Hey, it's Jason Moon. I'm a senior reporter and producer on the document team from NHPR.

My latest project, Bear Brook Season 2, a true crime story, is out now. And maybe you haven't

followed the Bear Brook feed, so we're dropping the whole series here. You'll find out later

in this series that the story is not over.

So if you want to get updates, make sure you subscribe to Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening.

There have been a lot of stories told about Sharon Johnson.

My favorite ones are the ones told by her friends. Connie Howard met Sharon in

1977. Probably Connie says in the laundry room of their apartment building in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Connie was 17, living on our own with a newborn baby. Sharon was 25, another young, single mom.

I think I thought I could maybe learn a lot from her.

She was just really smart and had her act together.

You know, she had a good job.

She had a nice apartment and seemed to be climbing the ladder.

Sharon was an engineer at a computer manufacturing company. Connie says back then in the late

70s she'd never met a woman who was an engineer. Sharon had her own car, was saving to buy her own house.

To Connie, Sharon just seemed confident in control of her own life.

Made you think that you could do it. You know, a 17-year-old girl with a baby, I didn't have any

direction. So it, you know, it really was a good thing to see another woman like that.

The two of them hit it off.

Connie felt herself nestling in under Sharon's wing.

Connie needed a driver's license, so Sharon let her borrow her car to take the test.

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