then Nixa was so small, that was a big ordeal to, you know, to get in the parade. I'll never forget how beautiful she looked. She was so happy.
I remember that day. We rode in the back of the convertible and she had her crown and it kept falling off. It was a lot of fun.
[Narrator] Jackie is cheered on by her three sisters, Joyce, Jean, and Janice.
The four John's girls were all well known around town. Jackie may have been the most extroverted of them. Just a big personality. Just very gregarious.
Jackie was the baby of the family. The only one that was living with mom and dad at that time. We were all out on our own. Jackie was always mom and dad's little baby. And even I protected her every chance I could.
The first time I met Jackie, we were in second grade and at recess she asked me if she could come home with me. And I said, well, I guess you can. And so she rode the bus home with me and my mother's like, I don't have these two children. So my mother was a little upset with me but after that, Jackie and I were close friends.
And you hardly ever saw her in a bad mood. And like my dad used to say, Jackie was the best Ann Landers. Anytime somebody had boy problems or something, Jackie would be the one they called to straighten it out.
Everybody loved Jackie. I don't think anybody ever had a bad word to say about her.
Jackie and I were cheerleaders together. She would use so much Aquanet on her hair. At least one can to two. And I was always afraid if anybody lit a cigarette or anything that the whole place was gonna blow up. Her hair would just be so firm. You couldn't move it.
There's a picture I have of her. And I mean, you can see the wings. They're just, you know, the 80s hair and this all flowed perfectly.
[Lisa] Jackie always had to look perfect. She loved to be the center of attention.
[Narrator] In the summer of 1985. Jackie buys her very first car and it makes quite an impression on the streets of Nixa.
Jackie's car was a black Camaro, all red seats. And it had a spoiler on the back, she had nice tires on it. And that was her car.
Everybody in town knew it was her car. It had Jackie on it, the vanity plates and she loved that car.
[Narrator] It's that distinctive car, that sheriff Dwight McNiel finds by the side of highway 160 early that summer morning.
Once I was on scene, I requested assistance from the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Whatever happened inside that car was a very violent act. I was fearful that there might actually be a body in the trunk of the car, but there was also the possibility that Jackie might have been still alive.
(dramatic music) Jackie John's vehicle had been found alongside US 160. I was very desperate to find out where she was. After examining the interior of the car, we opened the trunk. There was no body. There was a bumper jack lying loose in the floor of the trunk, which had a substantial amount of blood on the lug of the jack. I was very concerned about where she was and what condition she might be in. I also felt a tremendous amount of pressure to locate her for the sake of her family. In June of 1985, I'd been the sheriff for a little over five months. You were trained never to become personally involved in these types of cases, but there was no escaping that for me, because I had known her for so many years. The whole family was just good people.
[Narrator] McNiel interviews Jackie's friends and coworkers to piece together her movements on the previous evening.
On that night of the 17th of June, It was busy, super busy. So you don't get much interaction cause you're just constantly cleaning tables or you know, whatever.
[Narrator] In the middle of her shift, Jackie leaves the cafe and goes next door to the sale barn.
For some reason, she went to the cattle side to look for Dana, her girlfriend. And that was very unusual. She hardly ever went over there. We still can't figure out why Jackie was looking for Dana that night. That's one mystery that we can't figure out.
But then her boyfriend showed up close to the end of shift. She was outside talking to him and I was sweeping and mopping, little irritated cause you know, she usually helps. And I come out the door that night and she hollered at me. She goes, are you done? And I'm like, yeah. And she goes, okay, I'll see you tomorrow.
[Narrator] Jackie's sister Jean last saw her younger sibling just three days prior to her going missing.
Her and a friend of hers came over to my apartment and she seemed great spirits. But Jackie shared with some of her friends that she felt like she was being watched. She did not want to be by herself anymore. You know, she didn't wanna stay by herself at mom and dads. She wanted somebody there all the time. For some reason, Jackie was scared.
[Narrator] On that fateful June night, Jackie Johns says goodbye to her boyfriend and coworkers and leaves the cafe alone.
On her way home to mom and dad's Jackie stopped at the 711 store.
One of the items of evidence that we located in the car was a receipt, which gave us a timeline of exactly when she arrived at the convenience store. She was her normal self according to the cashier. He saw no sign of distress. He was under the impression she was leaving there and heading home, which was probably only five minutes away.
