Women Behind Bars - Season 1, Episode 7 - Patricia and Rebecca - Full Episode | Forensic Files

on this episode of women behind bars one woman shot her husband after years of alleged abuse
mr johnson he was laying on his back he's saying to me i've been shot i can't breathe i'm going
to die i just lost it i had the gun in the bedside table and i just i just took out the gun and shot
then rebecca bivins tells her story she was convicted of fatally attacking her five-year-old step-daughter
the extent of her injuries were equivalent to dropping danny out of a 40-story building
just the torture of knowing that you that that you took a life a five-year-old life
and i have to live with that for the rest of my life two women two brutal crimes these are the stories
of joel and johnson and rebecca bivens [Music] on february 25th 1991 in the wealthy
seaside community of solana beach california sheriff's deputies responded to a 911
call when they arrived on the scene they found 46 year old patricia joellen johnson armed with a 38
revolver her husband peter johnson lay dying in their home a bullet lodged in his back she said i
shot him because he's he deserved it all of the abuse that he had put onto this woman
for the two years he had been with her erupted that night into this moment of rapid fire shooting it was pretty
cold-blooded and deliver it was patricia joellen johnson guilty of premeditated murder
or was this a crime of passion resulting from years of abuse patricia joellen johnson who goes by
joellen grew up in the small idyllic community of matune illinois with her brother and parents she was a
good good child she was very intelligent very active she's always been very athletic but when joellen was just six
years old everything changed when her father left the family forever he was going to buy some cigarettes he
never came back ever he just left us we didn't know where he was for nine years then we got word that he was in the
heinz veterans hospital and he died there a week later life was very hard it was a struggle
and and i think that i never really dealt with the fact that my father walked out like that
i think it affected her in a lot of ways i think she was always afraid of being deserted
again despite losing her father joellen was an excellent student and went on to eastern illinois university
and majored in english there she met her first husband named craig when she and craig got married they were still in
college they were married 21 years and had two sons tim and ryan the couple lived in houston where craig
worked for nasa the marriage seemed idyllic on the outside but because her husband
spent so much time traveling or on the golf course joellen felt abandoned and after 21 years of marriage the
couple divorced months later joellen met and fell in love with her second husband
named stan a navy officer who was stationed in san diego when i first met stan he
had a really outgoing nice personality and i assumed that's the way he was but it wasn't long after they were
married that joellen says stan's personality changed he had a horrible temper i felt it was
pretty volatile she had some tough times with him and a lot of arguing over the telephone
and coming in to work with bruises on her arm not only was he pushing pushing me
shoving me and one day he kicked me in the thigh it was after that that she filed her
divorce though she had two failed marriages joellen was not giving up on love in 1987 she answered a personal ad
written by peter johnson a twice divorced biomedical executive who lived in solana beach california
peter was amazing he was outgoing he was nice looking he was had a wonderful sense of humor he was
fun peter johnson was a very friendly outgoing type of person usually very happy and jolly and easy to
get along with but highly respected pete just swept joellen off her feet well i was very impressed when i first
met him the first time at the christmas party when joellen brought him to the party he
was dressed in a i'm sure a three thousand dollar suit or more he had a ski condo in utah and we skied
in utah in the winter he had a corvette he had a boat they went on trips all the time
pete was very taken with joella we would stay weekends on the boat it just sounded like the most wonderful
life i could have imagined but some of peter's friends were hesitant about the new relationship
pete had mentioned to my wife that he had met this lady but she was a little concerned about it
in that this lady carried a loaded gun in her purse at all times i had a gun since 1972
my first husband traveled a lot we lived in houston i had two little kids at the time
joellen and peter moved in together but she claims the good times were short-lived
when i moved in with him it just became so apparent that that he was seeing a lot of other women
he traveled quite a bit every time he flew from the east coast back to california he would
stop over in salt lake city and he wouldn't tell me why or anything and i wasn't supposed to ask
he'd get cards in the mail from women he'd get phone calls from women he wouldn't come
home at night she'd find women's underwear under the is under the seat in the car
suspicious that peter was seeing other women the prosecution claims joellen also began to exhibit destructive
behaviors she was paranoid she was also obsessive extremely extremely jealous and
