What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
What Horrors Hide in Plain Sight?
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A routine traffic stop reveals the unthinkable horror hiding in plain sight. When Baltimore County police pulled over Nicole Johnson for minor traffic violations in July 2021, they never expected to discover the decomposing bodies of two children hidden in suitcases in her trunk. The horrifying revelation that Johnson had been driving around with the remains of her seven-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew for nearly a year stunned even the most experienced officers.
Woman Sentenced After Police Find Bodies of Niece, Nephew Decaying in Trunk
Aunt pleads guilty in deaths of 2 children from Dayton found in car trunk near Baltimore
Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com
Background music by Michael Shuller Music
Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the Shadows a father-daughter true crime podcast. My name is Jamison Keys.
Speaker 2I'm Caroline, Hello Hi.
Speaker 1Karen, how are you?
Speaker 2I'm well, good.
Speaker 1It's dreary outside.
Speaker 2Yeah, but I feel like it's a good like start to fall.
Speaker 1Yeah, but we've got a ways to go before fall it's still. August you think, well, yeah, maybe like a month, yeah, but it's better than last month. It was incredibly hot, just 95, 98 degrees.
Speaker 2So today I wanted to tell you about, like a news, current events thing that's going on in the true crime world and I think often true crime at least for me can feel really overwhelming at points where, like I don't want to consume too much of it at one time it can feel really like depressing. Sure, um, which you know makes sense with the content, but also it it's nice to to see when a victim's family member stands up for for their um, their loved one, loved one that was a victim of someone. I wanted to share with you an impact statement in the University of Idaho murder the man who killed, I think, four of the students that went to the University of Idaho.
Speaker 1Brian Colbert yeah.
Speaker 2I never know their names, they're not even important, literally the murderers. Bye, like you know, it's just whatever. But yeah, so the sister of the victim, kaylee goncalves uh, the sister's name is olivia goncalves and she has been blowing up on mainstream media, on social media, different news outlets, about her victim impact statement. So she was in the courtroom and she basically told off the murderer who murdered her sister. And yeah, I would just, I would recommend that people watch it. If you're watching true crime, especially if you're feeling kind of like depressed by it all, like it is, it's, it's, it's nice to see, to see someone tell off a murderer you know what I mean. And so she really goes in on him, telling him like she is so disappointed by how average he is, and it's just, I was like you know what.
Speaker 1Yeah, like as you should is, and it's just, I was like you know what? Yeah, like as you should. Yeah, I mean, that could probably give you a little bit of closure. I would think that at least at the very end you get to stand in front of this monster, literally, and tell him off. And you know, the interesting thing I thought about it was she didn't read it, she just belted it out she.
Speaker 2So she had notes with her and then she would like lock eyes with him and she just went like off the cuff like I think she like hit points on her notes but she was like I'm not breaking eye contact with you, you piece of like she was not playing. And yeah, she was very powerful.
Speaker 1I love some of the stuff she said she was so strong and had you not done that while she was asleep, she would have fought you off she said, she would have beat your ass.
Speaker 2She would have beat your ass I was like hell, yeah, that's right, that's right and you know so, yeah, definitely a powerful victim statement uh, in the courtroom, which, you know, I think I think that's another way to look at true crime is through, like the victim statements too. You know the people, people who are left after the crime has been committed, because those victim statements really do hold a lot of you know, obviously anger, but also like a lot of power.
Speaker 1Yeah, their chance to get closure, their chance to get it off your chest, so that doesn't have to.
Speaker 1you know kind of be with you forever, you can just get rid of it, get it all out, and so on. I remember when the Golden State killer was being sentenced and so on. So many people came forward and I don't remember that from when I was younger I mean I don't remember victim impact statements quite that much. I guess they still did them, but they certainly weren't something that was recounted very often. But I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 2It's a good thing.
Speaker 1I think it's a great thing, like a healthy kind of a thing to do after that, uh, to to someone of that terrible, terrible, yeah, yeah, what a horrible human being. Is a human being? Is he even a human being?
Speaker 2I'm not sure, unfortunately that's the scary part and that's why, like, I think true crime like is something that we listen to, especially like women or people that are interested in crime Like. We listen to it because we honestly it's hard to wrap your mind around that humans can be capable of such destruction and hatred and depravity, and but also humans can be capable of such amazing thing. It is, it is really. And so I think a lot of us like listen to true crime, trying to like how can we figure out the people in our everyday surroundings? How can we prevent this from ourselves? You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1Right, right, and I was actually. I was going to do something a little different this week. I was.