[Narrator] Sheriff McNiel calls in the citizens of Nixa to help with the search. Like most of the Ozarks, the town is surrounded by sprawling, sparsely populated, farmland.
[Narrator] Starting at nine this morning, the search for Jackie Johns got underway.
We actually set up a command post in the parking lot of the sale barn cafe. There were people on horseback, ATVs, motorcycles. We prepared a grid map expanding out from her car.
It was just hundreds and hundreds of people. It was just amazing. Just truckloads of people. I think everybody in Nixa was just in shock. My mom and dad, they were just devastated.
The quicker and sooner they get the culprits that are guilty of this. So some poor other poor innocent little girls won't be victimized like our sweet thing was.
Every day I would be at Jackie's parents' house and me and her siblings had our little group. We would try to remember where she had went or where she would go.
I think everybody was just in a daze. I mean, you wanna find Jackie, but you don't wanna find her. If that makes sense.
I just didn't feel like she was gone. I never gave up hope. I kept thinking she was alive.
I don't recall sleeping for five days. It was just so tiring. And that was hard, that was really hard.
[Narrator] As the search for Jackie continues, sheriff McNiel questions her boyfriend, Cody.
Cody is one of the last people to see her before she arrived at the convenience store. So that was extremely important to get him eliminated as a suspect, as quickly as possible.
[Narrator] Cody tells police that he was home alone when Jackie went missing, but has few other details to offer.
He's a tough guy. He's a cowboy and ranch hand and not the kind of guy that wears his emotions on his sleeve. There was no one to corroborate his alibi, but no one had anything to say about Cody. He wasn't a violent type of person, a jealous type of person.
[Narrator] Four days after Jackie disappeared, her parents get a phone call that confirms their worst fears.
I was actually at my mom and dad's house and the phone rang and it was one of my dad's friends. They, they were camping down at the lake Springfield and he called to say, they found the body.
Two fishermen had located a body floating in the Springfield lake, which was approximately four and a half miles, five miles north of where her car was discovered. The body was still floating it was a nude female, but there was no question of who it was. After recovering Jackie's body and getting her out of the lake, I was sick to my stomach. I was mad, I was, I was, I was sad for the family. It would be hard to put into words, all of the emotions that I felt that day on that boat ramp. You feel that it's your personal responsibility as a sheriff of that very small department in 1985, had five deputies sheriffs to cover 600 square miles. To say that we were understaffed and we were short of resources is not an exaggeration. I had to make a trip up to see Les and Shirley Johns to tell them we had located their daughter. That was, that was one of the worst experiences you can have as a law enforcement officer. When you know the people, when you know them on a personal level, it, it makes it twice as hard.
The officers you could tell, they were just as devastated as the rest of us. And you could tell it really took a toll on him. Dwight knew Jackie personally. So that was what was really even more devastating for him.
(police radio chatter) They didn't want us to see her body. They had cut off Jackie's rings, and that's how I identified her. I definitely recognized the rings because one of 'em I had given to Jackie for her birthday a week and a half before she was killed.
A lot of tears, anger. It was just, it was devastating. She's gone forever. Thinking about Jackie in her final moments. I can't even fathom. I know her, and she probably fought like hell.
After Jackie was murdered our family was just never the same. It was just awful.
And it was hard to deal with the fact that somebody was out there and killed your best friend. I wasn't a carefree kid anymore. I was scared of my own shadow. My whole perspective on life. The day they found her in the lake, it was, it was a day that changed my life forever. To this day I feel like if I had gotten to go with her, she'd still be alive.
When the sucker day queen is killed and that was the worst crime that had occurred in Nixa at that point, that's the sort of thing that sticks in the community's conscience.
The autopsy on Jackie's body revealed that she died as a result of blunt force trauma and that she had been apparently raped. There were puncture wounds that were consistent with the lugs that were on the face of the bumper jack. We were also able to recover a semen sample, which was fortunate considering the length time that she'd been in the lake.
[Narrator] Four days after Jackie's body is found, the family lays her to rest. Most of the town of Nixa turns out to say goodbye.
Nixa high school allowed them to have the funeral at the gymnasium there. It was standing room only. It's kind of like a blur to me. My dad preached part of the funeral and he said, Sonya, please, if I see you crying, I, I won't be able to get through this. And so I stayed stoic for my father.