when those personalities met up against one another it ultimately provided a very volatile mix
the prosecution also asserts based on testimony that despite peter's idiosyncrasies he was considered
by people close to him to be quite decent witnesses that knew him that knew him well he said he was a kind compassionate
man very intelligent man but there were very few people that were very close to him
other than mrs johnson that had bad things to say about him still joellen was intent on proving her
suspicions about peter's infidelities [Music] i hired a private detective in salt lake
the detective followed him and he had a girlfriend in salt lake so when he came back we
we argued about that and everything he would never admit it even though i had pictures
so i was going to leave but i stayed after two years of trying to make the relationship work joellen left peter and
went to florida but joellen says that peter then aggressively pursued her and a year
later they got back together i thought he had changed so dramatically and i was deliriously happy i thought
that he realized he loved me couldn't live without me he kept saying i'm the new 1990 pete
johnson in 1990 three years into their turbulent relationship peter and joellen johnson were married
but soon after joellen says that peter's behavior became increasingly controlling and
bizarre we had a prenuptial agreement that we both worked on and both agreed to but he kept revising the prenuptial
agreement and he kept asking me for a full financial disclosure i would read these things and i'd say i
can't sign this i i don't have any money he was always demanding money from her even though he out earned
her by like five to one he was controlling he had some obsessive tendencies he would keep lists and things like that
and he would question people who questioned him in relationships they would go on trips
according to testimony and he would charge her like three dollars for an aspirin this
was a two-sided affair from the very beginning where both of these people went back and forth at each other
and it was a relationship that was doomed from the start soon after getting married joellen
claims peter started making lists of his wife's actions he got to the point that whenever i did
something he didn't like he'd say you're making the list he established a system that if she
violated she would be punished the ultimate punishment was his complete withdrawal
of his love and affection for her and he would be allowed to spend eight hours four or eight hours
doing whatever he wanted without having to explain to her what he was doing not only was he
keeping lists i had rules i had to follow he was making behavior charts on graph
paper things i did wrong she became engaged in this constant pattern of trying to
make sure that she would please him and wouldn't violate the rules that he was establishing i
really had no confidence in my own judgment anymore nine months after getting married
joellen left her husband for the second time but she says peter convinced her to come
back it would be a decision she would regret for the rest of her life when women behind bars continues i just
lost i had the gun in the bedside table i just took out the gun and shot by 1991 joellen johnson says her
marriage to her third husband peter was becoming increasingly volatile on february 25th
joellen found a disturbing letter from her husband on their kitchen table it was this this final
demand for money and it said that that i was in arrears over three thousand dollars and
from that point on i had to pay all my own expenses and half of all the living expenses
joellen says she did have a job as a medical secretary and was already paying a lot of her own
expenses i called him at work i said i hope this is a joke and he said no it's not when peter got home that night
joellen questioned him about the note we started you know arguing about this bill and he was telling me that i was
thinking of the ultimate punishment the argument escalated and he decided to go to bed right in the middle of it
according to joe ellen she couldn't sleep and went into the bedroom to talk to her husband
i was totally distraught before he got home i had called an attorney in del mar and i was going to take her copies of
all these documents he had produced to me and the behavior charts some of the other things i had i just
wanted to get an outside assessment of all this craziness as joellen told her husband of her plan
to go to the lawyer the argument escalated he said if i went then just filed for divorce because he wanted
a divorce well i would i didn't want a divorce as stupid as it sounds now um i wanted the marriage to work i kept
trying to get him to talk i said at least kiss me good night so i can go to sleep and then he finally
turned over and mashed his mouth against mine and cut my lip and i just lost it i just picked up
the phone called 9-1-1 pete jumped up and pulled the phone out of the wall the dispatcher called the solana beach
unit to check on a 9-1-1 hang-up dispatcher further stated that it was a woman that was on
the phone dial 9-1-1 she heard a male's voice in the background and then the phone went dead
he was really really mad he was saying this is it it's over he was getting close to put on he was in
