DEATH ROW SERIES: Toforest Johnson

Hi, guys, Welcome to Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and dive in to right now in True Crime. We have a few updates to catch up on and go over, and then we are going to get into today's episode. First thing we're going to talk about is that the main shooter, Robert Card, was found dead on Friday night. Not a real shock to me. I figured that that's what the ending was going to be like. I didn't think that he was gonna turn himself in or go willingly with cops, So I'm not really surprised that this happened. I know, Friday night, when I was watching the press conference, they were talking about how they were in touch with the victims' families as soon as they had found Robert dead, and they also were in touch with his family, and they said that the majority of his family members were being very open and cooperative trying to help law enforcement find him. So it's really sad and unfortunate because this whole tragedy really could have been prevented, and it's sad that it came to what it came to, with so many people losing their life when they were all just simply out for a night at the bowling Alley. Older people, children, those in between. It's all just really sad and tragic and it never should happen. Now, this next story is crazy to me, and I'm so glad that it is now resolved at least what we know. So this is going to be so reminiscent of Lori Valo Chad Daybell. These people are from the same area and traveling into the same area. It is actual deja vus. So let me kind of break this down. So Friday night or Friday during the day, they said that there was a guy named Blaze Thibodeaux who's a teen and he was missing. He's from Arizona and he was missing. So he was essentially taken by his mother who was named Spring Thibodeaux, and his uncle who is named Brooke Haale, and they essentially took him and his sister and they were, I don't want to say, on the run, but they were on the move and it was a whole like stodial situation because they had crossed the Gilbert, Arizona area into Idaho. If this is reminiscent of Lori Vaalo, it's because those same exact areas were involved in Lori Vallo and this is a whole situation. So there was an emotion for emergency temporary orders that were filed by Blaze's father and it was pretty much filed right after Blaze was taken from his home in Gilbert, Arizona to Boise, Idaho. And this mom, Blaze's mom had formed similar beliefs to Laurie about the end of the world and it was just a whole thing, and they thought that they had to move away from Arizona to Idaho to have like the end of the world second coming saving Jesus all the things, like all the Lori Valochidabil things. And another name that pops up in the story because it has some eerie crossovers to Valo Dabel is Julie Row. Now, Julie Row, if you listen to my Summer series, is the author that originally started all of the near death experience stuff in the Mormon faith, and she became really famous in the Mormon Cure. And then Chad had near death experiences allegedly and that took off from there, and Julie Rowe and Chad Dabil did like book tours together and that's how he ended up meeting Lori Valo. So this is so reminiscent and intertwined. So this gal Spring Thibodeau was basically thinking I need to go to Idaho for the second Coming and had to take Blaze with her because Blaize was like a merchant and she needed to take him with her. So she also got her brother involved again, another parallel between Alex Cox and Lorii Vaalo with now Spring and her brother Brooke, which the names are a lot for me. I'm trying to not think that this is weird. But anyways, this whole thing is a mess. So as of last night, they hadn't been found, but they did find finally find them. They went to cross over into Alaska, so they were able to capture them at the border. The kids are safe. And then Spring and Brooke have been arrested and they are now in custody and there's like you know, extradition warrants and a bunch of other mumbo jumbo. But this could have been really bad. The good thing about this is East Sideaho News, Nate Eaton, Justin Lumm all those people were on top of it and getting the word out there, talking to different family members, and luckily everyone was privy to the information and we were able to luckily locate the two kids safely, because this could have gone really, really bad. This was a Lori Valow two point zero, and I'm so glad that it happened the way it did, and media did what media does best and they got the story out, and luckily two kids have been saved from whatever the hell these two were going to be up to. Because from what I've heard, Blaize is just a normal sixteen year old kid. He did not buy into all of the beliefs that his mom and his uncle had, and he would never have willingly gone along with something like that. So they obviously took him away from his normal life under circumstances that either they lied to him about it or they just took him away without any regard for how he felt about anything. So thankfully he and his sister are safe, and his mom and uncle are going to be appropriately taken through the core system, as they should be, because it essentially is like kidnapping because he's only sixteen, So that is that story. It was a lot for me to try to figure out how to fit that into such a short little right now in true crime tidbit, but I definitely wanted to touch on that because it is so reminiscent of Valor and it just really it struck a nerve with me when I heard about it. It