Who Murdered Carol Heath?

The Crime

It is either the night of April 1, or the early morning of April 2, 1993. The town is DeQueen, Arkansas.

A man arrives at the home of Carol Heath. She lets him in through the front door. Eventually there is a violent struggle as Carol attempts to defend herself. She claws at his face.

Her assailant becomes her rapist. He bites her breasts. He uses a condom and cleans up after himself with douche spray and tissue paper. There is evidence of strangulation.

Her rapist becomes her murderer. She dies from a combination of blunt force head trauma and the cutting of her throat. The cut was so deep it had reached her spine. Her murderer leaves the scene. He drops off his blood-soaked clothes and a towel in the woods four miles south of Carol’s home. He also leaves her purse there alongside his belongings.

These are the facts. This is what we know.

The Discovery

It is April 2, 1993. It is about 6:30a.m.. It is chilly outside.

Rose Cassidy knocks on the door of her sister-in-law, Carol Heath. She is there to borrow a sweater. There is no reply. The door is unlocked, and she hears Carol’s alarm clock going off. She goes inside and finds Carol’s bloody, half-nude body on the floor of her living room. She runs across the street to call the police. She looks at the duplex, and spots two pairs of eyes gazing at her from the bedroom window. Those eyes belong to Ashley and Johnathan Heath, children of the now-deceased Carol Heath. They are six and two, respectively. One of the first things Ashley says to her aunt Rose is that a black man had broken in.

Sergeant Keith Tucker of the DeQueen police department arrives at a home “in disarray” about 15 minutes after Rose called the police. Later, Chief of Police James Smith and criminal investigator Officer James Behling arrive to join the investigation. Behling finds a pair of panties next to Carol’s legs in addition to an empty douche bottle and an empty box of condoms in the bathroom sink. Fingerprints are taken from the bottle and box. No semen was found at the crime scene. Two hairs of black origin are found: on the floor next to Carol’s body and underneath Carol’s breast. They are collected and sent to the Arkansas State Crime Lab. “Several” caucasian hairs were found underneath Carol’s body, on a towel by her head, and in her hand. These caucasian hairs are “microscopically dissimilar” to Carol’s hair, but were never DNA tested. An inch-and-a-half long reddish-brown beard hair of caucasian origin is found in her hand. It is never sent for DNA testing. There is a cigarette butt on the floor of the master bedroom. A picture is taken of it, but it is not sent to the lab. Swabs are taken from the bite marks and a rape kit is done. No DNA testing is ever done on the rape kit samples.

It is April 5, 1993.

A man reports finding a purse in the woods of a roadside park. Officer James Behling arrives at the scene to find wet, bloodied clothes and the purse of Heath. Blood and hair on the clothes was found to have belonged to Heath. Cigarettes and matches are found in the pocket of a green pullover, one of the bloody pieces of clothing, the next day. Unlike the other pieces of evidence, which were sent to the lab right away, the cigarettes were not sent for testing until six months later.

These are the facts. This is what we know.

The Suspect

Stacey Eugene Johnson had found himself in DeQueen, Arkansas in January 1993 for the funeral of his father. He remained in DeQueen afterward, at some point attending a party at Heath’s apartment. He had known Heath through Branson Ramsey, Heath’s ex-boyfriend. Shawnda Flowers Helms testifies that she was present at the party, and that Johnson asked her and Heath if they would help him move drugs and if they would date him. The two women declined to both propositions. Helms claims that Johnson was angry with their decision.

Sometime between the party and April 1, 1993, Johnson was arrested for possession of a firearm, a charge exacerbated by his status as a felon. While in jail, he met Bobby Ray Wilkinson, an inmate who also knew Heath. Johnson claimed that he had sex with Heath “a time or two.” Wilkinson later testified that Johnson claimed that he was going to “fuck her again when he got out of jail.”

It is April 1, 1993. It is 2:00p.m..

Stacey Eugene Johnson is released from the Sevier County Jail after his girlfriend pays for his bail bond from Albuquerque.

It is April 2, 1993. It is about 2:00p.m..

Officer Hayes McWhirter, an investigator with the Arkansas State Police, interviews six-year-old Ashley Heath in the afternoon following the discovery of her mother’s body. Cynthia Emerson, a supervisor of the Department of Human Services, is also present during the interview. Ashley claims that she watched the crime occur.

