Cody Johnson | Pushed to Death | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[theme music] NARRATOR: A deadly fall from a desolate mountain trail. DICK SINE: We had received word that a body had been found
in Glacier National Park. NARRATOR: A newlywed's life cut short just days after saying "I do."
AMBER HAQUE: This was a case that had everybody gripped. What about to start their life together and one of them
has ended up dead. NARRATOR: Was it simply a terrible accident? JUSTIN FRANZ: She told law enforcement that they
had gotten into an argument. NARRATOR: Or the result of something far more sinister?
[theme music] JUSTIN FRANZ: Cody Johnson was born in California in 1988, and grew up in Montana.
AMBER HAQUE: Cody loved being outdoors. He loved sports, he loved going to his church,
and he also was obsessed with cars. He loved driving them, fixing them up. He was a person who loved life and his hobbies.
JUSTIN FRANZ: He was just very popular among his friends. He was very outgoing. NARRATOR: Cody's hometown of Kalispell
was the county seat of Flathead County. DICK SINE: The county is phenomenally large.
It stretches all the way from the Canadian border down to the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The county is a very wide river valley formed by glaciers eons ago, and there are a number of glaciers in the mountains.
And that's kind of a big reason why people like to come here, is to go to that remote area.
NARRATOR: Cody had been single for some time. In October 2011, he met Jordan Graham.
AMBER HAQUE: Jordan and Cody met at a Halloween party. Jordan was a little bit shy as she
was slightly more introverted. Cody was larger than life, really out there, extroverted,
but they got on really well. They had so much in common. Both really active, loved the outdoors, loved hiking.
They both were avid church-goers as well. And the relationship progressed quite quickly.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Cody was head over heels with Jordan. This was infatuated with her.
He once told a friend that if he could wake up next to her every day for the rest of his life,
he would be happy. AMBER HAQUE: The relationship moved fast. And a little over a year later, in December 2012,
Cody proposed. JUSTIN FRANZ: They're very involved in their church and would often go at least once a week,
but sometimes twice in one day. DONNA YOUNGS: Cody and Jordan were both members of the Faith Baptist Church, a very conservative
branch of the Christian faith. Jordan was particularly devout member, and her beliefs were very much that sex was something
to be reserved for marriage. AMBER HAQUE: On June 29 in 2013, the couple married in a modest celebration, surrounded
by family and friends. After the ceremony, the couple had a one-night honeymoon in a place
called Bigfork in Montana. Cody really spoiled Jordan that night. He decorated the room with flowers
to make it a really romantic evening for them. NARRATOR: When they returned from their honeymoon,
the newlyweds moved into their first home together. - The couple had time off work booked in to decorate their new
place together, and Cody was due back into work on Monday, the 8th of July. JUSTIN FRANZ: They got up, went to church.
People were asking Cody what they were planning to do that Sunday, and Cody said that Jordan had told him
that she had a surprise for him, but he didn't know what the surprise was. After church, they met some other church members
at the Dairy Queen in Kalispell. After spending time with their friends, Cody and Jordan went
home about 8:30 that night. NARRATOR: Later that evening, Jordan made an unexpected phone
call to her brother. - On the evening of July 7, at about 11:15, Jordan calls up her brother and she tells him that her and Cody
had gotten into a fight and he had gotten into a car with some of his car buddies to go joyriding, and
she didn't know where he was. And she didn't want to talk to him or look for him that night,
but she just wanted to talk to him the next day. NARRATOR: Later that night, around 1:00 AM,
Jordan drove to her best friend Kimberly's house. AMBER HAQUE: When she turned up on her doorstep,
Kimberly noticed that Jordan seemed nervous. JUSTIN FRANZ: She told Kimberly that the argument had
happened so quickly, and that she didn't really want to talk to Cody. She just wanted to see if he showed
up to work the next morning. NARRATOR: On July 8, Cody was due on the early shift
at the local car dealership where he worked building custom-made vehicles with his coworker
and close friend, Cameron. AMBER HAQUE: Cameron was expecting him to show up for work that day, but he never showed.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Cody always came to work on time, sometimes early, and was a very dedicated worker.
And so for him to not be at work was very unusual. NARRATOR: Two hours later, there
was still no sign of Cody. JUSTIN FRANZ: Cameron text, he called, but it went to voicemail every time.
