Introducing Beyond All Repair

Hi everyone, Zach here, it's been a long time. How you doing okay. I wanted to let you know about a new true crime show I've been working on called Beyond All Repair. It's a collaboration with w BR in Boston, and it's hosted by Amory Severertson of Endless Thread. It's the story of a woman named Sophia Johnson who is accused of murdering her mother in law with a pair of fireplace tongs. She swears she didn't do it, but

Heads up, this show has descriptions of violence and strong language. WBAR Podcasts Boston.

Shane, you have no idea how much I'm trying to protect you, little brother. You don't know it yet, but you're being misled.

It's the same good morning, how you're doing. Listen to me carefully. You're not ready for what will come down if you don't stop your nonsense and keep away.

If you, guys attempt to sabotage or to trouble me in any which way, or to try to slow down my life, I'm gonna fight you. Guys.

You don't know what you're playing with.

Okay. I wanted nothing to do with it in the beginning, and up to now I still want nothing to do with it.

Stop ak shit about me. I don't lie on me, but I'm not.

Going to let anybody lie on me.

Okay.

Okay, you're Washington Judress, You're wicked.

All I'm doing is I'm giving you fear fucking morning. If you come at me, I'm going to destroy you too.

You're hearing an implosion of sorts a family on the brink of a civil war, or maybe not so civil. This is the voicemail box of a guy named Shane. The two people leaving him messages his older brother.

Keep me out of him, and his.

Dad watch your mount.

But Shane isn't receiving the worst of it, especially from his father. Shane's sister is.

You are the disease of this Rocket family. You're devious, You're waters.

That's from her voicemail collection. Here's another one.

Oh, you're so fucking it in your lone, stupid get ter the reporter to your lie.

Give that to the reporter too. The dad says, Hey, Hi, Hello, I'm the reporter, and I'm the reason for these intimidating voice messages. Part of it, anyway, They started after I called that brother and father days earlier. My name is Amory Severertson. I work for WBUR. It's a national public radio station. I have reopened a box. Let's just say that some members of this family were hoping would stay shut forever, while others are the reason it showed up

Since the fighting against brother tried to lie to show jump your own brother, what kind of FeelA do you have, lady?

And despite the fact that this event happened more than twenty years ago, it's never been resolved. I'm talking about, Oh Wow, a murder. I'm Amory Stegertson from WBR and ZSP Media. This is beyond all repair. Chapter one, Foxes. Let's start with a younger brother receiving voicemail threats from his family, Shane Coria. He's the reason I'm here. Hi, Shane, Amory, it's so nice to meet you.

Thank you.

I first met Shane back in twenty seventeen. I'd gone to his New York City the apartment to interview him for another podcast I make called Endless Thread. It was for an episode about his experience with homelessness. Shane spent a period of time in his teens sleeping on the subway, nowhere else to go.

I was angry and pissed and sad. I only had until morning when school started, for like some normalcy.

Back then, I didn't know much about the murder that affected Shane's life, But the way I see it now, Shane doesn't end up sleeping on the subway without that dark chapter. Shane was born in the Bronx, the youngest of four siblings, three boys and a girl, with parents who were never not fighting, name calling, violence and ugly divorce. It was a bad scene. So by his preteen years, Shane and his mom and sister had moved across the

Verse Corinthians fifteen thirty three, do not be misled. Bad association spoils useful habits. Still know my Verse couldn't shake that part.

Shane is not a Jehovah's witness anymore, in large part because of something he was realizing about himself around this time.

I remember the night that I came out to my mom. She was in her room, and I like, roll in the chair for my room and like put it in the doorway, and I'm like, so, Mom, I have something that I want to tell you. And I'm like trying to couch it as much as possible, and I tell her I'm attracted to men. And she looked at me and she said, why hasn't my children become my worst fears?

Shane's mom mostly stopped talking to him. She'd leave food outside his bedroom door, as if you were in solitary or something. Right around this same time came this.

Arrests made in women's killing. Daughter in law accused in woman's killing.

The daughter in law accused is Shane's sister.

Woman pleads not guilty to murdering her mother in law. Slaying suspect has bailed, tripled, woman's murder charge upgraded.