We videotaped people coming and going. To see if someone appeared that we perhaps should be considering as a suspect. It just seemed like one of the few things that we had available to us at the time, there were a lot of people there, but we did not see anyone that looked out of place. We interviewed other employees from the sale barn cafe, as well as the folks who regularly frequented that restaurant, Multiple officers were conducting multiple interviews all day, every day.
[Narrator] Almost immediately, one regular customer at the cafe stands out.
We learned that there was someone who had been acting strange at the cafe around Jackie on one or more occasions.
Jackie kind of was getting creeped out about this guy. He was a little off, but he would bring her flowers. He would bring her candy.
He was the only person with any type of unusual activity at the time that jumped out as someone we probably needed to make contact with as quickly as possible. But as it turned out, he was alibied. He was in another jail in the area and we were able to eliminate him as a suspect.
[Narrator] Desperate for any kind of lead sheriff McNiel sets up a hotline for tips on the case, hoping that someone in this small town saw something suspicious that night. It doesn't take long.
Two men who were purchasing fuel on that night at the convenience store had seen a very distinctive pickup truck backed into a bank parking lot directly across the street from the convenience store. It was white over powder blue. It was the 60s model Chevrolet Cheyenne. And this particular truck had custom aftermarket wheels on it. The odds of there being two trucks that looked like that in Southwest, Missouri at that time were very, very remote.
[Narrator] Sheriff Dwight McNiel hopes that he's finally caught a break in the Jackie John's murder case. Witnesses spotted a distinctive vintage truck across the street from the crime scene. McNiel believes the truck belongs to Gerald Carnahan. The son of a prominent Nixa businessman.
Everyone in Nixa's pretty familiar with the Carnahan family. Gerald's father had been involved in a number of successful ventures, including a Foundry that was located just about a mile south of the sale barn cafe. Gerald Carnahan was a very clean cut, professional looking fellow and came into the office for his interview as cool as he could be. But professing that he would do anything he could to help the investigation. He knew Jackie, he admitted that in the interview from the sale barn cafe. And we said, we have witnesses who place Gerald's truck at the scene where Jackie was last seen. He denied that and stated that he was at home.
[Narrator] Carnahan's alibi is his 19 year old stepdaughter.
We made contact with his stepdaughter who told us that she and Gerald had been out to dinner on that evening, but it was her story that they arrived back home and Gerald never left the house again, which was absolutely inconsistent with the eyewitnesses who'd seen his truck at the convenience store.
[Narrator] Carnahan also tells investigators that Jackie had briefly worked for his family's business.
She quit. There were allegations that Gerald had hit on her while she worked there. And then continued pursuing her after she left.
[Narrator] Then another witness calls in about that one of a kind truck.
And that witness turned out to be Gerald Carnahan's brother. If you drive straight across highway 160 from the convenience store, the road makes a sweeping curve. At that time, there was a large hayfield on the right, just west of Gerald's parents' home, and Jackie John's home. And he saw Gerald's truck parked in that field at that intersection.
[Narrator] The brother says that Gerald asked him not to give this information to police.
We asked Gerald to take a polygraph examination, which he agreed to do, but the following day at the appointed time, he failed to show up.
[Narrator] Dwight McNiel now has deep suspicions about Carnahan's alibi with no fewer than three witnesses saying his truck was near the crime scene that night. But the sheriff still has no solid proof linking Carnahan to the murder itself.
You had no direct evidence of any kind, either forensic evidence or witnesses that actually put Gerald with Jackie that night. Suspicion would've been all you had.
[Narrator] Sheriff McNiel could only bide his time and hope he can gather more evidence, but then he finds out that Carnahan is about to leave the country, traveling to Asia, to work at a family owned factory.
We became very desperate to keep him from getting on that plane to an Asian country. Beyond our extradition treaties.
[Narrator] McNiel asks prosecutors to charge Carnahan with tampering with evidence by pressuring his stepdaughter to give him an alibi.
Lying to a police officer, unlike a federal officer is not a crime. We asked for and received the warrant for tampering or manufacturing false evidence in a criminal case, it was a stretch, but it was all we had at the time. And as a result of getting the warrant, we were able to intercept him as he literally got on the plane at Los Angeles and the FBI took him into custody and took him off the plane.