the closet and i said don't leave and i just lost it [Music] i had the gun um in the bedside
table and i just i took it out i was standing across a queen-sized bed from him and
he was at a closet and i just took out the gun and shot [Music] he didn't indicate that he was hurt he
was yelling and really really angry and and he was like pacing and so to get out of the door i had to
go by him and so when i went by him i shot him in the arm the first shot that she fired with her
38 revolvers she pointed at him from about a distance of four feet ripped into his back
ripped through his liver his lung his kidney and caused the the major damage to the
internal organs my heart was pounding i remember running down the hallway after i shot him in the
arm and i was looking back because i had the feeling that he was chasing me and i ran out the door
upon arrival at the scene female came out of the condominium wearing her pink robe i noticed she had a weapon in
her hand i was so confused and they told me i don't know how many times he yelled at
me to put my gun down i drew my weapon and i ordered her to comply by dropping the weapon
and i told her i threatened that i will have to shoot her joellen finally put down the gun and
responded to deputy yerkes's orders after subduing her jurkus entered the condominium looking for the victim
at that point she blurted out a statement oh he's on the bed i shot him i hope he
dies he deserves it i immediately restrained her had my partner come up the stairs real quick we both had hurts
of groaning and moaning and and as if someone was in pain mr johnson's laying on his back there's
a pool of blood on the left-hand side of him and later i saw a little bit around the
stomach area and that he's saying to me i've been shot i can't breathe i'm going to die she had said why don't
you close the door i don't want to hear him whining about dying while the deputy sheriff tried to
stop the bleeding paramedics showed up to administer aid to mr johnson but it would be too late peter johnson
died at the hospital two hours after he was shot by his wife i couldn't believe that
i had killed him and i couldn't i still loved him i couldn't believe that that pete could
be dead joe ellen was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the courtroom a jury heard about
peter's alleged taunting and sadistic behavior but at the time joellen's case went to
trial in 1991 a woman could not legally use her husband's abuse as part of her defense
they didn't see how those facts played into why she would kill him that final night
[Music] i had no defense basically my attorney said that we couldn't put the victim on
trial then the prosecution presented their case i argued and at the trial that that was
premeditation and deliberation she had an opportunity to think about life an opportunity to think about death
and she chose death i could feel it being the henniest crime as it was it was pretty cold-blooded
and deliberate and she's deserving of what she was going to get and as far as sentencing is concerned
i got the worst sentence i could have gotten i believe that pat johnson got off very lightly for the
murder of pete johnson i just thought i was going to die right there in the in the courtroom
joellen was sent to the california institution for women but 12 years later in 2002 the law
changed to recognize battered women's syndrome as a legitimate defense joellen took up her own cause i
filed a writ and my conviction was completely overturned so they retried me and the law changed
to allow for experts to testify and that's what was lacking in joel and johnson's first trial
was an expert who was trained to understand how does domestic violence result in
the death of someone and not be murder the relationship between patricia joellen johnson and
pete johnson really fit the criterion of a classic abusive relationship he was in the role
of what we call the coercive control dominated offender abusing and controlling the victim he would grab her face he
would shake her he threw he hit a racquetball at her he forced a milkshake down her throat
he would blatantly cheat and then he would blame her jealousy for causing the problems in their
relationship this is classic crazy making behavior and it was this was a very calculated
systematic attempt to do this in trial we tried to make it clear that this wasn't just a situation where
peter johnson was the big bad villain who was constantly abusing this poor woman that she also would in
her own obsessive and jealous and manipulative ways abuse him i argued in 2006 that this was
first degree murder because mrs johnson had a gun she knew where the gun was she kept it in a nightstand
she kept it loaded she had to think about where she was aiming the gun she aimed it directly at his back hit
her target then after hitting her target didn't stop and say you know oh my goodness what did i do to
the man i love calmly coolly walked around the bed fired another shot at him while he had
his arm up in a defensive posture she walked around the bed pointed the gun at him again and shot him in the arm
she took dead aim not once but twice and he died from bleeding that surgeons couldn't stop approximately 90
minutes after she shot him here she was on the stand this grandmotherly looking woman
