Marlene Johnson

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Speaker 4 Need home.

Speaker 8 The voice, Monday and Tuesday on NBC.

Speaker 2 With wedding bells on the horizon, life never looked better for this southern bell.

Speaker 6 She was so pleasant, so outgoing. She was just beautiful, just a good all-around person.

Speaker 6 She had finally found the true love of her life, and she was happy.

Speaker 8 They planned to live a good life together.

Speaker 2 But when a brutal crime is discovered, the plans for their bright future are destroyed.

Speaker 9 I could see her body in the bathtub. She had multiple stab wounds on her neck.
She was attacked by somebody that was very angry.

Speaker 2 The ensuing investigation uncovers an obsession driven by jealousy.

Speaker 8 It's kind of a shocker when you hear a spouse call in and say, I think my spouse may have killed somebody.

Speaker 6 She said, I'll kill you for f ⁇ ing my husband.

Speaker 9 I believe he's worried that he was going to be next.

Speaker 2 When the killer's motive comes to light, light, so too does a window into a dark mind.

Speaker 11 It's just starting to paint a picture of obsession.

Speaker 6 This just shook me to my core. It's just unbelievable.
Absolutely unbelievable.

Speaker 6 Why are you charging me?

Speaker 9 Why am I charging? Yeah. Because I feel like you murdered Chiller.

Speaker 2 Rowan County, North Carolina. Nestled between Charlotte and Greensboro, the fast-growing city of Kannapolis is renowned for textiles.

Speaker 13 Cannapolis is a growing town. There's, you know, a lot of different businesses coming in and out.

Speaker 9 It's kind of a quiet, family-based community. Upper-middle-class homes within eyeshot of each other.

Speaker 5 It's not the kind of neighborhood you would expect to find violent crime.

Speaker 2 On July 23rd, 2013, at 9.40 a.m., a 911 call upends the otherwise calm Tuesday morning.

Speaker 2 The caller, 59-year-old Chuck Reeves, is in dire need of help for his fiancé, 62-year-old Shirley Pierce.

Speaker 9 He's seen blood and what he thought was powder on the floor and went to the bathroom and found his girlfriend in the bathtub with the water running over her body.

Speaker 8 Chuck did report that she was in the bathtub, motionless, and there was blood everywhere.

Speaker 14 Shirley wasn't breathing.

Speaker 9 He realized that she was already gone. There wasn't nothing he could do for her.

Speaker 2 When police arrive, they are immediately led to the main bedroom.

Speaker 9 The house is just really quiet, nice house, kind of eerie feeling when you walk in.

Speaker 9 I could smell an odor of bleach.

Speaker 9 When I entered the bedroom, I can see a lot of blood on the floor, bloodstains. The bloodstains continued across the floor.

Speaker 7 It appeared that the scene was attempted to be cleaned up with bleach, which created some bleaching patterns in the carpet and back into the bathroom.

Speaker 5 There was a path that went from a bedroom into this bathroom.

Speaker 2 Once in the bathroom, they're met with a ferocious ferocious scene.

Speaker 9 I could see the body of Shirley Pierce laying in a bathtub.

Speaker 9 I could tell that Shirley was attacked with a sharp object. She had multiple stab wounds on her neck, her face.

Speaker 17 It's not an accidental death.

Speaker 16 It's clearly a homicide.

Speaker 2 With a crime scene in the early stages of processing, detectives turned to their only witness, Shirley's boyfriend, Chuck Reeves.

Speaker 12 I was able to introduce myself to Chuck Reeves, who was on the scene, and asked him to

Speaker 19 sit and talk to me for a moment.

Speaker 18 Chuck's demeanor was devastated.

Speaker 22 However, he was very cooperative and he was very articulate.

Speaker 7 He was able to provide good information.

Speaker 14 What we learned about Shirley Pierce was that she appeared to be just a good, decent working person.

Speaker 23 There didn't appear to be anything at that point to determine who would want to do something like this to her.

Speaker 2 Born and raised in Mooresville, North Carolina, Shirley Goodnight was a ray of sunshine in a region known for its southern hospitality.

Speaker 6 She was very close to her family, her sisters. She had a brother.
She was so pleasant, so outgoing. She was just beautiful, just a good all-around person.

Speaker 13 Everybody loved Shirley. She was a very friendly woman.
She was well-liked in her community as well as at her job. And people who knew her remarked how beautiful she was.

