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Season Six: Last in the Woods
223 Plays12 days ago
Today’s episode talks about missing persons cases and a set of unidentified remains with a some scary last images.
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Transcript
Content Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Introduction to April Reed's Case
00:00:59
Speaker
Today's case is a little different. It's kind of ah like a complete capsule of a case. like it It wraps itself up. We talked about this when it first happened ah briefly. You and I discussed it.
00:01:13
Speaker
And if you go online, there's a pretty good source for all of this at ansonrecord.com. The way that people may know this case is it has some pretty, I would call it eerie, I don't know what you would call it, trail cam footage?
00:01:32
Speaker
I think that eerie describing trail cam footage is accurate no matter what's on it. Yeah. it This trail cam footage shows a woman who appears to be almost naked, barefoot, ah wandering around in a series of still images.
00:01:54
Speaker
They kind of put the the images together to make a little bit of footage. And ah it becomes a mystery. But if you back...
00:02:05
Speaker
and you and I had to look at this couple of different times. If you backtrack through the story, ah the footage comes out because a body has been found. Now, there's a handful of people that are are sort of loosely identified ah in in this in the... in the so in They're loosely identified as potentially being this person.
00:02:32
Speaker
And one of those people is still missing right now. I don't know if you caught this one, but we had talked about her off the show. ah She goes missing in February of
The Jane Doe Mystery in Wadesboro, NC
00:02:44
Speaker
2021.
00:02:44
Speaker
This is April Reed. So April Reed goes missing from Lenore, North Carolina. She was 36 years old. Her full name is April Michelle Reed. She's a got blonde hair.
00:02:58
Speaker
She's five foot five, 110 pounds or so. She was reported missing by her family on March 20th of 2021. They said they hadn't seen her in a few weeks.
00:03:09
Speaker
And it was reported that she said she was going down to South Carolina to visit friends. But as far as the family knew, she had no vehicle. They didn't have an exact ah time that she may have left her residence.
00:03:21
Speaker
And, ah She has a ah number of interesting things that sort of tie back into this Jane Doe that's seen in these images. And one of those things was she walked ah with a limp and she usually had a ah cane.
00:03:36
Speaker
And in the images, the Jane Doe appears to be using like a hiking stick or a branch or something in one of the images. The article from the Anson Record sort of picks up. This is written by a woman named Lauren Monica down at the and Anson Record.
00:03:53
Speaker
It picks up March 3rd, 2025, and the first one says, Part 1, What We Know About Jane Doe. This is Wadesboro, North Carolina for the byline, by the way.
00:04:05
Speaker
It says, Certain outcomes can and always will be hard to accept. especially when one is consumed with knowing all the answers. The case of Wade's Burroughs Jane Doe is one that has captured the attention not only of Ensonians, but now through social media, the world, and is one that leaves a slew of questions in its wake.
00:04:27
Speaker
In the case of Jane Doe, whose body was found behind the North Carolina National Guard Armory May 12th of 2022, It's hard to envision justice because it is impossible to know what vindication would look like in her case.
00:04:42
Speaker
Life experiences condition us to immediately jump to the conclusion she was murdered. Half-naked woman, barefoot, alone in the woods, and later found dead. Definite foul play there, right?
00:04:55
Speaker
Maybe. What we do know is when she was last seen alive on a private landowner's trail camera, Sunday, August 22nd of 2021, in the heavily wooded area behind the armory.
00:05:07
Speaker
In the first set of still images taken around 1.33 a.m., Jane Doe is moving quickly, the trail camera catching one fleeting image of her moving briskly past a nearby deer feeder.
00:05:19
Speaker
In the next set of images taken between 4.30 and 4.33 a.m., she is moving slowly, cautiously maneuvering through the dense underbrush with the aid of a walking stick.
00:05:31
Speaker
Her cases spanned the tenure of two of the county's sheriffs and several detectives, current and former. Unfortunately, there are very little facts or information to go on in this case.
00:05:42
Speaker
At the time Jane Doe was found, her body had lain at the mercy of the elements for about nine months. According to records, her DNA was not collected at this time, nor was the discovery of her body made known to the public.
00:05:56
Speaker
The sheriff's office has never denied mistakes were made in the case initially. Under Sheriff Scott Howell, Jane Doe's NamUs profile was established. Her DNA was sent off for analysis and a new detective was assigned to her case.
00:06:10
Speaker
With the public now aware and movement occurring in the case, tips to Jane Doe's identity have began to pour in from all over. Closer to home, April Reed, missing from Lenore and possibly hitchhiking towards Myrtle Beach, became an early contender in Doe's identity as she fit the body type of the woman on the trail camera and reportedly reportedly required the use of a walking stick.
00:06:35
Speaker
Reed was later ruled out by her dental records and remains missing at this time. Another contender was Amber Johnston, who took an ill-fated trip on a Greyhound bus to Winston-Salem and disappeared from the bus station.
00:06:49
Speaker
Allegedly, she too had headed to meet her ex-boyfriend in Myrtle Beach. Jane Doe was found still wearing her black secret treasures bra and what could be legging-like material wrapped around her lower torso.
00:07:03
Speaker
The unsettling eeriness of the case keeps Jane Doe's story alive, and few who have seen her haunting last images can forget. We still do not know her name or how she came to be there.
00:07:15
Speaker
At this point in Jane Doe's story, it is hoped that law enforcement can give her back her name and return her to her family. It seems so simple to get DNA results.
00:07:27
Speaker
We watch the TV experts do it in seconds on crime shows. But in real life, there's a backlog of cases, each one representative of a family waiting for answers.
00:07:38
Speaker
And that's sort of the end of part one of this story. I find these cases interesting whenever you end up with someone who just kind of vanishes. Yeah, but it's very, um I find it interesting that the narrator of the story says that like, oh, there's definite foul play there because I don't i don't think there is.