really did. Okay, last thing I want to talk about real quick is Lindsey Clancy. She is the Massachusetts mom who killed her children during a alleged postpartum psychosis episode and then also tried to kill herself by jumping out of the window and ended up paralyzing herself. Her kids did, unfortunately pass away, and she was a nurse. She didn't have any postpartum issues with her first two kids, but after her third she had this postpartum psychosis and was on a bunch of different medicines for it. She had been back and forth to therapy and there was just a lot going on. So she ended up, like I said, taking the lives of her three children, attempting to take her life. And there's a lot more coming out about it now because her husband, of course, in his statement, you know, really I don't want to say put the blame on her mental illness, but that's pretty much what he was alluding to. Like Lindsay would never hurt her children. She was a good mom, and you know, she really thrived in her job. She was a neonatal ICU nurse, Like she did all of these different things. And it's not that I don't believe that. I do believe that, and I do think that two things can be true at the same time. So in Lindsay's story, it was alleged that she had kind of plotted her husband leaving the house so she could be alone with the kids, because up until that point she had been having not so great days and they didn't want to leave her alone, so she always had someone there. But this particular day, she was having a good day, so she had asked her husband to go pick up some medicine for one of their kids at the pharmacy and also to pick up dinner. And there had been reports saying that she did that on purpose so she could be alone with the kids, and she even like mapped out how long it would take for him to get from point A to point B to see how long she would have with the kids. And now it's saying that she was googling ways to kill, which that's never a good look. And like I said, both things can be true at once, So she could have been in a state of psychosis and thinking I need to kill my children. The voices are telling me to kill my children and looking up ways to do it. I guess, I mean, I guess that two things can be true at once. But it's going to be really interesting to see how all of this comes out and comes to fruition, because shortly after this happened, she was hospitalized. You know, she's paralyzed and in pretty much a state of not really being aware of what's going on, and she asked she had a whiteboard. She's obviously not speaking at this point, so she had a whiteboard, and she asked, do I need to get a lawyer? So she obviously knew something awry had happened. She knew something had gone wrong, and she knew that she had rights and she potentially needed to get a lawyer. So it's going to be really interesting to see all of the mental health professionals weigh in on her case, the people that had been giving her these different medicines and the different diagnoses that she had. To see the situation here, it always brings me kind of back to Andrea Yates and her whole situation. I don't know. It's reminiscent to me of that, But then I also feel like there's other aspects of this case that are going to be a little bit different, And I don't know, I feel like you can be having a mental health break and think that you have to do this horrible thing to your family and also have though the thought in your head to look up ways to do it. I don't really know. I really don't know. I don't know what I think about this one. This one's a toughie. So I will definitely keep you guys updated on this. It's a ever evolving, constantly new information coming out case, and I just I don't know. I know mental health is real, and I know that there is such a thing as postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and different things can happen to people, and some of the events that you're put on for those things are not helpful and they can cause horrible things to happen, you to have horrible thoughts. So it's sad. Overall, it's sad. Three kids lost their lives and their father lost their kid, his kids, and he's also lost his wife in a roundabout way, so it's just tragic. It's all around a really tragic story. So with all of that, we are going to go ahead and lead into today's episode. All right, guys, jumping in to another Death Row series case. I'm trying to do one a month and then I realized that October's almost over and I needed to get one done, and this one is kind of in the media right now, So we are going to talk about it. And that is the in my opinion, alleged wrongful conviction and sentenced to death row of a guy named to Forrest Johnson. We are going to talk all about it. We're going to talk about the trial and the case itself and why to Forrest is still in death row and why they're refusing to even think about getting him a new trial when obviously, by the end of this episode you're going to realize how corrupt this whole system is in regards to this type of situation with DeForest. It's really sad, and this case takes place out of Alabama. So we are going to go ahead and dive right into it. So this case was in nineteen ninety five. It was the nineteen ninety five murder of Jefferson County Sheriff's deputy William Hardy. He was forty nine when he was killed, and he had worked as a deputy for twenty three years. He also held a job as a security guard to bring money in for his family. On the night of July nineteenth, he was working security at Crown Sterling