Speaker 2 In 1970, Shirley married Randall Pierce, and the couple welcomed a daughter, Tracy, soon after.

Speaker 6 Tracy being her only daughter, only child, she just adored Tracy.

Speaker 2 When Shirley and her husband split in 1981, Shirley looked for a way to support herself and eventually signed on with the Tuscarorora Yarn Factory.

Speaker 6 Tuscarora Yarns was a textile company. They made specialty yarns.
I was in the accounting department and she came in as the owner's and the CEO's administrative assistant.

Speaker 6 Shirley was a very dainty, well-dressed,

Speaker 6 very well-spoken lady.

Speaker 2 She was very professional.

Speaker 6 Shirley and I were just really good work friends. We spent a lot of the day together working and we went to lunch most every day.

Speaker 6 We would go shopping some after hours or just go to dinner with each other.

Speaker 9 Short, long hours, and worked hard at the company. I think anybody would have been glad to have her work for them.

Speaker 2 Shirley put what free time she did have to good use, organizing golf tournaments and gala gala dinners for several local charities.

Speaker 9 She was involved in a charitable organization, raised money for people with traumatic brain injuries.

Speaker 8 That speaks to the character of a person that cares about other folks like that. Shirley had a very big heart.

Speaker 2 When Shirley's daughter Tracy became a mother to a little boy, being a grandmother sent Shirley over the moon.

Speaker 6 He was the apple of her eye. That's what she talked about the most.
Anybody that knew her will always know about her grandson and Tracy because she told everyone about them.

Speaker 2 By 2013, with her family growing and her career flourishing, Shirley was looking to hit the trifecta in her romantic life.

Speaker 2 When she began dating textile salesman Chuck Reeves, it appeared she had done just that.

Speaker 21 But he had known her for a while because he was a salesman and she was a president secretary at Tuscarory Yarn.

Speaker 27 So he had met her

Speaker 12 through that and the relationship turned into a dating one.

Speaker 9 Chuck and Shirley had a relationship kind of later in life. They had a good relationship.
They got along really well. Chuck loved her and

Speaker 9 Shirley loved him.

Speaker 2 The pair dated for four and a half years but kept separate residences.

Speaker 2 In the spring of 2013, Chuck proposed to Shirley and she happily accepted.

Speaker 6 She had finally found the true love of her life and

Speaker 6 she was happy.

Speaker 2 Sadly, Shirley would never make it to the altar. On the morning of July 23rd, 2013, Rowan County investigators are processing a horrific crime scene where Shirley Pierce has been found murdered.

Speaker 9 It appeared she had been stabbed multiple times just from looking at the body. We knew we were looking for a knife, very violent attack.

Speaker 9 She put up a fight, so we had defensive wounds and the fatal wound was probably in the neck. There's a lot of blood.
Blood had dripped from the ceiling fan. There was a large blood pool on the floor.

Speaker 9 It was a very violent crime scene.

Speaker 2 Despite the vicious crime scene, the killer took care to hide their identity.

Speaker 9 When we noticed the bleach stains on the carpet, it's well well known that bleach destroys DNA. We have someone who went to a lot of trouble to try to destroy evidence.

Speaker 9 So our killer, whoever it was, was aware of a lot of the techniques we were going to use to try to catch them as far as DNA. I felt good we had DNA in the house.
We just had to find it.

Speaker 9 We felt like the shower curtain was going to be important. So we processed all the way up to the shower curtain, leaving it in place until we got

Speaker 9 Shirley out of the crime scene and to the medical examiner's office. And as we decided to send the whole shower curtain to the state lab.

Speaker 2 The intensity of the crime suggests to investigators that this was a deeply personal attack.

Speaker 11 There did not appear to be any forced entry and it didn't appear to be ransacked like a typical burglary would ransack a home.

Speaker 9 She was attacked by somebody that was very angry. It was almost overkill, which didn't match up to somebody breaking into the house to steal her computer or something.

Speaker 15 And that again brought alarm to somebody very close to her, somebody who would have the ability to enter the house.

Speaker 11 So that becomes very big red flag back toward Chuck Reeves.

Speaker 25 This is exactly who we need to focus on first.

Speaker 2 Coming up, do investigators have their man?

Speaker 9 They're actually threatening to stab her with a screwdriver.

Speaker 2 Or had a ghost from Shirley's past carried out a vendetta?