- About 4:30, he texted Jordan. Jordan told Cameron that the couple had gotten into a fight,
and that Cody had taken off with some car bodies, apparently from Washington. NARRATOR: By July 9, it had been two days
since Cody had last been seen. JUSTIN FRANZ: Cameron went to Cody and Jordan's house to see
if he could find Cody himself. When he got there, he started looking around the house
and found the back door unlocked and went inside, but could not find Cody. And Cameron continued to get more and more concerned,
so he started to call friends and call police departments and to see if anyone matching Cody's description showed up.
He called hospitals from Kalispell all the way to Spokane, Washington, to see if they had found Cody.
NARRATOR: But there was no sign of him anywhere. AMBER HAQUE: Jordan gathered some friends
and began to search around the local area for Cody. When they were driving back, Jordan
received a call from the police asking her to come in for questioning. JUSTIN FRANZ: She goes to the Kalispell Police Department
to talk to a Sergeant Zimmerman and tell him what she knows about his disappearance.
Jordan said that Cody had received a phone call that evening that upset him and agitated him.
- Jordan speculated that it could have been a call from somebody called Jose, who she said owed Cody money.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Then she left Cody that evening for a little bit because she had forgotten
her phone charger at one of the places where she worked as a nanny. When she came home, Cody was gone.
She also told the law enforcement that she'd seen a dark-colored car pick up Cody
in the driveway and drive off. [tense music] AMBER HAQUE: A missing persons report was
launched in northwest Montana. This went out to all of the authorities in the local area who then began a search.
NARRATOR: Dick Sine was one of the officers on duty that day. DICK SINE: In 2013, I was the chief
of detectives for the Flathead County Sheriff's Department. Under Montana law, the elected Sheriff
is also the elected Coroner. I know Glacier National Park because I was a law enforcement ranger there for about eight years.
Hiking on the trails is not recommended at night. It's rugged. It's remote. A lot of times you're on a narrow rock ledge with mountain
to one side of you and a sharp fall off to the other side. And if you just trip and fall, you
can go downhill a long ways, and some of those falls can be very fatal. When someone goes missing, they generally
do a radio broadcast that can be received by all law enforcement agencies in the area.
So in the summer months, you get these all the time because of the extreme number of visitors
we have in the area. Most of these are resolved within a few hours. They just come out way later than they planned on,
or they overnight somewhere and come out the next day. Rarely are they actually missing.
The report of Cody Johnson missing was not an unusual event. The fact that he stayed missing longer than most than
made it more intense, and more of interest to law enforcement to be looking with greater diligence.
AMBER HAQUE: It's now two days since Cody's last been seen. His friends and his colleagues were really
starting to get worried. NARRATOR: Cody Johnson had been missing from the Kalispell area
for over two days. While local police began their search, his wife of only 10 days, Jordan,
continued to be questioned by detectives. JUSTIN FRANZ: When asked why she didn't immediately
report him missing, Jordan told law enforcement that she didn't know that she could.
She thought she had to wait 48 hours before reporting someone missing. Jordan also said that she believed
if Cody had come home and found out that she had called law enforcement, that he
would have gotten upset. Law enforcement was suspicious of Jordan's story because she had been telling different people
different things throughout the previous few days. NARRATOR: The following morning on July 10, 2013,
Jordan returned to Kalispell Police Department along with her mother and some vital new information.
JUSTIN FRANZ: In that email, the person wrote, "my name is Tony. There's no bother looking for Cody anymore.
He's gone. He had come with some buddies, met up with me on Sunday night in Columbia Falls.
He was saying he needed to be with his buddies for a bit and take them for a joyride."
AMBER HAQUE: "Three of the guys came back saying that they had gone for a ride in the woods somewhere,
and Cody got out of the car, went for a little hike, and they are positive that he fell and he is dead, Jordan."
JUSTIN FRANZ: "I don't know who the guys were, but they took off. So call off the missing persons report.
Cody is gone for sure." - This really turned the investigation on its head. When she gave this email to law enforcement that essentially
said her husband was dead. She was acting very unusual. She wasn't freaked out. She wasn't crying.
She wasn't sad. She seemed to be showing almost no emotion at all. - For a woman who's potentially just
found out that her new husband is dead, this reaction is not what you would expect.