Sweet's Hotel in Birmingham, and somewhere between midnight and one am, he was shot in the head, execution style in the hotel parking lot. There was no eyewitnesses to the crime and there was no weapon that was ever recovered. There were a few hotel guests that had heard two back to back gunshots. This deputy was reported to be a great person. He was very quiet, stuck to himself. He was hard working and very loved by all that knew him. He left behind a wife, two children, four step children, and the community of law enforcement officers that mourned his death when he was killed. So how To Force ended up becoming involved and eventually arrested and charged with this murder. I'm going to tell you about it. It's so round about crazy that this whole thing even happened like this. So to Forrest said that at the time of the shooting. This was his alibi that he was with his friend at a Birmingham night club when this police officer was killed. So three hours after the murder, to Forrest and his friend had picked up two female friends and they were planning to rent a room at the Super eight motel was in Homewood and that's when they were approached and questioned by police in the parking lot. So police had responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle and after searching the group and the vehicle, they released all of them except to Forest, who police arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant and he was taken to the Birmingham City Jail and was able to get out a few hours later. So already they're zeroing in onto Forest for what other reason other than he was in a parking lot of a hotel late at night and had a traffic warrant. Maybe that's really it. So there's court records at stay. A week after the murder, a teenager named Yolanda Chambers went to the police. Chambers, who was fifteen at the time, was one of the two female friends that was with to Forrest and his friend when they were questioned by police after William Hardy was killed. Yolanda told police that she was with the group and had witnessed William's murder, but would go on to change her story about who killed him countless times. The other female had told police that Yolanda made up the story in pursuit of the reward money, which is a terrible reason to frame somebody for murder so you can make five thousand dollars, you're shady. But despite that, police took Yolanda at her word and they charged four young men with capital murder, including to Forrest and his friend. Eighteen months later, Yolanda changed her story yet again and told the police that two of the suspects that they had arrested were not involved, so they therefore were released. So that left to Forest Johnson and his friend in jail facing trial for the murder of William Hardy, and they both claimed that they were innocent and they had nothing to do with it. There was a pre trial hearing for to Forrest and Yolanda Chambers changed her story again and she admitted on the stand that she wasn't there when William Hardy was killed, and she also said that to Forrest and his friend, whose last name is Ford, were also not there, and she testified that she made up the story because of pressure from police. Shocking, not shocking. So, despite her coming forward and saying this at a pre trial hearing under oath, the charges against to Forrest and his friend remained, they didn't drop the charges because she said, oh, this isn't true, even though that's literally all that they went on to charge them was her word, and she's going back on her word and they're not taking her out her word. I do not understand this line of thinking in the police departments. I hear it all of the time. There are so many cases like this where somebody implicates somebody and then later come back and say, oh, I was just kidding. Never mind, that didn't really happen. I lied about it, and instead of actually investigating it and looking into it, they just stick with the initial charges and they never really go and deep dive and investigate into well, maybe this person is telling the truth now. They were lying then and we believe them and now they're telling the truth, and they just stick with the original narrative. I think, honestly, a lot of it is pressure to solve some of these higher profile cases where they want to arrest somebody and they already have a suspect, so let's just keep up with our narrative and carry on with who we think potentially could have done it. Even if they're saying that they didn't do it, we're still just going to stick with it, just so we have a suspect and we can say case closed. So to Forest, family members say, at the time of his arrest, he had been somewhat just not like acting like himself. He had been partying, he had been detailing old cars, chasing women, but he wasn't into anything dangerous and he wasn't doing anything bad. He wasn't out killing people. He wasn't hurting anybody. He had a few arrests on his record for drug possession, but it's not out of the ordinary for things like that to have been the case back in those days. And it doesn't make you a bad person or a murderer just because you have a few things on your record like that. When they ultimately arrested to Forrest for the murder of William Hardy, they had gone to his cousin's house to try to find him because that's where he had been staying and to Forrest wasn't there at the time, and the cousin called to Forrest and to Forest was like, tell them that this is where I'm at. I don't know anything about a murder, but tell them this