According to Ashley, a black man in a brown truck arrived and knocked on the door. Her mother let him in. The man was wearing “a green shirt and a sweater,” and claims he had just gotten out of jail. Ashley says that she had seen the man visit twice before. The man was angry at Heath for dating a man named Branson Ramsey. A fight ensued, and the man left to his truck and returned with a knife and a gun. Ashley and her two-year-old brother, Johnathan, hid in the closet during the assault and murder. According to McWhirter’s notes, Ashley claims “[t]he black male used a girl sounding name.”

Officer McWhirter then laid out seven photographs of black males. Ashley pointed to Stacey Eugene Johnson.

It is April 14, 1993.

Stacey Eugene Johnson is located and arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He gave a fake name to the police and was arrested for providing a false identity. Officer Paul Pacheco claims that Johnson confessed to the murder and admitted that he had other warrants out for his arrest. These other warrants were confirmed; they were related to capital murder, firearms, and drugs. Officer Pacheco’s partner, Officer Ed Bylotas, was also present and claims that he never heard Johnson confess to anything. No confession is documented. Officer Pacheco also does not alert Rick Foley, the Albuquerque Police Department homicide detective, of this alleged confession before Foley interviewed Johnson. He is the police’s first and only suspect.

The Argument Against Johnson

Over the course of the investigation, several pieces of evidence were collected and sent to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for DNA analysis. These included:

• Saliva from the bite mark on Heath’s right breast

• Four hairs found on the floor of Heath’s apartment

The saliva was found to share similarities with Johnson’s DNA, but it was not conclusively determined that the saliva was his.

The four hairs on the floor of Heath’s apartment did belong to Johnson. While significant, these hairs are not in and of themselves a smoking gun, as it is known that Johnson had been to her apartment before.

While not hard evidence, Ashley Heath’s initial testimony is hard to ignore when taking an unbiased look at this case. If Johnson is truly innocent of this crime, how can it be explained that the first thing that Ashley said to her aunt Rose when found was that it was a black man who had broken into the apartment? Certain details line up perfectly. In her initial questioning, Ashley recounted that:

• It was a black man

• Wearing a green sweater

• With a “girl-sounding name” (Stacey)

• Who had just gotten out of jail

• And had been over twice before.

It is a fact that Heath’s assailant-rapist-murderer was wearing a green sweater during the crime, as evidenced by the blood-soaked green pullover at the second crime scene. Also, how could Ashley have known that Johnson had just gotten out of jail? She offered this information before Johnson was officially declared a suspect, so it is impossible that she had overheard this from a relative or law enforcement officer before her interview. Ashley also picked Johnson out of a photo lineup twice.

The Cigarette Butt

As mentioned earlier, cigarettes and matches were found in a blood-covered green pullover at the second crime scene. The pullover was said to have been drenched in blood, but the cigarettes were dry. These cigarettes were not sent for DNA testing until six months after other evidence was sent and tested.

When addressed in court, the prosecution referred to the cigarettes found at the second crime scene as “a cigarette butt.” This cigarette butt was found to have had Johnson’s DNA on it. When it comes to a capital murder case, there is a very significant difference between “cigarettes” and “a cigarette butt.” In this case, it may literally be the difference between life and death. Associate Justice Hart believes that this evidence is too unreliable to be counted as sufficient evidence against Johnson:

… the cigarette butt with Johnson’s saliva actually came from somewhere other than [the pocket of the green shirt] and its corresponding chain of custody … The chain of custody for the cigarette butt with Johnson’s saliva is materially deficient. This deficiency undercuts the reliability of this evidence, and (despite the “plant” label volunteered by the State) supports the possibility that it was “swapped in” at some point after the evidence from the crime scenes was collected. But regardless of how the cigarette butt became evidence in Johnson’s case, the presently observable shortcomings in its chain of custody render it an unreliable piece of evidence for purposes of our subdivision 202(8) analysis.

The only other reference to a cigarette butt comes from the photograph that was taken on the morning of April 2, 1993 when officers were investigating Heath’s apartment. There is no mention of that specific cigarette butt in any police record or court documents. This is the only possible source of the cigarettes-turned-cigarette-butt unless one is willing to go as far to claim that the evidence is outright fabricated.

The Argument For Johnson

Johnson was able to provide phone records along with witness testimony that accounted for his whereabouts during the night of Heath’s murder. Johnson also drove a “big car”, and not a brown truck.

