Her Parents Didn’t Like Her Boyfriend
By: Jean Campbell
Tags: Murder, Idaho, Teens, True Crime, Guns

Her Parents Didn’t Like Her Boyfriend

Winchester rifles. Photo credit: Adobe Stock.

Only four females have been convicted of parricide — killing both parents — in the last quarter-century in the United States.

Perhaps the most famous case is Lizzie Borden, but she was eventually acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892. Despite winning her freedom, the rhyme about her stuck around:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Sarah Johnson, 16, of Bellevue Idaho, wasn’t under suspicion for the murder of her parents right away. Her boyfriend, 19-year old Bruno Santos-Dominguez, was the most likely suspect. But Sarah was acting oddly, and soon friends began to wonder: could she really have killed them?

A nice family

One of Sarah’s friends spoke with reporters just days after the murders, “I felt she could do a lot better,” said Syringa Stark. “He was a high school dropout and was selling drugs and she was from a nice family. It just didn’t seem like it was right.”

The boyfriend, Santos-Dominguez, was an older man. Sarah’s mom, Diane Johnson, didn’t like the age difference or much else about him. She’d told her daughter to stay away.

Once her parents learned that Sarah was sleeping over at his apartment, they made it clear to both Sarah and Bruno that the relationship was over. That conversation occurred outside his apartment on Saturday, August 29, 2003, when Alan and Diane picked Sarah up there.

Santos-Dominguez had three strikes against him. He was from the wrong side of the tracks, he’d dropped out of school, and he was a drug dealer. He was also living in the US illegally, having crossed the border from Mexico.

Diane Johnson told the 19-year old that if he didn’t stay away from Sarah, she would report him to the police for having sex with an underaged girl. She also threatened to have him deported. That threat came on Sunday, but Diane wouldn’t have time to carry them out.

On the night before they were killed, Diane and Sarah both telephoned Sarah’s older brother, Matt, who was away at college. His mother cried, he said, and told him she was embarrassed about Sarah’s choices and actions.

When Sarah spoke with Matt she seemed oddly accepting of her punishment, telling him she knew what what her parents were scheming. Matt found this statement unsettling and he almost called his mother back, but it was late.

A day later, on Tuesday, a bloody scene unfolded at the Johnson home.

Just after Labor Day

The second day of September, 2003, would dawn to be another lovely early fall day in Bellevue. In the affluent suburb where the Johnsons lived, the early morning air was pierced with screams. Sarah Johnson fled her house. Her parents, she told her neighbors, had been murdered.

Police arrived quickly, finding Diane Johnson, 52, in her bed beneath the covers. Most of her head was gone; she had been shot with a high-powered rifle. Alan, 46, was lying near the still running shower. He’d been felled by a single bullet to the chest.

Bullets for .264 Winchester Magnum, the type used by Sarah Johnson. Photo Credit: Adobe Stock Images.

The lead investigator, Sheriff Walt Femling, took swift action. He closed off the street — a smart move that netted evidence from a garbage truck that had just rolled past. The truck yielded a goldmine of evidence: a leather glove, a latex one (both with DNA), and a bloody bathrobe.

The copious blood trail inside the house led from Alan and Diane’s bedroom directly across the hall to Sarah’s room. In the master bedroom, the officers spotted a .264 Winchester Magnum rifle and two butcher knives set on the end of the bed. In Sarah’s bedroom, they found cartridges for the rifle, along with a magazine for a 9 mm handgun.

Blood splatter and footprints inside the house indicated Alan hadn’t died instantly but had time to walk toward Diane before collapsing. He bled to death before he could reach her.

Sarah tells stories

Alan and Diane’s bodies were removed, per protocol, in body bags. Fremling recalls that something struck him as off about Sarah’s reaction. He asked his colleagues to keep an eye on her. “I said, ‘There is something going on here.’ I mean, most 16-year-olds would be hiding,” he said. “They would not want to sit there on a fence and watch their parents come out in body bags.”

Police found Sarah unable to make up her mind. She first described her bedroom door as being closed early that morning when she heard two gunshots. She got up, went to her parents room but only knocked and called for her mom. She never opened their door. Later, she had different accounts the doors were open or closed.

Forensic evidence was clear, however. Both doors had been open.

Sarah Johnson at her trial. Photo source: Murderpedia.org

Sarah also had trouble dismissing the evidence found in the garbage truck: a pink robe covered with blood. She allowed it was her robe, but couldn’t figure out why it would be bloody or in the trash. When first asked about it, she simply responded, “I didn’t kill my parents.”

Sarah’s strange behavior wasn’t lost on other people in her life, either. Neighbors noted she didn’t seem genuinely upset the day of the murder, and spoke mostly about wanting to see her boyfriend.

Her brother Matt had a lot to say about Sarah’s character. In his estimation, she was a good liar, a great actress, and prone to bringing a lot of drama into the house.

Murder in the first degree

Her trial lasted five weeks but it took the jury only 11 hours to find Sarah Johnson guilty.

The DNA and circumstantial evidence were overwhelming. Witnesses, including her friends, painted a portrait of Sarah as calculating and unfeeling. During her pre-trial stay in jail, Sarah was loose-lipped with cellmates. One reported the teen told her she’d placed the knives on the bed to make the murder look “gang-related.”

Sarah Johnson was sentenced to life without parole, plus 15 years.

In 2011, Sarah’s found a lawyer from the Idaho Innocence Project to help her file an appeal based on new DNA and fingerprint technology. The appeal also claimed Sarah had incompetent counsel. That same year, her former boyfriend, Bruno Santos-Dominguez, was sentenced to 14 years for trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine.

Sarah was granted a hearing in November 2012 but it went nowhere. The Idaho Supreme Court rejected her appeal on February 18, 2014. Today, Sarah Marie Johnson is 33 years old and living in the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center, where she will remain for the rest of her life.