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True Crime

Beyond All Repair

WBUR

Home of Beyond All Repair, WBUR & ZSP Media's 10-part true crime investigative series and Violation, WBUR & The Marshall Project's series exploring America’s opaque parole system.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 34 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • Jun 13, 2024 · 1 hr 14 min

    Beyond All Repair Bonus: Your questions... answered!

    What did Susie, Sean's girlfriend at the time of Marlyne Johnson's murder, tell detectives? Was a $10,000 stash of cash ever found in the Johnsons' home? Did Sophia have an alibi? These are just a few of the listener questions Amory and Beyond All Repair producer Sofie Kodner answer in this deep-dive, follow-up episode.

  • Feb 22, 2024 · 3 min

    Trailer: Beyond All Repair

    Sophia Johnson was starting fresh: A new life, a new husband, a baby on the way. But it all unraveled on January 10, 2002, when her mother-in-law Marlyne was found bludgeoned to death in her home. Days later, Sophia was charged with the murder. Sophia swears she didn’t do it. But someone says they witnessed it — her own brother.

  • Sep 26, 2023 · 14 min

    Violation Bonus: Jacob Wideman Says 'Vindictive' Arizona Officials Violated His Rights (Update)

    In August, lawyers representing Jacob Wideman argued before a judge in Arizona that state officials treated him in a “constitutionally impermissible” way when they revoked his parole more than six years ago. Lawyers for the parole board and the state corrections department said Wideman was trying to avoid following directions and therefore could not be trusted to be free.

  • May 3, 2023 · 59 min

    Violation Ep 7: No Safe Place

    When someone commits a terrible crime, as Jake did, is there anything they can do to prove they deserve to be free again? How does the parole system help us determine what justice should be in any given case — and does it make us more safe?

  • Apr 26, 2023 · 46 min

    Violation Ep 6: 'Your Life Is About To Change'

    Six months after Jacob Wideman was released from prison on home arrest, he appeared before the parole board for a routine check-in hearing. His parole officer told the board that Jake was doing well: Jake’s employers and therapists gave him positive reviews, as did the director at his halfway house and the landlord at his apartment complex. But other people were coming to a different conclusion. About a week before the hearing, Jake’s parole officer had told him that he had received complaints that Jake had committed numerous violations of the terms of his parole — violations that, if he had committed them, could cost him his freedom. The officer also told him something that startled him: A private investigator could be watching him. “It brought home to me the people who didn't want me to be out were keeping an exceptionally close eye on me, and that, you know, they were willing to go to some pretty drastic lengths to try to find ways to get me put back in prison,” Jake said later in an interview from prison. Soon after that routine check-in hearing before the parole board, Jake was re-arrested. In Part 6 of "Violation," we hear interviews and testimony from Jake, his attorneys, parole officials and others as we piece together the events leading up to the parole violation that sent Jake behind bars again — possibly for life.

  • Apr 19, 2023 · 38 min

    Violation Ep 5: Mass Supervision

    Jake didn’t know it when he was first released on parole, but his freedom would only last nine months — and there were people on the outside working to put him back inside.

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes