Forensic Files | Accident Or Murder | FULL EPISODE | HD | True Crime Procedure Investigation Drama | Forensic Files

And then what are you going to do? >> On the morning of February 20th, 1989, something terrible happened to Janice
Johnson, a 35-year-old housewife and mother of two children. >> Uh, Claire, I got to go. I'll talk to
you later. Okay. [Music] The investigation into that morning's events would raise questions that
persist to this day. [Music] Clayton and Janice Johnson lived in the tiny coastal fishing village of Shelurn,
Nova Scotia. It's a close-knit community where town's people all know one another. For the
Johnson's, Shelburn was the ideal place to raise their two young daughters, 11-year-old Darla and 9-year-old Dawn.
>> We had two lovely girls and you know, perfect as far as I was concerned. We were always together. Like even ask
anybody around the community whenever they seen us, we were the four of us were usually always together. Very, very
rarely we ever went anywhere individually. Clayton was an industrial arts teacher
at the local high school. Janice was a homemaker. The Johnson's were a deeply religious family and very active in
their church, volunteering much of their free time to church activities. >> We were always out visiting people and
doing this and that. My mom was the type of person that she didn't like to just sit around and do nothing, so we were
always busy doing something. Um, and like we never went anywhere without doing it as a family.
>> The morning of February 20th, 1989 was a typical one for the Johnson family. After the children left for school,
Clayton carried some laundry to the basement for his wife. >> All right. Very good.
>> Moments later, the telephone rang. Clayton answered on the basement extension.
>> Sure. Just right here. >> Okay, great. Thanks. >> Hi. >> It was Claire Thompson, our next door
neighbor. >> Throw on a load of laundry. >> She wanted to answer. She took the phone.
>> What? >> And I went out and got my coat and come back in and told her I was going to give
her a kiss goodbye and I left. >> Really? Do you think your husband's got a mind?
>> We got to go. >> Oh, okay. Bye. See you later. >> See you tonight. >> Mhm. >> Okay. Yeah.
Clayton then left for work, stopping along the way at a local gas station. >> Janice
Janice. A few minutes later, a neighbor stopped by the Johnson's home. He discovered Janice at the bottom of
the stairs. She was bloody and unconscious, but still alive. Clayton heard the news when he arrived
at work and rushed to the hospital. >> When I first seen her, I I didn't recognize her because of like all the
tubes and and the swelling. So, and I'd look almost twice to realize it was her.
And it's just one of those things that you don't want to see every day. Janice had sustained severe head
injuries from what was assumed to be an accidental fall down the basement steps.
Despite the best of medical treatment, Janice died of her head wound several hours later. She was just 35 years old.
>> I think it was the first time I ever seen my father cry. My first reaction was that it wasn't it
wasn't real. like you want to believe it didn't happen. >> That's one of the hardest things I've
ever done in my life is to tell the two girls that their mother passed away. >> The small community of Shelurn rallied
around Clayton Johnson and his two daughters as they paid their last respects to a loving wife and mother.
But that support soon crumbled when Clayton Johnson started dating a woman 30 years his junior.
[Music] After Janice Johnson's death, the chief medical examiner, Dr. Roland Perry,
performed an autopsy. He was hampered to some extent by the fact that there were
no photographs of the accident scene. In a misguided effort to be helpful, two family friends had washed the blood from
the basement before photographs could be taken. This is a police video shot later
as the women described the blood stains. They said there was a small blood stain
on the floor at the bottom of the steps and a blood stain with bloody hair on the concrete wall next to the third
step. [Applause] This recreation shows the position of Janice Johnson's body when paramedics
arrived. Her head was on the floor, her leg was above her head on the step. In her left
hand, she was holding her car keys. Although Dr. Perry found Janice Johnson's wounds to be unusual. He ruled
the death a freak accident, concluding that she had fallen forward down the steps to her death.
He suspected that her skull had become wedged in a 5 and 1/2 in space between the wooden steps and the adjoining
concrete wall, which crushed both sides of her head. When she landed on the concrete floor, she sustained the wound
to the top of her head. Since Janice Johnson was thought to be in the house alone at the time of the incident, foul
play was ruled out. Janice was on the telephone with Claire Thompson, who said she heard Clayton
kiss Janice goodbye before leaving for work. >> You think so? I don't know about that.
Well, you better look for me. >> Claire Thompson said they talked for 10 minutes and that the call ended around
750. >> Can I call you later? >> Oh, sure. Okay. Talk to you then. Bye. >> This morning? Yeah.
>> Witnesses saw Clayton Johnson at the gas station at the same time. >> Got myself a diesel.
[Music] A minute or two later, a neighbor found Janice in the basement and called
paramedics. The call was logged in at 752. >> That was, so to speak, the end of that.
Of course, Clayton and his daughters had to deal with uh the great loss that they
had suffered. Um, it was only uh after some 18 months had passed that Clayton really made what might be called a