AMBER HAQUE: Jordan said that she didn't know who Tony was, but she gave police contact details for somebody
called Tony Stallcup. - Law enforcement immediately thought the email was sketchy,
but it was still a lead nonetheless. So they subpoenaed Google for information about where the IP address of the email had been created,
and they also decided to track down this Tony. NARRATOR: While police tried to trace Tony Stallcup,
Jordan regrouped with her search party. AMBER HAQUE: Armed with this information from this email,
Jordan gathers up her friends, her brother Michael. They all head to Glacier National Park
and begin a search. JUSTIN FRANZ: At a few points, they would stop and get out of the car
and start hiking around looking for Cody. But it was kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.
Glacier National Park is a million acres. It's a huge landscape, and so finding a single person in it
would be nearly impossible. One of the spots that Jordan wanted to look at was this location called The Loop.
They parked the car and looked around briefly, but it was getting late and so they went home.
The following day, they went back to the spot, and Jordan was pretty insistent that they
searched this area again, and so they started walking. At one point, Jordan started to climb down the embankment.
It's this very steep embankment. That's over this river. Very dangerous, but Jordan was insistent about going
down this embankment. - Her brother tries to say to her, "it's not safe over there."
But she just says to him, "no, I've just got this feeling that we might find something."
JUSTIN FRANZ: After a few minutes of walking around, she spotted something in the ravine below.
Her brother Michael came alongside her and there he was. [sinister music] It was Cody's body at the bottom
of the steep and rocky ravine. Michael immediately became emotional and started crying,
but Jordan was very cold and didn't seem to show a lot of emotion at all about what she had just seen.
NARRATOR: With no phone signal on the remote hiking trail, Jordan and her friends drove to the nearest general store
to alert the authorities. - From there, a call is made to say that the body has been found.
NARRATOR: Park rangers confirmed the presence of a body, but due to the difficult and dangerous
terrain, recovery teams waited until the following day, July 12, to attempt to retrieve it from the ravine.
DICK SINE: We had received word that a body had been found in Glacier National Park,
that they suspected that it was, in fact, Cody Johnson. So I was assigned as a coroner, not as
a detective, but as a coroner, to go and investigate the death. We were taken to a spot where you could look over
the edge of the gorge, and you could see the body and the water below. And then we came up with a game plan of how to get down to it.
NARRATOR: Cody's body was almost 200 feet below in a creek at the bottom of the canyon.
- The fastest and easiest way would have been to rappel down on ropes. But because the body was at the bottom of the gorge,
we weren't sure how the cliff faces were involved in what happened, so we didn't want to disturb
anything on the cliff faces. So we walked down through wooded area and followed the creek that he was in and approached him
that way, was not to disrupt any evidence or forensic findings that might be there.
When we came upon the body, it was in a small pool of water, which roughly was 3-foot deep.
Prone, arms hanging down at his side, legs down underneath him. As coroners were taught, everything
is a homicide until the evidence and the information proves otherwise. We also know people fall and die in the park
with some regularity. For the most part, almost three a year. So you try to start with an unbiased mind.
A number of investigators and myself took a series of photographs looking at the body from all angles, so you get a good perspective
of where they're at. Then we go into the physical examination of the body. There was no blood.
You could see some skin defects, which is corner terms for tears and skin. But with his face down, we couldn't
see any trauma associated with his head or skull from that position. In his back pocket was the outline of a wallet.
So I recovered that wallet. I found a Montana operator's license which was issued to Cody, and the physical description
matched the general physical description that we had in front of us. So now we were able to say that this,
in fact, was Cody Johnson. We have to put our emotion behind and look at things from a clinical standpoint.
It was not a pleasant thing to look at by any means, but it was part of my job and I try
to do my job with the greatest efficiency and professionalism I can. As I panned the area taking photographs,
I noticed two objects that were not naturally occurring. One was a piece of black cloth or fabric,
and another one was a tennis shoe up on the cliff edge. So that was the first clue from where he came down,
because he could have come down from either side of that canyon. But then we knew he came from the south side of it
because of the placement of that shoe. The plan was made that we would put Cody in a water bag, which
is basically a large mesh bag, and try and hoist it up the side of a mountain. In rolling him over to position him in the bag
was the first frontal view of his face and the frontal lobes of his head. And he had massive trauma that would be, the descriptor we use
is inconsistent with life. And that further gave indication that he fell from altitude.
