Roxanne Buck

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When a mother and daughter opened their doors to a long-lost family member, it seemed like the perfect union.

My daughter is all excited because she thought of her as her aunt.

I think she just wanted to turn over a new leaf here in Ohio and start over.

But this newly forged bond is suddenly shattered by a horrific crime.

My first reaction was: holy shit.

There is blood everywhere.

Everywhere.

It's like somebody just came in and painted the apartment red.

The ensuing investigation will put a seemingly close-knit family under the microscope and in the process, reveal a sordid tale of addiction, mistrust, and infidelity.

I don't know that there's anything else in the world that can create a firestorm like that.

The night before the murder, they had observed a police cruiser in the driveway.

He totally denied having any kind of affair.

All this was building, and unfortunately, she was there at the time when it finally exploded.

This was probably the biggest case we had to handle in our city since all my 35 years there.

March 15th, 2014, 5.30 p.m.

It's a quiet afternoon in Stowe, Ohio.

Police officer Jason Bailey is on patrol when he receives what seems to be a routine radio call.

I was dispatched to return a phone call to

a mother that was concerned that she could not contact her daughter.

The concerned caller is Diana Johnson, the mother of 21-year-old Michelle Johnson.

Diana left for a trip for a couple of days and fairly quickly after she was gone, wasn't able to establish contact with Michelle.

She didn't see her on Facebook.

She wasn't responding to phone calls and text messages.

I started to get a little worried.

She always had her phone on.

She went to sleep with her phone on.

So if I ever needed to get a hold of her, I could always get a hold of her.

She felt helpless because she was hours away and couldn't check for herself.

After speaking with Diana, Officer Bailey makes a beeline to Maple Park Drive, where Michelle and her mother live.

When I began to knock on the door, I immediately hear a large dog barking.

No one's coming to the door.

I decided I'm going to walk around, try to make sure no one's in the backyard.

There's a makeshift shed, and the side of it, toward the back door, is open.

You can see stuff stored in there.

There's blankets over top of something and a tire.

And I walk up to it.

I remember remember seeing a hand sticking out.

My initial thought was that it was one of those things that someone sticks in their trunk during Halloween.

It didn't look real to me.

As Officer Bailey takes a closer look, it's clear this isn't some sort of prank.

I can see dry blood under the nails,

and at that point, I realized that it's a real hand.

Michelle Johnson was born November 30th, 1992 in Stowe, Ohio, the youngest of Diana Johnson's four children.

From the day she was born, that child was the glue of that family.

She was the light in every single person's eyes.

She was the baby.

So I got to spend more time with her.

I think that Michelle and I were closer than most parents are with their their children.

Everybody would probably describe her as being bubbly, very loving, very caring and nurturing, always wanted to help other people.

She had the ability to make friends wherever she went and really light up a room.

Growing up, she wanted to be a veterinarian because she always was hanging around animals.

She'd see a dog along the side of the road.

Oh, mom, we gotta stop and save it.

It's like, well, Nick, Nick

can't save all of them.

When Michelle was in ninth grade, her mother and father's marriage disintegrated.

Michelle and Diana moved to Florida for a fresh start.

But five years later, Diana decided to return to Ohio, while 18-year-old Michelle chose to stay in Florida with a family friend.

I wanted to be closer to my other children and grandchildren.

So it was time to move back.

The weather, the people, I knew she just needed a little bit more time down there.

Back in Ohio, Diana rented an apartment with an extra bedroom just in case Michelle ever wanted to come visit.

But in September of 2013, it wasn't her daughter who moved into the room.

It was close family friend Roxanne Buck.

Roxanne was married to my cousin at one point.

That's how we came to know her.

Throughout the years, we kept in contact here and there.

For 44-year-old Roxanne, life had never been easy.

Roxanne was born in California.

She had an older brother.

They were pretty hard up, pretty poor growing up.

There was some abuse in the family.

She ran away a couple times as a teenager.

She never really had a stable home life.

Roxanne worked hard to overcome her turbulent upbringing.

By her late 20s, she had two failed marriages behind her and struggled to stay on the straight and narrow.

Though in 1996, Roxanne seemed to turn a corner when she married her third husband, Wesley Buck.

After we started seeing each other, fell in love, got married, and

figured we'd go ahead and try building a life together.

At first, the relationship was smooth sailing, but over time, it became one filled with heartache.

And most of the emotional wounds were inflicted by Roxanne.

Roxanne had a little problem with being in a monogamous relationship.

She would venture out and find someone for a fair or a one-night stand.

Some of her friends from work

had told me that she was out doing things that, you know, she shouldn't be doing.

That's one night,

more or less, that's it, I'm done.

In 2001, Wesley filed for divorce.

And for the next 12 years, Roxanne drifted from one bad relationship to the next.

She just felt like she never fit in anywhere.

I think she just wanted to turn over a new leaf here in Ohio and start over.

And in 2013, she reached out to her distant cousin, Diana Johnson, for help.

We decided to help her help me give her a better life than where she was at.

For Roxanne, the move gave her a new lease on life.

But she did eventually find work working fast food restaurants, also worked for an ambulance company doing some coding.

She was trying to make a go of things in Ohio.

Just a few weeks after Roxanne moved in, she and Diana welcomed Diana's now 21-year-old daughter, Michelle, into the home.

She missed everybody.

She decided to move back up here.

She was extremely happy to be home.

She had her dogs, she had her family.

She was all excited that Roxanne was staying there because she

thought of her as her aunt.

So, you know, she thought we were just all gonna just have all kinds of fun.

It seems Roxanne was looking forward to it as well.

She hadn't seen Michelle since, you know, she was littler.

She thought it would would be nice for Michelle to come and stay with us.

Shortly after moving in, Michelle landed a couple of part-time jobs.

She was a waitress at one of the local restaurants.

Then she took a job at a gas station as a cashier.

In her downtime, Michelle was also able to pursue her dream job.

As she grew older, police

work seemed to interest her.

So she would do right-alongs, and that's when she decided she wanted to be a canine officer.

She was working and just trying to get her money together to go do that kind of thing, and then eventually go to an academy.

She had it all laid out, and she knew what she wanted, and that was a fantastic path for her.

I think it was her calling because she wanted to help, and she did have an outstanding gift with animals.

She was going to be a fantastic police officer.

In early 2014, Michelle, Diana, and Roxanne signed a lease on a duplex on a quiet street in one of Stowe's nicer neighborhoods.

It was a two-story, two bedrooms, but we made a bedroom downstairs for Roxanne, and Michelle and I got the upstairs.

part of the house.

It was like really nice for them to like be together, you know?

A couple months after settling into their new home, Michelle's mother Diana took a trip back to her hometown in West Virginia.

Diana gone home to see her father for his birthday?

While she was in West Virginia, Diana repeatedly called to check up on her daughter, but Michelle never answered, nor did she return any of the other messages Diana sent her.

And I left a message on Facebook that afternoon, still no response.

So I decided to call her workplace

to see if she had shown up that Friday night for work.

And

her manager said no.

That's when I started freaking.

It's Diana's call that leads Officer Jason Bailey to make the gruesome discovery in the shed behind the house.

I move some stuff to try to make sure that this is who I think it is.

I look and I see the hair that matches Michelle Johnson.

Coming up, another grisly discovery leaves investigators with an added fear.

We have one dead woman.

We have another woman missing.

Is she a victim here?

Has she been abducted and kidnapped?

In early 2014, 21-year-old Michelle Johnson, her mother Diana Johnson, and longtime family friend Roxanne Buck were living comfortably together in Stowe, Ohio.

But on March 15th, Diana is in a state of panic when she can't reach Michelle and finds out that Michelle missed her shift at work.

It's not like her not to show up for work.

And since nobody could get a hold of her, that's when i called the stow police department

and told him that i would be up here in about three and a half four hours and i couldn't get there fast enough as diana rushes home officer jason bailey discovers michelle's gravely battered body in a shed behind the house i could see injuries it was very obvious that there were no signs of life I checked for a pulse.

It was very cold to the touch, and I knew that she had been there for a while.

Michelle is so badly injured, Officer Bailey can't immediately determine the cause of death.

Her throat was slit, and she had numerous stab wounds in her upper body.

It's hard to tell if Michelle was still fighting the whole time or if one of the stab wounds incapacitated her and she was down and still being stabbed.

There was a lot of...

rage involved, it seems.

I was wondering how Diana was going to take this.

I mean, I knew it was was going to be very painful for her.

She was on her way up from West Virginia, and that was a big concern of mine: when would she be advised of this?

As Diana promised, she arrives at the Stowe Police Department within hours of her call.

An officer came out,

and I asked them if they had found her yet.

Officer told me

that they had found her body

In the backyard.

You'll never hear that pain in somebody's voice except for when a mother's lost a child.

So obviously it sinks in pretty quickly.

Back at the crime scene, Michelle isn't the only person police are curious about.

There could be possible other victims.

Certainly if you find someone who's been murdered and they're in a shed, there's going to be concern as to are there were dead people inside the house?

What's going on in there?

Roxanne Buck, a friend of the family, also lived there.

Roxanne's not in the house.

Is she a victim here?

Has she been abducted and kidnapped?

They didn't know what's happening here.

We have one dead woman.

We have another woman missing.

You know, this is pretty serious and it's very alarming to the people who are investigating this.

Inside the darkened residence, police find Michelle's dog, but no sign of anyone else.

Not everything was disorganized or knocked or turned over like if it was a recent struggle.

But you really couldn't tell there were signs of a struggle.

Although the crime scene appears ordinary, the officers waste no time calling in the State Bureau of Crime Investigation, known as BCI.

BCI investigates our bigger crimes.

We don't deal with a lot of homicides and still, and this is obviously a very important case that we want to make sure it's handled properly.

Once on the scene, BCI technicians spray the residents with luminol, a substance that illuminates when it comes in contact with human blood.

It became apparent that there was a large

area that at one point in time was covered in blood.

They could see the swoosh marks from where a rag or a mop had been used to clean up.

It's really a house of horrors based on the amount of blood that they find inside the house.

Blood evidence on the walls, high up on the walls.

You could tell it was a very violent struggle.

My first reaction was,

holy shit.

There was blood splatter on some of the walls and bookshelves and in the laundry room area and stuff like that.

The bulk of the crime scene was located in Roxanne's living quarters in the area by the end of her bed.

Now, there is some evidence that someone tried to clean up the blood there, but there was such a vast amount of blood that it was just fruitless.

And whoever was trying to clean it up just decided to abort and move on and do something else.

Diana Johnson informs investigators that Roxanne is employed at a local fast food restaurant.

Officers are dispatched there immediately.

Part of the effort to locate Roxanne so quickly was to make sure that she was not injured, that she was okay.

Much to their relief, officers find Roxanne behind the cash register, unhurt, and apparently unaware of the horror that's unfolding back at the house.

Sergeant Breznick had gotten her back to the station to talk to her about, you know, if

she knew anything about what was going on.

Do you have any reason why they called you down to the station?

No.

Okay.

Michelle's been seriously injured.

Okay.

Um,

they suspect foul play is involved.

Roxanne seems stunned and asks what hospital Michelle has been taken to.

Will they let me see her and talk to her?

No.

Um excuse me.

No, Michelle's dead.

So when they broke the news of Michelle's death to Roxanne, she was devastated.

How was terrible damn when?

But it's investigators who hope Roxanne can help them narrow down the timeline.

According to Roxanne, she last saw Michelle the day before on Friday, March 14th, around noon.

Roxanne said that her and Michelle were out in the garage having a smoke, and that's when Michelle told her that she was having friends coming over about 12.30 that afternoon.

I was going to make myself scarce for a few hours and then do whatever.

Roxanne says that she returned home around 5 p.m.

The house was empty and nothing seemed out of place.

And when you came home, where was Michelle?

I didn't see her.

She wasn't home.

No.

When Roxanne woke up that morning, she was gone, so she figured that it was no big deal.

She was not alarmed at this time.

Roxanne says that when she got up for work the following morning, around 8 a.m., there was still no sign of Michelle, though Michelle's dog wouldn't stop barking.

Roxanne

called

Michelle's mom or sent her messages that Michelle wasn't around.

I talked to Diana on the phone and IM'd her a few times.

And I IM'd Michelle saying, hey, your dog is driving me crazy.

Where are you?

Roxanne tells police that she had no idea that Michelle's body had been in the backyard shed the entire time.

Does it surprise you that Michelle was hurt?

Yes, it does.

I mean, could you see this coming, something like this?

Never.

I repeatedly asked Roxanne who might have harmed Michelle.

I asked her if she knew anybody that would do her harm, and repeatedly she said no.

Did she say who was going to come over?

Who do you think was coming over?

I have no idea.

Do you know who hurt Michelle?

No.

I don't know any of her people.

Does she hang around some undesirable hero?

Though Roxanne says she has no clue who would want to harm Michelle, she does offer investigators some insight as to why so much blood was found in the area near her room.

My room is like the doggy and smoking highway, because you have to go through my room to the laundry room to the garage.

As you go through the bedroom

towards the back of the house, there's a laundry area and a bathroom there, which leads into the garage and which leads out to the backyard to where the shed was.

This information leads investigators to believe that Michelle might have encountered an intruder in the living room area, then tried to flee through the garage before being subdued.

The first thought here is it's very possible at the outset that, you know, this could be a burglary gone wrong.

The door is open.

There's less access to the house.

After completing her statement, Roxanne voluntarily submits to a DNA cheek swab before being released by detectives.

She wasn't a suspect, but we would have needed DNA from most of the people that lived there.

Coming up.

New allegations surface, and investigators are confronted with their worst nightmare.

There was a sexual relationship between Michelle and a SO police officer who had probably visited Michelle's residence within hours of her death.

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21-year-old aspiring police officer Michelle Johnson has been savagely murdered inside her own home.

And investigators in Stowe, Ohio are scrambling for answers.

I began to investigate, you know, through talking with Diane on friends that Michelle had, things that she liked to do or places that she may go.

Did she have boyfriends from past history on the job?

News of the brutal slaying in one of Stowe's more peaceful neighborhoods fills local residents with anxiety and fear.

This was really shocking because it's a young, beautiful girl killed inside of her house.

You know, that resonates with people in this little town.

With the killer still on the loose, police phone lines are flooded with potential leads.

When you are in a suburb or a community where there aren't a lot of murder cases, people are really paying attention.

I think there were a fair amount of people that were calling in tips that were saying, maybe I saw something maybe i know something

there definitely was quite a bit of that

most of the tips proved to be little more than speculation but one lead offered up by a clerk at a local convenience store seems promising a number of hours after michelle's body was discovered

A man was talking with some of the clerks there about how there had been a murder and how the body was found in the shed and how a tire was placed on top top of the body.

None of this information had been released publicly.

So how does this guy know all this information?

The clerk, I think, also found it to be suspicious and called the police.

Investigators head to the convenience store to speak to the clerk about the man in question and learn of another telling remark he made.

She's hearing all this.

you know, these comments from this stranger about, you know, a murder.

A lot of times, if someone knows that kind of detail, they could be a suspect.

They were able to get footage of the gentleman purchasing this stuff, and he used a credit card.

So we were able to locate his name.

The man is identified as Joshua, and on March 17th, police pay him a surprise visit.

So you want to talk to them, you know, without them knowing you're coming, so they have time to prepare.

They want to talk to him to find out, okay, how do you know all this stuff?

Joshua is the stepfather of my grandchildren.

It was discovered that his wife had been down at the police department shortly after Diana had been informed of what had happened to her daughter.

Joshua explains that his wife had let slip some of the details of Michelle's murder.

Joshua sheepishly admits that from there, he formed his own theory about the crime.

He goes out blabbing what he knows when nobody else is supposed to be talking about it.

So he was quite embarrassed about the whole ordeal and the fact that he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

He was concerned that he might have hindered the investigation in some manner.

They even went so far as to check out his alibi.

He's clean, he was not involved in this killing.

That same day, investigators received Michelle's official autopsy report.

The brutality of the attack speaks volumes.

Her throat was slit.

She was stabbed over 32 times,

various parts of her upper torso.

This was a very violent murder.

She had a really deep, large gash right on her neck.

She was the victim of

just a tremendous amount of rage.

Her throat was slashed literally from ear to ear.

This attack was personal.

It was not a burglar.

During the autopsy, the coroner collected multiple DNA samples from under Michelle's fingernails, which investigators hope will help their case.

And with the level of violence indicative of a personal attack, investigators redouble their canvassing efforts in the neighborhood where Michelle resided.

One of the neighbors had reported that the night before the murder at around 2 or 2.30 in the morning, they had observed a police cruiser in the driveway and they saw Michelle get out of the cruiser cruiser and go into her house.

It was known that Michelle really wanted to be a police officer.

She had previously been on a number of ride-alongs.

Investigators pull up the list of ride-alongs in which Michelle had recently participated.

Many of them had been conducted by one policeman in particular.

The officer, he'd gone on some ride-alongs with her and talked to her and befriended her, showing her the ins and outs of law enforcement.

With no ride-alongs scheduled on the night in question, investigators decide to look deeper into his relationship with Michelle.

We had her subpoena or search warrant for the phone company that she had to get all the phone records for probably the day before and prior to that, anybody she would have contacted.

It became apparent from reviewing the evidence, the text messages, that Michelle was having an affair with the Stowe police officer.

officer.

The text messages indicate that the affair started shortly after Michelle returned from Florida.

It started out by her shadowing him, going along with what they call a ride along.

But it was clear from the evidence that that friendship turned into a sexual relationship.

He was married, however, had kids.

So there were some boundaries that were going to be crossed here that made some folks a little uncomfortable.

Including Michelle, at least according to some of the text messages.

The relationship with this officer went a little further than Michelle was comfortable with.

And at some point, Michelle, she tried to break off this relationship.

It was clear from the text messages that

Michelle wanted more than just sex, but she felt that he only wanted sex.

The text messages between Michelle and the officer suggesting, let's meet,

let's have one final hurrah, if you will, before they go their separate ways.

The Stowe police officer had

probably visited Michelle's residence

within hours of her death.

Here we have an ex-boyfriend who's parked outside of her house.

Around the time that she's killed.

When you think about a motive to

commit a crime of such tremendous passion, I don't know that there's anything else in the world that can create a firestorm like that.

A married man and an affair he had with somebody he met at work.

Armed with this new information, detectives bring the officer in for a formal interview.

They said, We have reason to believe that there's a relationship between you two, the sexual relationship, which he denied.

His denials, though, only raised the suspicion of his own officers.

But even though detectives are convinced their fellow officer is lying about the affair, they have no evidence that ties him to the murder.

What the police have at this time is his car is there.

There's really no evidence connecting this officer to Michelle's death, so they let him go.

And shortly after that, he was placed on administrative leave.

The investigators, they didn't give up on this officer and his relationship.

They started doing an internal affairs investigation because basically they're accusing the officer of, you know, buying.

Coming up, as internal affairs close in on one of their own, an explosive allegation surfaces and adds another layer of scandal to an already salacious case.

People do strange things when they're under the influence of illegal drugs.

21-year-old Michelle Johnson was a bubbly small-town girl who dreamed of being a cop.

But her alleged affair with a married police officer has become the pivot point in the investigation into her brutal murder.

The most glaring person of interest, in my opinion, was an officer with the Stowe Police Department.

The extramarital affair that the officer was having, the fact that they were going to break it off, he totally denied having any kind of affair with Michelle.

His denials, though, only raised the suspicion of his own officers.

Looking for answers, investigators continue to pour through Michelle's phone records.

When Michelle's cell phone was reviewed, we found a number of texts.

The ones though that were more critical to the investigation is a text that was sent in the morning.

It's a text message from Michelle to the officer dated 6.30 a.m.

on the day of the murder.