is where I am. And that's when cops went there and picked him up, and they arrested him and charged him with this murder, even though he was saying like, I have nothing to hide, I'm here. They can come talk to me, but I don't know anything about a murder. I wasn't involved. I wasn't there. So to Forrest and his friend were each tried twice for William Hardy's murder. The first two trials ended in mistrials. The jury was not able to reach a verdict, and in his friend Ford's second trial, the jury of quitted him on all charges and he is free today. So at least that is one justice that happened in this case because he was not involved. Also, I need to say that his friend Ford was in a wheelchair, So the fact that he could commit this heinous crime on a police officer and get away without anybody seeing him is pretty not possible in my Allegedly, in the second trial against to Forrest Johnson. He was convicted, and since it's to death, so much of the evidence against the two men was pretty much the same. The few key differences in to Forrest a second trial that his current attorneys have argued amounted to basically, there was a shoddy defense and they really didn't have much to really defend him, and that comes down to the court system. You don't always get the best defense attorneys in a situation like this. So the case against Forrest is pretty thin. There wasn't really a whole lot. There was no physical evidence that tied him to the crime. There was no eyewitnesses that placed him at the scene, and him and his friend had the same alibi, and there was ten different witnesses that saw them at the night club at the time that William Hardy was killed. The original lawyers that to Forrest had only hired one investigator, and this person was so overcome with his own personal problems and incompetence that he did nothing to help to Forest's defense. So there was a witness named Violet Ellison who had claimed that she had overheard a phone call from the jail in which a man who had identified himself as to Forrest said that he had killed William Hardy, and this Violet Ellison testified against Johnson, but not against Ford. So these phone calls happened in August of nineteen ninety five when Violet Ellison's daughter Katrina, had a boyfriend who was locked up in the county jail who would call her and talk from the jail payphone, and they had an arrangement in which Katrina would make a three way call for him so that he could talk to other friends without having to pay for a new call, and she began doing this for other men incarcerated in the jail and testified that she connected several three way calls to an inmate who said his name was to Forrest. This is a long, convoluted story, so Violet Ellison claimed that she eavesdropped on at least four phone calls between this man and other people, and in the first call, she heard him tell a young woman named Daisy that he had shot William Hardy in the head, and she also testified that he implicated one of the other men who was originally charged in the murder but was later released. During the second trial, they asked Violet why she came forward with this story six days after the phone call allegedly happened, and she said she came forward because she couldn't sleep at night, And I personally think that was a big smoking gun for why he was convicted and sentenced to death. And the current attorneys for taforst argue that Violet only came forward after the governor's office announced a ten thousand dollars reward, and the jury did not know this because the prosecutors did not turn over that information to to Forest's defense. So his current attorneys say that if the defense team would have known about this reward, that they could have argued that Violet had significant financial motivation to comeforward with the story, which may have created doubt about to Forest's guilt, which is so true. It's terrible to me that people are so motivated by money like this that they would make something up and implicate somebody for something that they don't know if they did. I mean, it's just so crazy to me. So to Forest's family attended both of his trials, and they remember feeling incredulous at the state's portrayal of to Forest and powerless to stop how they were portraying him. And they all knew that they wanted a conviction in the case, and to Forrest, unfortunately was their last shot, because that's really all that they had was to Forrest to force. His family was not very well connected and they couldn't afford expensive trial lawyers, and they did notice a big difference in his second trial that may have led to his conviction. They said that his attorneys did not call many witnesses. Many of the alibi witnesses from the nightclub and those that they did put on the stand were not at all well prepared. And they also did not call a witness from the hotel that heard the gunshots and saw a man who looked nothing like to Forrest drive away in a vehicle that did not fit the description of the car that he was driving that night, which was in nineteen seventy one Monte Carlo. This drives me insane. So they never called any of Forrest's family members to talk about be like character witnesses for him. They never were asked to come up, and they ended up sentencing to Forrest to death following his conviction, and the family was so shocked and upset that they were able to convict and sentence somebody to death on so little evidence, when there's tons of people who have put him at an entirely different place during the actual murder. There's