who had had this country club life and was college educated and the victim is an executive these
aren't people who who you would expect to be in a murder trial it was our hope the
jury would understand that all of the abuse that he had put onto this woman for the two years he had
been with her the emotional and psychological abuse erupted that night into this moment of rapid fire
shooting that was done in the heat of passion and she should be convicted of a voluntary manslaughter
and not murder we called a mental health expert who clearly acknowledged that there was
abuse from mr johnson to mrs johnson that there were it was serious abuse but what we disagreed with that it was
one-sided abuse joellen suspected that mr johnson was cheating on her she would check up on
him all the time several weeks into joellen's second trial the case went to the jury
when women behind bars continues second-degree murder comes with intent so the jury clearly
felt that she intended to do this and later in this episode of women behind bars
a woman is accused of fatally attacking her five-year-old step-daughter all i could think to myself was oh my
gosh she's dead in 2006 joellen johnson while still in prison was on trial for the second time for
murdering her wealthy husband peter johnson joellen claimed she shot him after years
of psychological and emotional abuse but this jury also came back with a verdict of guilty
convicting her of second-degree murder she received a sentence of 15 years to life
second-degree murder comes with intent so the jury clearly felt that she intended to do this they
clearly did not buy the argument that she was driven to it i was very disappointed when they came
back with second degree by law any sentence with a life on it in california it's almost impossible to get out to get
out of prison we were very pleased with the verdict we've always felt that this was a murder
she was convicted of murder in 1991 that was overturned she was convicted again of murder in
2006 albeit second degree murder and it was sad to see this woman continue to be traumatized by being
convicted of murder when it really wasn't murder i believe an appropriate sentence
for pat johnson would have been capital punishment after the trial joellen was returned to
the california institution for women located an hour outside los angeles the hardest thing to get used to in
prison was just of course not having any freedom i was in group therapy and the mental health department helped
me a lot it's hard for me to accept that i did what i did that i shot him i see how things just spiraled out of control
and it was as it was my fault too i feel bad that so many lives have been affected
it never should have happened and no one deserves to die over the years joellen has had a rough
adjustment to prison life it's taken a long time to get used to living in here but finally i think i've mastered it
i've been a so-called model prisoner i have no disciplinary write-ups i've done everything i'm supposed to do
i've done volunteer work joellen's volunteer work includes helping to train dogs for the disabled
i'm in the dog program which i really really like and some of the changes i saw in women
lifers when the dogs came in it was it was really amazing it's the greatest program i could
imagine in a prison i just love it as she waits for yet another appeal joellen stays in touch with her sons
from her first marriage through letters she also talks to her mother weekly she says she won't give up hope that someday
she will be free joellen johnson's case is on appeal right now and that will take a number of years to
go through she also has a parole hearing in three years it's not that i don't think i should be
punished and that i don't and it's not that at all i just think that i think i've served enough time
i still have some hope you know that justice will prevail [Music] next up on women behind bars she was the
center of our life and if she wasn't there it wasn't worth it no more for more information about women behind
bars go to www.wetv.com on tuesday november 17 1998 31 year old rebecca bivens rushed her
stepdaughter danny bivens to the emergency room the five-year-old was unconscious and
clinging to life the extent of her injuries which were blunt force trauma were equivalent to you know dropping
danny out of a 40-story building rebecca soon confessed to the crime and police discovered that throughout her
life rebecca had a history of emotional problems and violent outbursts when you look at mental illness and
violence and you add them together it's a formula that dispels disaster was rebecca guilty of killing her
stepdaughter in a vicious rage or was her mental illness to blame for the psychotic snap
[Music] rebecca bivens was raised in the small close-knit community of streeter illinois i grew up in a good
home my mom and dad were you know both there they weren't divorced her father worked for a glass
manufacturer and her mother was active in the baptist church their home was sort of the second home
of a lot of the kids in the youth group they were the surrogate parents of a lot of those children who came from
dysfunctional homes i have a brother so it was me and my brother he's younger than me
from a young age there were signs that she was a troubled girl i think my mom and my dad knew something