He didn't just trip and fall there in that body of water. Everything that we saw, the totality of the information,
suggested that he came from the south rim of that Canyon up in that loop area and hit rock objects all the way down.
DONNA YOUNGS: This sets up some big questions. What was Cody doing there and how did he fall?
NARRATOR: Cody's body was airlifted out of the ravine and sent for autopsy. Later that day, the autopsy results
confirmed he had died from blunt force trauma consistent with a fall from 200 feet.
Meanwhile, news of Cody's death spread throughout the local community. JUSTIN FRANZ: The discovery of Cody's body
in Glacier National Park was a big story locally. People go missing in the park with some regularity,
and occasionally people die. But this was very mysterious about how he ended up at the bottom of the ravine.
NARRATOR: On July 22, 2013, 11 days after Cody's body was found, friends and family
gathered for his funeral. AMBER HAQUE: Cody's mom, Shari, led the tribute service.
They had a memorial fund there to pay for some of the expenses, but the room was full of all of Cody's loved ones,
his friends, his colleagues. However, the mourners described that Jordan's demeanor
was unusual. JUSTIN FRANZ: She seemed very disengaged from the entire event. She wasn't very emotional, especially
considering that she just lost her husband of eight days. And some people later said that she spent most of the time
looking at her phone. NARRATOR: Concerned about her best friend Jordan's Maid of Honor, Kimberly,
contacted the police about some worrying text messages she'd received from Jordan
in the run up to the wedding. JUSTIN FRANZ: Jordan had been sending her a lot of texts about issues that she
and Cody had been having. AMBER HAQUE: She kept saying to Kimberly she wasn't sure if she
wanted to go through with it. Kimberly said Jordan seemed more concerned with being a bride than a wife, and
that also she had some nerves around the night of the wedding. Because she was deeply religious,
she was nervous about the prospect that Cody might want to consummate the marriage that night.
NARRATOR: Jordan's doubts about her relationship with Cody continued in the days following the wedding.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Kimberly told law enforcement that a lot of the text messages she had received from Jordan
were about how she felt like she had made a mistake. She wished she hadn't gotten married to Cody.
She was really struggling with settling into married life and settling into adulthood.
She was also having trouble being intimate with Cody. She would make up excuses why they couldn't be intimate
together, and she was just really struggling with that part of marriage. DONNA YOUNGS: These messages are about
more than post-wedding blues. They're not simply a reaction to the end of the excitement and the anticipation
leading up to the wedding. These messages imply somebody who feels frightened, who feels trapped.
What we have here is somebody who doesn't really have the emotional maturity for
marriage yet. NARRATOR: There was one text message in particular sent the night Cody went missing that raised
alarm bells for officers. - Kimberly told law enforcement that on the night of July 7,
Jordan had texted Kimberly and said that she was going to finally bring up these feelings with Cody and that they
were going to have that conversation that evening. She also told Kimberly that if she didn't hear from her later,
that she should be worried that something had happened. [ominous music] NARRATOR: As the investigation continued
into the death of Cody Johnson after a fatal fall in Glacier National Park, his friends
began to question the behavior of his now widow, Jordan Graham, in the aftermath.
JUSTIN FRANZ: In the days after they found Cody's body, all of Cody and Jordan's friends
started to look at the events of the previous week or two in a different light. They started to remember that at the wedding,
she was acting very unusual, that she wasn't really expressing a lot of emotion or even excitement about the wedding.
While she had been excited about the event itself, she didn't seem to be excited about getting married to Cody.
When she was walking down the aisle, Jordan was actually crying. At the time, her friends thought
that maybe they were tears of joy, but with the passage of time, they started to think that maybe those were
tears meant something else. AMBER HAQUE: When people reflected back on that wedding
day, it seemed even more suspicious now Cody had gone missing. NARRATOR: Jordan's behavior during the search
for her missing husband had also taken friends and family by surprise. AMBER HAQUE: She was giggling.
She was texting on her phone. And then when they eventually did find her dead husband's
body, she made this comment and say, "oh, well, they call off the search now. The detectives can get off my back
and get out of my business." JUSTIN FRANZ: Later that day, they were driving home in Cody's car.
