Murders
By the age of 22, Johnson was on her third marriage. Her first marriage produced a girl, born in 1971. Her second marriage produced a son in 1975 and her third marriage, to Earl Bowen, produced a son and daughter, born 1979 and 1980, respectively.
On September 25, 1977, Johnson claimed her 23-month-old James William Taylor was unresponsive when she attempted to wake him up from his nap. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was determined to be sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). [1]
On November 30, 1980, Johnson claimed her three-month-old daughter Tabitha Jenelle Bowen was blue when she went to wake her up from a nap. Paramedics were unable to revive Tabitha, and her death was also attributed to SIDS. [1]
In January 1981, 2-year-old Earl Wayne Bowen was found with a package of rat poison. He was treated and released from the hospital, after which his parents claimed he began to have seizures. On February 12, 1981, Earl went into cardiac arrest while being taken to the hospital during a seizure. He was revived and placed on life support; however, doctors pronounced him brain dead, and he was removed from life support three days later. [2]
Johnson claimed her 11-year-old daughter Jenny Ann Wright was complaining of chest pains, for which a doctor prescribed Tylenol and a rib belt. On February 21, 1982, paramedics found Jenny Ann face down on Johnson's bed with foam coming out of her mouth, but were unable to resuscitate her. [3] An autopsy indicated that Jenny Ann had died of asphyxia. [4]
Johnson and Bowen separated permanently, and Johnson remarried.
Arrest, confession and conviction
In December 1989, an article in The Atlanta Constitution questioned the deaths, and the cases were reopened. Investigators determined that each child's death was preceded seven to 10 days by marital problems between Johnson and Bowen. [5]
On July 3, 1989, Johnson was arrested, and she confessed to killing two of her children. After confrontations with Bowen, Johnson would suffocate the children by rolling her 250-pound body on them as they slept. [4] She claimed the motive was to punish her husband. [6] Johnson claimed she was not responsible for the deaths of her two youngest children.
By the beginning of her trial in April 1990, Johnson had retracted her confession. [4] On May 5, 1990, she was convicted of murder for the smothering death of one of her children and sentenced to life in prison. She was housed at Pulaski State Prison before being granted parole on March 23, 2020. [7] Martha's life and murders are the basis for a novel, “Underneath” by Lily Hoang, published in 2021 by Red Hen Press.
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Hank Earl Carr was a convicted criminal who, on May 19, 1998, shot his girlfriend's four-year-old son with a rifle, was arrested, and then escaped from his handcuffs and killed two Tampa detectives and a Florida state trooper. Carr then barricaded himself in a convenience store and held a clerk hostage before committing suicide with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Raymond Martinez Fernandez and Martha Jule Beck were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to twenty victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.
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Lyda Southard, also known as Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood, was an American female suspected serial killer. It was suspected that she had killed four of her husbands, a brother-in-law, and her daughter by using arsenic poisoning derived from flypaper in order to obtain life insurance money.
Clarence Arnold Elkins Sr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, and the rape and assault of his wife's niece, Brooke Sutton. He was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of his wife's six-year-old niece who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator.
Laurie Show was a 16-year-old sophomore at Conestoga Valley High School who was stalked by her classmates and murdered on December 20, 1991, in the United States. Her body was discovered in her Lancaster, Pennsylvania home by her mother Hazel Show with her throat having been slit. Her classmates Lisa Michelle Lambert, Tabitha Buck, and Lawrence "Butch" Yunkin were all subsequently charged with her murder.
A Good Marriage is a 2014 American psychological thriller film directed by Peter Askin and written by Stephen King, based on King's novella of the same name, from the 2010 collection Full Dark, No Stars. It stars Joan Allen, Anthony LaPaglia, Kristen Connolly and Stephen Lang.
The Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God, also known as the Church of the Lamb of God, was a violent Latter Day Saint group founded by Ervil LeBaron that is responsible for dozens of deaths over two decades. After his death, it was run by several of his sons.
Louise Porton is a British double murderer who came to public attention in 2019 when she was convicted of murdering her two children as they "got in the way" of her sex life. Between 2 January and 1 February 2018, she repeatedly attacked and then killed her two daughters, one aged three years and the other aged 17 months. Suspicion soon fell on her when she was noted to show little concern at the unexplained deaths of her two children only 18 days apart, and a police investigation found that she had made a number of incriminating internet searches at the time attempting to find out how to successfully murder her children and cover up her crimes. At trial, she was convicted by unanimous jury decision and sentenced to a minimum of 32 years' imprisonment. She is imprisoned at HM Prison Foston Hall.