[Narrator] Authorities in Nixa convene a grand jury with sweeping powers to look into the entire Jackie John's case.
The grand jury, as far as I'm concerned, its role is only one more investigative step in hopefully resolving this thing quickly.
It was our hope that it might buy us some more time to gather some more physical evidence. It would also put us in a position to interview him one more time.
When sheriff McNiel and the investigators talked to Gerald Carnahan, again, he still said he was home by 10 o'clock and did not leave the house. He said, I know I was home by 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock news was going and I never left again. I went up and went to bed.
[Narrator] The grand jury sends Carnahan to trial on the tempering charge based on the highly questionable alibi he gave to police. There's still no murder charge, but for the family, it's a step in the right direction.
This is what we've been waiting for. I want the guilty person taken care of and the innocent turn loose.
The judge throws out the charges for lack of physical evidence.
We were doing everything we could and everything in the book and then some, but we still weren't able to get it done.
[Narrator] With the charges dismissed and no more leads, the case of the murdered festival queen turns as cold as a winter day in the Ozarks.
It remained a cold case. It kind of fell off the radar.
Sometimes you're just at a point where you run out of leads. You run out of things that you can do and that's kind of heartbreaking.
The family looked at me as a total failure, that added to the pressure. The fact that the family was personally angry with me. Maybe I shouldn't have taken that so personally, but it's the only homicide that I ever worked while I was in law enforcement that I couldn't shake. You're trained not to do that, but there was no way I could get away from that one. No way.
(dramatic music) - I was born in Springfield, grew up there and in Nixa. So heard a lot about the Jackie John's case as I was growing up, it was kind of unavoidable. I think this case haunted a lot of people.
It changed the way that I raise my kids. I have a daughter she's 21 now. When she would think we were being too strict on her or something with her curfew, you know, I'd say I can't go through that again. You know, if something were to happen to you.
A young woman, I think she was around 18, was walking down the street when Gerald Carnahan pulls up next to her and attempts to kidnap her, and she managed to get away but he is apprehended.
It was really bizarre because, you know, if you're Gerald Carnahan, you know, everyone in town knows who you are. And he attempts to kidnap an 18 year old in a part of town that was not at all secluded. And he wasn't even alone. A friend of his was driving the car. So it was really a, a strange situation. I think there was a sense that he considered himself untouchable.
He was convicted of the attempted kidnapping, but did not a lengthy sentence, just a few years.
By the late 90s, Jackie's case wasn't on the nightly news and in some ways people had moved on.
I never lost hope. I always felt like that it was solvable. We just needed a break. Looking back, it was the most thoroughly invested case in the history of Christian county at that point. And perhaps even still today, but we just did not have that last piece of, of science to help us close the deal.
[Narrator] Sheriff McNiel's term had ended in 1988, just three years after Jackie's murder. But he keeps track of developments in DNA technology as the years pass.
I had discussed DNA profiling with the Springfield police department a few years earlier. And it was decided that we would not attempt to make a DNA comparison because there was a chance that we might wind up destroying the small sample that we had.
(dramatic music)
[Narrator] Sergeant Daniel Nash, the new cold case detective at the Missouri Highway Patrol picks up the baton.
DNA is becoming more mainstream now. And we can do a lot more than we could, but because the swab had been in the water for multiple days, it was a big concern that that may be for not, but we decided to do it anyway.
With just one little sample left, there was no telling what was gonna happen.
[Narrator] Miraculously enough of the sample has survived.
The samples did show degradation, but sperm cells are one of the most resistant cells in the body to breaking open and releasing their DNA. Their job is to get through to the egg, to fertilize it through a harsh environment. So the profile from the sperm fraction was nearly complete.
It's August of 2007. I remember distinctly Dan Nash informs me that the lab has actually finally been able to develop a DNA profile.
I immediately thought, oh my that's awesome, that's great. We have this DNA, but now who do we match it to? I immediately thought it's probably gonna be the boyfriend. I mean, in any kind of crime of violence like this, the statistics are very, very clear that usually it's someone that you know that harms you.
[Narrator] Although Jackie's boyfriend, Cody was never a serious suspect, detectives back in 1985, didn't have the tools to rule him out with complete certainty.