Speaker 9 Tracy talked about him threatening to kill Shirley.

Speaker 2 July 23rd, 2013, homicide investigators with the Rowan County Sheriff's Office turned to Shirley Pierce's fiancé, Chuck Reeves, who found her bloody body in her bathroom.

Speaker 8 It was obvious that he was distraught and torn up. They planned to live a good life together.
Now he is, here he is having to report this horrible scene.

Speaker 16 I asked Chuck, when was the last time he had spoken to Shirley?

Speaker 19 And he said he spoke to her by phone the night prior.

Speaker 17 And I believe that time was around 8.15 p.m.

Speaker 8 She was going to dog sit for him while he traveled out of town as he frequently did for his job.

Speaker 7 He spoke to Shirley, made arrangements for the next day to bring the dog by.

Speaker 2 Chuck says that in the middle of the call, the phone suddenly went dead.

Speaker 9 The call ended and he didn't make contact with her again. That wasn't unusual.
In that area of Cannapolis, telephone services, Spotty.

Speaker 2 While he wasn't alarmed by the dropped call, when he arrived at Shirley's house the next morning, Chuck had an eerie feeling.

Speaker 9 Shirley was expecting Chuck to arrive. She knew he was coming.
He talked to her the night before on the phone. So when he arrived at the garage door, this opened, the door was locked.

Speaker 9 That was unusual.

Speaker 10 He retrieved a key from

Speaker 22 a vase or a flower bed just to the left of the doorway, and he let himself in with that key.

Speaker 10 He heard the shower running, he looks in there, and he saw Shirley in the tub with the water running, and he approached her, he saw where she was beyond help.

Speaker 2 Chuck's story is consistent with the scene so far, but police tread carefully before clearing him.

Speaker 11 I'm listening to every single word.

Speaker 17 I'm analyzing everything he says.

Speaker 19 I'm trying to find inconsistencies in his story.

Speaker 7 Eventually, I asked Chuck directly if he had anything to do with Shirley, and he adamantly denied it.

Speaker 14 He said his relationship with Shirley was a very good one.

Speaker 27 Everything's going well.

Speaker 8 Why would he murder the woman that he was engaged to and appeared to be very happy with?

Speaker 30 His alibi, his story was that he was out of town and wasn't even in the area he claimed he was at work in south carolina

Speaker 2 while detectives confirm chuck's alibi with his employer they also look for a telltale clue on his hands anytime somebody assaults somebody with a knife generally the assailant is also cut by that knife and there will be injuries to their hands I asked Chuck, I need to look, see if he had any injuries on him.

Speaker 9 He readily showed me everything. He showed me his arms.

Speaker 9 He didn't have a scratch on him.

Speaker 2 What's more, Chuck's alibi holds up.

Speaker 30 In order to clear Chuck, we were able to contact his employer to determine that he was in fact working out of town during that time period.

Speaker 8 Mr. Reeves was able to fairly quickly be put to the side as a suspect based on the information he was able to provide.

Speaker 2 As detectives wrap up their interview with Chuck, Shirley's daughter arrives at the tragic scene.

Speaker 9 Tracy and Shirley had a great relationship. They got along really well.
Shirley was Tracy's support system. She was devastating to find out her mother was killed.

Speaker 8 She was very distraught. Tracy, understandably, was having a very hard time that her mother had been murdered.

Speaker 2 With Chuck Reeves cleared of any involvement, detectives ask Tracy if she can think of anyone who would wish harm to her mother.

Speaker 9 We talked to her at the scene, trying to get background on Shirley, her habits, anybody Tracy may know that would want to hurt or kill Shirley. Tracy talked about Richard, Shirley's ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 2 Tracy explains that 10 years ago, her mother was in a troubled relationship with a man named Richard.

Speaker 9 Tracy tells us about Richard had been abusive towards Shirley and then the relationship had ended.

Speaker 14 The information that we learned was that several years ago, Shirley had in fact obtained a restraining order against Richard.

Speaker 2 According to Tracy, the restraining order had been put in place after Richard showed up at her mother's home one night looking for Shirley.

Speaker 9 Tracy told us about Richard threatening to kill Shirley and actually threatening to stab her with screwdriver.

Speaker 2 Tracy says after her mom filed the restraining order, Richard left town. But after nearly 10 years of silence, Richard had recently attempted to contact Shirley.

Speaker 16 We believed he was back in the area and had reached out to Shirley maybe six months prior and was trying to contact her again.