was wrong but they just didn't know exactly what was wrong becky was rather emotionally oriented
as she'd respond rather sharply to many emotional situations conflicts with some of her friends
real bad mood swings and the mood swings sometimes were very angry sometimes i cried a lot
hopeless at age 14 rebecca was drawn into a secret romance with a 19 year old cousin who was visiting for the summer
i was looking for love and i was going to find it whether it was good or bad when summer ended rebecca's cousin moved
back home to another state leaving the 14 year old pregnant i had an abortion because my mom made me it was very hard
for me and then it was even harder because i was never allowed to talk about it rebecca describes the relationship with
her mother as strained it was a constant battle she wouldn't let me date because she was
afraid that i was going to get pregnant again my mom does she love me yeah she loves
me but has she always loved me i don't think so by the time she was 18 rebecca was
married her and her mother had a conflict of some kind becky left home and went to the county courthouse and
married allen her first husband that's why i married al i married al to get out of the house rebecca soon gave
birth to a daughter and embraced motherhood i guess it's the unconditional love they
love you no matter what um to have that little person depend on you and worship you and
it's just beyond words but according to rebecca the marriage was filled with constant fighting
after 21 months the couple divorced and rebecca soon married larry muller with whom she had three more children
larry was my soul mate he loved me he worshipped me um it just felt right rebecca admits her mental instability
created friction with her second husband i mean he tried i wasn't easy to live with lord knows i wasn't easy to live
with yeah becca had a history of uh being aggressive if somebody would say something that she
might just drum jump across the table and grab them you know grab them by the neck you know
whenever she would find a situation too unbearable emotionally and it usually involved
family situations there would be violence rebecca remembers going through extreme
emotional highs being nothing three four o'clock in the morning washing walls and and singing
and dancing and then suffering debilitating lows the depressive stage was horrible i
didn't want to live i couldn't eat i couldn't sleep life was just life was horrible people
didn't really understand mental illness and they probably thought hey that's what rebecca
is her unchecked erratic behavior continued until at age 25 she suddenly walked out on her
husband and children and disappeared for months they say i had a psychotic breakdown i don't remember
three four months of my life it was like i woke up one day and i didn't know where i was
or who i was with when rebecca's mother and husband found her in a nearby town they brought her home and checked her
into a local hospital for psychiatric evaluation doctors diagnosed her with bipolar
disorder and borderline personality disorder it was a relief i've been waiting for
those answers for 25 years that's chemical that that i can't help that i can't control
after rebecca was diagnosed she was released from the hospital with prescription drugs designed to control
her intense mood swings they put me on a whole bunch of meds prozac was one of them lithium was
another court guard to control the anger episodes but rebecca claims the pills made her
feel lethargic and worn out so she stopped taking her medication as a result she would sink into severe depressions
there were times when at least two three maybe four different times when she tried to commit suicide
taking an overdose of pills rebecca was hospitalized four times over the next two years
but each time she was released back home she failed to continue her medication she would then relapse into manic
depressive episodes i was not a very nice person i was drinking i was having sex with whoever wanted to have
sex with me [Music] didn't too much take care of my kids after six years of marriage her behavior
finally pushed her husband larry to the brink according to rebecca he pulled a shotgun
on her one night when she was in bed with their baby daughter it just so happened that he was
so drunk when he loaded the gun he jammed the bullet and that's what saved our life
in 1995 approximately two years after the shotgun incident the couple divorced and their four
children went to live with relatives rebecca says she continued her self-destructive path of sex
alcohol and drugs she met fellas in taverns who had their own problems and she more deeply involved herself in
that kind of life violence was pretty much part of her life numerous calls at the residence
you know for domestic issues with you know rebecca's husbands or living boyfriends at that
time after a third failed marriage that lasted 11 months rebecca met her fourth husband chad
bivens in 1996 she soon found herself in another marriage she claims was abusive
he would get mad over the easiest littlest things a 1997 police report confirms that the police were
called to the bivins home for domestic abuse he had had this reputation for violence rebecca
says she again did not take her meds because she felt she could deal better with her husband's alleged temper
