Teen’s murder trial goes to jury

BOISE – Jurors began deliberations Monday afternoon in the trial of an Idaho teen accused of killing her parents, one of the most notorious murder trials in central Idaho in a decade and a half.

Sarah Johnson, now 18, is accused of killing Alan and Diane Johnson in the bedroom of their Bellevue home Sept. 2, 2003. The trial has lasted six weeks and has cost Blaine County more than $1 million, as witnesses flew in from across the country.

During Monday’s closing arguments, prosecutor Jim Thomas called Johnson a selfish, self-absorbed murderer who shot her parents out of a “fantasy” to marry her illegal-immigrant boyfriend and live off the inheritance money.

Defense lawyer Bob Pangburn argued somebody else killed Johnson’s mom and dad.

His reasoning: The murder weapon, a powerful .264 caliber rifle, would have sent blood spraying in all directions. But Idaho State Police didn’t find her mom’s blood in Sarah’s hair, so it couldn’t have been the teen, he said.

“If there’s no blood, there’s no guilt,” Pangburn repeated, before the jury left the courtroom at 3:30 p.m. to begin deliberations.

Not since Mitchell Odiaga, a postal worker from Boise, randomly gunned down two people on the streets of Hailey in 1991 has a Blaine County murder case gotten so much attention.

Odiaga, 50, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole before 2014.

“They (murder cases) don’t happen very often,” said Blaine County Sheriff J. Walt Femling, in an interview outside the courtroom where cameras from televison’s Court TV were rolling.

In the Johnson case, the shootings were preceded by a dispute in which Johnson’s father threatened to turn his daughter’s 19-year-old boyfriend, Bruno Santos, over to authorities for statutory rape.

Santos is an undocumented Mexican immigrant.

Thomas, the prosecutor, said evidence collected at the scene ties Sarah Johnson to the murders: a bloody bathrobe with traces of gunpowder found in the trash can outside the home, blood splatters on the wall and bloody bullets found in Johnson’s bedroom.

“Piece by piece, the evidence has shown the face of the real killer. That is Sarah Johnson,” Thomas said.

Johnson, who faces life in prison, watched the proceedings calmly. She cried quietly on occasion, receiving comfort from members of her defense team.

Her brother, Matt, who testified for the prosecution, sat among family members near the back of the room.

Pangburn argued that someone else killed the Johnsons, noting unidentified fingerprints found on the rifle scope, and witness testimony that loud cars raced through the Johnsons’ neighborhood on the night of the killings.

“Make them go out and find the real killer, please,” he pleaded with the jury at the end of his closing arguments.

Pangburn focused on investigators’ failure to preserve as evidence a bloodstained comforter that was on the murdered couple’s bed.

Prosecutors have maintained the comforter covered Diane Johnson’s head when she was killed, preventing a “backsplatter” of blood and brain material that ordinarily might have doused the killer.

That’s why Sarah Johnson didn’t have blood in her hair, Thomas said.

But Pangburn argued Blaine County authorities didn’t keep the comforter because it would have failed to substantiate that theory.

Prosecutors and law enforcement agents acknowledged they’d made a mistake by allowing the comforter to go missing.

“I thought we’d packed it up in the body bag with Diane Johnson,” said Bellevue Marshall Randy Tremble, in an interview.

Jurors deliberated until 5 p.m. They’ll resume at 8 a.m. today.

Judge Barry Wood has sequestered the 12-member panel and levied a ban on cell phones, watching the local TV news and accepting most visitors.