DNA testing on clothing found at the second crime scene determined that the blood present on the clothes belonged to Heath. There was nothing at the second crime scene that could be directly linked to Johnson (unless you count the problematic “cigarette butt”).

The douche bottle and box of condoms found by Officer Behling were dusted for fingerprints, and it was found that the fingerprints present on both items did not belong to Johnson.

A “reddish” beard hair of Caucasian origin was found in the hand of Heath, but was not DNA tested. This is noteworthy because this potentially ties an ex-boyfriend of Heath’s to the crime: Branson Ramsey. This is the man that Ashley claims Johnson was angry about her mother seeing. Ramsey himself had a “reddish” beard, and a history of violence against women. Ramsey’s ex-wife, Cordelia Vineyard, testified that he would often bite her breasts during sex. Coincidentally (or maybe not?), April 1, 1993 was the day that the divorce between Ramsey and Vineyard was finalized. Police were aware of Ramsey’s previous relationship with Heath and the fact that he had been in “recent contact” with her. The beard hair found at the crime scene was not compared with Ramsey’s beard hair or submitted for DNA testing.

The inclusion of these facts are not to suggest that Ramsey is the perpetrator of this crime, but rather to indicate that there was clearly another suspect worth investigating that the police did not pay any mind to. Ashley Heath at one point even claimed that it was Ramsey who committed the crime. This is reasonable doubt.

Psychological examiner Jill Smith treated Ashley after the death of her mother, and claimed that the child’s story was wildly inconsistent. She even believed that Ashley may not have been present to have witnessed the crime. Smith claims that Ashley’s stories were “profoundly inconsistent”, and that she was “parroting” other family members. A specific example she recalls is the repetition of the phrase “put him [Johnson] behind bars” that was first said by Ashley’s grandmother. Ashley was told by her grandmother that she was the only one who could “keep him behind bars,” and that if she didn’t, Johnson would come and kill her too. Smith claimed that there was an enormous amount of pressure placed on six-year-old Ashley’s shoulders. While she did pick Johnson out of a photo lineup twice, she had seen him at the apartment at least two times before the murder, so it is possible that she recognized him from a previous encounter. When she was presented with a photo lineup on another occasion (that included Johnson), she claimed that “the creep” who killed her mother was not in any of the photographs.

Ashley was not allowed to testify at Johnson’s first trial in 1994, but during his retrial in 1997 she took the stand. She was unable to remember how “the black man” entered the house or what kind of car he was driving.

Ashley Heath contends to this day that Stacey Eugene Johnson is the rapist and murderer of her mother.

The Trials

It is September 23, 1994. Stacey Eugene Johnson is found guilty of murder by the Sevier City Circuit Court and is sentenced to death.

It is November 1997. Stacey Eugene Johnson argues for, and receives, a retrial. He is again found guilty and sentenced to death.

It is April 20, 2017. Stacey Eugene Johnson is scheduled to be executed, but at the last minute is granted a stay of execution by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

It is November 2017. Stacey Eugene Johnson argues that new DNA testing technology will allow for evidence to be reexamined, and will allow for evidence that has gone untested to finally have its day in the lab.

It is May 2018. A judge in the Circuit Court of Sevier County, Arkansas, denies any new DNA testing of evidence. He claims that the technology and techniques used in 1994 are the same that are used currently. He also supports his decision by stating that there has been no new evidence found since Johnson’s 1997 retrial.

It is December 2020. Stacey Eugene Johnson has been incarcerated for the murder of Carol Heath for 26 years, and is still currently behind bars. For the past 27 years, he has proclaimed his innocence.

The Coverage

In an age where true crime has had a resurgence, there is a stark lack of information about the actual crime within articles about Stacey Eugene Johnson. Sometimes now-adult Ashley Heath is quoted, usually not adding much other than fuel for the fire of fervent death penalty supporters. In several articles, she is quoted as saying,

[Johnson] beat my mom, he raped my mom, he strangled my mom, he cut my mom’s throat. There was blood everywhere, there wasn’t a part of the living room that didn’t have blood on it.

The article this quote is from actually contains the most in-depth, unbiased look at the murder and subsequent trials out of all articles available online. After the quote by Ashley, journalists Katlyn Gardenhire and Michael Buckner delve into the case and examine each side of the story. They mention Ashley’s potentially flawed initial testimony as well as the possibility of Branson Ramsey being the assailant. Their analysis of the case is ankle-deep at best, but it’s more than any other article had to say.