Speaker 1There's been a lot of conversation about whether or not there is a serial killer in the New England area or not. There is a serial killer in the New England area, and I looked because there are 12 or 14 bodies that have turned up in a short period of time in a space from Rhode Island up through Massachusetts, and it's the more I looked into it. Obviously, any human loss of human life is a tragedy, Absolutely. But the more I looked into it, there really isn't. I don't think there's one person there doing it.
Speaker 1Some of the deaths may be related, but I don't think there's anything that could really say that it's actually. You know one person that's doing this kind of thing, and a lot of that has to do with serial killers especially tend to do things um, uh, the same way. There's a ritual part of it, right, and that isn't present here, because some of the people they found parts of bodies in a wooded area in you know one place and another place they found, uh, people in in the river, you know, but we don't know what, how that happened or what the intention was the modus operandi of the way that they were killed and so on. There was no continuity in that either, and I know everyone's on guard ever since you know the things happened over in Long Island, the Lisk, the Lisk but in this case, I don't think it's anything that's generated by one person.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, we can keep our eye on it.
Speaker 1For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2The trigger warnings for today are child abuse, murder of a child and not disposing of a body in an appropriate way. Right.
Speaker 1So this has blown up on the internet quite a way, right, so it is, and this is, uh, this is blown up on the internet quite a bit.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And it happened not so long ago, but it wasn't just like it was just six months ago. Um, when I was young, I often thought that maybe when I was older I'd become a police officer, and you know, most of that stemmed from this romantic notion I had, you know, from watching a lot of police dramas and so on, procedural dramas with my dad, and I told him one day that and he got very sad, he got a sad look on his face and he said he said, buddy, it's not how it's portrayed on television. Police work, like serving in the military in a time of war, is really far more grim and sad than it might seem. Fortunately, I listened to him and while you know I have great respect for those who chose that life, I'm certainly not one of them.
Speaker 1In July of 2021, a police officer in Baltimore County Police Department made a routine traffic stop on Eastern Boulevard in the town of Exit, and that was about at 11 pm on the 28th, which year this, 11 pm on the 28th, which year? This is 2021. Okay, so as he approached the car, the car was driven by a lady by the name of Nicole Johnson. Something seemed off to him, you know. He asked her for her license and her registration. She had been speeding a little bit, the car turned out to be unregistered, uninsured, and she had a fake license plate. Oh my gosh, so this lady's in a little bit of trouble to begin with, so Johnson's behavior seemed erratic and he told Johnson and her passenger to exit the car as it would have to be towed because the registration and the license issues, you know, all wrong. They were just fake. Uh, he told her, um, to get out of the car, and if she needed something out of the car that she would need to take it with her and then have to go and get a court date and all that sort of thing. And she really wasn't paying attention. I've even seen the I've even seen the vest footage of this body cam yeah, the body cam footage, and he noticed something weird about it. And he noticed the unmistakable smell of decay. Oh, johnson explained that it was probably a dead rat in her car, which is scary in and of itself. Uh, and when she opened the trunk, the smell became overwhelming and he noticed maggots in the trunk. A backup officer arrived and he too noticed the smell and the police instructed her to start removing things from her trunk.
Speaker 1Johnson attempted to pull the things out and say that they were just dirty blankets and dirty towels and things like that. But they have to do an inventory of the car when it goes into impound because they could have something in there valuable and so on. You don't want that to disappear. So you could tell she was getting more nervous and more nervous and so he had to pull some of the stuff out. And then there were just bags, you know, like, like garbage bags, you know wrapping sheets and towels and stuff like that.
Horrific Trunk Discovery
Speaker 1And he's like what, what is all this? And she said well, you know, we, we stay in hotels and we go from hotel to hotel and we like to have our own stuff. And he kept pulling it out and one of them seemed extremely large and he said pull everything out of that, right. What he kind of feared is that once she got down and started cutting the layers of the paper bags off, he opened the black suitcase and in the suitcase was a seven-year-old who had died and her corpse was in this black suitcase. What a nightmare, what a nightmare indeed. I mean, as you can imagine, as I would do, you can see this and it's so really it's heart-wrenching. It is On the video.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Because these are guys that see some bad stuff, right, they see people hurting people all the time, but it's something different entirely when she opened the bag and it was obvious that inside that, inside that suitcase, was the body of a seven-year-old child. Now she tries to sprint away. Yes, and there's no way that's going to happen. He, he, he, really. He caught her and they brought her back and you know they would just quickly too. He caught her quickly too, right, and he brings her over and you know she's trying to escape and so on. He puts her on the ground and he handcuffs her and so on, and, uh, it just it's, it's such a. It's so amazingly, amazingly so.
