Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. August nineteen eighty nine, the air
in southeast Fort Worth was heavy, thick with late summer
heat that made the pavement radiate and the portable classrooms swelter.
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Teachers at Glen Park Elementary were back on campus getting
rooms ready for their students who were arriving back to
school the following week. Inside the temporary portable buildings behind
the main structure, boxes of textbooks waited unpolished floors, hopeful
little stacks for a new school year. But on the
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steps of one of those portables, just after noon, a
teacher was found lying face down. Colleagues thought she had
fainted from the heat, then they turned her over and
saw the blood. From that moment, a realization and began
to echo through Fort Worth. Someone had stabbed twenty four
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year old Jana Carrol Simpson. She was pronounced dead at
John Peter Smith Hospital at around two pm. It was
her first day at work at Glen Park and it
was supposed to be the beginning of a life she
had intentionally arranged to be closer to home and family. Instead,
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it became a crime scene in broad daylight at an
elementary school in a city that suddenly had to reckon
with just how unsecure normal could be. Jana Carol Simpson
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was born on February sixteenth, nineteen sixty five, in San Antonio, Texas.
She was the middle child of Mike and Sue Simpson.
She had an older sister, Cindy, and a younger brother, Chris.
Her father's work in the oil business meant the family
never stayed in one place for too long. Mike Simpson
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had worked his way up from the oil fields into management,
eventually serving as president of Cherco, a company that manufactures
gas compressor rigs. That job meant transfers San Antonio, Houston
small towns in Oklahoma. The family grew used to packing
up and starting over, but it wasn't always easy for
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the kids. Jana was naturally shy, and uprooting every couple
of years only made her quieter. Still, her gentle manner
drew people in. Her mother remembered that Jana never raised
her voice, never picked fights. Her peers described her as
kind but reserved, the kind of girl who might sit
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quietly until you get to know her and then reveal
a dry sense of humor, but when she was around children,
the shyness melted. Kids were her element. By the time
Jana was in high school, the Simpsons had settled in
Longview in East Texas. She attended Pine Tree High School,
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where she graduated in nineteen eighty three. At Pine Tree,
she was active, but not flashy. She played soccer and
ran cross country, and was a member of Junior Achievers
and Future Homemakers of America. Friends remembered her as book smart, modest,
and tall five foot nine, with an athletic build and
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long stride. Tatures at Pine Tree also noticed how Jana
seemed to thrive in structured environments. She wasn't the type
to lead cheers or chase popularity, but she was steady,
always on time, neat handwriting, and good grades in yearbooks.
Classmates described her as sweet and serious. It wasn't lost
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on her peers that she gravitated toward younger children, often
helping with church, nursery or babysitting jobs in the neighborhood.
Looking back, it seems obvious she was preparing for the
classroom long before she knew it. At first, though her
parents dot Jana might pursue medicine, she had the grades,
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the steady temperament, and the compassion to be a pediatrician,
but she had other ideas. Jenna wanted to teach. The
classroom did something for her. Her mother explained years later,
she felt alive when she was helping children, whether it
was tutoring, babysitting, or just listening to them. After graduating
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high school, Jana enrolled at Stephen F. Austin State University
in Nacadocius. There she found her place. She studied education,
earned her teaching certificate in nineteen eighty seven, and spent
her college years laser focused on her goal. Professors described
her as conscientious, never cutting corners, always willing to stay
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late to polish a lesson plan or practice teaching strategies.
Jena wasn't chasing a paycheck, she was chasing a calling.
College friends remembered her dorm room walls covered with construction
paper cutouts and teaching posters, where others decorated with band
posters or movie stills. Jana kept early childhood lesson plans
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tacked up during student teaching rows. She stayed late, tidying
classrooms long after supervising teachers had gone home. She wanted
every kid to feel seen. One classmate said. Her first
teaching position was in Potit, a small town about twenty
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five miles south of San Antonio. Potit was famous for strawberries,
not for stability. Classrooms were crowded, resources were thin, and
Jana was learning on the job, but she excelled. She
poured herself into her students, staying late to grade papers
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and making personal connections. Parents and Potit remembered her as
warm and approachable, someone who listened even when she didn't
have answers. But Jana longed to be closer to her family.
She talked often about her parents, about wanting to spend
more time in Longview, and about how important family were
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to her. Later, she accepted a second grade position at
Effie Morris Elementary in lake Worth, just northwest of Fort Worth.