One of Jordan's friends was driving and she was obviously very emotional. I mean, they just found their friend's body
and they were driving erratically. And at one point Jordan told this friend, "hey, slow down,
drive safe. This isn't my car." And then she paused and said, "well, actually it is now."
That just seemed very unusual to be more focused on the car that you have, instead
of the fact that you just discovered your dead husband at the bottom of a ravine.
DONNA YOUNGS: All of this tells me that this is someone who's not surprised by the discovery of the body, who's
not emotionally impacted by the discovery of the body. Someone who's unaware of the world that she's living in,
who hasn't admitted to herself what's going on. NARRATOR: But what really set alarm bells
ringing was how quickly Jordan found Cody's body in Glacier National Park, a sprawling wilderness
spanning over 1 million acres. JUSTIN FRANZ: The odds of finding a body in Glacier National Park are slim.
The odds of finding your dead husband in Glacier National Park is probably one in a billion.
DICK SINE: The park has hundreds of miles of trails, hundreds of lakes, several rivers.
If you could look at an acre a day, it would exceed a human lifetime. It's beyond reasonable imagination
that they just happen to luck on to the right spot at the right time. Just incredibly unusual.
I can't think of another time in my career that that has happened. NARRATOR: As suspicions swirled around Jordan,
detectives continued to follow up on the lead she had provided to police when Cody was reported missing.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Initially, Jordan had told law enforcement that Cody had received a phone call on the night of July 7
that had upset him. [tense music] AMBER HAQUE: The police did investigate this call, which Jordan said Cody received
from Jose in Washington. Turns out Jose did call Cody, but this was just about a work-related incident,
so the police quickly cleared him of any suspicion. Detectives then began to investigate the email.
Jordan had said that this came from a man called Tony Stallcup. They made contact with Tony.
He had nothing to do with this email. The police then subpoenaed Google to find out more
information about the account. [tense music] Two key pieces of information were found.
This account was set up on July the 10, the same day that the email was sent. And the IP address led back to Jordan's parents' house.
This now strongly suggested that Jordan had set up this email account to send a fake email
to create a fake narrative about what really happened to Cody. DONNA YOUNGS: Now, if Jordan sent this email to herself,
this tells me that we're dealing with somebody who's desperately thrashing about, who's
on the back foot scrambling, and who's simply reacting to events rather than having pre-planned
them in any way at all. NARRATOR: Then came another shocking revelation. JUSTIN FRANZ: During the course of law enforcement's
investigation, they were able to subpoena the cell phone data of Jordan's phone and where it had been on the evening of July 7.
That information told them that Jordan was headed towards Glacier National Park and eventually entered the park, where she lost cell
phone service for a while. Later, it showed her leaving the park going back to Kalispell.
NARRATOR: This confirmed that Jordan, or at least her phone, had been in the park on the same night
that Cody fell to his death. And then detectives uncovered another key piece of evidence that would change the course
of the entire investigation. On the evening of July 16, Jordan was asked to come
in for further questioning. - Initially, she thought it was just an interview to wrap things up, but when she got there,
she wasn't talking to detectives with the Kalispell Police Department anymore. She was talking to an FBI agent.
[tense music] The FBI was involved because Cody's body had been discovered in Glacier National Park,
which is federal jurisdiction. The agent asked Jordan to explain the night of Cody's disappearance.
Jordan told him about the car buddies, how they had gotten into a disagreement. But at one point, the agent told Jordan to stop
and said that he knew she was lying. He flips over a photo from the security cameras
at the west gate of Glacier National Park. Right there was Jordan and Cody and their car
and a timestamp saying that they were there the night that Cody died. [tense music]
- The police used this piece of irrefutable evidence of her lying to break Jordan down.
Faced with this evidence, she breaks down and confesses. - Jordan said that they drove into the park
and they decided to go on a hike. JUSTIN FRANZ: She told law enforcement that they had gotten into an argument,
that she had finally confronted Cody about her feelings of not wanting to be married.
And the argument got heated quickly. DONNA YOUNGS: In that moment, although I think she will have been aware at the back of her mind
of the consequences of what she's telling, I think, actually, Jordan will have experienced this as a relief to be finally saying the truth.
NARRATOR: Following her confession, Jordan was released and placed under house arrest,
while detectives continued to build a case to prove this wasn't an accident but a meticulously planned murder.