dreadful mistake. Clayton Johnson's mistake was to fall in love. Soon after Janice's death, Clayton
started dating and later married 22-year-old Tina Waybritt. She was a member of the Johnson's church
and was 30 years his junior. In the close-knit conservative community of Shelburn, this new relationship
raised a few eyebrows. Police also discovered that Clayton Johnson had purchased a $120,000 life insurance
policy on Janice 2 months before she died. A background check revealed that Clayton Johnson was also having
financial difficulties and that utility services were sometimes cut off in their
home for nonpayment. >> And pretty soon uh fact became confused with rumor, rumor was fact. And the more
people talked, the more people wondered whether this lovable teddy bear Clayton Johnson was a wife killer.
So, police decided to reopen their investigation into Janice Johnson's death. Homicide investigators went back to
reinter the woman who cleaned up the blood after Janice Johnson's death. To their surprise, two years later, one of
the women recalled seeing more blood in the basement than she originally reported on the walls,
across the length of the floor, and on piles of lumber along the far wall. Investigators took this new information
along with the autopsy photos to two of Canada's most respected pathologists. 3 years after his wife's death, Clayton
Johnson was arrested and charged with firstdegree murder. Johnson pleaded not guilty to the
charge. Prosecutors introduced the new blood spatter testimony and also raised the issue of Johnson's new love
interest. >> Clayton Johnson was on trial for events that happened after the accident. He was
on trial for the insurance monies that he collected. He was on trial for this uh new girlfriend that he that he that
he had lived move in with him. >> Clayton Johnson was found guilty of firstdegree murder and was sentenced to
life in prison. >> I don't know how yet I stood up. I could feel my knees and everything get weak
and I took all my power was to keep standing up, not falling down. It just it was a shock, I'll tell you.
Have you ever felt like you were reading a book? That's what it seemed like. It didn't
seem like it was it could be happening in my life. >> Johnson was ordered to serve his
sentence in the Atlantic Maximum Security Institution. From there, he contacted the Association
in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted in Toronto. His story caught the attention of the director of the
organization, James Locker. >> As you go back through the miscarriages of justice in both our country, uh, in
the in Canada, that is in the United States and in England, very often, probably as often as 40 to 50% of the
time, a bad science has played a significant role in a wrongful conviction. But the first thing Locker noticed
wasn't just questionable science. It was a problem with the timeline. >> Clare Thompson said she was on the
telephone with Janice Johnson on the morning of her death. >> Yeah. Elseie and I.
>> In her original statement, Thompson said she heard Clayton kiss Janice goodbye at
approximately 7:40. >> Oh, sure. She said the call with Janice lasted 10 minutes until about 7:50.
A witness said Clayton Johnson was at the gas station at the same time, 7:50, when Clare Thompson said she was ending
her call to Janice. >> 911. >> The neighbor found Janice's body and called paramedics at 7:52.
>> Clayton was aware that Janice was expecting company that morning. any theory that he would kill his wife uh in
a time span of seconds or or minutes when he could legitimately expect three different people to show up at the house
uh in that very time that he was supposedly assaulting his wife. You put all that together, the theory he killed
his wife was, in my view, completely ridiculous. >> Blood spatter expert Herb Macdonald was
also skeptical. He believes that the witness's original statements were probably the most accurate.
>> The neighbors at that time reported that the blood was consistent with an accident. Now, obviously, they're not
qualified to interpret blood stained patterns, but had they seen a lot of spattering, or if they'd seen blood up
on the walls and ceiling, I think at that time, even though they were cleaning it up, they would have a clear
recollection of what it looked like and especially where they washed it up. Another story that changed was Claire
Thompson's. In her original statement, she said she called Janice around 7:40 and that the call lasted for 10 minutes.
>> Two years later, she said she may have called closer to 7:30. This created the window of opportunity
for Johnson to have murdered his wife. James Locker asked two forensic pathologists to review the forensic
evidence independently. Dr. Linda Norton of Dallas, Texas, and Dr. James Ferris of Vancouver.
They both examined the case file and autopsy photos, and it was what they didn't see that they found most
intriguing. >> There are no defense wounds. And in a bludgeoning of this nature, considering
the location of the head wounds, one would expect to see defensive wounds if this were an actual bludgeoning death.
>> During an attack, most individuals instinctively raise their hands to protect themselves. As a result, their
hands and forearms sustain injuries. There's absolutely no evidence that any of the injuries were as a result of some
form of homicidal assault. >> Janice Johnson's car keys were in her hand when paramedics arrived.
The lack of arm wounds and the car keys also cast doubt on the original forensic
report which stated that Janice fell forwards down the steps. What occurred is that she slipped at the top of the
stairs and she fell backwards instead of forwards. And of course, most falls down