Speaker 1Further investigation revealed the decomposing body of Johnson's seven-year-old niece, jocelyn Johnson, and there's more shocks and more horror ahead, because they also found the body of her five-year-old nephew, named Larry O'Neill, in the trunk. Johnson was taken into custody and she had been in custody of the children from her mother since 2019. Reportedly, she told detectives that she'd been driving around with the children's body for an extended period of time. She claimed that once they got through the police station, she claimed that the little girl was in the hotel. She said that their mother was abusive to them and that she took charge of them and was living in hotels, moving from hotel to hotel, and that the little girl had been not behaving and the little girl had been taking things out of their freeze, the refrigerator in the room that she didn't want her to um, so people that in the hotels that she frequented said that you know she had off. They'd often hear screaming and screaming at her, screaming and cursing at the child and stuff like that.
Nicole Johnson's Story Unravels
Speaker 1But on this particular night, she said the little girl was being obstinate. She tried to remove something from their freezer and Johnson said that she hit her. The little girl fell down and hit her head on something and, according to Johnson, she tried to do CPR and that sort of thing Just not helpful when you hit your head. Well, no, I mean no, I mean exactly. So she said that when she stopped CPR because she was exhausted, she put her up on the bed and she laid down with him. She didn't call the police, she didn't call an ambulance Right After a while she said that the next day she wrapped the body up and put it in the suitcase and just put it in the trunk. Now, later on the little boy. She says that the little boy was just went to sleep one day and he didn't wake up.
Speaker 2What a lie, I know Like come on.
Speaker 1You just proved that you can harm a child. You just proved that you have no problem instead of informing the authorities. Look, I mean, that's awful what happened. Yeah, she said that she didn't feel like any of her family or the mother was trying to support her, but police found out that the mother had been sending her money. The mother had been checking in on them to see how they're doing, had been sending her money. The mother had been checking in on them to see how they're doing. But she noticed some kind of weird and sketchy stuff when she asked to see the children and she wouldn't text her back and she wanted to get photos of the children and she wouldn't send them. That's when she started moving from hotel to hotel.
Speaker 2Okay, and it was after they were already dead.
Speaker 1After they were already dead. Yeah, so Johnson said that she and it was after they were already dead. After they were already dead, yeah, so she's johnson said that she, she, just she, no one was helping her and and that sort of thing. Like that is a, like that is a, you know, like that's something that you can fall back on as an excuse to murder, for murdering a.
Speaker 2Oh and yeah, it's always shocking like how people these murderers will, like they're excuses, like it's interesting to hear, like what they say, like is the reason, and like who they'll blame, and it's so such like a last ditch effort.
Speaker 1So I can't imagine really, but if you're in a situation maybe there's drugs involved, maybe it's something like that and the mother doesn't feel like she can take care of the children, and I totally understand why someone wouldn't be super up about putting children into the system, yeah, but honestly, I mean, in this scenario, would they still be alive today? Probably so, maybe, probably so, maybe, maybe so. But giving them to your sister and hoping your sister will raise them, and so on, I mean, that was just a terrible story. And the thing that really got me was the fact that you had these hardened police officers that were weeping. Oh yeah, of course I mean my gosh. I mean just imagine that. I mean, mean, this one guy said he had a five-year-old. His little girl was going to turn five later that weekend. Just imagine that. Like I can't and I'm so glad that my father talked me out of that sort of thing because I could not- have probably would have left, left that career for sure, I mean for sure.
Speaker 2No, I couldn't. I couldn't see that kind of when we, as non-police officers, when we see sad situations in real life, it's traumatic and so, yeah, I can't imagine seeing that more frequently, you know, than we already do, which is typically not as frequent, you know, but still enough to traumatize. It's just. Oh yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker 1Yeah, but think about that for a minute If that child died in some time in 2020, and she'd been driving around for almost a year with his children in the trunk of her car?
Speaker 2what the hell, why I don't understand, like even in her twisted logic of like I don't want to get caught, you know whatever. Okay, why are they in your trunk? I'm so confused, like the whole thing is just obviously like she has mental health issues, obviously. But I mean that's even more so because what I mean? Just the avoidance of that, trying to literally pretend that didn't happen it's a childlike response yeah, for sure. So childlike or like yeah, or just yeah, yeah simplistic, I mean.
Speaker 1I mean when I was a kid, I remember I broke a lamp one day when my, my parents were out, a friend of mine was over and we broke a lamp and so I tried to hide the lamp, right, yeah, and that seems like something a child would do, right? I mean, if I can just hide the bodies, no, that's not going to ever. You know, that's not ever. I mean.
Speaker 2I just don't understand how she thought. How did she think that's just a crazy situation and you had people in your car? The whole thing's confusing.
Speaker 1She had a lady in her car named Mimi I believe the lady's name was that was traveling with her.
Speaker 2She had a mental intellectual disability.