Speaker 22 Immediately, he is my lead suspect.

Speaker 9 Tracy wanted Richard really looked at domestic relationships often end in homicide, so we're going to have to explore him a lot more thoroughly.

Speaker 2 Detectives prioritize locating Richard and quickly get a hit on Richard's place of employment, a mere 15-minute drive from Shirley's home.

Speaker 9 We actually found Richard at a local pawn shop nearby and spoke to Richard.

Speaker 2 Detectives start off the interview by disclosing Shirley's murder.

Speaker 9 Richard, who was shocked by the news that Shirley was dead, seemed very legit.

Speaker 14 He characterized the relationship with Shirley as ending 10 years prior.

Speaker 9 Richard was asked about the past abuse that he was accused of, and he said that law enforcement did come and he said that eventually the charges was job and Shirley apologized to him, I guess for having him arrested.

Speaker 2 As for the night of the murder, Richard claims he had come home after working a 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
shift.

Speaker 31 Richard said that he had come home, did not leave home, had gone to bed about 9 p.m.

Speaker 9 Richard lived by himself. There's nobody confirming.

Speaker 2 Detectives again look for signs of foul play by inspecting Richard's hands.

Speaker 23 There was no injuries on his hands or arms, which would indicate that he may not have been present during that assault.

Speaker 2 There's another reason Richard doesn't appear to be their man.

Speaker 9 He's not in the best of shape. He had some kind of health problem.

Speaker 21 He was barely walking.

Speaker 9 One of my detectives actually felt Richard was physically incapable of committing a crime. They didn't feel like he was our suspect either.

Speaker 2 Hours into the investigation, detectives have exhausted their most promising leads.

Speaker 2 But when they receive a disturbing phone call from one of Shirley's co-workers, the case takes a sharp turn.

Speaker 19 I got a call that somebody had called into the 911 center and wanted to talk to someone because he believed his wife had killed someone.

Speaker 2 Detectives get a number for the caller and immediately follow up.

Speaker 10 I called that number.

Speaker 25 It was Irvin Johnson, and Irvin Johnson was the CFO at Tuscarora Yarns. Shirley Pierce was the executive secretary for Tuscarora Yarns.
Mr.

Speaker 14 Johnson was highly agitated, very difficult to talk to.

Speaker 2 When detectives inform him that they have just left the scene of Shirley Pierce's murder, Irvin Johnson breaks down over the death of his co-worker.

Speaker 5 Immediately, he believes that Marlene Johnson, his wife, is the one responsible because for years, Marlene Johnson seemed to be obsessed with Shirley Pierce.

Speaker 2 Coming up, with a new suspect revealed, investigators uncover a potentially deadly motive.

Speaker 6 Looks like that was her daily mission to wake up and figure out what she could do that day to stop Shirley.

Speaker 2 And a physical altercation points to a deeply held grudge.

Speaker 6 She had a hold of her hair and was just slamming her around.

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Speaker 13 Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo. There's no Milo here.

Speaker 6 Who picked up my son from school?

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Speaker 2 I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

Speaker 26 You don't understand. It was just the five of us.

Speaker 5 So this was all planned.

Speaker 6 What are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

Speaker 26 I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people

Speaker 2 killing each other.

Speaker 7 All her fault.

Speaker 8 A new series streaming now, only on Peacock.

Speaker 2 Hours into the murder investigation of 62-year-old Shirley Pierce, detectives receive a shocking tip from one of Shirley's coworkers, Irvin Johnson.

Speaker 2 And he is certain that his own wife, 61-year-old Marlene Johnson, is involved.

Speaker 8 It's kind of a shocker when you hear a spouse call in and say, I think my spouse may have killed somebody. That is just, that's not really heard of.

Speaker 30 Irvin Johnson agreed to talk to us in an interview.

Speaker 6 And at the office, he began to lay out the history of his and Marlene's marriage.

Speaker 2 Born into a wealthy family in 1952, Marlene Postel grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Speaker 27 She did have some family in Gastonia who were in the restaurant business.

Speaker 6 She wasn't used to not getting her way you could tell that you could tell that she was not used to somebody telling her no

Speaker 6 she didn't hurt for anything this is a woman who is very professional she's dressed to the nines she speaks very eloquently marlene just oozed that she had nice things

Speaker 2 With her refined exterior, Marlene had always turned heads.

