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Bear Brook

Extraordinary

Bear Brook

NHPR

True Crime

4.815.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sharon Johnson’s family and friends have spent the last 35 years coping with her brutal murder. But what if that story was based on a lie?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

There have been a lot of stories told about Sharon Johnson. My favorite ones are the ones told by her friends.

0:09.0

Connie Howard met Sharon in 1977. Probably Connie says in the laundry room of their apartment building in Manchester, New Hampshire.

0:19.0

Connie was 17, living on our own with a newborn baby.

0:24.5

Sharon was 25, another young, single mom.

0:28.2

I think I thought I could maybe learn a lot from her.

0:31.7

She was just really smart and had her act together.

0:35.9

You know, she had a good job.

0:37.7

She had a nice apartment and seemed to be climbing the ladder.

0:46.1

Sharon was an engineer at a computer manufacturing company.

0:50.4

Connie says back then in the late 70s, she'd never met a woman who was an engineer.

0:56.2

Sharon had her own car,

0:57.6

was saving to buy her own house.

1:00.3

To Connie, Sharon just seemed confident in control of her own life.

1:05.7

Made you think that you could do it.

1:08.4

You know, a 17-year-old girl with a baby,

1:12.1

I didn't have any direction.

1:16.5

So it, you know, it really was a good thing to see another woman like that.

1:23.4

The two of them hit it off. Connie felt herself nestling in under Sharon's wing. Connie needed a driver's license, so Sharon let her borrow her car to take the test.

1:34.3

Connie needed a job, so Sharon got her one at the computer company.

1:39.0

Connie felt aimless in life, so Sharon gave her a shove.

1:47.5

She said if you don't have a career,

1:58.9

you'll amount to nothing. So you need to do something. It was blunt. At first I was kind of hurt by it, but then it motivated me.

...

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