[tense music] That August, she was indicted by a federal grand jury. - Prosecutors managed to secure an indictment against
Jordan for first and second-degree murder and lying to authorities. The police department called Jordan
in asking her to return some evidence, but when she arrived, they arrested her on suspicion of Cody's murder.
The trial began on December 9, 2013, at a federal court in Missoula, Montana. NARRATOR: Jordan pleaded not guilty to charges
of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and making false statements to authorities.
JUSTIN FRANZ: First-degree murder suggests that it was premeditated and that she had planned it all out.
Second-degree murder was that it was an accident. The purpose of the trial was to determine whether or not she
had killed Cody on purpose. NARRATOR: If the prosecution could prove Jordan was guilty of first-degree murder,
she could be facing life in prison. On December 9, 2013, just five months after Cody Johnson
died after a fatal fall in Glacier National Park, his widow, Jordan Graham, stood trial for his murder.
- The prosecution brought various pieces of evidence. These included the fact that Jordan took Cody for a surprise
that night up on the mountain. The fact that she sent these text messages on the night of his death to Kimberly,
all of her nerves before the marriage, as well as her lies after Cody was found dead.
- The prosecution is painting a picture of Jordan as somebody utterly cold, somebody who was able to ruthlessly hold
a secret from her friends and family, somebody who strategically tried to take control of the narrative.
NARRATOR: There was one further piece of evidence that prosecutors hoped would convince
the jury that Cody's death had been planned. JUSTIN FRANZ: There was a cloth that
was found near Cody in the park, and prosecutors believe that it might have been a blindfold.
Jordan had put a blindfold on Cody before he had been pushed off the cliff. Prosecutors tried to introduce the blindfold at trial,
but because it hadn't been put in a proper evidence bag, they were not able to submit it as formal evidence
in the trial. - They were looking for DNA on it and it was stored in a plastic bag and it was damp.
Well, things stored in plastic bags that are damp putrefy and destroy DNA evidence.
[tense music] NARRATOR: Jordan's defense team continued to claim that Cody's fatal fall had been a tragic accident.
JUSTIN FRANZ: Jordan's attorneys argued that Jordan was an immature person and that she wasn't ready for the responsibilities
of marriage, but that she didn't purposely kill Cody. Their argument was that Cody and Jordan had gotten
into a fight that night in Glacier National Park, and that she had pushed him off the cliff by accident.
And that everything that she had done in the days after his death, all the lies she told,
was because she didn't think anyone would believe her version of events. - There's no doubt this is a plausible explanation.
I'm just not sure it's consistent with somebody who is also able the next day to create
an email alibi, deflecting blame on somebody else. NARRATOR: During the course of the trial, dozens of witnesses
were called to testify, including then chief of detectives and county coroner Dick Sine.
DICK SINE: I was brought into the courtroom and the questioning involved was about the location.
How did I take the remains into my care, and how was the integrity of them going forward to the crime
lab, those mechanical sorts of things which one cannot take for granted at trial.
JUSTIN FRANZ: They also put his mother on the stand for a very emotional testimony.
She told the court that Cody was super happy to have been getting married, that he'd always wanted to buy a home and start a family,
and that she'd always wanted to become a grandmother. And so she was kind of on cloud 9 in the days
after Cody and Jordan's wedding. But unfortunately, those dreams were quickly dashed.
[pensive music] There was a lot of emotional testimony throughout the course of that week,
but the entire time Jordan showed very little emotion. [pensive music] DONNA YOUNGS: It's almost as if her reactions are
the reactions of somebody who doesn't actually think that she's done anything wrong.
It's as if she's the victim somehow. NARRATOR: As the trial progressed, more shocking evidence came to light.
JUSTIN FRANZ: One of the investigators happened to live in Cody and Jordan's neighborhood,
and he was out for a jog when he discovered that someone at Cody and Jordan's house
had taken out the trash. Once trash can's on the curb, it's kind of fair game. And so he took the trash can, brought it home, and dumped out
everything that was inside. He found cards and Teddy Bears and other gifts that Cody had given Jordan.
And he also found part of Jordan's wedding dress. And it was kind of unusual that Jordan just
decided to throw them out, especially immediately after his disappearance. - This is not somebody sentimentally
holding on to the loss of a loved bereaved partner. This is somebody cold and calculating.