the stairs or forward falls. Backward falls are uncommon. And I think that's what led to an awful lot of the
misinterpretation that occurred in this case. >> Clayton Johnson's new defense team now
had two major hurdles. first to prove to the court that Johnson was innocent and
also to show how Janice Johnson really died. [Music] By the time Clayton Johnson's new
defense team gathered their information, he had spent 6 years behind bars. It was a life Johnson had no choice but
to get used to. It's a whole new ball game as far as your change of life style, the whole thing. You know, it's
it's a rude awakening. >> Johnson's team of forensic experts did not believe that his wife's injuries
were consistent with the bludgeoning death, and they did not think that she had fallen forwards as was originally
reported. They believed that Janice had fallen backwards. To get Johnson's conviction overturned, his lawyers
needed to find a way to show how the accident really happened. They turned to blood spatter expert Herb Macdonald. But
after studying the case file, Macdonald couldn't figure out a way to recreate an
accidental fall down the basement steps. the very night that I was about ready to
call James Lock here and advise him that I just I could not do my recreation and
I've done many of these reconstructions or recreations if you like. Uh I was very disappointed and I told him I was
about to tell him that I I just couldn't do it. And that night I read the morning
paper. I frequently don't read the paper until a day late. And on the front page
here's Peter Pan at West High School. And of course I thought, hey, >> look at me up highen.
I'm flying. >> In the production of the musical Peter Pan, various characters fly across the
stage in a harness. Macdonald called the high school, borrowed the transom and the operator,
and hired a model the same height and weight as Janice Johnson. Macdonald then built a replica of the
Johnson's basement steps. He videotaped the entire procedure and put blue chalk on the wall and step where witnesses saw
the blood with the model at the top of the steps. She fell backwards. [Music] When her head fell into the gap in
between the third step and the concrete wall, the chalk marks on the model's head were consistent with the injuries
found on Janice Johnson. >> There's no question that that is a good explanation for how the wounds on Janet
Johnson occurred over her right ear. It's remarkable when you see it because the blue marks appear on the model's
head exactly where the injuries are found on Janice's left and right temples. >> James Locher believes that Janice
Johnson was still on the telephone when Clayton was at the gas station. >> And then what are you going to do? and
that the call ended at 7:50 just as her neighbor was arriving at the house. >> Uh, you know, I've got to go. I'll talk
to you later. [Music] >> She grabbed her car keys, ran up the steps, and lost her footing.
As she fell backwards, her head became wedged in the 5 and 1/2 in gap between the step and the cement wall. Her feet
pulled her head from the gap, flipping her body over onto the basement floor, producing the gash found on the top of
her head. When all of this information came to light, Canadian prosecutors took the unusual step of releasing Clayton
Johnson from prison. He had spent 6 years behind bars. I'm just very happy to be back with my
family. I'm very pleased with the decision of Justice Freeman and I couldn't ask for a
better legal team than what I've got. and I just want to get back with my family.
>> I'm really happy right now because that means my dad's actually going to see me
graduate. I've got my father back in my life. >> Although authorities have made no final
decisions about the case, and there's always the chance of a retrial, many believe it will simply be dismissed.
for a crime forensic experts say didn't happen. Six years in prison is enough. >> That's quite right. Indeed, Clayton
Johnson wasn't convicted of a murder uh that he didn't commit. He was convicted of a murder that never happened.
>> We've made an error. So once you recognize you've made an error, you do the best you can to rectify it. And the
best way to rectify this case is simply to acquit this man, exonerate him, and let him go on with his life.
>> Well, I was given all a different opinion as far as, you know, the justice system is concerned because I mean, I've
always been brought up right from the time I most walk around that, you know, the police were your friend, that you
held them on a certain level. And uh just after going through this, it makes you think twice.
[Music] Why? [Music] Heat. [Music]

Season 4 Episode 9 | Janice Johnson was found dead at the foot of her basement stairs. Police in Nova Scotia had to unravel the circumstances surrounding Janice's death and answer the question: Was it an accident...or murder?

Brief Summary

The episode details Janice Johnson's death, Clayton's wrongful conviction, and his eventual exoneration after new evidence emerged.

Key points

The Tragic Death of Janice Johnson. On February 20th, 1989, Janice Johnson suffered a fatal accident that shocked her family and community.
Clayton Johnson's Arrest. After years of suspicion, Clayton Johnson was arrested for the murder of his wife, Janice.
Exoneration of Clayton Johnson. After six years in prison, new evidence led to Clayton Johnson's release, raising questions about justice.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think it was the first time I ever seen my father cry.

Reflecting on the moment of loss.

4:08WatchOct 16, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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