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Lucille Johnson Murder Case Study

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Lucille Johnson Cold Murder Case

Jennifer Potts

Friction Ridge Analysis/CJC-245-EK1

November 8, 2017

Surry Community College

Instructor: Denise Sizemore

The case that I will be discussing is the cold murder case of Lucille Johnson from Salt Lake City, Utah. Unfortunately, at the time of the murder the investigators didn’t take certain evidence serious in the case. The investigators thought that it was just evidence that had no meaning. None the less, it ended up convicting the murderer, John Sansing. On February 1, 1991, Lucille Johnson was brutally murdered in her Utah home. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, “the last that anyone had seen Lucille Johnson alive, she had been sweeping her porch on the afternoon of …show more content…

During the investigation “detectives also learned that Johnson would not have left her grandchildren’s toys strewn about her house and collected them as evidence along with scrapings from under Johnson’s nails. Also, discovered that a ring and necklace was missing that Johnson always wore” (McFall, 2014). Unfortunately, at that time the investigators stated that “the Legos seemed unimportant” (Fox News, 2014). In my opinion, they didn’t work and investigate as well as they should have during this time. An article stated, “the investigators worked on the case but, were unable to solve it. They stopped investigating in 2006 because they lacked any new leads” (Evans, 2014). Little did they realize that the case would soon be reopened. In August 2013, the case was reopened by “a team led by the Unified Police Sgt. Michael Ikemiyashiro” (Evans, 2014). According to the article, “the detectives sent scrapings that had been collected from under Johnson’s fingernails for DNA testing and recovered a profile that matched a Combined DNA Index System profile for Sansing” (Evans, 2014). The detectives not only tested the scrapings but, also tested the Legos that was once thought to be unimportant. The article states that, “investigators matched fingerprints from the LEGO toys gathered during the original investigation with one of Sansing’s children who was 5 years old at

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