Michelle had found out that she, Roxanne, was doing drugs.

But Michelle, like, obviously, didn't like that since she was going to the academy for police work.

As the text exchange continues, it becomes clear that Michelle's roommate and de facto aunt, Roxanne Buck, was now using crack cocaine under Michelle and her mother's roof, and Michelle wanted no part of it.

You know, it's cocaine, high-grade drugs, very dangerous.

And here you have Michelle, who wants to be a police officer.

She can't be living in a house with a crackhead.

For investigators, this final exchange between Michelle and the officer places Roxanne Buck squarely on their radar.

People do strange things when they're under the influence of

illegal drugs.

On the afternoon of March 18th, investigators speak with Michelle's mother, Diana, about Roxanne's alleged drug use.

Diana states that she and Michelle discovered Roxanne was using just a few weeks earlier.

I confronted her about it and I told her, well, we won't tolerate it.

She was told that she has to leave if she's going to continue doing drugs.

Diana tells police she was willing to give Roxanne until April to clean up her act.

But according to a text exchange between Michelle and her mom the morning of the murder, it seems Michelle was ready to send Roxanne packing that day.

Had Michelle attempted to kick Roxanne out of the house, only to have Roxanne explode into a murderous rage?

Initially, Michelle's mother doesn't think so.

That

never crossed my mind that Roxanne would have ever done it.

I don't feel that Roxanne was really a person of conflict.

She just usually got quiet when she got upset.

She didn't usually explode.

When investigators speak to Roxanne's co-workers, they tell police Roxanne did come to work on the day of the murder, but quickly left because of some fairly nasty injuries.

She had some pretty significant cuts on two of her fingers.

The cuts were bad enough that they had to be stitched up.

She told them that she cut her hand

because she fell while she was holding a knife.

She's becoming more and more of a suspect.

I mean, we started treating her like that the second time we brought her in to interview her.

However, Roxanne denies the cuts on her hands have anything to do with Michelle's murder.

Instead, Roxanne claims they are the result of a drug-related accident.

Based upon Roxanne's admission, she had purchased close to $200 worth of drugs in the 24-hour period before Michelle was murdered.

I went to go see my dealer and then I came back and smoked in the bathroom.

And how'd you smoke a can?

A can?

She didn't have anything to smoke them in so she fashioned a pop can

into a makeshift pipe breaking the can apart.

You poke a hole, like a blow hole, towards the end of the can, like towards the end so that you can put your finger on it while you're holding it and then let it go.

And then you put ashes on it and and then you put that on top and then you light it while you're doing the finger hangs.

I've never smoked.

I know.

I'm sorry.

Roxanne told me that her hand was cut on the aluminum can when she was using crack cocaine.

What did she used to do that with?

I have a razor knife in my car.

So you're cutting the can with the razor.

Right.

And I took one of the fair razors from inside it.

The razor thing has, you know, a holding spot.

And you scrape the resin like that.

She said she used a razor knife, and that's how she cut her hand.

The cut was so severe that she had to go to a local hospital to get stitches in the hand.

I went to the emergency room around, I guess that was a little after two.

That part at least is verifiable.

And I didn't leave it there until after four.

So you were there at about two?

Yeah, around two.

I mean, by that time, I'm in shot.

I mean, I have my gut.

That's I'm not thinking right.

Given Roxanne's admission, detectives ask her point blank: isn't it possible that when Michelle demanded she move out, she murdered her in a drug-fueled rage?

You guys get in an argument or something?

Do I

piss you off that after

kind of the crappy conditions that you lived with over at that apartment for a while that now she's kicking you out?

Maybe you're mad at Michelle.

Could you have done this and not realize?

I should do this.

I've never done anything like that.

I am not a violent argument person.

She was not confessing to anything.

She was not admitting that she was part of this.

With Roxanne unwavering in her statement and with no physical evidence tying her to the crime, detectives have no choice but to release her.

We really didn't have anything to keep her on, so we allowed her.

to leave that night.

They needed physical evidence

to have the probable cause to make the arrest.