[pensive music] AMBER HAQUE: As the trial was nearing its conclusion, Jordan's defense were faced with lots of evidence
mounting up against her. They had her confession, they had the falsified email that she'd sent, witness testimony,
and the trash can discovery. It was not looking good for Jordan. JUSTIN FRANZ: Before the trial, and we are anticipating closing
arguments from both sides. But after lunch break, everyone got back into the courtroom
and there was a surprise. Jordan had decided to plead guilty to second-degree murder.
It was a very shocking moment. The defense realized that there was no way a jury was going to find her innocent of these charges.
- She accepted the charge of second degree murder in agreement that the charge of first-degree
murder and her lying to authorities would be dropped. [smashes] NARRATOR: On March 27, 2014, Jordan Graham
was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison with 5 years of supervised release following her term.
JUSTIN FRANZ: She also had to pay restitution to law enforcement of about $17,000 to cover the cost
of recovering Cody's body. - It's reassuring that something horrible that happened to another human being
is not without its penalty. And there's remorse because a young lady lost any semblance of a future she
was going to have for a momentary occurrence where she ruined multiple lives. She obviously took the life of her husband.
She condemned herself to the bulk of her adult life in jail. She had family and friends that lost respect for her.
She had other people and other family members that lost a son, lost a good friend, lost a coworker.
AMBER HAQUE: Cody Johnson left behind a family and friends who loved him dearly.
Dying in his mid-20s when he was just at the start of his life. This was such a tragic case.
JUSTIN FRANZ: I don't think anyone doubts that Jordan did it, but I certainly do think that even a decade later,
there's a lot of questions that linger about the entire episode. Whether she planned it out and lured him
to some cliff with a blindfold on, or whether it was just an accident and she pushed him off the cliff
in a moment of passion. The only person who knows for certain what happened that night is Jordan.
[pensive music] I don't think she was really ready to be married. She wasn't ready for that type of commitment.
And I do have to wonder-- logically, you would think, well, if you get married and you're immediately unhappy, we'll just file for divorce.
But I don't really know if that was an option for her, you know, considering her very religious background.
That might have been tough for her. And so I do think she maybe felt she was trapped in that marriage
and that there was no way to get out of it. DICK SINE: We are all products of our upbringing
and the culture we live in. You have to ask yourself, are any of the other people that had those constraints
killing their spouses? [melancholy music] NARRATOR: Following the trial, friends and family held
a memorial service for Cody. JUSTIN FRANZ: And it was-- it was very well attended.
There were a few hundred people, lots of Cody's friends and family, and just a lot of memories about the type
of person Cody was. I think while there was a lot of emotion at that event, I think there was also a lot of relief
that they finally knew what had happened, or at least as much as they're ever going to know
about what had happened. But it was very an emotional event. Cody was a beloved person, and that event reflected that.
- This was a real tragedy where two lives were ruined. Jordan found herself in this situation where she got herself
30 years in prison, and then Cody's family and friends who loved him dearly have been left with that loss
and that grief of a young man who was just starting out his life. - With the guilty verdict, the family and friends of Cody
have got justice, but they forever lost the bubbly, vivacious character that was their son,
their brother, their friend. [melancholy music] [theme music]

The chilling case of Cody Johnson, who is pushed to his death almost 200 feet into a ravine at Glacier National Park by his wife of only 8 days, Jordan Graham.

Pushed to Death tells the stories of people who tragically passed away after appearing to suffer a fatal fall in suspicious circumstances.

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Brief Summary

Cody Johnson died shortly after marrying Jordan Graham, who was later convicted of his murder.

Key points

A Deadly Fall. A newlywed's life is cut short just days after saying 'I do.'
The Search Begins. Cody Johnson goes missing, prompting a search in Glacier National Park.
Unusual Behavior. Jordan's demeanor at Cody's funeral raises concerns among friends and family.
Jordan's Unusual Behavior. Jordan's reactions during the search for her husband raised suspicions among friends and family.
Confession Under Pressure. Faced with irrefutable evidence, Jordan confesses to the murder of her husband.
Plea Deal Shocks Everyone. In a surprising turn, Jordan pleads guilty to second-degree murder before closing arguments.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was a case that had everybody gripped.

Amber Haque reflects on the case's impact.

0:22WatchJan 27, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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