Speaker 6 She was probably 5'5, very slender, muscular, in very good shape.

Speaker 6 She just was groomed exceedingly well. It just stuck out.

Speaker 2 On May 15th, 1983, 31-year-old Marlene married 36-year-old Irvin Johnson. The pair complimented each other well, Irvin with his quiet, reserved nature and Marlene with her intimidating presence.

Speaker 6 He would speak when spoken to. It wasn't like he was a socially outward individual.
He really wasn't. And

Speaker 6 he appeared to be the guy who went along with the group, went to work, went home after work, and came back the next day and did the whole thing over again.

Speaker 2 For over two decades, the couple had a happy and prosperous life.

Speaker 11 They did have one daughter together.

Speaker 15 Irvin Johnson made a very nice salary. Marlene did not work outside the home.

Speaker 6 I believe that Marlene's money came from an inheritance.

Speaker 5 She took a great interest in his business, in his life, in his personal matters, obviously. She had friends.

Speaker 2 Then, for reasons Irvin can't explain, something in Marlene changed.

Speaker 2 Irvin tells police that in 2003, Marlene suffered a sudden nervous breakdown and had tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills.

Speaker 30 We did learn of a nervous breakdown that she had in 2003 in which

Speaker 12 she was treated for that. He said she never fully recovered back to being the same person that she was.

Speaker 15 She was always very intense, very aggressive, very difficult to live with from that point on.

Speaker 6 She was not in her right frame of mind, it seemed like. It seemed like she was very erratic.

Speaker 16 She had threatened to kill him. She had assaulted him.
During an interview with Irvin Johnson, he was able to point out a scar

Speaker 19 where Marlene had stabbed him previously.

Speaker 2 Irvin says that Marlene had also become obsessed with the idea that he was having an affair. Irvin tried to alleviate Marlene's fears, but doing so only heightened her suspicions.

Speaker 22 He said, Marlene is a person who is driven by ego, by just a jealousy, a possessive person.

Speaker 6 She had caused many issues at every job that he worked at. She would always target the single women that were not married.

Speaker 6 and she would get the story in her head that they were having an affair with him.

Speaker 2 Irvin adds that when he took the job as CFO of Tuscarora Yarns in 2006, Marlene's suspicions had turned to well-liked administrative assistant Shirley Pierce.

Speaker 12 He characterized Shirley as a southern lady, and when he introduced his wife to Shirley, she called him honey and touched his arm.

Speaker 27 And Irvin said, I saw Marlene's antenna go up.

Speaker 8 Marlene Johnson just dialed right in that this was an affair, it was going on, and she was jealous and not happy about it.

Speaker 2 Irvin says that for the next several years, Marlene became completely fixated on Shirley Pierce, even going so far as to hire a private investigator.

Speaker 6 Marlene hired me on September 12, 2010, and our agreement was that we would surveil him for a month. I could not get any proof that any wrongdoing was going on on either of their parts.

Speaker 2 But even with no proof of infidelity, Marlene refused to accept the truth, and her obsession intensified.

Speaker 6 Marlene would get more and more bizarre and ask more things of me that were very unethical.

Speaker 6 She had hired another PI firm, and I learned that the firm was using drones and was getting her aerial views of Shirley's residence.

Speaker 6 She supposedly knew when she went to the grocery store, when she came back, she knew what time she was getting home from work, and she knew that this garage door was open so far.

Speaker 6 She just got to the point where she scared me, and I'm not a person that scares easily because I work capital murder cases, but she scared me.

Speaker 6 There was no convincing her, no matter if she had all the evidence in the world to show her there was no affair, I don't think that her mind would have believed that.

Speaker 2 Irvin tells detectives that the less Marlene found, the more she became unhinged. And her interactions with Shirley intensified.

Speaker 2 But Shirley, knowing full well Marlene was watching her, didn't realize how dangerous the situation was becoming.

Speaker 6 Shirley never seemed to be scared because she knew she was doing nothing wrong and so she just assumed nothing would ever come of it.

Speaker 2 According to Irvin, in 2011, Marlene's paranoia finally boiled over.

Speaker 13 There was an incident involving Marlene Johnson where she showed up at a restaurant that Shirley and a few of her co-workers were having lunch.

Speaker 6 Irvin and Shirley would come in with the Tuscarora Yarn Group every Friday for lunch and I got to know them from being their regular waitress. So they come in for their lunch as always.