without them life was easier to handle without the medicine the beatings they didn't seem to hurt as
bad the one bright spot in rebecca's life she says was taking care of chad's five-year-old daughter danny
she was a girly girl she liked her hair done you know curled she was just full of
life just bubbly and happy-go-lucky chad and rebecca had recently obtained full custody of danny
from his previous wife rebecca seemed to really care for danny she had her dressed really nice
and her hair was always done really nice i love danny more than life itself but without the stabilizing effects of
medication rebecca was a ticking time bomb she had the bipolar disorder also the
borderline personality disorder which rage is a common component of the vet so she had all
these things going on plus a violent environment so the amount of raids that she would have
would be substantial rebecca says the morning started out stressfully me and chad had been fighting for days i
hadn't had no sleep i was at my wit's ends with him chad went to work at six o'clock
she was trying to get danny ready to go to daycare and so she was started drawing the water in the bathtub
she remembers walking towards danny's bedroom from her statement to the police she had
said that she had told danny to stop jumping on the bed and to make her bed and that danny had said you can't make
me you're not my mommy what happened next was a brutal attack that shocked a community
next up on women behind bars just knowing that you took a life a five-year-old life and i have to live
with that for the rest of my life in the late 1990s in a small town in illinois 31 year old rebecca bivens was
struggling with mental illness that included intense anger and manic episodes by 1998 she had been in and out of
psychiatric hospitals and says she was trapped in an abusive marriage and losing control
the morning of november 17th rebecca was getting five-year-old step-daughter danny bivens ready for school
police say what followed was an unspeakable act of rage the last thing i remember is running her
bathwater and that's it so from 8 30 to about 10 30 i have no recollection of what happened
rebecca claims her next memory is finding the little girl injured and unconscious on the floor
all i could think to myself was oh my god she's dead so i picked her up and i took her to the
emergency room i was crying i was devastated danny was transported by helicopter to the trauma center at
children's hospital of illinois in peoria they induced the coma to see if the swelling would go down in her brain
in the late morning hours by a social worker from saint francis medical center in
peoria illinois that they had a five-year-old girl there with head trauma injuries
police questioned rebecca about her actions that morning rebecca stated that after she had got
danny up for school she went down to wash some clothes and she heard a loud bang so she come
running upstairs and danny comes out of her bedroom saying mommy i fell down and she just collapsed on the floor
police didn't buy her story investigators went to the house to piece together what happened to danny
if she was bouncing on the bed she would hit the ceiling tile which would have caused no injuries at all
but right away we suspected other objects in that household might have been used to cause
the severity of the injuries to danny despite the doctor's best efforts to save her life danny bivens never
recovered on november 18 24 hours after her arrival in peoria little danny was taken off life support
we pulled the plug wednesday afternoon becky was devastated she was devastated she was the center of our life and and
it wasn't worth living no more if she wasn't there it wasn't worth it no more the
pathologist you know informed us that the extent of her injuries which were blunt force trauma
were equivalent to you know dropping danny out of a 40-story building the next day after danny's death rebecca
came into police headquarters she basically came in and confessed to what happened
her and danny were having little problems that morning far as getting danny ready for school danny
comes out says you're not my mother and right away rebecca gets all upset about it
she grabs danny throws her against the love seat which danny strikes wouldn't handle she falls to the floor
she was in a state of manic rage throwing destroying shouting unable to stop rebecca picks danny up again and throws
her across the room again picks her up and starts banging her head on i believe it was a wooden coffee
table rebecca insists to this day she doesn't remember any details about the beating
or giving a confession to police i don't remember telling them that but i must have told them something
police arrested bivens and she was locked up at a local jail to await trial danny's death was very shocking to the
community in general there was outrage there was a lot of anger it was the talk of the
beauty parlors and bar rooms people thinking you know what an awful person she doesn't deserve any mercy
the emotional stakes were so high that they could not stand on both sides to be supportive of becky while lamenting
the death of danny initially i'd hope for the death penalty if anyone's deserving of the death
penalty it's someone who's capable of throwing a five-year-old girl around a room like a sack of potatoes
