Arthur Samson, the owner of a New Orleans antique shop, was murdered on July 16, 1977, shot once and stabbed over 100 times. His store was ransacked and the safe was missing. Several weeks went by without any significant leads. Ten days before this crime, a young college student was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. The gun used in that crime was a .32 caliber pistol. On July 26, 1977, the car Bobbie Jean Johnson was riding in with two males was stopped by police. A .32 caliber gun was found in Ms. Johnson’s purse. She told police that one of the men in the car had put the gun in her purse, a fact that he corroborated, adding that he’d lent the gun to another woman who wound up bragging about this murder. Ballistics testing concluded that this .32 caliber had been used in both murders. Under brutal questioning about a number of crimes, Ms. Johnson confessed. Based on this confession, Ms. Johnson was convicted of first degree murder in October 1978 and sentenced to life.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana’s investigation uncovered undisclosed police documents that both undermined the version of facts in Mr. Johnson’s confession and placed the other woman (who’d bragged about the crime) with Mr. Samson on the night of the crime. A search of that woman’s home had turned up the murder weapon days before it was placed in Ms. Johnson’s purse. Further, the man who’d put the gun in Ms. Johnson’s purse had been seen with the gun just before police pulled them over. Police testified that there were no useable prints found at the scene, but never revealed that three fingerprints had been found and that they did not match Ms. Johnson.
The Promise of Justice Initiative eventually brought Ms. Johnson’s case to the court and secured her release in February 2018, over 40.5 years after her conviction. Sadly, Ms. Johnson was only able to enjoy a short period of freedom, as she passed away in October 2019.