00:07:59
Speaker
Well, no, she's kind of asking, is there foul play there that we leap to murder? I don't think there is either. That's what, I think that makes it more fascinating to me. And parts of it, you know, the fact that she's seen walking around completely on her own, right? So she's not being held captive by anybody, right? No, she's not. It does not appear that she is. They they do ask the questions in a different version of this article that I found. Same thing, part one about Jane Doe from March 3rd. Yeah.
00:08:31
Speaker
The questions that they ask are pretty decent ones, I think. Why did we not get these trail cam images images earlier? And I think the reason is, is I think it was hard to put all this together for somebody.
00:08:47
Speaker
Well, when did they get them? Do we know? um So for what she's saying here, she says that we've got Jane Doe in Wadesboro. She ends up barefoot, half naked in the woods.
00:08:58
Speaker
She disappears into these woods for three hours. There's a possibility she became injured, ah but she manages to have the wherewithal to walk in a straight line past the same trail camera a second time.
00:09:13
Speaker
ah Why was she not picked up on any other trail cams in the area? Why were the trail camera images not made public immediately? Why was the fact that a young woman's body ah had been found kept a secret for nearly two years?
00:09:27
Speaker
Well, Miss Trail Cams, you have to actually go retrieve the footage. Um, I, that used to be the case now. Okay. Uh, depending on where the trail cam is and what type of trail camera it is it could still be the case.
00:09:44
Speaker
Right. Which, I mean, I don't know what kind it was, but what I'm saying is it's not necessarily like a surveillance camera, right? Right. Yeah. Like I have, so I have some live cameras. um They have to be, the live cameras I have, they can operate with cell service or they have to be close to a wifi connection.
00:10:03
Speaker
But then I also have what you're describing. Like I have cameras that I put out um far away from like wifi. And honestly, one of, or possibly two of them are far away from cell coverage.
00:10:17
Speaker
And they, I have to like physically go to them. I have to remove a memory card. And like, I ah basically play a memory card swap game. Yep. And i will say that i don't always re like I don't always review the memory cards right away. I just know that like it basically takes about five days to fill up a memory card with video and still images.
00:10:42
Speaker
So every four or five days, I try to get down there and like swap it. Right. And so i thought perhaps the reason that it wasn't released earlier was just because when a body was found, it triggered someone's memory if they had seen her on the trail cam. Because she's not she's on someone's property, but she's not really doing anything that would be concerning, right?
00:11:09
Speaker
No, not really. Depending on how far away the property is from the owner or whatever. i mean, if she's just out in the woods... You know, it could have been a really nice person who was just like, well, whatever she's doing, she can just camp out there until she leaves or whatever, right? Right. or
Exploring Potential Identities for Jane Doe
00:11:25
Speaker
when the body was found, it triggered somebody to think proximity-wise, I should check my cameras and see what's on there.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. And so I don't think there's anything sinister about that because the the bottom line is if there was something sinister about the images, we just never would have seen them.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, we wouldn't. i don't I don't think we would have either. like It almost feels like ah hold back for evidence, like timeline-wise, in case something lines up with a potential suspect, maybe. Right, but there was nothing about her body that indicated anything like that.
00:12:05
Speaker
No, I didn't see anything about the body indicating that. I have heard like some stories about money related to this. Have you heard this?
00:12:16
Speaker
i don't think so um so. Allegedly, one of the missing people they considered had some money in a backpack, and the backpack is eventually found, but the money's gone.
00:12:28
Speaker
I think it was her, wasn't that um yeah it? Yeah. But did the people that found the bag confess to it? i do not know the answer to that sitting here today. See, I got it a little bit confused. But, yeah, I mean, i so I did hear about that. And what I heard was um the hunters, I think it was hunters, came across the bag. They took the money, left the bag. They never saw anybody attached to the bag or anything. Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
Which, I mean, I believe that. ah That might be dumb to believe, but like otherwise like they would have been like, what are you talking about? Right? Yeah. Because there's no reason, I mean, there was no evidence of video of them taking the money or whatever.
00:13:11
Speaker
But it seems like, ah like two things can be true at the same time. Like, somebody could have taken money out of a bag they found in the middle of the woods and not reported it or said anything to anybody about it, and they still could have nothing to do with her being dead. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, yes, there are some sinister things to happen.
00:13:36
Speaker
ah Like, ah ah I wouldn't say sinister. It's coincidental, right? Yeah, it it but it it's more coincidental with like needs more investigation. like They could look sinister on the surface.
00:13:50
Speaker
I don't necessarily know that I would automatically jump. like Kind of like the author asked, do we automatically jump to a murder having happened? Well, we see the person alone. So no, I don't. I think I lean more towards misadventure from what I see, but I do understand how creepy the images are.
00:14:10
Speaker
They are creepy, but she is alone. She actually looks like she's, except for the bra, completely naked, but they've said she has on leggings or something. Yeah, they said they said that there were leggings found with her um and they described the bra kind of in detail in the different articles you can read here.
00:14:27
Speaker
And I've seen, so this would have been, ah she was seen on video in August, right? Yeah. And she's then sort of western North Carolina.
00:14:40
Speaker
Um, it's so the place that she has found, um
00:14:47
Speaker
is Anson, North Carolina, which is down, ah it's by Wadesboro. Do you know, are you familiar with where Wadesboro is? It's like kind of West end, both South.
00:14:59
Speaker
I'm going to look it up. Cause, um,
00:15:04
Speaker
my, cause my question was, um, Okay, so how about how far... it's actually It's actually pretty much in the middle of the state. Right? Yeah.
00:15:18
Speaker
And
00:15:22
Speaker
to the south. Right, because the narrative was that she rode on a greyhound to once in Salem. Correct. Okay, and so you're looking at...
