Gerald Carnahan convicted of first-degree murder and forcible rape of Jackie Johns in Springfield, MO

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Clayton, MO (KSDK)-- The long awaited march towards justice has finally come for a Springfield area family, whose daughter was abducted, raped and killed before being thrown into Lake Springfield 25 years ago.

Trial for 52-year-old Gerald Carnahan will begin today in St. Louis County Court, before Judge Michael Jamison. The case was moved to the court in Clayton due to extreme media coverage of the incident in the Missouri Ozarks in southwest Missouri, and the need for an impartial jury.

Carnahan is charged with first-degree murder and forcible rape in the death of 20-year-old Jackie Johns of Nixa, south of Springfield, in Christian County.

Johns was abducted in June 1985 outside a convenience store in Greene County and was never seen alive again. Dozens of detectives investigated the case and helped in the search for the victim.

Authorities located the woman's car the following day and her nude body in the lake several days later. Officials say the woman had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned with a tire iron before being tossed into Lake Springfield.

Several last minute motions are expected to be decided Monday morning before the jury selection process begins. Opening statements could be heard as early as Tuesday.

Carnahan was long suspected in the case of Jackie Johns disappearance and murder, but was never charged until 2007 when a DNA match linked him to the victim.

If convicted of the charges, Carnahan is facing a life prison term with no chance of release. The death penalty in the case was waived after the elderly father of the victim told prosecutors his family preferred closure in Jackie's death versus a long drawn out appeals process that accompanies capital punishment cases in Missouri.

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September 14, 2010


Clayton -- Ten women and four men from St. Louis County will begin hearing evidence today as prosecutors begin presenting their case against Springfield businessman Gerald Carnahan.

Carnahan, 52, is charged with the rape and murder of 20-year-old Jackie Johns of Nixa, whose disappearance and death in June 1985 has been one of the Ozarks' longest unresolved cases.

Although a suspect in Johns' death early on, Carnahan was not charged until August 2007, after authorities developed DNA evidence they say links him to the crime.

Due to the intense media coverage of Johns' death in the Springfield area over the years, attorneys agreed to hold the trial in Clayton to ensure an impartial jury.

Starting with a pool of 40 people late Monday morning, attorneys questioned potential jurors into the afternoon.

Carnahan, his hair grayer than at the time of his arrest three years ago, appeared to listen intently as he sat in a dark suit with defense attorneys Dee Wampler, Joe Passanise and Adam Woody.

After striking several prospective jurors based on answers given earlier in the day, the prosecution and defense each were able to strike seven more, leaving a final group of 14, including two alternates.

Passanise asked that measures be taken to conceal from the jury which of its members are alternates so that all would pay equal attention through the trial, which is expected to last up to two weeks.

Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore stated no opposition and Circuit Judge Michael Jamison -- who called it an unusual request -- agreed to avoid referring to the final two jurors as alternates, although their seating arrangements and earlier numbering could render the effort moot.

The jury is not being sequestered during the trial, but Jamison instructed them Monday not to talk about or research the case on their own and to avoid news reports about the trial.

CLAYTON, Mo. -- After initially being evenly split for and against a murder conviction, a St. Louis County jury convicted Gerald Carnahan of first-degree murder and forcible rape on Thursday afternoon for the death of Jackie Johns 25 years ago in Greene County. Barring a successful appeal, the 52-year-old man likely will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of the rest of his life in prison without chance of parole. After a separate sentencing hearing, the jury then recommended a life (30-year) sentence on the rape conviction; that crime carries a range of five years to life in prison. The jury recommended the two sentences be served consecutively. Circuit Judge Michael Jamison will hold a sentencing hearing, possibly in late October, at which he will hear attorneys' motions and recommendations, and then formally issue a sentence, assuming he thinks the trial outcome is fair.

The jury said shortly after 2:30 p.m. that it reached a verdict. The verdict was read about 3:10 p.m. Carnahan's family gasped at the verdict. Johns' family, including her three sisters, exhaled in relief.

Later, Carnahan's wife started crying uncontrollably. Carnahan and his wife have two daughters, ages 6 and 8. His family has told reporters that his wife, who is from Asia, had no idea when she married him that he was a suspect for the crimes in 1985.

After the verdict was read, bailiffs put handcuffs on Carnahan. His defense attorney asked that he be allowed to talk to his family one last time. The judge didn't answer him and the bailiffs led him out of the courtroom. He spoke briefly with his father and attorney during the break before the trial resumed for the sentencing hearing.

Investigators long believed that Carnahan raped and beat Johns, 20, of Nixa in June 1985 and dumped her body in Lake Springfield. They started looking at him as a suspect within a week of the murder but didn't have sufficient evidence to charge him until three years ago. He was charged in 2007 after criminalists said DNA evidence in semen found on Johns' body matched Carnahan's DNA.

DNA analysis wasn't available in the 1980s. The Springfield Police Department got a grant in 2003 that let it afford to look at cold cases such as this one. The SPD tested the DNA from samples taken from Jackie Johns' body and car but wasn't able to match it to a known person.