Effie Morris was a Title I school serving children from
working class families. Jana fit right in her Fellow teachers
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said she was always smiling, someone who brightened the lounge
even on long, hard days. She wrote to students who
had moved away. She sent postcards while visiting her brother
Chris and Frankfurt, West Germany in June of nineteen eighty nine,
he was stationed there with the US Army. Jana celebrated
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birthdays with cafeteria cake. She never forgot a child's face.
She was the teacher who volunteered for the messy jobs
supervising recess in August, staying with children whose parents were
late to pick them up. Jana wasn't loud or dramatic.
She was reliable. Parents trusted her, students adored her. She
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was popular among faculty. Two friends remembered how she loved
silly practical jokes, like swapping out chalk with a piece
of soap just to see the look of surprise when
a colleague tried to write on the board. Jana joined
her church choir in Longview. When she went home on
the weekends, she wrote long letters to her college roommate,
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updating her about her students. When her contract was renewed
in lake Worth, the district hoped she would stay, but
Jana received an offer she couldn't pass up, one that
came with the better pay and benefits. When fort Worth
ISD offered her a position at Glen Park Elementary, she accepted.
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She found an apartment in Haltam City and had already
arranged to move into a new place in South Arleaneington.
Once school started, boxes were stacked in her current apartment
waiting for moving day. She had plans, career plans, family plans,
life plans, all of it just beginning, and then came
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her first day at Glen Park Elementary. The morning of Monday,
August twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine began like any other
back to school day for faculty. Teachers across the district
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gathered at Will Rogers' Memorial Center for the annual convocation.
Superintendent Don Roberts gave his pep talk, reminding teachers of
their mission, encouraging them to make a difference in their
students' lives. It was equal parts pep rally and ceremony
to set the tone for the year. The event wrapped
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up at around eleven fifteen am, after teachers headed to
their campuses to begin the real work of setting up classrooms.
Jana drove with her map tucked beside her, guiding her
to Glen Park Elementary, a campus she had never visited before.
Glen Park sat on Pacas Street in southeast Fort Worth.
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The neighborhood was modest, full of small frame houses, some
ranch style and some bungalows, chain link fences, and patches
of overgrown weeds. Crime rates in the area were higher
than average. Neighbors knew not to leave their doors unlocked,
but the school itself carried a reputation for being relatively safe,
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at least compared to others in the district. Fort Worth
in nineteen eighty nine was a city of contrasts. The
oil bust of the early eighties had left scars, job losses,
and shuddering businesses, but it was also growing. Expanding south
and west southeast fort Worth, where Glen Park stood, was
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a community often overlooked. Poverty rates were higher, police calls
for burglaries and assaults were routine. Teachers assigned to campuses
there knew they were serving children from struggling families, and
they often went above and beyond to provide stability. Like
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many campuses in the late nineteen eighties, Glen Park was overcrowded.
The district relied heavily on portable classrooms to handle the overflow.
These weren't modern modular buildings. They were wooden barracks style
portables with rickety steps and poor insulation. In the summer,
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they baked in the winter. They chilled. Teachers assigned to
them often felt isolated, cut off from the main building.
Jana's third and fourth grade classroom was in one of
those portables, tucked at the back of the property. That morning,
teachers bustled about, some hauled bulletin board paper, some unpacked
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boxes of workbooks, and others arranged desks. At all needed
to be done. At around eleven thirty, most of the
faculty left for lunch, chatting as they piled into cars.
Jana stayed behind. She was new to the building and
wanted to get a head start. She carried supplies into
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her classroom, sorting them into neat stacks, and wrote her
name across the chalkboard. Witnesses later said she was smiling
that morning, introducing herself to colleagues and thanking the custodian
who helped carry in her boxes. She seemed eager, even
a little nervous, like any t t about to start
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with a new group of kids. When the other teachers
returned from lunch at around twelve forty, they rushed into
action when they saw Jana. She was lying on the
steps of her portable, face down. At first, it looked
like she had collapsed. The heat was brutal, and fainting
seemed like the most plausible explanation. A teacher grabbed ice
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and rushed forward. As they got closer, their hope crumbled.
Jana wasn't unconscious, she was covered in blood. Chaos broke out.
