Trailer: Beyond All Repair

Beyond All Repair

WBUR

Criminal Justice, True Crime

4.6 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2024

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Imagine if, one day, you are accused of something. Something horrible, violent, heinous. Something you swear you did not do, and nothing you say can convince anyone otherwise — even the people closest to you.

That’s Sophia Johnson’s story.

Sophia was starting fresh: A new life, a new husband, a baby on the way. But it all unraveled on January 10, 2002, when her mother-in-law Marlyne Johnson was found bludgeoned to death in her home. Days later, Sophia was charged with the murder.

To this day, Sophia swears she didn’t do it. But someone says they witnessed it — her own brother.

When family betrays family, who do you believe? In this story of a sibling rivalry beyond compare, WBUR’s Amory Sivertson turns the clock back. She reexamines an unsolved case, a family torn apart, and a woman who wasn’t believed.

From WBUR and ZSP Media, Beyond All Repair is a 10-part true crime investigation into a cold case. The series ends with an answer.

The first two episodes of Beyond All Repair will drop on March 7, 2024. Listen and follow Beyond All Repair on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Listener note: This show has descriptions of violence and strong language.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	W-B-B-U-R Podcasts, Boston.
0:09.0	Did you kill Marlene Johnson?
0:11.0	I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked.
0:17.0	How could that be when you were put on trial for murder? Because I wasn't asked. was told you know I know this happened we
0:24.6	know you killed Marlene just told me what happened tell us how.
0:27.8	Sophia Johnson was 23 years old and newly married when she was accused of brutally murdering her mother-in-law.
0:36.5	Her head was beaten in with fireplace tongs. It was shock shock and I'm going to sleep in jail tonight.
0:44.0	Sophia swears she didn't do it, but someone says they witnessed it.
0:49.0	The person kind of took it was like stocking off of their face. It turned out to be my sister.
0:57.8	Two siblings at odds at the center of a murder.
1:05.0	My brother did this to me.
1:07.0	Just the blatant lies.
1:09.0	This just feels like such a he said she said.
1:12.0	And that's all we have for the past three years
1:15.0	Sophia has been telling me her side of the story about her trial about going into
1:20.2	hiding and about the son she was pregnant with when the murder happened and hasn't seen since he was born.
1:27.1	The only thing he will ever know is that I was accused.
1:31.1	His grandmother is dead. This is my legacy. This is forever, my legacy. Sophia's legacy and life just seems so fubar, someone told me,
1:50.6	fished up beyond all repair. Now more than 20 years after her mother-in-law's
1:56.1	murder, Sophia's hoping she still has time to change that legacy. The
2:01.4	question is, is she telling the truth?
2:05.0	I don't know.
	...

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