After 25 Years, Still No Justice

WILL GERALD CARNAHAN ever go to trial for the 1985 murder of Jackie Johns? Nearly 25 years after the Nixa beauty queen was found beaten to death, the answer seems more remote than ever before. Carnahan was scheduled to go on trial March 1 in St. Louis. But his lead attorney wants a delay; Dee Wampler says he’s battling cancer and will undergo surgery this month. “I think we should all pray for him,” Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore says of Wampler. “But we actually thought we were finally on the path to try this case.” A path to a clearing, to closure. Jackie Johns’ father no longer believes in that path; he’s given up on the notion that justice for his murdered daughter is imminent. “I don’t believe it will ever go to trial,” Les Johns says. “I’ve been waiting for 25 years. I’ll never get over it – never.” A GENERATION OF OZARKERS knows the name “Jackie Johns” as the worst thing that could happen to a young woman. She vanished on June 17, 1985, a Monday. Her abandoned sports car was found, with one door open, at dawn Tuesday, about a mile south of the Nixa Livestock Auction, where Johns worked. Hundreds searched – on foot, on horseback, from the sky. As the days crawled to the weekend, those involved in the search grew more determined. They knew they would find 20-year-old Jacquelin Sue Johns and bring her home to her parents, Les and Shirley. Her disappearance, solved. A happy ending. It sounds hopelessly naïve, doesn’t it? A missing woman, an abandoned car, blood in the back seat – signs of an obvious tragedy, ignored by people who wanted to believe such violence only existed in bigger cities outside the Ozarks. On Saturday morning, June 22, two anglers on Lake Springfield saw something floating in the water. As they got closer they realized it was a battered body of a woman. Jackie Johns was no longer missing. ALMOST FROM THAT moment, Gerald Carnahan became a suspect. He was the scion of a rich businessman; his family lived not far from the Johns family; his alibi for that night seemed shaky, and police were interested in fresh scratches on Carnahan’s face. The 26-year-old Carnahan denied knowing anything about Johns’ death – of course he knew her, they were neighbors and she was friendly, but that was all. Police were sure he was lying. Investigators took Carnahan for a drive to Lake Springfield and made him look at the water, told him they knew he killed Johns and would prove it. Carnahan asked them if they were done talking. In October 1985, Carnahan was arrested in Los Angeles as he prepared to board a plane to Taipei, Taiwan. He said he had business there. Prosecutors charged him with felony tampering; they said Carnahan lied to investigators. A grand jury convened, heard testimony, indicted Carnahan for the same charge. His stepdaughter was accused of perjury, for allegedly lying to grand jurors about where Carnahan was the night Johns vanished. All those charges were either dismissed or ended in acquittal. Gerald Carnahan was free. But Les and Shirley Johns dogged his every movement, shouting the word “murderer” every time they saw him. Shirley Johns didn't know it, but she was dying. Lung cancer raced through her body. Within three years of Jackie’s death, Shirley was buried alongside her daughter. GERALD CARNAHAN couldn’t stay out of trouble. In 1993 he tried to snatch a young woman off Ingram Mill Road, just south of Sunshine Street. That same year, he set fire to an aluminum foundry in Aurora. He was convicted of attempted kidnapping, stealing, arson and burglary and sent to prison for several years. In numerous conversations with a reporter, he denied knowing anything about Johns’ death. He said he couldn’t wait to get free so he could travel again, see the world, get clear of the stares from strangers who were convinced he was a murderer. Les Johns marked the days of Carnahan's incarceration on a KTTS calendar. He gloated at Carnahan's predicament. Carnahan was eventually paroled. For more than a decade, he remained in the background, his name surfacing only when other women went missing. He couldn’t escape his infamy; when three women vanished in Springfield in 1992 and the local public-television station aired a live call-in program, Carnahan’s name was among the first mentioned. Then came August 2007, and the bombshell announcement of a break in the case. LES JOHNS has always been a realist. On the 10-year anniversary of his daughter’s murder he visited her grave and said the past was permanent: “It’s over. Ten years, two grand juries, and nothing. They’re not gonna solve it.” He based his opinion on a lack of evidence – but that was 1995, when DNA was not in widespread use in Missouri criminal cases. By late 2007, police were circling back on cold cases. They cracked the files in the Johns slaying and found DNA evidence that hadn’t been tested. They say they found evidence of Carnahan’s involvement in Johns’ murder. Carnahan was arrested, charged with first-degree murder, locked up without bond in the Greene County Jail. That’s where he is today. “It is conceivable you could have a trial setting in early June or late in the summer or early fall,” says Moore, the prosecutor. “So that's what I will be looking at -- but the primary thing will be what is the prognosis for Mr. Wampler after the surgery.”