You may say that the guilty verdict is enough to name Johnson ultimately as Heath’s murderer; by that logic OJ Simpson, famously innocent of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, should then deserve the same treatment. The language used to describe Johnson is delicate, in that Johnson is not “the murderer of Carol Heath”, but instead, “condemned to death for the 1993 murder of Carol Heath” or “convicted in two separate trials in connection with the brutal 1993 murder of DeQueen, Ark., resident Carol Heath.” He is not referred to as the perpetrator, but rather the individual who has been convicted of the crime. This careful wording ensures that Johnson is not portrayed as completely guilty or completely innocent. It is the truth that he was convicted of this crime, although the truth of who murdered Heath may be more difficult to ascertain.

Described as “harrowing” by Metro News, the murder of Carol Heath is often overlooked in favor of discussion or updates on the incarceration of Johnson. Heath is hardly more than a footnote in articles about Johnson. She has become a background set piece in her own murder. The only news articles pertaining to the crime are updates about Johnson’s sentence and death row status. Occasionally, details of her murder are brought up to add color to an otherwise standard piece about Johnson’s stay of execution or updates on his request for DNA testing. In the latter article, the only mention of Heath is within the following sentence:

In a 5-2 ruling, justices upheld a lower court ruling denying convicted murderer Stacey Johnson's request for additional testing of evidence from the 1993 killing of Carol Heath.

Four words about her! Two of the four being her first and last name. Heath was a mother of two who would sometimes substitute teach the local Bible study class. She was only 25; gone before her time. An entire 25 years and a truly cold-blooded ending to them are boiled down to four words. Regardless of who is found guilty of this crime, there is a sense that justice has not been served, as the life of Carol Heath is overshadowed by the circumstances of her death and the controversy surrounding who is responsible.

Rest in peace Carol Heath.

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Works Cited

Blanco, Juan I. “Stacey Eugene JOHNSON.” Murderpedia, murderpedia.org/male.J/j/johnson-stacey-eugene.htm.

Deen, Sarah. “The Emotional Story of Stacey Johnson the Convicted Murderer on Death Row Who Maintains His Innocence.” MetroUK, Associated Newspapers Limited, 17 Feb. 2018, metro.co.uk/2018/02/17/emotional-story-stacey-johnson-convicted-murderer-death-row-maintains-innocence-7321474/.

Demillo, Andrew. “Arkansas Court Denies Death Row Inmate's Bid for DNA Testing.” U.S. News, 12 Dec. 2019, www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-12-12/arkansas-court-denies-death-row-inmates-bid-for-dna-testing.

Gardenhire, Katlyn, and Michael Buckner. “Despite Claims of Innocence, Carol Heath's Daughter Says Stacey Eugene Johnson Is Guilty.” THV11, KTHV-TV, www.thv11.com/article/news/local/despite-claims-of-innocence-carol-heaths-daughter-says-stacey-johnson-is-guilty/91-433288561.

“JOHNSON v. STATE.” FindLaw, Thomson Reuters, caselaw.findlaw.com/ar-supreme-court/1171655.html.

Johnson v. Norris, CAPITAL CASE, No. 5:06CV00185 JLH (E.D. Ark. Aug. 14, 2007)

“Judge Denies Death Row Inmate's Bid for More DNA Testing in SWAR Murder Case.” KSLA News 12, Gray Television, Inc., 29 May 2018, 7:13 PM CDT, www.ksla.com/story/38300231/judge-denies-death-row-inmates-bid-for-more-dna-testing-in-southwest-arkansas-murder-case/.

Moritz, John. “Killer on Arkansas' Death Row Again Denied New DNA Tests.” Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 21 Feb. 2020, 6:29 a.m., www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/feb/21/killer-on-death-row-again-denied-new-dn/.

“No. 2-48 *** CAPITAL CASE ***.” Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court of the United States, 20 July 2020, www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-48.html.

Peacock, Leslie N. “Stacey Johnson Granted Stay of Execution by the State Supreme Court.” Arkansas Times, 20 Apr. 2017, arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2017/04/20/stacey-johnson-granted-stay-of-execution-by-the-state-supreme-court.

Williamson, Jim. “DNA at Center of Convicted Murderer's Appeal.” Texarkana Gazette, Texarkana Gazette, Inc., 16 Nov. 2017, www.texarkanagazette.com/news/texarkana/story/2017/nov/16/dna-center-convicted-murderers-appeal/700173/.