00:15:35
Speaker
i I'm actually going to see how many miles away. so To give you an idea of who they're looking at, I pulled this Inside Edition thing. Yeah. and So Inside Edition has an article from a woman named Deborah Hastings back in February of 2024.
00:15:50
Speaker
And it just says, ah desperate relatives are searching for two missing mothers who simply vanished in North Carolina in towns 100 miles apart, leaving behind their children and no trace of where they might be. And I'm using this to to highlight this.
00:16:04
Speaker
These other cases, because I always feel like you should highlight missing persons cases when you can. ah One of these mothers is Melissa Carmichael. She's 25. She had called 911 for help in the wee hours of the morning, January 14th, saying that she had been dumped off at a gas station near Greensboro, North Carolina.
00:16:24
Speaker
and that a man had driven away with her cell phone and she didn't know where she was. The other mom they're talking about here is Dana Muschian. She's 33. She had last been seen November 30th of 2023 in the driveway of her home when she kissed her father goodbye, said she'd see him tomorrow.
00:16:42
Speaker
She doesn't show up a couple of days later for her daughter's sixth birthday party and her family reports her missing. In both cases, police have been searching for these missing women without success.
00:16:52
Speaker
And in both cases, distraught families have said there's no reason the the women would voluntarily leave behind their children. So Sarah Carmichael, that's Marissa Carmichael's mom, she's now left caring for five grandchildren.
00:17:07
Speaker
between the ages of three and nine. ah Her quote from the Inside Edition article says, we have to get her home. As much as I'm hurting for my daughter, I'm hurting for my grandchildren. They're having a hard time, and her children need her.
00:17:21
Speaker
Sarah Carmichael says at the time she was being treated for terminal illness. She said, I don't have all the time in the world, and I'm trying to keep it together, because when I fall apart, I have to put myself back together to focus.
00:17:34
Speaker
By the same turn, Megan Muschen, who is Dana Muschen's sister-in-law, said it seems as if Dana just vanished off the face of the earth. She said, we tried ground searches, ponds, woods, anywhere we could think of.
00:17:47
Speaker
And people in the community have just rallied, and we didn't realize how loved and how many people knew her. So Dana doesn't get reported missing until December 4th. And her family said they began calling when they, when she didn't show up for her daughter's birthday party and relatives started leaving her messages. And then all of a sudden her phone went dead and started going directly to voicemail.
Amber Johnston's Disappearance
00:18:12
Speaker
um They talk about both of these two women um as being potential candidates for this Jane Doe, but they also just sort of highlight ah that she, we have missing people in this small area and they're trying to get a a good feel for, ah who Jane Doe could be.
00:18:34
Speaker
Now, Marissa doesn't really fit. Dana kind of fits a little bit. um another person that's mentioned in all of this is Eileen Michelle Lavery. Now, when this all first started, Eileen Michelle Lavery had been missing since March of 2023, also out of Once in Salem. Um,
00:18:52
Speaker
But her body has since been discovered in Catawba County. Her body was found near a creek there. um I believe that Dana Mushtian is still missing.
00:19:03
Speaker
And they pointed out that April Reed's dental records ruled her out. So we're left with a young lady named Amber Johnston.
00:19:16
Speaker
And we get a part two of this story on March the 10th from the Anson Record from the same author, Lauren Monica. And she kicks this story off by stating in the title, who was Amber Rae Johnston?
00:19:33
Speaker
um It says, since the body of Wadesboro's Jane Doe was discovered during a May 2022 land survey in a wooded area behind the National Guard Armory in Wadesboro, two main contenders ah for her identity had emerged, April Michelle Reed and Amber Rae Johnston.
00:19:53
Speaker
She points out that the elements had taken a hold on the body. So all we have left are the skeletal remains, which are believed to belong to a Caucasian woman, 30 to 40 years of age, roughly in height, which honestly huge difference.
00:20:10
Speaker
which is honestly ah huge huge variation in height for me um both reed and johnson are within the identified age and height range both women were possibly headed to myrtle beach traveling the roads by either hitchhiking or in april reed's case uh hitchhiking in april reed's case or by greyhound bus in ah amber johnson's case So she gets into NamUs under that sheriff.
00:20:40
Speaker
A few details kind of dribble out, and then they suddenly rule out April Reed with dental records. But Amber Johnston couldn't be ruled out based on dental records alone.
00:20:53
Speaker
She had had what's described as inconsistent dental visits. And her mother, Pennsylvania native, ah Sharon Johnston, she said she looked at the still images taken by the trail camera, and she says she knows that the half-naked woman she sees in those images is her daughter.
00:21:13
Speaker
So aside from this sudden and jarring appearance on a trail camera, there were no other clues as to how Amber Johnson travels down the Wadesboro and suddenly gets lost in the woods.
00:21:27
Speaker
But that's where we're leaning in terms of who this Jane Doe would be. They describe her as 36 years old, so at the time, she's been living kind of a a nomadic lifestyle.
00:21:40
Speaker
She had recently broken up with a boyfriend, Jarrett Ward, and she had been living alone in Bullhead City, Arizona at the time of her disappearance. So we talk about this all the time where geography sort of gets in the way of an investigation.
00:21:58
Speaker
I don't think you can get a much bigger gap than Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Bullhead City, Arizona. Right. This is definitely that. ah A huge gap. And not to mention the fact that she wasn't going to stay in Winston.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah. yeah she She was just passing through this area. Right. She was headed up to Pennsylvania and she didn't arrive. And so... That is a huge obstacle, really.
00:22:25
Speaker
And we have this crazy story. So there's the Winston-Salem Greyhound bus station, August 17th, 2021. We've now confirmed Amber Johnson was there.