This murder was a big deal in a small Washington town, and words started spreading from newspaper headlines to gossiping teenagers at Shane's school.

I remember like going into the lunch room and like, this group of kids is like coming toward me, and the like the kid that I don't like is like, so is it true that your sister killed someone? And honestly, after that, I just kind of stopped going to school. I'd always been a really good student up to that point, and then I just kind of shut down.

Going to school felt impossible. Being at home with a mom who had barely talk to him felt impossible. So Shane flew back across the country by himself to the only other place he knew, New York.

So I slept on the train, went to school, went to work, still got over net paycheck hourly.

Shane finished high school like this, unhoused. He worked part time jobs to get by.

And like going to work in a rumpled suit because you have no place to put it like. That was when I actually started to feel homeless.

Shane eventually pieced together enough of an income to rent a room in an apartment. He put himself through college, then law school. By the time I spoke to Shane for Endless Thread, he was working in the Bronx District Attorney's office. The criminal justice system, to Shane, is something that's brought order to a chaotic life. It's dealt with things in a way he hasn't been able to, including his sister being accused of murdering her mother in law.

Uh?

I don't know. Everyone's got a different story, and this is where I just kind of surrender to the justice system.

That's where we'd left things back then as far as the murder was concerned. But the experience of hearing his larger story told by an outsider was pretty cathartic, Shane told me. He wrote to me after that episode came out, saying, I feel a bit more unleashed from some stuff I didn't fully know was holding me back, and that was it. I thought time passed Shane changed legal jobs, adopted a dog.

Damn good boy. Yeah, I'll give you cuddles of it.

And then about three years later, in the spring of twenty twenty one, I got an email from Shane out of the blue. There was someone else looking to be unleashed from something holding her back.

Look, I don't really know her story.

Something that's been boxed up and for Shane at least untouched for more than twenty years.

Do I think that my sister is capable of committing such a brutal crime?

Shane was reaching out to say that that question might finally get answered because the person who could settle it for him once and for all, she wanted to talk, and she wanted to talk to me. Coming up Shane's sister.

Check check.

It's a couple weeks after Shane emailed me saying his sister wanted to quote speak openly about something that has caused a lot of pain in our collective eyes, the murder of her mother in law. I'd seen pictures of Shane's sister in newspaper clippings from the early two thousands, handcuffed wearing the stereotypical bright orange jail get up. No makeup, her expression ranging from self assured to resigned. I didn't

Hi, good morning, how are you hey?

This is Sophia.

A little nervous.

I won't lie.

Yeah, well, we're embarking on something new. I say that as if I knew what we were embarking on. But listening back to this, I want to warn my past self. Girl, you have no idea what's coming. Sophia didn't neither.

Well, let's just see where it goes.

Why not?

Sophia showed up to our first video call looking nothing like the woman I'd seen in the newspapers, her long jet black hair, shiny and neat, her face impeccably made up, winged eyeliner, red lipstick, meticulously shaped eyebrows, and an almost air brushed appearance that defied everything I knew about her life at that point.

I wake up, I have usually several cups of coffee and I'm watching the news.

She sounded so normal, sweet, Even.

I do a little bit of gardening.

I listen to music.

She was talking to me from.

Yeah.

I can't say where she is. I can't say why. I can't say either. Yet I can say that, contrary to her appearance, Sophia feels anything but put together.

The only thing I can do because I'm at my bottom. I stand up for myself, because I have zero expectations that anyone else can do it for me.

She feels held back from the life she had imagined for herself, a life that was really just starting twenty two years ago with a new husband of four months, new in laws with whom she'd quickly become close. Then came January tenth, two thousand and two. Sophia's mother in law, Marlene, was supposed to come over to her house for lunch that day. She didn't oh, and when Sophia and her husband went over to Marlene's house to check on her,

You know what happened to him on.

Okay, murdered your mom. I have no idea murder.

On her forehead or there wasn't any bold.

Is there something that you typically do on this day?

This is a day I wish never existed.

It's now January tenth, twenty twenty two, twenty years to the day that Sophie as mother in law was murdered. Sophia is in her mid forties at this point, but every year on this day, she says, she's transported back.