Speaker 6 Marlene arrives. She's dressed in black kind of workout clothes that day

Speaker 6 and she has a hat on.

Speaker 5 Marlene Johnson held a menu in front of her face to try to shield her identity.

Speaker 6 It didn't work very well.

Speaker 6 I knew that it was her

Speaker 6 and I immediately went and told them, the Tuscarora group, that, you know, Marlene was in the restaurant.

Speaker 6 They panicked because everybody knew she had it out for Miss Shirley.

Speaker 2 Irvin says that his fellow employees tried to form a protective circle around Shirley to get her out to her car, but it wasn't enough.

Speaker 6 I'm just sitting at the restaurant having lunch, kind of daydreaming out the window, just looking out the window, and Marlene was a gazelle.

Speaker 6 She just came across that parking lot, and I mean, she was on Shirley's back.

Speaker 6 She had a hold of her hair and was just slamming her around.

Speaker 6 She said, I'll kill you for my husband.

Speaker 6 It was just unexpected chaos, but it was kind of quick and

Speaker 6 over with pretty fast.

Speaker 2 Marlene was arrested and charged with assault, but the case never went to trial.

Speaker 6 Shirley wouldn't press charges against her. She didn't want to do that because she didn't want to make waves for Irvin.

Speaker 6 Shirley said that she had filed a restraining order

Speaker 6 and that she was hopeful that would take care of the issue.

Speaker 2 Irvin explains to detectives that he moved out of the house and got his own restraining order against Marlene. But he now fears that with Shirley dead, he he isn't safe either.

Speaker 8 He was maybe a little afraid that she could retaliate against him as well. At this point, she was capable of anything.

Speaker 9 He was absolutely sure that Marlene was going to kill him next. He was in fear of his life.

Speaker 2 Irvin tells police that they need to speak to a man named Tim Connor, who had become Marlene's confidant.

Speaker 9 Irvin showed us a picture. The picture was of Marlene at a restaurant with some guy.
The person in the photograph was Tim Connor.

Speaker 30 At this point, I needed to speak to him to see what information that he had.

Speaker 2 Before they track down Tim Connor, detectives obtain a search warrant for Marlene's home and put out a bolo for her vehicle. It's not long before they find her car and Marlene as well.

Speaker 14 And it was parked at her attorney's office in downtown Salisbury, and she was instructed by her attorney to cooperate with the detectives and to surrender to them at that point.

Speaker 2 Marlene is arrested and transferred to the Rowan County Sheriff's Department to await questioning. And what investigators find in her car may provide some answers.

Speaker 9 When we searched her car in the parking lot, we found a lot of cleaning supplies in the trunk of the car, which could have been a source of the Clorox stains that we found at Shirley's house.

Speaker 2 Following the search of her vehicle, police execute a search warrant on Marlene's home.

Speaker 13 Once investigators began searching Marlene Johnson's house, they discover a myriad of things that point to her as a suspect.

Speaker 23 When I went to the dining room, I found an aerial photo of Shirley Pierce's house taken from like a Google Maps photo.

Speaker 9 We also found surveillance photographs she had taken of Shirley.

Speaker 11 There were hours upon hours of work put into it, a lot of effort, a lot of money. It's just starting to paint a picture of

Speaker 12 obsession.

Speaker 2 Coming up, Marlene's penchant for outward appearances may be her undoing.

Speaker 9 She had had like a French manicure nails done and the tips of her nails were missing.

Speaker 2 But investigators hit one more roadblock.

Speaker 30 The search attendant's house did reveal that there appeared to be a knife set and one of the knives from that set appeared to be missing.

Speaker 10 He said, I haven't been totally honest with you guys.

Speaker 2 Just before midnight on July 23rd, 2013, Marlene Johnson sits in an interview room at the Rowan County Sheriff's Office, now the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of Shirley Pierce.

Speaker 9 You want to make things mad or going with your attorneys already?

Speaker 9 My attorney.

Speaker 9 She had her sunglasses on.

Speaker 9 She acted bored, uninvolved. She was acting the complete opposite way I'd act if somebody was accusing me of murder.

Speaker 15 She didn't answer any questions, and she just denied any involvement and didn't answer any questions at all.

Speaker 2 While Marlene refuses to talk, her hands tell detectives everything they need.

Speaker 2 I need to look at your arms and

Speaker 2 your hands.

