Episode 185: Jason Carroll
Sharon with her daughter Melonie
36-year-old Sharon Johnson was an engineer at a computer manufacturing company and was described as brilliant, kind and a wonderful mom. She had a 14-year-old daughter named Melonie who she adored, and she was 7 months pregnant with another girl that she was thrilled about.
On July 29th, 1988, Sharon was last seen at the mall in Bedford, New Hampshire looking at baby clothes. Her body was found the next morning in a wooded construction site in a rural area of Bedford about 20 minutes from the mall. She had been left unclothed from the waist up, and she had been strangled and stabbed 14 times. Devastatingly, her unborn child also did not survive the attack. It was determined that Sharon had been murdered the night before on July 29th, the same day she was last seen.
Police later learned that Sharon’s husband, Ken Johnson, had asked 19-year-old Tony Pfaff to move Sharon’s car on the night of the murder. Her car, a 1983 Subaru, was found at the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester, New Hampshire. Police looked into Tony and found that he had dated Ken Johnson’s 17-year-old adopted daughter Lisa from a previous marriage. Tony worked with another 19-year-old boy named Jason Carroll at an industrial kitchen cleaning business, and police learned that Jason hadn’t shown up to work the night of the murder. It seemed to investigators that Ken Johnson had hired the two teenagers to help murder his pregnant wife.
Jason Carroll was questioned by police roughly 18 months after the murder on November 24th, 1989 at the National Guard Armory. Here, Jason told police that he had been at the murder scene with both Tony Pfaff and Sharon’s husband Ken Johnson, but did not admit to any further involvement. The next morning, Jason told his parents he wanted to recant his statement. New Hampshire State Police Sergeant Roland Lamy was assigned to the case, and Jason tried to reach him to recant his statement. Sergeant Lamy didn’t answer, but Karen Carroll, Jason’s mother, was also a police officer with the Bedford police and called Bedford Police Captain Leo Morency. Captain Morency then had Jason drive himself down to the station to talk further.
What began as an interview quickly turned into hostile questioning and a heated interrogation, starting with Sergeant Lamy yelling over and over again that he did not believe Jason when he denied any involvement in the murder. At about 2:45 p.m., Jason requested that his mom be present for the interview, and Sergeant Lamy left the room to get Karen. While he was gone, Jason told Captain Morency and Sergeant Scott that the original statement he made the night before about how he was at the murder scene with Tony Pfaff and Ken Johnson was true. He also said that he was afraid of both of them.
Sergeant Lamy told Karen Carroll on two separate occasions that when she entered the room, she was entering as Jason’s mom, not as a Bedford police officer, and her role was to be there for Jason as his mother as opposed to taking part in the interrogation. The interview began again and was recorded at 3:20 p.m. What the audio tape recorder picked up was shocking as Karen began interrogating her son so aggressively that Jason was in tears. Both Karen and Sergeant Lamy raised their voices at Jason to such an extent that Captain Morency and Sergeant Scott later testified that it was one of the most emotional and intense interrogations they had ever witnessed in their careers. Karen at one point screamed at her son “If you put a knife in that woman, I wanna know!” Jason broke down in tears multiple times over the course of the questioning, at one point lowering himself to the floor and pulling his knees up to his chest. Despite Karen being in the room and taking part in the interrogation when she wasn’t supposed to have any role at all, she went so far as to promise leniency to Jason.
After intense interrogation, his mother screaming at him, and multiple episodes of sobbing, Jason told his mother and police that he stabbed Sharon three times in the back. He then said that he and Tony Pfaff agreed to murder Sharon for $2000. Jason told police that he and Tony tricked Sharon into being driven from the mall to the remote construction site and that he had stabbed Sharon first. The weapon was his pocket knife. The interview then stopped when Jason broke down and asked repeatedly to go home.
On November 27th, 1989, Jason agreed to be interviewed again. During this interview, Jason said that he had been paid $5,000 and he and Tony forced Sharon into the car at the mall instead of luring her to the construction site. After hours of incessant questioning and interviews over just four days, Jason was charged with capital murder.
19-year-old Tony Pfaff was also put through a long interrogation and confessed to his involvement in Sharon’s murder. He also recanted his statement and pleaded not guilty. In 1991, prosecutors dropped all charges against Ken Johnson due to lack of evidence. Both Jason and Tony had not wanted to testify against him. Tony went through a 16-day trial in 1991 and was found not guilty.
Jason later recanted his confession and pleaded not guilty. After two trials, Jason Carroll was found guilty of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. In 1992, he was sentenced to 46 years to life in prison.
Jason now has a legal team through the New England Innocence Project, and in November of 2022, they filed a petition for post-conviction DNA testing. Documents as well as physical evidence from the crime scene, including several knives, a stained white long sleeve shirt found near the crime scene, and fingernail clippings taken from Sharon to obtain samples of blood found under her fingernails from defensive wounds, were all hidden away. This evidence was contained in a box that was found in October of 2022 inside the old headquarters of the New Hampshire Department of Justice, which was being cleaned out. Jason’s legal team is seeking to have the evidence DNA tested. Days prior to a hearing about the evidence, a second box of hidden evidence in the case was found.
Jason’s attorney also said in a previous interview with NHPR that Jason’s statements to police contained “glaring inconsistencies” compared to other evidence. Jason told police that he stabbed Sharon with a pocketknife, which had a 2” blade, but it had been determined that there was a 4” deep stab wound to Sharon’s back, which is where Jason said he stabbed her. Jason and Tony also described the murder weapon differently, said entirely different dollar amounts when telling police how much Ken paid them, and Jason wasn’t able to pick Ken Johnson out of a photo lineup and said he had a beard when he didn’t.
Many of Sharon’s family and friends, including her daughter Melonie who was just 14 at the time of the murder, feel that Jason is responsible and do not agree that he was wrongfully convicted.
Jason’s legal team fought to have the evidence that was hidden away in the basement DNA tested, but Assistant Attorney General Charles Bucca had fought for almost 18 months against allowing the testing. In a written motion he stated “There is no scenario where testing these items will exonerate the defendant.” In April of 2024, he reversed his opinion. Testing is still ongoing at this time.
No one has ever been exonerated for a murder conviction in the state of New Hampshire, and if Jason’s legal team succeeds, he will be the first.
Image sources:
New England innocence.org - “Case update: Our fight for Jason Carroll”
daily mail.co.uk - “He confessed to her mom’s gruesome murder. Decades on she is in fresh agony as the case takes a shocking twist”