so much here that is corrupt and it's really really sad that this happened. And the real kicker now is that since all of this has happened, the trial, the conviction, the death row sentence, a lot of the jurors have come forward and admitted that they think that they convicted an innocent man. And it's unfortunate that, you know, even they have come forward and said, like, we made this mistake, we think that we did the wrong thing. And we're still at the point where to Forrest has yet to get another trial. This man deserves another trial. If nothing else. There have been many many, many, many many many people, and I'm talking court officials, judges, prosecutors, and the man who secured to Forest's conviction have called for this to be overturned because of all of the evidence that is in favor of to Forrest being innocent. And it was discovered more than nineteen years after the trial that Violet was paid five thousand dollars for her testimony. What the actual hell is going on in Alabama? Stuff like this should never freaking happen. And it really pisses me off that this is what's going on. Whoever killed William Hardy is still out there and you have to forrest behind bars bad enough that he's behind bars on death row, ready to execute this man for something that he literally did not do. I don't think I've ever covered a death Row series case where the evidence is right in front of us this one. This guy is innocent, It's not even alleged. In my opinion, I think he's innocent. It's all right in front of us, and the State of Alabama refuses to do anything about it, even though all of these officials are on the side of to Forest. Literally everybody that I have come across that I have seen speak on this case wants to force to get a new trial. Again, it's not about guilt or innocence. It's about fair being fair. And when you have a witness, the main witness that was paid five thousand dollars for her alleged testimony, in my opinion, allegedly not true testimony, it just doesn't seem how that was fair. The jury has come forward and said that they think they made the wrong decision. There are so many court officials who think that they've made the wrong decision, and everybody is being very outspoken about it, and I think that that's the way that we need to do things in order to get to Forrest a new trial. And it's sad, so we have to hope and pray that to Forrest is released soon. I feel like all of the evidence is there in his favor, and I feel like if enough people make noise about this, something is going to happen. The Innocence Project is on board with to Forest's case. There is a Instagram page for to Forrest. It's to Forest Johnson to fo R Eest Johnson, And there's a whole website with all of the different articles that explains everything that has gone on with this case since it initially happened to now. And I feel like this is one where it's common sense do the right thing and let this man out of jail, or at least give this man a new trial and give and his team a chance to actually fight for what's right. Get a jury in there that isn't biased and is going to be able to look at the actual concrete evidence that is presented to them and make a decision based on that actual concrete evidence. This is a travesty and it should not be happening. He should not be on death row and he shouldn't be in prison for something that he didn't do. And the person that did it is still out there. That person is wandering around and this innocent man has been in jail more of his life than he wasn't in jail. It's sad, it's tragic, it's unfortunate. So I am going to share some pictures of to Forrest. He has a beautiful, beautiful family, and he remains hopeful even though he's been incarcerated for twenty five years for something he did not do. He remains hopeful. And I'm hopeful that there is going to be some type of red in this case because it's not fair and it's not right, and anything I can do to bring awareness to a wrongfully convicted person is that's literally what I want to be able to do. That's part of the reason that I started this podcast, because I feel like there's so many people incarcerated, wrongfully, incarcerated wrongfully on death row, and I have to do something about it. I can't just sit back and do nothing when I have this platform, So please share this episode. Please like the Instagram page for Taforest Johnson, follow the Innocence Project. There's also going to be a new podcast that is going to be called ear Witness and they are going to be doing a deep, deep dive into the case of DeForest Johnson. And I feel like it's really really important to really listen to this podcast and listen to all the evidence. I did a very brief summary of everything, but even in my brief summary, I think if you have any sense, you know that this guy was framed and incarcerated and convicted and put to death based on testimony of a woman who got five thousand dollars to give her testimony, who was motivated in the first place by ten thousand dollars. It's all shady. So please share this episode, Please share to Forst's case, and let's get this man a new trial and get him out of prison back home with his family where he belongs. It has gone on too long, it's been twenty five years. He deserves to be free, and we need to find the person that did this. At the end of the day, So thank you guys so much for listening. I appreciate you as always Please share this episode. Please share it to Forest's story and I will see you guys next time for a new episode. Bye.