Speaker 9 She had had like a French manicure, nails done, and the tips of her nails were missing.

Speaker 9 To me, it was clear that she had used her hands in some kind of a situation similar to a fight, and then the cuts on her hands were consistent with the knife cutting her fingers as she was stabbing somebody.

Speaker 2 Between the previous attacks, her husband's statement, and physical evidence of a violent altercation, detectives believe they have enough to formally charge Marlene Johnson.

Speaker 9 You've been charged with murder. I'll take you over to the master's office, put you over there, they'll be processed, they'll take you over to jail and you make some phone calls, okay?

Speaker 6 What is your evidence?

Speaker 6 So tell me what your evidence are

Speaker 6 and why you're charging me.

Speaker 9 Why am I charging you? Yes. Because I feel like you murdered Cheryl.

Speaker 2 While officers escort Marlene to her jail cell, detectives drive out to the home of her friend Tim Connor, who Irvin Johnson told police may have valuable information.

Speaker 2 Tim answers the door and agrees to an interview.

Speaker 23 I began to conduct an interview with Mr. Connor.

Speaker 10 He actually was surprisingly pretty cool and calm about it.

Speaker 18 He didn't seem to be distressed or worried or overly anxious.

Speaker 11 He had a pretty good career as a published author and a motivational speaker.

Speaker 9 I believe Marlene met him at a book signing and they hit it off after that and he explained that it was just a friendship, that he did love her, but it was as a friend.

Speaker 9 He had actually stated it wasn't sexual.

Speaker 2 Tim tells investigators that the previous day he'd had a medical procedure and afterwards Marlene stayed with him in the event he experienced any complications.

Speaker 12 He said that he had gotten up two or three times and that she was there each time that he had gotten up through the night.

Speaker 9 Basically, he was providing her with a pretty solid alibi that puts her at his house and not at a murder scene.

Speaker 2 While Tim seems calm, detectives are confident Marlene is their killer, which leads them to suspect Tim is not being forthcoming.

Speaker 15 Near the end of that interview, I knew that he knew more

Speaker 30 than he was telling us.

Speaker 2 The next day, July 24th, investigators receive Shirley's autopsy results and retrieve a critical clue.

Speaker 9 They actually found a knife blade inside of her neck.

Speaker 9 For the knife to go inside and break a kitchen knife, which is made out of stainless steel, would have required a lot of force.

Speaker 5 The medical examiner determined that this would have been a painful attack, that Shirley Pierce would have had to have suffered from excruciating pain for probably several minutes before she passed away.

Speaker 2 While police found no similar cutlery in Marlene's home, they convinced a judge to let them search the home of Tim Connor on July 25th.

Speaker 7 We're looking for the murder weapon, the broken knife.

Speaker 11 The search of Tim's house did reveal that there was a knife set.

Speaker 23 Looked like there was a set of four.

Speaker 25 Three of them were still there, and this fourth one was missing.

Speaker 9 The knife we recovered from Shirley was consistent with the knives that Tim had in his drawer.

Speaker 2 Detectives confront Tim with this new evidence and give him one more chance to come clean.

Speaker 9 The whole time, Tim's getting more and more nervous. While we're talking to him, he acts like he's very uneasy.

Speaker 25 Asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say.

Speaker 22 He kind of sat back in his chair, looked up to the ceiling, and said, I haven't been totally honest with you guys.

Speaker 2 Tim says that although he had spent the day with Marlene on July 22nd, they actually hadn't spent the night together and insists he has no idea why the knife is missing.

Speaker 2 Tim tells police that when he met up with Marlene for breakfast the next morning, she requested an odd favor.

Speaker 9 She was wanting Tim to be her alibi and basically say she had been with him all night. and including the time that Shirley had been murdered.

Speaker 9 I think a normal person would think that was weird, but Tim heard what she was saying and agreed to go with it because they were such good friends.

Speaker 8 Tim's entire demeanor changed from being cool and under control to really almost like a groveling person.

Speaker 10 He wasn't sure now of Marlene's involvement.

Speaker 9 It was big because her potential alibi had just dried up.

Speaker 25 We have really her only alibi witness just completely recanting everything he had just said about where she would have been the night before

Speaker 16 and I knew at that moment that we we had our person

Speaker 2 coming up does Marlene have a plan to escape justice

Speaker 6 I was so fearful during this thing that Marlene was going to get off

Speaker 5 Marlene made this audible gasp sound and collapsed onto the floor.