Speaker 1She did so. The police took her down and it was very clear that she first of all doubtful, very doubtful, that she had anything to do with it.
Speaker 2Doubtful, also no, no, no, no, no I don't think that.
Sentencing and Justice
Speaker 1Yeah, Doubtful that she had anything to do with it, Doubtful that she knew that the children were back there, because my God, who could do that? And and you know nothing to do with it and no, no. But yeah, johnson was charged with multiple offenses, including child abuse resulting in the death or negligence of a minor, failure to report the death of a child and unauthorized burial of a body.
Speaker 2Burial yeah.
Speaker 1When did the burial? There was no burial, well Horrific.
Speaker 2Horrific.
Speaker 1In the general sense. She pleaded guilty to two counts of first degree child abuse involving the death of a victim younger than 13 in February of 2025. So just this year and Johnson was sentenced to between 50 years and life. She will never, ever, ever get out of prison or, at the very least, will serve at least 50 years, and if she's 30 now or something like that, you know that's pretty much uh, yeah, but uh, honestly, honest to goodness, that was just such a terrible case. Yeah, that is really scary.
Speaker 2So but yeah, it's interesting, uh, to see the people who go through these life sentences. Life sentences are very long sentences for doing some horrible things. Um, and when they get out it's so interesting. I just why are these people getting out? I don't like no well it's.
Speaker 1it's like those menendez brothers, right, they're there because of the the kind of the attitude in California at this point in time, there's potential for them to get out of jail Now. They murdered both their parents, if you recall.
Speaker 2I do, but they had an interesting weird like they were being abused potentially.
Speaker 1They said that, but no one at all. The therapist in it didn't confirm that. Well, they didn't mention that they were being abused until after the death of oh, ok, ok, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2I don't know about that situation, but I'm talking more about. What comes to mind for me is the Elizabeth Smart case and her captor, the woman who, like, sexually assaulted her with her husband and, like, kidnapped her, brainwashed her, tried to make her part of their cult. Like what, what do you mean? She's walking around. What do you mean? Like, no, that's not okay is she out.
Speaker 2yes, yes, she got out. In utah, they literally live not very far from each other. Oh no, it couldn't be me. He's out too, he's not she is oh, my God. She's just as bad.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2I mean, I don't know what he did to her, but she is just as bad in my eyes because I mean, you're an adult, Right.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2You have to be held responsible for your actions. Right, you're an adult, right? Right, you have to be held responsible for your actions. Right, and I am extremely empathetic, uh, to victims of, you know, abuse and what, what have you, but like, still, you can't do that to a child, that's no, yeah, maybe she, maybe she's turned state's evidence against him, or something like that doesn't matter I agree, I agree they already got him no even how that ended with, with they were walking around trying to get money in in uh salt lake city trying to be a cult.
Speaker 2Right, right, they were in a cult, a religious cult they created a religious cult.
Speaker 1They walked around in white clothing and yeah, like that's.
Speaker 2I mean that that is a religious cult. Right, that's that's crazy.
Parole Discussion and Show Closing
Speaker 1And and this police officer you know, in in salt lake city saw her because she they made her wear a veil, but the veil was down or something like that. And the policeman kind of locked in on that and said, um, wait a minute, are you, elizabeth, smart? That's crazy. And she was terrified to say yes, yeah, yeah, because she was brainwashed, right. And he separated them from the two people and they were getting very, you know, crazy and like no, you can't talk to my daughter. He like put his hand on his gun, he goes you need to stay away, you need to step back. And they kind of separated and so on, and she said just tell me if that's who you are. And that's how that whole thing ended.
Speaker 2I know it's crazy, but now she's out, it's horrific and Elizabeth Smart has her own children. It's terrifying. Yeah, sure, absolutely so it's good to know that this woman's probably not going to get out, though 50 years.
Speaker 1I think chances are she's not going to get out though 50 years, I think. I think, uh, chances, because she's not going to get out. And even if you just accidentally kill two children, the fact that you didn't, how?
Speaker 2no, the fact that the other boy just died. No, that didn't happen. You're such a liar. That's right.
Speaker 1Pathologically but yeah, hopefully, um yeah, she'll never see the light of day. So that was that case and that was just really revolting. Hit me on a very, very base level. I mean it was just, it was so awful to watch that, yeah, I couldn't watch it, I couldn't watch the whole thing, I just couldn't, yeah. So anyways, that's, that's that case Terrible.
Speaker 2Follow the show on whatever streaming site you're listening on.
Speaker 1And remember. All of the source material will be available in the show notes.
Speaker 2And follow us on Instagram at whatweloseintheshadows, and let us know if you want to hear a specific case or if you just want to give us some feedback. Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday. Bye.