and killing her but prosecutors knew rebecca's mental state would come into play
and chose not to pursue the death penalty rebecca had a very hard time processing
what had happened rebecca's defense attorney was concerned his client was not fit to assist in her own defense
she didn't quite remember what happened during the period her rocking back and forth and maybe not
really focusing on what i was saying but psychiatrists evaluated rebecca and she was found
fit to stand trial her best defense was to try and do an insanity defense which is extremely
difficult to know and all dr robert chapman after evaluating rebecca on behalf of the defense
testified that she was legally insane during the murder thoughts were racing jumping she was
unable to think as we know thinking she could not appreciate the wrongfulness of her act
it was like i woke up from a dream and she wasn't moving i don't even remember what i was doing physically i
just remember seeing her people in an acute manic state have an amnesia many times for what what
happens at that time their thoughts are so disorganized and so scattered so flight of ideas that they really
don't have a good memory for it prosecutors didn't deny rebecca had mental problems
what we were saying is yes she's mentally ill we know she's mentally ill but that
doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's doing the prosecution presented rebecca's
initial claim to doctors and police that dany's injuries came from jumping on the bed but she contradicted this
story when she later confessed to police that she had killed danny we thought gotcha the fact that she lied
about what had happened to danny was our strongest suit you don't lie unless you know you're
guilty unless you're culpable of offense you wouldn't bother to make up a lie dr chapman testified that because of her
memory gaps rebecca made false statements to bridge those gaps she had a blank space and she just was
trying to fill it in because she had no information of what really happened because she
couldn't remember the jury came back guilty but mentally ill i was disappointed i think the public in general doesn't
understand that meant that she was going to prison i think some crimes are just beyond the
pale and people say well i don't really care she's mentally or not you know that was such a horrific crime
i don't care rebecca was sentenced to life in prison but a later appeal reduced her time to
40 years she is currently incarcerated at a maximum security center in eastern illinois
i think i've made a life for myself in here i just try to do positive things i take my
medication i go to the beauty school prison saved my life because if i would have stayed
out there i don't think i would have made it little danny bivens has not been forgotten danny bivens
was buried in a cemetery actually across the street from a preschool where she was going
town still remembers the bivins case and they remember danny that was a tragedy that shocked our town
shortly after dany's death a child advocacy center was named for her and another child who was also a victim of
child abuse it's called the danny brandon center by having the center named for her
puts kids first and that's what needs to happen rebecca's oldest child is now an adult
the three younger children live with their grandmother in another state too far away to visit but rebecca writes
and calls to stay in contact with them rebecca still struggles with the terrible crime she committed that
november morning i did what i did um but being mentally ill had a lot to do with it i believe
everybody deserves redemption but what she did was serious and there are serious consequences
some things i wish i would remember because i would like to know exactly what happened
and then some days i don't want to know what happened but i think basically she does know exactly what happened that
you know fatal morning with danny billings when you look at a picture you see a life there you see
you see a potential there and then you realize it's gone i have done more to myself than anybody
could ever do to me i have beat myself up i have just the torture of knowing that you
that that you took a life a five year old life and i have to live with that for the rest of my life
you

Brief Summary

Joellen Johnson shot her husband after years of abuse; Rebecca Bivens killed her stepdaughter amid mental health struggles.

Key points

The Night of the Shooting. On February 25th, 1991, Joellen shot her husband Peter during a heated argument.
Joellen's Turbulent Marriages. Joellen Johnson's relationships were marked by abuse and turmoil, leading to tragic consequences.
Legal Battles and Convictions. Joellen faced multiple trials for the murder of her husband, with varying outcomes.
Joellen's Prison Journey. Joellen shares her struggles and adjustments to prison life, including her volunteer work.
Rebecca's Confession. After a tragic incident, Rebecca confesses to the police about her actions towards her stepdaughter.
The Aftermath of Danny's Death. The community reacts to the shocking death of five-year-old Danny Bivens.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just lost it.

Joellen describes the moment she shot her husband.

0:17WatchJan 12, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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