Cody was very helpful, very cooperative. We took a buccal swab out of the inside of his mouth and we sent that to the crime lab. It comes back and, and it's not Cody. The only suspect left is Gerald Carnahan. So at this point, we start trying to get a search warrant to get a DNA sample from Mr. Carnahan himself.
[Narrator] But Carnahan is out of the country and the investigators don't know when, or if he's coming back.
(dramatic music) Investigators finally have DNA evidence that could solve the Jackie John's murder case, but their prime suspect is overseas. Beyond the reach of the law.
We basically started working with Homeland security to notify us when Mr. Carnahan would, would come back to the United States and probably six or seven months after that, we get a call that says, Mr. Carnahan is on a flight and he's landing in New York. And then he's gonna be traveling to Springfield. We were concerned that he would not be cooperative. So we came up with a ruse that myself and another investigator went into the office of the, the company. And we told the receptionist lady that we were high school friends with Mr. Carnahan, that we were planning a reunion. We sat down and he says, I don't think I've remembered you guys from school. What was your names again? What's this all about? And then asked when we told him that we had a search warrant for his DNA. And we said, this is about the Jackie John's death investigation. And I saw a small little tear, right? Coming down the corner of his eye.
[Narrator] Sergeant Dan Nash collects the DNA swab and rushes it by plane to the state's main crime lab in Jefferson City.
There was an urgency because Gerald made frequent trips to China. He still had his passport. He had married a woman from China. So we had this great sense of, we need to get it done quickly before he has a chance to leave the country.
The crime lab person, Jason Wyckoff, is going to basically stay at the crime lab all night and work on this because we want to get this back immediately.
I began the initial steps of the processing, basically extracting the sample and I was able to get the results by the next day.
I think like at 5:30 in the morning, my phone rings. And I remember Jason saying, we got a match, it's him.
And it was a great day. It was August 10th, it was my birthday, and I couldn't have had a better gift. It felt like someone had lifted a car off of me. There was just a wave of relief that I experienced from that phone call that's hard to describe.
[Narrator] Prosecutor Darrell Moore, charges Carnahan with the rape and murder of Jackie Johns.
When they brought him in handcuffs, You know, that was a, a total relief. Finally, he's getting his justice, you know, right here. And I don't know, I, a lot of anger, lot of anger, I just, I just couldn't hardly stand to look at him.
There was a lot of anxiety in the courtroom. It was tense because we got into some very graphic testimony regarding the cause of death and the autopsy. And that was difficult for her family to see and listen to.
[Narrator] The family agrees to waive the death penalty, to shorten the trial in the hope that Jackie's ailing 83 year old father will live long enough to see justice served.
My dad just didn't feel like he could, was up to going up to the trial. So we just call him and updating all the time. The whole two weeks of the trial was so hard to, to rest. It, it, it was awful. So when they called us back in and said the jury has decided. We all piled back into the courtroom and just sit there and held hands and just waited.
I thought finally, he was gonna pay for what he did to her.
And then the judge read the verdict. He's guilty of first degree murder, he's guilty of rape. Even though the judge instructs everybody in the courtroom remain composed, don't react. You can imagine the family reacted.
It, it was just so hard to hold back screams. It was, it was elation.
I was at her dad's house. Tears, tears of joy. I mean, relief. He got to see it, thank goodness.
The jury sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Life without parole. (laughs) Well, I've got four or five news people I'm getting, I'm gonna make Hollywood before the days over.
It's not really closure, but I feel like there was justice, you know, finally. That's an awful feeling to think that he got away with murder for 22 years.
I would be less than honest if I didn't say there was an element of personal satisfaction because every police officer has one that they carry with them to the grave. And I was afraid I was gonna die with this one unsolved.
It's really hard to talk about her, to have your friend ripped outta your life and not have that person there anymore. It was the, probably the hardest thing I've ever gone through. So it was very hard.
What I miss most about Jackie, her friendship. Was always there if you needed a shoulder to cry on, I mean her smile. That was probably the best.
Every time I cross Springfield lake, every time I go by the livestock cafe, every time I go by that intersection, I still have thoughts of that case. I always will. I don't think there's any getting away from it. And I'm so thankful that we. That we were finally able to resolve that, but I'm just glad it's finally closed.