Teachers screamed, some sobbed so hard they nearly collapsed. Teacher
Joan Guess later described the scene. I tried to hold
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onto a couple of ladies that were crying so hard
they were almost sick. Someone quickly made it to a
phone and dialed nine to one pint one. Paramedics arrived
and tried desperately to save Jana's Simpson. They performed CPR
applied pressure to wounds, but the injuries were catastrophic. Jana
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had been stabbed repeatedly in her chest, neck, and head.
One wound severed her spinal cord. She was rushed to
John Peter Smith Hospital, but by two pm doctors pronounced
her dead. The attack was savage and senseless. It happened
in broad daylight on school grounds, with others just a
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few hundred feet away. The murder of a young teacher
on her very first day sent shockwaves through Fort Worth
At Effie Morris Elementary, where Jana had taught the year before.
Principal Janis Miller fielded call after call. Parents wanted reassurance
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was their beloved Miss Simpson really gone. Teachers wept in
the hallways. One colleague remembered how Jana had phoned the
night before asking which third grade teacher had received her
old students. She recalled how deeply Jana cared about her kids.
As she struggled through tears. In Longview, her family leaned
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on the church. Gregton United Methodist Pastor Emmett Borrow said
the Simpsons were crushed, but their faith anchored them. Friends
and neighbors dropped off food, wrote cards, filled pews at
prayer services. Meanwhile, the school district scrambled. Superintendent Don Roberts
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called the murder devastating. Beginning the very next day, off
duty police officers were stationed at Glen Park. Plans were
announced to hire campus monitors once classes began. Assistant Superintendent
Dan Powell explained the urgency when you have someone out
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there with no more regard for human in life than that,
you have to take every precaution. But parents and neighbors
were already rattled on Pakas and Moberly Streets and all
the surrounding roads. Fear spread like wildfire. Seventy seven year
old Edwin Siebert admitted he now kept a gun under
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his pillow and relied on his dog Sandy to protect him.
Eighty year old Clyde Honeycut said bluntly, if I had
anywhere else to go, I'd move. Parents promised to walk
their children to school each morning and pick them up
every afternoon. Teenagers cut their curfews short, making sure to
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be home before dark. Women stopped going out alone at night.
It exposed a troubling contradiction. Glen Park was officially considered
a low crime campus, which meant no monitors or stationed security,
but the neighborhoods was plagued with burglaries, assaults, and thefts.
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Teachers working in the portables now knew how vulnerable they were.
Security was minimal. At emergency school board meetings that week,
parents packed the room. Some shouted at administrators, asking why
teachers were left unprotected in isolated portables. Others begged for
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metal detectors, locked gates, or escorts to parking lots. The
idea that campuses were sacred ground, safe from the outside
world suddenly seemed like a naive illusion. The sense of safety,
already fragile, was shattered. What had happened to Jana could
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have happened to any of them. Fort Worth Police detectives
faced a puzzle. Jana's purse was untouched, her jewelry still
in place. She hadn't been robbed, she hadn't been sexually assaulted.
Both the motives were off the table. Her wounds told
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a story. Jano was stabbed more than seventeen times. Some
were defensive, as if she had fought desperately. Others were deep,
aimed to kill. Whoever had attacked her had done so
with startling ferocity. Police canvassed the area. Neighbors reported seeing
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a teenager near the school that afternoon, described as a
black male, maybe thirteen to fifteen years old. Homicide Sergeant
Paul Kratz said they wanted to speak with him, though
they stopped short of naming him a suspect. Officers scoured
the field across from the school, mowing tall weeds and
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sweeping the ground with metal detectors. They hoped to find
a knife, any trace of the murder weapon. They found
no days passed. Detectives interviewed colleagues, neighbors, and parents. They
checked Jana's background, looked for any sign she had been targeted.
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They came up empty handed. For a time, investigators even
considered whether a transient might be responsible. Glen Park sat
near several busy thoroughfares, and it wasn't unusual to see
drifters cutting through the neighborhood, but no one turned up.