In 2006, the Missouri State Highway Patrol got a similar grant for cold case analysis, and again tested the evidence and got a DNA match to Carnahan after getting a search warrant to take a swab of his saliva. At the trial, a Highway Patrol criminalist testified he didn't know Springfield police sent the same semen evidence to a lab three years earlier.

Defense attorneys questioned a lack of a report about the testing done in 2003. It's possible that missing report was a fortuitous break for investigators and prosecutors. The Highway Patrol criminalist might not have retested the evidence if he'd known about the previous test.

Defense attorneys challenged the validity of the DNA evidence, based on how crime scene samples were stored and handled for 25 years. Defense attorney Dee Wampler said the DNA evidence appears to be the key factor in the conviction, even though defense attorneys raised questions about that evidence extensively during the trial. He said in an interview that it's evident that jurors put great faith in the science of evidence analysis.
Wampler said he believes he has 50 or more grounds for appeals, and plans to use them.

The trial was held in St. Louis County because of extensive publicity about the case in Springfield. The jury deliberated for eight hours on Wednesday and five-and-a-half hours on Thursday. It heard testimony and attorneys' arguments over seven days. The jury had choices of not guilty, guilty of first-degree murder, and guilty of second-degree murder, as well as not guilty of rape, guilty of forcible rape, and guilty of rape, a lesser charge than forcible rape.

In the sentencing portion of the trial, Janis Johns Walker, 59, Jackie Johns' oldest sister talked about the impact of the murder on her and her family. Her mother died in 1988 with cancer but Walker says that's not what killed her.
"My mom grieved herself to death. She'd sit and cry and cry, and it took a toll on her," Walker said. "Holidays were never the same. Jackie was gone and that destroyed us. It weighed on all of us all these years."

"I prayed all day long," Walker told a reporter after the verdict. "I was afraid he'd get out of it. Now he won't kill anyone else, and I know Jackie and mom are looking down today, smiling. We finally got him."

Walker said she waited 25 years, three months and 6 days for this day.

"We've always though Carnahan was the guilty party," said said. "Jackie was my youngest sister; she was like my baby."

Jackie Johns' father, Les, received the news by a telephone call from his three daughters as reporters waited with him at his home in Nixa. His reaction was emotional, but muted. Happy, with tears in his eyes, he felt vindicated at the news that he said he knew all along: that Carnahan was responsible for his daughter's death. He lives in the same home where Jackie Johns lived when she was murdered.

Les Johns rejects the idea that the verdict will change is life.

"There's no such thing as closure," he said.

Les Johns, 83, is in poor health and wasn't able to attend the trial. He followed news reports about the trial and got updates from his daughters. Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Darrell Moore decided not to seek a death penalty in order to get the case to trial faster because Les Johns feared he wouldn't live long enough if the trial was delayed any more. Johns said, even if an appeal is successful, it won't change his opinion of Carnahan's guilt.

Carnahan's family declined to talk to reporters about the conviction.

The case caps Moore's career as a prosecutor. He was a young assistant prosecuting attorney when Jackie Johns was murdered. He chose this year not to run for re-election to a fourth term as prosecuting attorney, and lost a Republican Party primary race for U.S. representative from the 7th District. His term ends on Dec. 31.

"We were looking at someone facing life in prison," said jury forewoman Deborah McLaughlin. "We did not take that lightly. It was just really tough."

McLaughlin says the rape conviction came fairly quickly.

"DNA doesn't lie. DNA was there; nobody can manipulate DNA. DNA is DNA. That was what was in my mind. I felt like, if his DNA was there for the rape, that he went on to commit the murder. It was a very, very brutal rape, in my opinion. I just was prety positive he went on to commit the murder," she said.

She said not every juror felt the same way. McLaughlin says the first vote on murder was split, 6-6.

'I didn't feel like we had a motive. Nobody saw her go with him. We didn't have any evidence on how it was initiated," McLaughlin said. "There were no fingerprints. We didn't have the evidence to say he was in the car with the fingerprints."

She says jurors hashed it out, going through every possible scenario. The decision was made: guilty. And it wasn't until the very end when they were let in on Carnahan's other convictions that she thinks all the jurors finally felt at peace.

In the sentencing phase of the trial, Moore told the jury about Carnahan's criminal record, something that he was prohibited from doing during the guilty-or-not-guilty portion of the trial. He listed these convictions:
-- Jan. 13, 1994, second-degree burglary of a business, two-year prison sentence;
-- Jan. 13, 1994, stealing from that business, four-year prison sentence;
-- Jan. 13, 1994, arson at that business, three-year prison sentence;
-- Jan. 10, 1994, attempted kidnapping of a girl in Springfield in 1993;
-- June 1, 1994, assault of a law enforcement officer, 11 months in county jail;
-- June 1, 1994, unlawful use of a weapon, one-year prison sentence; and
-- other prison sentences for attempted kidnapping and tampering with evidence.

"I was confident I had made the right decision. I was comfortable with it. When I heard the charges, especially when he got to the kidnapping charge, my cake was decorated," said McLaughlin.

Moore said he doesn't feel like Wampler's appeal will go anywhere. He said he is just relieved that this case finally has a resolution, especially at the end of his time as prosecutor.

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