00:22:38
Speaker
But after this breakup with Jarrett Ward in Arizona, Ward tells Amber's mom that he left Amber in Bullhead City and he went on to Las Vegas.
00:22:51
Speaker
He had gotten a Greyhound bus ticket through an organization called Catholic Charities, and they were sending him home to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So Amber's alone in Bullhead City, but there's a weird thing that happens on August the 8th, 2021.
00:23:11
Speaker
Around 8 in the morning, Amber had gone swimming with the man that she had just met. She leaves all of her belongings, including shoes, wallet, everything, on the water's edge while she's swimming.
00:23:25
Speaker
The man goes, and he gets a floating device, like a flotation device. His claim to law enforcement in Bullhead City is that when he came back, Amber was gone, and he was not sure if she drowned.
00:23:43
Speaker
According to local law enforcement, the man provided Amber's ID to law enforcement as proof that she had been there. Drones are called in and rescue crews search the water.
00:23:56
Speaker
But Amber's landlady calls in to let police know she had seen her return safely to her apartment. Her mom, Amber's mom, Sharon, finds this story strange.
00:24:09
Speaker
She says her daughter is a very careful person who would never leave her ID and clothing in the possession of someone that she barely knew. But according to what law enforcement runs down about her, she does leave Bullhead City on August 16th.
00:24:26
Speaker
So this is a week after this incident at the swimming hole where Amber is headed east. According to Jarrett Ward, he claims that to Sharon in the conversation that Amber was actually traveling all the way to Myrtle Beach because the two of them were going to reunite. They were going to get back together.
00:24:49
Speaker
Now, this is just my opinion. That's the moment that, like, you have a suspect. Like, and I'm not saying he is the suspect, but I'm saying if you're law enforcement, like,
00:25:05
Speaker
That's the suspect, don't you think? I do. um I think so, especially... so we're talking about, you know, both of them are in Arizona. Then he's back at Myrtle Beach. She's still in Arizona. She has this strange encounter with, you know, whoever this other guy is. But she leaves everything behind. That tells me she's having some sort of crisis.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah. It may not be that obvious at first. However... Because she left her identification behind, her clothes behind, ah didn't say bye to this guy. Not that she owed him, you know, to say bye, but, like, she didn't take her stuff with her. Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
And so she's lost her mind, right? She could have, yeah. She could be in any kind of crisis. It goes on to say, and so I believe that she probably was, i don't know actually how far you just got, but she's talking, you know, her boyfriend's saying, we're getting back together. or She's headed this way or whatever, right? Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
But she's also asking a friend at the same time to help her find a rehab close to her family in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And so as crazy as all of this sounds, Jarrett Ward sends screenshots of conversations he's been having on his phone.
00:26:18
Speaker
Like he sends over screenshots of of these conversations between him and Amber. And like you said, Sharon's also getting these conflicting messages that Yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
she's trying to get away from jarret ward he's allegedly physically abusive to her she's trying to get away from drugs and she wants a bet in a rehab center that'll be close to pittsburgh pennsylvania which is far away from you know what we're looking at Right. And so what do you think of when, um, but we don't know who the guy she went swimming with us They don't name him. I mean, obviously she's been, she was seen after that. And we have proof that now don we have proof that she got on the bus and then she rebooked her ticket. Right. When she got to Winston-Salem. So they, but they know she was there.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so she had met the guy that she went swimming with somehow. They don't elaborate on that, but to me, that's actually really important because we're about to have a situation where, I looked it up, it's about 115 miles yeah between Winston-Salem and Anson. Yes. and we're about to have another situation where she's going to have she's going to have to have some sort of brief encounter with someone.
00:27:36
Speaker
She is. Yeah, she is. So I have not seen the guy named from Bullhead City. I do know that there is a detective out there named Scott Sharp who has the missing persons case for Amber Johnson.
00:27:49
Speaker
So work has been done. And he has released that August 15th, 2021. Amber's phone has a Flagstaff, Arizona ping that was interesting to him.
00:28:01
Speaker
She apparently posts on her private Facebook account that she was ready to come home to Pittsburgh. And she includes that she's trying to clear up some old warrants.
00:28:12
Speaker
So that's something to think about. There's a video that's uploaded on her Facebook page during this time where if it's Amber traveling on this bus, uh,
00:28:26
Speaker
Someone is traveling on a bus taking silent video. There's no sound in it, but you can see exits for Birmingham, Alabama on the path this bus is traveling.
00:28:38
Speaker
And there's no image of Amber here, but law enforcement... says to Sharon they don't believe that Amber was necessarily traveling through Birmingham.
00:28:49
Speaker
ah Sharon says she's been told by some of Amber's friends that they believe the video is an old one of Amber's, and it is not clear why it was uploaded to her Facebook account in August of 2021.
00:29:02
Speaker
Now, the same detective we were just talking about, Scott Sharp, he has confirmed tracking Amber's finances that she purchases that second bus ticket to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania out of Winston-Salem.
00:29:17
Speaker
And i think that's important. ah Sharon thinks it's important. She's quoted several places as saying that she boards this bus in Bullhead City. The bus route she takes has multiple stops.
00:29:29
Speaker
She gets to Winston-Salem. The police have told Sharon that that is where she booked her Pittsburgh bus pass. And it was marked paid, issued, but it never gets you
00:29:41
Speaker
So from Ward, we get screenshots like around this time where she states that she wants Ward to go get a hotel room that's about an hour out from the beach.
00:29:54
Speaker
And she wants to come and stay like the two of them together before they head back to Myrtle Beach together. So even though we have... some evidence she's buying this Pittsburgh bus pass.
00:30:08
Speaker
We have other evidence that appears to be Jarrett Ward and Amber talking about going to Myrtle Beach. So again, we have like some jurisdictional confusion. We start in Arizona.