Police looked into Jana's short time and fort Worth, her apartment,
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her coworkers from Lake Worth, her church contacts, but there
were no disputes, no jealous boyfriends. She was, in every
sense a young woman with no enemies. It was beginning
to look like the case might stall. But then attention
shifted to someone who fit the description sort of, and
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it was someone who had been seen on the campus
that very day, a boy named Michael Allan Johnson. Michael
Allan Johnson was no stranger to Glen Park Elementary. He
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had just turned twelve the day after Jana's murder, but
he was small for his age. He stood barely four
foot six and weighed under ninety pounds. Teachers remembered him
vividly from years earlier. In third grade, he was placed
in Brenda Williams's class. She recalled him calling her vile
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names like whore and bitch. He threw desks. Michael would
sit withdrawn and preoccupied, staring off at nothing. I've never
seen him happy, Williams later said never. Teachers described him
as average academically, but emotionally he was troubled. He was
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diagnosed as emotionally disturbed and placed in special education programs
for behavioral issues, but Michael was defiant rather than violent.
By fifth grade, he had been moved to Meadowbrook Middle School,
a campus designed for children with serious behavior problems. Later,
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he landed at Glencrest, where staff put him on a
half day schedule so he would be under parental supervision
in the afternoons. Life at home was chaotic. Michael's mother
struggled to manage him, and his stepfather's discipline was described
as inconsistent. Teachers suspected neglect, but had little power beyond
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referrals to counselors. In a pre Columbine era, there was
little infrastructure for behavioral intervention beyond shuffling difficult children into
special classes and hoping they improved. Just weeks before Jana's murder,
Michael had been caught up in a car theft incident.
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He his brother and some friends hot wired a vehicle
from their stepfather's yard. They went on a joy ride
that ended in a crash. When questioned, the boys lied
repeatedly before finally admitting the truth. His father paid restitution
to the car owner and the charges were dropped, but
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the event reinforced his reputation as a troublemaker. On August
twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine, the day Jana was stabbed
to death, Michael was seen at Glen Park Elementary that morning.
He rode up on his bicycle and told the vice
principal he was a fifth grader. Later, staff caught him
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fiddling with a laminade machine in the library and sent
him away, And just minutes before Jana's body was discovered,
a teacher saw him riding away from the area of
the portables. Detectives brought him in for questioning. At first,
they said he was considered a witness. Detective J. D.
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Roberts later testified that Michael seemed evasive. They pressed him harder. Finally,
after about two hours, the boy broke down. He sobbed
and blurted out, I killed the teacher. I killed the teacher.
That spontaneous statement became the centerpiece of the case. Detectives
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claimed Michael didn't stop there because they neglected to record
the interview. It's impossible to know for sure how it
went down, They said, he described the crime in detail.
He told them that a man on the street had
frightened him, so he went home and grabbed a steak
knife from the kitchen. He returned to Glen Park, wandered
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behind the school and checked doors on the portables. At
one classroom, he said a teacher caught him. She grabbed
his arm and scalded him. According to police, Michael claimed
he didn't like being grabbed, so he pulled out the knife.
He slashed at her face and then stabbed her repeatedly
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until she collapsed. He said he threw the knife in
the bushes across the street and went home to wash
his clothes. On the surface, it was damning, but there
were problems. No knife was recovered, no blood was found
on Michael's clothes, his fingerprints weren't on the doorknobs of
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the portables, there was no evidence on his bicycle. Nothing
physical linked him to the crime, and almost immediately Michael
Alan Johnson recanted in the chain chambers of Judge Lewis Stearns,
where he was to sign a written statement. He said,
I didn't say all those things, and I didn't do it.
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They kept on at me until I said I did it.
Juvenile justice advocates at the time pointed out that police
interrogations of children often relied on intimidation. A twelve year
old small for his age, alone with detectives for hours,
could easily be pressured into saying what he thought adults
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wanted to hear. Nationally, cases of false confessions from juveniles
were mounting, raising questions about how reliable such admissions could
ever be. The case highlighted the difficulty of child interrogations.
Texas law required kids to be taken immediately to a
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juvenile detention center before questioning. Interviews had to follow strict procedures,
and most importantly, any confession had to be corroborated by
physical evidence. Detectives had done none of that. They had
no physical evidence. Still, prosecutors pressed charges. Michael was indicted
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for delinquent conduct murder, the most severe charge possible for
his age under Texas's new determinate sentencing law. He faced
up to thirty years incarceration. The trial against Michael Allen
Johnson opened November seventh, nineteen eighty nine. Courtrooms are rarely
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built for children, but that's what this one was, an
adult sized space holding a boy small enough to barely
see over the defense table. Assistant District Attorney Bob Gill
led the prosecution his case was circumstantial. Judge Scott Moore
had delivered a blow to the prosecution before testingemony even began.