I'm twenty three years old in my head, and.

This is two thousand and two.

And you know what I thought.

I thought it's January tenth. And whoever did this to her?

Do they know that it's January tenth?

Do they know they're out there somewhere. Then again, there are a lot of people who would say that the person who killed Marlene is talking to me right now.

I want to say, and be very honest with you, that if I did Marlene's murder, they wouldn't.

Have to worry about finding me.

I would turn myself in.

Sophia has always held fast that she did not kill her mother in law, but she also says there's a lot to this story that she's never told anyone until now. This is how she thinks about her life.

It is a house that has lots of boxes and lots of different rooms that need to be unpacked, not necessarily sure where to start.

Okay, It's Monday, April twenty sixth, twenty twenty one.

And.

I got a box today. The day I started unpacking metaphorical boxes with Sophia, a physical one showed up at my office. Inside this box were VHS tapes. Sophia says that she's never watched them. She told me today that she does not want to watch them. She said that she's worried that, like it'll put someone else's version of the story back in her head head and right now she just wants to focus on what she knows to be true about what happened. Thirteen tapes in black and

You're ready for the jury.

That yeah, sure, thank you.

Okay, Wan'm bringing the jury please.

These tapes are the video footage of Sophia's murder trial, and they were really just the beginning. I didn't know what was in all of Sophia's boxes I know now abuse, disownment,

My son turned nineteen years old yesterday. Never met him, don't know anything really about him.

Her son. When Sophia was accused of bludgeoning her mother in law to death, she was six months pregnant. She gave birth to her only child while incarcerated and hasn't seen him since.

And I do not want another one of his birthdays to go by without at least having an image of me and hearing the truth about what I'm sure he's read and heard about his entire love.

That's when I realized that Sophia is really trying to clear her name. In the eyes of one person.

The only thing he will ever know is that I was accused. His grandmother is dead. This is my legacy, This is forever my legacy.

But maybe it doesn't have to be. Sophia can't start over, but she might still have time to change that legacy. Pretty early into reporting this story, someone told me that Sophia's life just seems so fubar. I wasn't familiar with this term, but it's a military acronym fucked up, beyond all repair, beyond all repair. That idea has stayed with me, not as a statement, but a question. Is Sophia's life beyond all repair? And if she is in fact innocent

Do I believe what she's saying that she believes she's innocent, Like I can believe that, But belief is very different from fact, you know, like someone still died.

If he believes anybody believes that, I am that person, And I just don't know what that steps.

That means that I'm not explaining it right, or he dies, said no, Ena, And I never want my son to ever think that, Mom, I love you anyway. That is not the right answer. That's not the right answer.

The right answer to me is just the truth. I've been upfront with Sophia about this from the very beginning. I can't root for people in this story, but I can root for the truth. And if the people are aligned with the truth, then I'm rooting for the people.

You know, I agree with that.

It's been almost three years since my first conversation with Sophia. I've spoken to dozens of people connected to the story. I have thousands of pages of case files and court records. I have information And now, what the fuck Shane does too?

Oh?

This hurts. This hurts.

I can't read it.

Years after this murder uprooted his life, Shane's decided he's not going to surrender to the justice system anymore because, according to the justice system, this murder is technically a cold case.

This is not right.

I don't care who it is.

Next time, Shane digs into his sister's case file and I dig into Sophia's trial and the key witness who testified against.

Her, the person kind of took it was like stocking off their face, and it turned out to.

Be my sister, Sophia's other brother.

I'm going to fight you, guys.

Beyond All Repair is a production of wbur Boston's NPR and ZSP Media. It's written and reported by me Amory Severertson and produced by Sophie Coodner. Mix sound design and original scoring by Paul Vikis, Production manager of WBR Podcasts, Theme and credits music by me. Our Managing producers are Summatajoshi for WBR and Liz Styles of ZSP. The show is edited and executive produced by Ben Brock Johnson of

That's Beyond All Repair hosted by Amory Severertson. New episodes drop Thursdays. Find it Wherever you're listening to this, let us know what you think.