00:30:20
Speaker
We've got a video showing Birmingham. We're in Winston-Salem where a bus pass is purchased, where she really has no other ties. She's either going to this place an hour from Myrtle Beach or she's headed to Pittsburgh.
00:30:33
Speaker
That's a lot. Well, it is a lot. And it also, to me, it shows that she was having Yeah. yeah Because she's literally talking about two different things happening at the same time. i don't know if she genuinely was thinking that. But even as she's as we move through this story, it's it's not adding up, right? Yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
But to me, it's not adding up in a way that like shows that she is having a crisis. I don't know if it's a like just a mental crisis, if it's a drug-induced crisis, if it's...
00:31:09
Speaker
Whatever it is, there's there's two different sides of things happening here, which it makes sense that she would split the difference and end up in the woods in some ways.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah. So, okay. She is in these messages to Ward, which have all been collected by law enforcement, by the way. She mentions that she's staying in a hotel and there are some women that bothering her.
00:31:38
Speaker
Amber does not indicate toward how she's traveling. like She doesn't specifically say, I'm on a bus. And she doesn't tell him whether or not she's traveling alone.
00:31:49
Speaker
According to the same detective, and the Anson Record has this in their article, Amber's cell phone last pings in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Amber's Financial Struggles and Disappearance Theories
00:32:00
Speaker
And Jarrett Ward claims to Amber's mom that somewhere along the way, Amber used his like snap benefit card at a flying J gas station and that it would have been on August the 19th.
00:32:17
Speaker
Now, the detective says to Amber's mom that Amber's phone is discontinued being used in Charlotte, North Carolina.
00:32:29
Speaker
He doesn't know if it's thrown away or shut off or what happens. And according to Amber's mom, she's told by Jarrett Ward that when Amber leaves Arizona, she only took a few things with her.
00:32:43
Speaker
And according to Amber's landlady, who has talked to the police in Bull City, and then she later on talks to Sharon Johnston,
00:32:54
Speaker
and Arizona law enforcement at this point gets in on this. Amber actually took most of her belongings with her when she left. Sharon Johnson says that her daughter always traveled with a bag.
00:33:07
Speaker
This is important because rabbit hunters who were in Wadesboro in February 2022 from Florida had allegedly found a bag in the woods near the location that Jane Doe's remains will be found in May of 2022.
00:33:23
Speaker
And those rabbit hunters admitted they had taken money from the bag. But according to law enforcement interviews, they couldn't recall the color of the bag or any of the other contents. Searches conducted by these guys that you know were stealing from this bag, along with members of the Anson County Sheriff's Office, have been unsuccessful in locating the bag.
00:33:47
Speaker
And I wanted to ask you, do you think that bag is... out there still or did they take it with them and wander along? um I don't think that they're lying as far as the rabbit hunters. Yeah, yeah I don't think they're related to this, but I don't know if they took the bag away from the scene or not.
00:34:07
Speaker
Oh, I doubt A girl's bag. like I could see where like they wouldn't have any interest in anything else in there. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about somebody who's, ah she's a no she's nomadic traveling, right? Yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
So, you know, the other thing about the discrepancy between whether she took, like, very few things or everything she owned. Yeah. You know, there's both of those things can be true at the same time.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah. And not to mention the fact that ah we kind of skip over the fact that, She had left her belongings by the side of the pool.
00:34:45
Speaker
a Part of them, yeah. Whatever she had with her, right, at that time. Yeah. And so she's, she's it it's a an established pattern that she's kind of just whatever-ing things, right? Yeah. she's lee I mean, because her identification was left at that wherever she went swimming with the guy. Well, if you're going to hold on to anything at all, you might want to hold on to that.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah. And then her phone being, we don't know if she left her phone somewhere, right? No, we just know that like stops it stops being trackable in Charlotte, North Carolina on our on August 19th, but we don't know what happened to it.
00:35:27
Speaker
We don't know if she had it, though. Right. Or if somebody realized they were never going to get into it and they threw it away or whatever. Yeah. ah There's no telling, really. But we, again, it's demonstrating this sort of crisis situation because, I don't know, would you, between your identification and your phone, ah now, granted, the SNAP card made it to North Carolina, it appears. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:54
Speaker
So I feel like I would, I have very few things that I would absolutely have to hold on to, but like my phone and my ID would be about the same as far as importance, right?
00:36:07
Speaker
I think so. I mean, like... In my travels, like either my ID, typically it's like my ID or my passport. like So it's either there a single ID or my passport.
00:36:19
Speaker
And then some kind of access to money, which for me is typically ah small amount of cash and like a card of some kind. Like they're never leaving my person.
00:36:30
Speaker
And I would say in 2025, my phone is probably in that same group of possessions I'm not letting go of. Right. And so because she had initially left her ID behind, it kind of throws everything up in the air, right? Yeah.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, it does. it It makes a person hard to track when they don't have ID. ah So on the other end, it kind of makes a person easy to disappear. Although we kind of have evidence that she's at least alone in some this video.
00:37:02
Speaker
We don't know what's happening before or after. Right. I feel like wherever she got the hotel room, um because, so she tells Ward, she got a hotel room about an hour away from Myrtle Beach. Well, between Winston-Salem and Myrtle Beach, we're talking about six hours at least, right? Yeah, yeah. so that's a long travel. How'd she get there? Like, how is that...
00:37:24
Speaker
and And it's not to say that the place in Anson wouldn't be between the two places, right? Correct. It's not an hour away from Myrtle Beach, but it is headed south, right? Correct.
00:37:36
Speaker
And so I feel like that stuff could be filled in. She could have also just been giving him a line of garbage, right? Yeah. Yeah, she could have been saying things to him just to keep him away from her.