Speaker 20 It takes a really sick, terrible person to do what she did.

Speaker 2 In the months after Marlene Johnson's arrest, the North Carolina State Crime Lab completes its analysis of the DNA swabs taken inside Shirley Pierce's home.

Speaker 9 We finally got a hit back putting Marlene Johnson's DNA on the shower curtain where Shirley was found.

Speaker 11 There is nobody else that would have been able to commit this crime. There was no other DNA present that we located other than hers.

Speaker 2 With the DNA proving Marlene was at the scene of the crime, authorities have a clear picture of what happened on July 22, 2013.

Speaker 9 Shirley had been the target of Marlene's obsession for years. It was a picture of kind of this dark obsession she had with Shirley that just progressively got worse over time.

Speaker 5 She became obsessed with the thought that Shirley Pierce was having an affair with her husband. She was so enraged at that thought that she had to take action.
She was going to do something about it.

Speaker 9 I think Shirley drove into her garage, got out of her car, went in her house. At some point, Marlene snuck in the house behind her.

Speaker 9 When Shirley was getting dressed to go to bed and called Chuck back, she was attacked brutally,

Speaker 9 stabbed multiple times.

Speaker 9 She finally succumbed to the attack and died.

Speaker 9 And then was drugged to the bathtub.

Speaker 9 I think after she put Shirley in the bathtub, she'd covered her tracks pretty good. She noticed she'd been cut.
So she went and got bleached and poured it on areas where she thought she bled at.

Speaker 9 And that's why it was so splotchy and all over the house.

Speaker 2 In January of 2018, Marlene Johnson stands trial for first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 She was very demure and looked very professional the way that she was dressed and just the way that she appeared. She did not appear to be an enraged, scorned lover.

Speaker 13 She maintained her innocence. She appeared as if she was untouchable, that she would not be convicted.

Speaker 2 But when prosecutors lay out the brutality of the crime, the defense's only recourse is to call the evidence into question.

Speaker 9 They're trying to make it look like more could have been done. And if it had been done, then the blame would been pointed at another person.

Speaker 5 There was not a lot the defense attorneys could say about the physical evidence, and they couldn't really question that so much. The physical evidence in the case was very strong.

Speaker 6 I was so fearful during this thing that Marlene was going to get off some way.

Speaker 2 On January 24th, 2018, DNA evidence, cuts on her hands, a false alibi, and an ongoing pattern of harassment towards Shirley leads the jury to a speedy verdict.

Speaker 5 As soon as the word guilty came out of the mouth of the clerk, Marlene made this audible gasp sound and collapsed onto the floor.

Speaker 5 One deputy rushed to her. A couple of other deputies in the courtroom also made their way towards Marlene Johnson.
The judge stopped them, said, do not take her out of the courtroom.

Speaker 5 The judge said, you're going to listen to this verdict. Then the judge polled the jury and made each individual juror give their verdict, 12 guilty.

Speaker 5 And the judge said, it is my order that you will die in prison.

Speaker 2 Even though Marlene will spend the rest of her life behind bars, those involved in her case still can't sleep easy.

Speaker 6 I don't feel like Marlene got what she deserved. She doesn't deserve to be alive.

Speaker 6 She's going to live off of us for the rest of her life, our tax money, while Shirley, Shirley's life ended.

Speaker 5 This is a person who did absolutely nothing and yet was stalked, was terrorized, and then eventually tortured and killed.

Speaker 6 My heart's broken. Miss Shirley was such a wonderful lady, and I just feel like she died for no reason at all.

Speaker 6 I feel like she died because of the obsession of Marlene

Speaker 6 that she had in her mind.

Speaker 27 Shirley, her family lost mother, grandmother, Chuck lost his fiancé, and it shouldn't have happened.

Speaker 6 Marlene is a coward. It takes a really sick, terrible person to do what she did.

Speaker 2 This

Speaker 6 just shook me to my core.

Speaker 13 It's

Speaker 6 just unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.
I just miss her as a person. Her smile, her laughter,

Speaker 6 just being such a caring person

Speaker 6 would give anybody the shirt off her back.

Speaker 6 I just miss our laughs and our good times.

Speaker 26 Marlene's is serving her life sentence at Anson Correctional Institution in Pulton, North Carolina. She still maintains her innocence.

Speaker 26 Tim Conner was never charged in connection to the murder of Shirley Pierce.