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He ruled that Michael's detailed oral confession was inadmissible. Police
had violated juvenile law, and without corroborating evidence, the confession
couldn't stand. That left the prosecution with only the boy's
outburst I killed the teacher. I killed the teacher. Still
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in the courtroom were teachers who saw Michael on campus
that day, a vice principal who remembered the false claim
about being a student, a teacher who saw him riding
away near the portables. The defense, led by Earl Ernie Bates,
countered aggressively. Bates hammered on the lack of evidence, no knife,
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no blood, no fingerprints. He highlighted police errors. The interrogation
wasn't recorded procedures for juveniles wasn't followed. Michael was twelve
years years old, small. Could he really have stabbed a tall,
athletic adult more than seventeen times, severed her spinal cord
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using what was described as a steak knife, and walked
away without a scratch. A shadow of a doubt loomed
heavily over that allegation. On one side of the courtroom
sat Jana's family, eyes fixed on the boy they believed
had taken her life. On the other, Michael's parents, insisting
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their child had been railroaded. Court reporters described the atmosphere
as tense. Detectives admitted under cross examination that they had
no physical evidence. The jury watched stone faced as each
side painted a very different picture, a violent child who
snapped or a confused boy bullied into a confession. The
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trial lasted just over a week. Jurors listened to testimony
from teachers and police. They saw Michael, a small boy,
sitting stiffly at the defense table. They weighed the statements
against the void where evidence should have been. Deliberations took
less than an hour. Seven women and five men emerged
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with a unanimous verdict not guilty. Juror Geraldine mckel explained
there was no evidence. Foreman Jack Longeer said the jury
spent most of their forty minutes praying, then spoke. One
by one. They all agreed the state hadn't proven its case.
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Michael was released after ten weeks in detention. He leaped
into his stepfather's arms. His parents cried with relief, but
Janna's family was left in despair. The acquittal of Michael
Allan Johnson didn't solve anything. It only deepened the wounds
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for the Simpson family. It was unbearable. They had sat
through every day of the trial hoping for justice. Instead,
they left empty handed. They remained convinced Michael was responsible,
but the law had spoken For police, the case was
effectively closed. Chief Thomas Wyndham said, to the best of
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our abilities, this case has been solved and cleared. Prosecutors
admitted defeat. Assistant DA Bob Gill confessed that the case
was weak. We did the best with what we had,
he said. He hoped the boy truly hadn't done it,
he added, but he wasn't certain. A year later, in
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nineteen ninety, children discovered a rusty knife in bushes across
from Glen Park. It matched the place Michael had claimed
to toss. One Sergeant all Krats believed it was likely
the murder weapon. Oddly, it had been steadily described as
a stake knife originally, but was now being called a
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butcher knife. Likely if the knife had been found before
the trial, the defense would have easily argued this inconsistency
only strengthened his case, and anyway, the case had already
been tried. At Fie Morris Elementary, Jana's former school, the
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nineteen ninety year book was dedicated to her memory. Students
wrote tributes and drew pictures. One child scrawled simply she
was real nice. Faculty and family wept as they turned
the pages. As for Michael Allan Johnson, his life unraveled.
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He was branded teacher killer by classmates, taunted, ostracized, Haunted
by the case, he drifted away from school. He found
work in odd jobs, but never stability. On December twenty ninth,
nineteen ninety four, Michael was shot and killed on a
fort Worth street. He was seventeen. Witnesses said he refused
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to hand over his jacket to a group of teenagers.
His attorney from his trial, Ernie Bates mourned him as
another casualty. My client didn't do it, Baits insisted, but
he could never put it behind him. Today, the case
of Janet Carrol Simpson is technically still open, but practically
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it is cold and even considered cleared by the detectives
who worked the case initially. Unless new evidence emerges, her
killer may never be identified. The story of Jana Simpson
is one of promise cut short. She was twenty four
years old, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a
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teacher who poured herself into her work. She had plans
for the future. Instead, she died on her first day
at a new school, and more than three decades later,
her family still waits for answers. As her father said,
this is the final chapter of my daughter's life. All
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I know for sure is that my daughter was murdered.
If you have any information about the murder of Jana
Carol Simpson, please contact the Fort Worth Police Cold Case
Unit at eight one seven three nine two four three
zero seven. We'd like to offer a huge thanks to
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and lev El and Teresa f at the Bomb City level.
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(34:08):
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