00:37:47
Speaker
Right, exactly. And so, you know, if she really did get a hotel room, we don't have that information. But that should be, even now, something that's trackable, right? Yeah. And at that point, you know, maybe she did use her... imagine...
00:38:03
Speaker
imagine the is ah somebody that's having the kind of crisis I imagine Amber to be having, which I don't know her. And this is, it's pretty much speculation, but it's sort of backed up by the facts of what's happening.
00:38:17
Speaker
I imagine that like she went swimming with that guy and he looked at her the right wrong way. And she was like, yeah, I'm not going to be in this situation. And so she left everything behind and left. Right. Yeah. And then she's like, yeah, just forget that. She manages to get herself on the bus on her way.
00:38:33
Speaker
ah to Pennsylvania. And then she somehow gets sidetracked. I imagine it was something as simple as the bus for um Pennsylvania wasn't leaving until whenever it was leaving.
00:38:47
Speaker
yeah And she got sidetracked doing other things, right? yeah And somehow or another, you know, maybe she did use the SNAP benefit card at Flying J's on August the 19th. It doesn't say if that was in Charlotte or not.
00:39:04
Speaker
No, I'm guessing it's on the path, the way that they're describing it here. It's on a path, and they're trying not to give away the path. I guess so. But to me, ah that seems sort of... It doesn't seem like a very smart... It doesn't seem like it would matter if they said it at this point.
00:39:21
Speaker
But she... She was probably looking for certain things whenever she had downtime in her travels. And I'm going to go out on a limb here. And because she was asking her friend for you know to help her find a place to go to rehab, I'm to say she probably had a craving for something.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree with you. Unless it's just straight up mental health rehab and the drugs are like secondary to that. and she's but But even then, you could still be like on the right path with that.
00:39:49
Speaker
Sure, and I mean, I'm not trying to put her down or anything, but that goes a long way to explaining how she scores whatever it is she's looking for, and then she goes on her little expedition in the woods.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I will go ahead and and I will back you up there and say that Sharon Johnson says that her daughter is acting irrational. She believed that someone had been following her for at least a month prior to her taking this bus trip.
00:40:14
Speaker
Which I feel like is negated by the fact that she was then missing and found... Right. Exactly where she had last been seen the last time... ah ah Well, close to where she had last been seen the last time her she was known to be alive, right?
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah. What I will say about the Greyhound bus thing and the cell phone ping that's weird is if you're in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and you're buying a pass to get you to Pittsburgh, you're headed north.
00:40:45
Speaker
Charlotte is south. The cell phone ping is south. This location where we see her on, and I know I call it video, but the still image sequence from trail camera is south of where you bought that northbound bus ticket.
00:41:02
Speaker
But we don't know when the bus ticket was for. No, we don't. and we We don't have that. That's a hold that from law enforcement right now. Amber does tell her mom that she's afraid of Ward and his mother and that, according to her, Ward would take her phone and then he would be able to get into her bank account.
00:41:21
Speaker
He would be able to see like what money she had in different benefits. I think a lot of this would rest on being able to ah sit down with Ward and have a real official, like, police-level interview with him.
Resolution of Amber Johnston's Case
00:41:35
Speaker
And unfortunately, that is not possible because... Jarrett Ward dies from a drug overdose. So he's never brought in for questioning.
00:41:46
Speaker
He's just ah participating from the perspective of having shared screenshots and evidence, but he's far away from the detectives that are working on this case. And he's far away from Amber's mom in terms of like physically being able to see him.
00:42:02
Speaker
But it was proven by Arizona law enforcement during the time that they were talking to him that Amber's own benefits for SNAP and her Social Security disability benefits had been taken out of her account.
00:42:17
Speaker
So during the time she's sort of missing and up until the point that her account is turned off, money is being taken. Right, but we sort of just talked about how he had access to stuff, right? Right.
00:42:33
Speaker
And so when did he die? um So I tried to pull up like an actual death record on Jarrett. And i can only tell you that he is linked to Williamson, North Carolina, I believe.
00:42:48
Speaker
I think that he died September of 2023. Yeah. teamth of twenty twenty three I'm 100% sure that I've got the right death record there, but that seems to fit with all of this given where we are now.
00:43:02
Speaker
Sure. Well, and so i I think that that could be, i mean, I don't think it has anything to do with her death. i It is odd, right? But I mean, she basically said this dude has access to my stuff, right? Yeah. And if you're in a desperate situation, which he died from a drug overdose, so I'm going to go with people that Our addicts, they are constantly in desperate situations because their need to get money is fueled by their addiction, right? Yes.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I feel like if he had access to her funds, however it was, he probably would have taken them, especially if they went in and then they sat there and he knew that, right? Yeah.
00:43:45
Speaker
He might have not had any idea what had happened to her, but he knew she wasn't spending her money and she wouldn't mind if he used it, right? Well, so, okay. That's what he's telling himself.
00:43:57
Speaker
there This comes up. And Scott Sharp, for whatever reason, he took all of this seriously enough that he at least represents having done a fairly deep dive into Amber's financial information.
00:44:11
Speaker
So Sharon says that at one point, Scott Sharp was able to track Jarrett Ward selling Amber's SNAP benefit card. So it's the whole reason that she has his SNAP benefit card, which is the one that pings later to another individual named Jarrett Leary. So we've got two Jarrett's here, by the way, but they're spelled very differently.
00:44:31
Speaker
um And according to this investigation, Jarrett Leary has bought this so that they can exchange drugs. And there was digital tracking done of Amber's banking information that showed not just the SNAP benefit card, but also the debit card had been used by other people than just the two Jarrett's to make online purchases.
00:44:57
Speaker
Where we picked up on this story originally, Sharon and one of Amber's children had submitted their DNA and to be compared to the DNA that had been found on Wade's, the DNA that had come from Wade's Rose Jane Doe.