We decided that maybe we should get a search warrant for the residence and for her car also, just in case there's any type of evidence or anything like that.

They were looking for anything that they thought could be tied in with a homicide.

They were keeping their eye out for a weapon.

Detectives don't find a murder weapon, but they do find other physical evidence.

There were books in the car that belonged to the Stowe Library that Roxanne had checked out, and they had blood on them.

Investigators send the books to the crime lab for analysis, and when the results come back on March 20th, there's a match.

Lo and behold, the bloody library books come back to Michelle.

It's Michelle's blood in Roxanne's car.

And that's not all the crime lab results reveal.

When some of the blood evidence was tested, it was discovered that there was DNA that belonged to Roxanne underneath Michelle's fingernails.

It was also discovered there was a mixture of Roxanne and Michelle's blood on a paint can that they located within the house.

It showed that Roxanne was bleeding at that time, and so was Michelle.

So if Roxanne would have stabbed her and cut her hand, then both of their blood would have...

been on the paint can at the same time.

And the DNA certainly eliminated the officer as a suspect at that point.

So based on the totality of all the evidence, it was pretty clear to the detectives that Roxanne, in fact, was the killer.

When the police came to arrest Roxanne, it was no surprise.

She knew what was coming.

She was standing outside smoking, and she said something like, here I am.

She was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

We handcuffed her and put her in the back of the police car.

When word of Roxanne's arrest gets out, friends and family are stunned.

I was angry and didn't understand why

she would do something like that.

I wanted to get my hands on her.

I was

married to this woman, and those kind of hostilities

was never revealed to me in any way.

As far as whipping out a knife and brutally murdering somebody, that

kind of like threw me for a loop.

I couldn't believe it.

Coming up, Roxanne stands trial for her alleged crimes, and prosecutors spell out Michelle Johnson's harrowing final moments.

All this was building.

And unfortunately, Michelle Johnson was there at the time when it finally exploded.

She just snapped and became angry and lost it.

October 7th, 2014.

In a common pleas courtroom in Summit County, Ohio, Roxanne Buck's trial for the murder of her roommate, Michelle Johnson, gets underway.

Prosecutors waste no time laying out their theory.

So as best we can tell, we believe there was a confrontation between Michelle and Roxanne over Roxanne's drug use

and that Roxanne became very angry.

Roxanne was high.

She was on drugs.

She just snapped

and became angry and lost it and violently attacked her.

She continued to stab and stab and stab and stab.

She dragged her out of the house into the shed and tried to clean up the crime scene.

You know, the blood evidence was really key, I think, for connecting what was happening.

There was a footprint that was near the shed as well that ended up being a match to the shoes that Roxanne wore that also had some mud on them.

The autopsy photos were probably the worst photos that I'd ever seen.

They were very gruesome and horrific.

We had a pretty strong case.

We had good DNA evidence.

We had a lot of good statements that Roxanne had made.

They had DNA, which is, you know, the best evidence you can have.

It only took the jury like three hours to come back with the verdict.

They convicted her of murder,

tampering with evidence.

She received, you know, the maximum sentence, life in prison.

Though the sentence is severe, Roxanne's reaction is one of indifference.

It's almost as if she felt it coming.

There was not much emotion from her.

Even as Roxanne is carted off to prison, Michelle's friends and family are left coping with what they feel was the ultimate betrayal of a once-beloved friend and roommate.

Well, it's been three and a half years.

And it seems like yesterday.

I have no trust in hardly anybody anymore.

Roxanne Buck

is the most evil person

on this planet that does not deserve to be breathing the air that all of us are breathing.

I don't think Diana will ever be the same after this, and she'll always be so heartbroken.

And

I mean, it's just like terrible.

Michelle was the most vivacious person I'd ever met, and that never changed.

She was just always that magnet for love.

Everybody in that family lost more than I can ever tell you when they lost her.

Roxanne Buck will be eligible for parole in 2032.

She will be 62 years old.

Michelle's mother, Diana Johnson, along with members of the Snow Police Department, have vowed to make sure that Roxanne never gets paroled.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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