Hush

In 1998, police in Salem, Oregon, discovered the body of Harriet Thompson inside her apartment. And within a week, they arrested Jesse Johnson for murder.

A closer look at the crime scene of Harriet Thompson's murder reveals a frantic, violent attack. Prosecutors would eventually convince a jury that Jesse Johnson committed that attack.

A Salem jury convicted Jesse Johnson in 2004, six years after he was first arrested. The jury heard an alleged confession to the murder... but they didn't hear the full story.

Detectives considered Donald "Shorty" Blocker's interview as Jesse Johnson’s confession to the murder. And while Shorty’s comments were critical to Johnson’s eventual conviction – and remain a piece of critical evidence, according to the Marion County District Attorney’s office – he recanted the statement entirely eight months later.

A police oversight board was formed in Salem after police regularly targeted people of color in their efforts to crack down on drug users in the 1990s. But the head of the police union, who investigated the murder case involving Jesse Johnson, opposed the board.

A fatal police shooting of a farmworker in 1996 offers insight into the way police and prosecutors dealt with issues like drug culture, race and police oversight in the years before Jesse Johnson was arrested.

The night Harriet Thompson was murdered in 1998, her neighbor Patricia Hubbard was sitting on her porch and heard some of the tragic events. But police officers rejected her help in the case.

When defense investigators knocked on Patricia Hubbard's door in 2011, she did not know Jesse Johnson had been convicted of killing her neighbor, Harriet Thompson. But Hubbard did remember the night Thompson died clearly.

Forensic scientists, part of a quickly changing field, used Jesse Johnson's fingerprints in DNA testing. New documents reveal those scientists might have been more focused on convicting Johnson, instead of finding a murderer.

While there was a significant amount of forensic evidence presented to the jury at Jesse Johnson's trial, the significance and importance of that evidence is still debated today.

Two new people come forward with critical information, one who was at Harriet Thompson's house the night she died, and another who no one seriously questioned.

In the early days after Harriet Thompson's death, Salem police detectives received several tips from the public. But they only focused on one to pursue as part of their investigation.

An interview with the detective in charge of the case reveals new biases.

After denying repeated requests for interviews and answering direct questions from OPB, the Marion County District Attorney's office issued a lengthy statement outlining its view on Jesse Johnson's release.

There were three men who all had connections to Thompson and violence in their pasts. But police and prosecutors never seriously considered a scenario where Jesse Johnson didn't kill Harriet Thompson.

In 1998, just before he arrived in Key West — the seat of Monroe County — Salem police investigated William Elmer Cross as a potential suspect in the murder of Harriet Thompson.

After decades of being imprisoned, Jesse Johnson is free— but has Oregon changed?