00:45:12
Speaker
So if that DNA is a match, the Anson Record article asked, Where was Amber from the time she got off the bus in Winston-Salem, like on August 17th, 2021, until she appears in these sequences of photos wandering around in the woods and in Wadesboro on August 21st, 2021?
00:45:32
Speaker
And then there's questions that are asked about the rabbit hunters, which I i think they're kind of a red herring in this case. But I do think it's interesting that we have people from out of town in Florida who find and take money from Amber's bag.
00:45:48
Speaker
And that indicates a couple of things like what else was there? Who else is coming through this area? And like, what did they find along the way? Right. We don't know how close her bag was to where she was found, though.
00:46:01
Speaker
No, I don't. I do not have that in the articles that we've put together so far. just It's just close enough that they're calling it relative. um Well, sure. especially But you know keep in mind, her ID is already back in Arizona, right? Yeah.
00:46:17
Speaker
And so her phone was ditched in Charlotte. Yeah. By whomever, right? Correct. ah The... You're saying that the her SNAP benefits card was sold by her boyfriend?
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah. And that's why she had his? Yeah, it was basically traded for drugs, and that's why she ends up with his. And so that's used, which makes sense, the 17th.
00:46:45
Speaker
Wait a minute. 19th. 19th, yeah. She came in on the 17th, and, you know, you can get from Winston-Salem to Charlotte in two days for sure. Like, I mean, there's ah an end.
00:46:58
Speaker
Depending on what's happening and how she did that, you know, if she met a friend, a truck driver, a i don't know. There's a lot of options, right? Yeah, you're not driving a super long way to get from Winston-Salem to Charlotte. I mean, two days time, there's a number of ways you could have gotten there.
00:47:18
Speaker
And what's to say that, you know, she, so she, this is sort of where I'm at as far as just the information we have. She meets a guy, they go swimming, wherever they went swimming, she leaves everything behind to get away from him, right?
00:47:31
Speaker
Right. In Arizona. This is before any of this happens, except Ward had already left to go to Myrtle Beach at that time. Yeah. And so what's to say she doesn't meet a new guy that she doesn't know Winston-Salem and they decide to go camping, right?
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's an hour east of Charlotte, so it would be on the way from Winston-Salem. If you're headed to Myrtle Beach from Winston-Salem, you could go down into the south east and hit Charlotte. Or they could just be going camping, and she's like, you've got to take me back to Winston-Salem when we're done, right? Yeah, and she could just up and leave and end up in the woods.
00:48:10
Speaker
and And, yeah, exit that's what I'm saying. Because of the earlier incident, right? Yep. And so I don't know that that guy is ever going to come forward or realize anything that even happened to her, right? Yeah.
00:48:23
Speaker
Because it was so bizarre. People, it's my impression, i mean, she was probably getting high with the guy that she went swimming with, too. I'm just saying that that would be a common ground type thing, okay? Yeah.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah and it's a strong possibility that it has to be considered no matter the angle that that you want to take on what's happening with her. Sure. And I'm not trying to put her down. I'm just looking for explanations, right?
00:48:47
Speaker
yeah And I do feel like a woman who who is you know has made it clear she's either trying to get back with her boyfriend or get home to go to rehab, um and she has five children.
00:48:58
Speaker
kids and she's got a mother who loves her. I mean, she's clearly going through some stuff mentally, right? Cause otherwise this isn't happening at all.
Reflections on Justice and Impact on Family
00:49:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah, so we do have some conclusions to this case. I didn't want to like drag this out forever for people.
00:49:16
Speaker
ah March 13th, Jane Doe Part 3 comes back. Lauren Monica again for the Anson Record. And she opens with, it's with a heavy heart, Sharon Johnston, the mother of missing woman Amber Johnston, has confirmed the news no parent ever wants to receive.
00:49:32
Speaker
On Monday, March 10th, Sharon received a phone call from a detective with the Anson County Sheriff's Office who's in charge of the Waysboro Jane Doe case. It was during this call, as Sharon has since shared with the Anson record, that she learned her daughter Amber has been positively matched with the DNA of the unidentified woman whose body was found behind the National Guard Armory in May of 2022.
00:49:56
Speaker
Johnson says, the news about Amber being identified was an emotional breakdown for me I'm glad that I can bring her home and she can rest in the cemetery beside her grandfather and her grandmother. They were very close.
00:50:08
Speaker
She adds the last three and a half years have been hard on her and Amber's five children. Her children and I knew that Amber would never quit calling and texting them, and I was hoping she was coming home.
00:50:19
Speaker
When I got the news, she bought a ticket to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but never got on that bus. I knew that it was bad. Remember Sharon? Johnson acknowledges she does feel some amount of closure in finally having an answer for where her daughter has been all this time.
00:50:34
Speaker
Amber's gone, it's real, and it's heartbreaking. The horrific pictures on the deer cam will never leave me. But they were part of identifying and bringing my daughter home, and that I'm thankful for. Many families are still searching after many years for their loved ones.
00:50:48
Speaker
Looking ahead, Johnson says she doesn't know what she thinks the next steps in the investigation and into her daughter's disappearance will be, but she's hopeful that law enforcement will not give up on finding the answers to Amber's story.
00:51:00
Speaker
I do know Amber did not get to that location on her own. She had no belongings, no phone, no shoes, no clothes. Johnston does have some ideas on the next steps you would like to see law enforcement take now then an an identification now that an identification has been made.
00:51:16
Speaker
The living person that used her SNAP benefits while she was laying there to rot in the woods needs to be questioned. Her picture should be shown in the area, and hopefully someone saw something, someone knows something.
00:51:27
Speaker
Someday someone comes forward with that information. Through the heartbreaking journey to find Amber and bring her home, Johnson said that she's learned a thing or two about the kindness of strangers, even those from other countries who've reached out to offer prayers, love, and support.
00:51:44
Speaker
um They thank a lot of people here, and of the the different people that have have reached out here. She specifically says that ah podcasters, podcasts, boots on the ground from Dutchie, which is the Dutchess Discussions YouTube channel, ah the Facebook page from The Missing, Angela Mimi, Ray Law out of North Carolina going down from Winston-Salem to Charlotte, videotaping The Way, posting flyers.
00:52:09
Speaker
ah She says, you know, Amber was a kind soul. She loved us all. She was coming home to family and friends with something or someone sidetracked her. And she'll be coming home a different way. And we shall visit her and know where she is now.
00:52:22
Speaker
She's home.
00:52:26
Speaker
And I don't have like a lot more on this case. Like you've discussed all the angles from your perspective, from our perspective. And, you know, I do think there's something to be said for how she gets out there.
00:52:38
Speaker
I don't automatically jump the murder, but North Carolina is a big state for death by distribution and other charges that could come up. Sure. That's absolutely right. And it is in time. I don't know that they're going to be able to pinpoint something like that at this point. Yeah.
00:52:54
Speaker
I do unfortunately feel like she, ah it could you know, it could have been a heart attack. It could have been a heart attack because she overdosed. It could have been a lot of things. um It's unfortunate that that occurred.
00:53:10
Speaker
She was so young, Yeah.
00:53:14
Speaker
Yeah. But there are, you know, and I don't want to, I don't want to discount it. um I definitely think that everybody has to be careful now.
00:53:25
Speaker
ah Even, you know, seasoned drug users, I guess, because of all the, you know, more lethal stuff that's being being added to run-of-the-mill drugs. Yeah, particularly with fentanyl being used to give you the high with less, people don't understand that happening. Right, and it's killing a lot of people. it is. and unfortunately, i see something like that to be more ah more more likely than like some sort of murder, right?
00:53:54
Speaker
And because of her sort of nomad status and because there's so many broken links in the chain of how she ended up out there, I don't know that they're ever going to really figure out what happened, but hopefully anybody with information will come forward and provide that to law enforcement because i feel like most of her interactions, are it's not going to be that anybody did anything wrong, right? until Unless you figure out who maybe sold her the drugs. Yeah.
00:54:24
Speaker
And that's really the only place that that would be ah where there may be some culpability. I'm not even sure. i feel like In the event that she was having the crisis she was having, I don't think she died by... um I don't think the elements killed her.
00:54:43
Speaker
Not in North Carolina in August. No, it could be an injury. There's a number of things that could have happened. I mean, we don't know how long she'd been um less than well-nourished or...
00:54:57
Speaker
sober or whatever like and and like that's not a judgment that's just saying all sorts of misadventures can come about when you're not having the best time mental health or physical health wise well sure and i would have to say i don't feel like she was so far in the woods that she was beyond getting help for herself if she needed it i tend to agree with you And so because of that, there is part of me that says, well, you know, she's made certain choices. I don't feel like she should be punished for that. at all. No. If you go out into the woods knowing that you're not quite right, you know, and then you die, i don't know how much somebody else is responsible for that.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I just um want top point people that there is a Justice for Amber Ray Johnston page out there. ah Grain of salt. ah If there's justice that needs to be had, it should be had.
00:55:50
Speaker
If this is a terrible case of misadventure, I hope the family finds that out in a way that they are able ah to to live with ever how this all went down.
00:56:01
Speaker
And, you know, the more cases that we come upon that sort of lend themselves... towards misadventure, right? Yeah. I realize how important learning about misadventure in being able to move on families being able to move on.
00:56:24
Speaker
yeah Because when you have this huge thing sort of hanging and you're wanting this perhaps unattainable justice to be had,
00:56:36
Speaker
it can really ruin a lot of lives. I would agree with that. And she's got children and, you know, a family that loved her. And I'm glad that they knew now that, you know, she's not out there somewhere and they're not trying to find her any longer, but hopefully they can move forward and, you know, use whatever they learned from this and move forward. But I do, it it bothers me sometimes when I see a lot of justice for things that,
00:57:04
Speaker
I don't think it's going to come. You mean kind of like the moniker, like we're going to get justice for whatever is? Justice for the person who there was, that ended up tragically dying, but there's nobody really that needs to be held accountable for it. And I'm not saying necessarily in this case, that's the case. If somebody sold her fentanyl yeah and they did it knowingly, they should be charged with death by distribution.
00:57:31
Speaker
Period. End of story. It can go through the court system. They can figure it out. But if she got a ride, ended up somewhere she didn't want to be, then ended up by herself in the woods, sort of like mimicking what happened in Arizona, right? Yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
And then she ended up dying just because of, you know, her desire to be out there or whatever. I don't know that anybody really did anything to make that happen. Yeah.
00:58:00
Speaker
Well, I will say that a lot of the death by distribution cases I've been involved with and seen in recent years, um if that's what this is, but I'm not saying that it is, ah they tend to sort themselves out shortly.
00:58:14
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, that's also something that I've seen. um The drug community, I know nothing about except what I see. And I don't even know that drugs have anything to do with Amber's death.
00:58:27
Speaker
But I do know she asked a friend to help her get help. In some sort of rehab. So i that there's that element there, right? And then there's also other drug elements in the thing. Everything in the drug community ends up sorting itself out. It is the most, like, karmic, awful. Self-contained ecosystem. I mean, it really is right? Yeah.
00:58:49
Speaker
yeah And I see it and it's tragic. And, you know, i think about just, it's all just a waste. All of it's a waste.
00:58:59
Speaker
But it's almost like you get into it and you just can't get out of it.
Podcast Episode Credits
00:59:09
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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01:00:33
Speaker
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