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In the years leading up to Denise Johnson's murder, Kill Devil Hill's police had the same man at the helm, Chief James Gradeless, who also went by Jim. Alongside him, veteran detective Bill Walker. Shortly before Denise's death, a newcomer took over the department, Chief Ray Davis. All of the men knew Denise Johnson when she was alive. In this episode, everything they remember about her death.
Today marks 20 years since emergency responders found a murdered woman inside of a burning home in Kill Devil Hills. The victim was 33-year-old Denise Johnson. You wouldn't know it looking at this home that something terrible happened here 20 years ago, a horrible crime that is yet to be solved. I remember seeing heavy black smoke up in the air. I just remember a pool of blood and her laying in it. We knew obviously something was way wrong. This wasn't just a routine call. ♪♪
On July 13th, 1997, someone brutally murdered 33-year-old Denise Johnson inside her childhood home in North Carolina, then set it on fire. For 22 years, Johnson's killer has eluded police, living among us, undetected. This is CounterClock, the investigation into the unsolved murder of Denise Johnson. I'm your host, Delia Diemra. ♪
For almost the entire decade of the 1990s, one man steered the Kill Devil Hills Police Department, Jim Gradeless. I went to work at the Kill Devil Hills Police Department in 1978, and I stayed there until 1996 and concluded my service there as chief of police. I think the last seven and a half years I was chief of police there.
Gradeless still lives on the Outer Banks. Over the years, both as a police chief and a Kill Devil Hills citizen, he got to know a lot of people in this small town, including a family that had six daughters. I met the Johnson family a number of years back. A good friend of mine lived next door to them, and I would go over there, and he knew them, and I met them through him. They were living in the family cottage, I believe, on Norfolk Street, Kill Devil Hills.
One person in the Johnson family who stood out to Jim Gradeless was the youngest daughter, Denise. She was a sweet girl. She had a big smile. By July 1997, Gradeless had wrapped up his time in law enforcement. Denise's gruesome murder and the arson was huge news to Gradeless. It rocked his community, and it rocked law enforcement, too, I believe. I think it shocked everybody.
That sweet girl he had remembered from Norfolk Street had been brutally murdered.
When you heard about the murder, when did you hear about the murder and what hit you immediately as a person in that area? I probably heard about the murder the next day, probably. Possibly that afternoon or that morning. It was the next day because it was night when she had her problem there and got murdered. So it was the next day, actually, that I'd heard about it. And of course, I was shocked, as the rest of the community was, shocked.
I think it was shocking to everybody on the out-of-banks. I guess they were worried. They didn't know who the murderer was. It was not a case of hysteria, but certainly a lot of concern. Gradeless immediately wanted more knowledge of the case, but in retirement, he was now on the outside, out of the club, had limited access.
What was going through your mind about, you know, how this could happen? Or, you know, did any instincts of law enforcement kick in for you, out of curiosity at least? Well, the idea that it could happen, there was no question about that. Because we were no strangers to homicides down here. Over the years, there's been a number, several of them, or a number of them anyway. Maybe half a dozen while I was in tenure. And, oh gosh, yeah.
It was just such a heinous crime that my thoughts were I really wanted to be in and get in and be in the investigation, although I really knew I couldn't.
but I wanted to have a part in it because of my familiarity with the Johnson's. I had just recently retired from that job as chief of police and the new chief of police was there. He was conducting or having the investigation conducted. I didn't want to step on his toes and go in there and try to run the organization. It wasn't my time to do that. I did want to help, but I wasn't involved. I couldn't be involved.
The new police chief who took over the reins from Gradeless is Ray Davis. My name is Ray Davis, I'm chief of the Kittler Hills Police Department, late August of 1996.
By the time Davis was in his role on the Outer Banks, he'd already served as a North Carolina Highway Patrol state trooper and a sheriff's deputy elsewhere in the state. Davis felt the job in Kill Devil Hills was a good change of pace and was happy to see that Jim Gradeless had run a tight operation. There were minimal officers to manage. When I left
Never having worked in a small town like Kill Devil Hills, Davis assumed it would be calm. But that changed 11 months into his new job. When did you get the call and learn about the Denise Johnson murder?
Who called you to inform you that there had been a murder?
Oh, Lord, I couldn't tell you that. Either DARE Central, the dispatch center, or one of my officers, I can't recall. You guys didn't have any major homicides that you remember, do you? I think the town had had two homicides prior to me getting here, if I can remember correctly. But it was a rare occurrence anyway. Did you visit the family? What were those first couple of hours like? Well, we...
Of course, we started an investigation. We started canvassing the area for any witnesses. We enlisted the help of the SBI. I think we had two agents respond fairly quickly. We contacted the crime scene unit with the SBI. They responded. And I think at one point we may have had as many as four SBI agents working with us.
So it was your role as chief of police, as the ultimate authority of the department, to go, hey, we need to bring in the SBI. Did you make that decision immediately? Did you make it because of the fire or did you make it because of the fire and the homicide? Both Mary, arson investigator at the time, was out on injury leave at the time and so he wasn't available. So in order to help investigate the arson itself, we called in the SBI.
It was Davis' job to let the Johnson family know Denise had been murdered. Describe that moment for me. Yeah.
proceeded on with the investigation. Something you never want to happen, but things do happen. And as chief, I took it extremely seriously, naturally, and put all the resources we could possibly muster to try and solve it. The entire department took it seriously. What we had
While Davis got the investigation underway, still waiting on the outside of it all and curious for more information was former Chief Jim Gradeless. Here he is again.
My conversations with the chief, Ray Davis, was always, "Hello, how are you? How's things going for you?" You know, that kind of a thing. I never tried to get involved with his business. Didn't think that was a good practice to do that. That's like trying to step in somebody's grave. I never even tried to pressure anyone for any information. I felt like if they wanted me to know, they would certainly tell me, you know?
It's not a question that I didn't want to know. I did want to know, and I wanted to be a part of it, but just wasn't going to pressure anybody for that kind of information. Gradeless may have taken a backseat as far as perception goes, but his many years with the police department got him the access that he wanted —
I went down to the cottage where the crime scene was at, and I was allowed to look at the crime scene. I went in with an investigator. Didn't touch anything, but I went in the crime scene, and we talked about it just briefly. I think I was disturbed at the fact that she had been murdered, and then whoever the culprit was, a perpetrator, tried to burn the inside of the house. And I thought, I was pretty appalled by that, but...
I was shocked, because I'm sure they were trying to destroy any kind of evidence by starting a fire. But that was going through my mind. The smoke damage and the smell of the smoke and the fire
was pretty apparent, of course. But like you say, there was not a lot of burned as far as, you know, fire destroying anything in that cottage. I think primarily most of the evidence could be picked up, was probably destroyed via heat from the fire. Primarily, everything had been done by the time I got into that cottage. The investigators had gone through pretty thorough and
Looked at everything, photographed everything. And of course, when I went in, I was told not to touch anything. And it wasn't a whole lot of discussion about what they recovered or what they saw or what they did. You know, I was kind of like, I really wanted to know. I was curious. Believe me, I was curious. But I just didn't feel like I should be asking them those kind of, or putting them on the spot.
Why do you think they let you into the crime scene, just because you had been with the department shortly before? Yes, yeah, certainly. No question about it. And the fact that I knew Donnie and them, I can't say it's so small. It was like a family, but we all knew them, and the boys knew that I knew them. So they let me go in and satisfy my curiosity. I guess the policemen know the other policemen.
or die with curiosity, you know? Hank Watson, he satisfied my curiosity without telling me anything. He just let me take a peek and that was it.
Despite being retired law enforcement, the fact that Gradeless, who was not an active police officer at the time, got to go inside Denise's crime scene and look around is poor police practice. Not locking down a crime scene leaves an open door for potential contamination. Despite a major error like that, former Chief Gradeless and Ray Davis had faith in the lead detective that was heading up the investigation. They trusted Detective Jim Mulford could do the job.
He and his right-hand man, a former detective of the Denise Johnson homicide, who I tracked down after months of searching.
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Jim Mulford wasn't the only Kill Devil Hills police detective on the Johnson homicide case in 1997. The other man who saw everything Mulford did is former Kill Devil Hills police detective Bill Walker.
Right before the Johnson murder, Walker slipped and fell at the police department. He injured his back and took weeks to recover. Walker didn't start working on the Johnson case until four months after the crime. By November of 1997, he was caught up and working side by side with Mulford and State Bureau of Investigation agent Donnie Varnell. Just like Jim Gradeless, Bill Walker knew the Johnson family. It definitely affected me.
Walker realized very quickly that there were going to be hurdles and complexities to this homicide. What was the biggest challenge of this investigation from day one, really, that Mr. Mulford expressed to you?
Lack of physical evidence. Lack of witnesses. There was very little. As we backtracked, there were several places that Denise had been, as I recall. Now, keep in mind, this is a long time ago. As I recall, I also talked to people that had seen her that night, different places. And just the interviews...
had her by herself. It's not like she had walked in with a handful of other people or with a boyfriend or something. That is not what I recall out of these interviews.
Probably for the first six months a year, we would get different people would call in with different information. I heard somebody say something about the case. And of course, we would take whatever it was they heard, and then we'd start talking to those people. And I say most of the time, the information that we were able to acquire was
was just non-relevant. It was people chatting, friends of hers, ex-friends of hers, people that had dated her. Jim did a lot of interviews with those people, people that were calling it in, and the majority of it was people talking. You never know what's important until you find out it is. That's why you interview all these people.
Lack of evidence makes any crime very, very difficult assault. I wanted Walker to help me understand more the timeline he and Mulford had built for Denise the night of her murder. He just said his partner interviewed people who saw Denise the night of the crime, and they didn't say she was with a lot of people. I specifically wanted to know more about the gas station near her house.
What I recall is the Amoco station. Yeah. That's what I recall him talking to the people that were working at the Amoco station that night. And as I recall, once again, as I recall, when she was in there, she was alone. And there was not anyone of a suspicious nature that anyone could identify hanging around there that night.
I brought up the short woman with blonde hair who witnesses reported was near Denise at the store. The woman that Kill Devil Hills police released a composite sketch of after the crime and for years have wanted to identify. Now that you mention that, it seems like there was another woman in the store. There was a woman, an employee, and Denise. As I recall, there was no real communication, contact, anything with the other woman.
Because that lead led nowhere, Walker and Mulford turned to evidence at the crime scene for more clues, but there were problems there too. Yes, the house had been somewhat ransacked. Don't know if the suspect was looking for something or if it was just a crime of opportunity or whether they actually knew Denise. I don't know. The fire, the intense heat, the smoke, the soot would have destroyed any fingerprints.
it would have destroyed or at least hidden any possibilities of additional blood being there other than the victims. And of course, when the water hits the fire, the steam, the water itself removes a lot of evidence. We primarily used the photographs, but we actually, as I recall, we went back to the house and
And of course, there had been a number of people through there by the time we went in there. We had one of the crime scene technicians from the SBI come and assist with the actual crime scene investigation. And if I recall right, the following day, the crime scene tech came and went through everything and collected what could be found missing.
And, of course, it just didn't have a lot of probative value. What little bit was there? Walker says he believes some form of accelerants were used to start the fires inside the house. It made a determination on cause and origin that it was a cause and origin of the fire, that it was an accelerant used. But I don't recall right now whether it was gasoline, light or fluid, what it was. It was some kind of accelerant used, as I recall it.
Walker says because the scene was so torn up, he and the other detectives couldn't say for sure what belonged and what didn't, despite the SBI crime scene tech bagging dozens of items. 53 pieces of evidence from a homicide, an arson homicide like this. Is it a lot or is it a little bit? I don't know.
The pieces of evidence that were acquired were acquired as part of the fire and homicide investigation. What is evidence? Nobody knows until it is. When you go into a crime scene and start analyzing what you see, you don't know what is evidence until you prove it's evidence.
I took a minute in our interview to ask Bill Walker what his thoughts were on the crime possibly being committed by a woman. Up until this point, we've heard a lot of theories that could point to that. And even first responding firefighter Glenn Rainey, as well as Denise's sister Donnie, believe it's a highly likely scenario. The way the fire was started, the way the assault was done, there were several people that were involved in the investigation.
Months into their investigation, detectives started to feel a chill growing over the case. Leads were going nowhere, so the Kill Devil Hills Police Department took a gamble.
Mulford, Walker and newly minted police chief Ray Davis took a drive to Quantico, Virginia, and for the second time asked another agency for assistance. This time it was the feds.
We were fishing. We're just trying to come up with different ways to re-energize the investigation and just hoping that if the FBI sat down, went over our paperwork, went over the crime scene technicians' reports, the medical examiner's reports, hoping that they might have someone that had an idea
We got hooked up with the FBI and just wanted to sit down and talk to them. So we mailed them all the information so they could do some pre-discussion stuff and try to run down some information. And hopefully, because look, they want it solved just as bad as we did. So you just don't like for things like that to hang around long. That may be a little bit of a crude way of saying it.
You want to bring a case like that to a head, primarily for the family. After hours with some of the greatest minds in law enforcement. There were at least five or six FBI agents in there that had done this kind of work for years. There was a lot of experience in the room. There was a lot of experience coming from Kildare Hills, a lot of years. Of course, we don't work...
those cases every day, and it just didn't work out. Criminal profilers and evidence experts with the FBI couldn't do anything for the department. They'd gone over Denise's case and come up with nothing of any value. Kill Devil Hill's detectives had come a long way and left empty-handed. What was that car ride like on the way back from Quantico? As I recall, it was rather quiet.
And we would, each one, you know, the three of us that were there would talk at different things that came up. We would discuss those and see how they fit in, see what we had, what was there. We just didn't have, I don't think anything came out of that discussion that was viable to the investigation.
My conversation with Ray Davis on his, Bill Walker, and Jim Mulford's trip to and from the FBI wasn't as candid. At the start of our interview, Davis only agreed to talk with me on the condition that he'd know beforehand what I'd be asking him. He wouldn't answer my questions about what he discussed with the detectives after visiting Quantico. At one point, you, Bill Walker, and Jim Mulford went to the FBI together.
Talk to me about that decision. And was that a mutual decision between the three of you or was that your kind of executive decision? Again, that's been so long ago. I don't know who actually suggested it to start with. But once it became a thought, we thought it was well worth following through. So the three of us did go to Quantico and sit down with the SBI, their behavioral analysis unit, and give one advice or analysis that they could provide to help us out.
What were some of those things of advice that they could offer? I don't think I want to reveal any of that. Was there ever one major thing that you and Jim just kind of always stuck with you guys about the case? That would go towards revealing some bit of information. I'm not going to deal with that area. Do you guys ever feel that there was some really strong leads? You take every lead seriously, and we followed up every lead we got.
It was clear, even after 22 years, Davis was not going to answer direct questions about the case, any persons of interest or theories. I circled back to Bill Walker because he was more open about the investigation. After the disappointing trip to Virginia and the FBI, Walker remembers thinking a lot about Denise's dog, K. Ridge.
If that person was welcomed into the home, the dog would not have gone crazy. Not knowing who this person was, we don't know if it was a friend of Denise's. And if it was, the dog may have been very familiar with the person or it was a person the dog wasn't familiar with. Denise would have calmed the dog down if it was a friend.
Walker felt the dog's placement in the house was a clear sign that someone who was familiar with Denise was in her home leading up to the murder. And here's where things got interesting. Walker and Mulford eventually discovered a personal connection between the first eyewitness on the scene and Denise.
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That's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash counterclock. Tryfirstleaf.com slash counterclock. As it turned out, the first eyewitness on the scene, the man who'd been driving by to go pick up one of Denise's neighbors for work early that morning, did have a personal connection to Denise. They had briefly dated or had some sort of fling.
Former Kill Devil Hills police detective Bill Walker remembers he and Jim Mulford grilled this guy on that detail, combined with the fact that he was the first eyewitness. There was a young man that was questioned probably more deeply than others, and that was due to circumstances.
Walker wouldn't go into detail of what those circumstances were, but did say that the man who first reported the fire wasn't exactly the perfect fit for a suspect. The young man that they probably did the most detailed interviews with was right place, wrong time. For him, there was no reason to believe aside from the, like I say, right place, wrong time.
there was no reason to believe that he had a reason to hurt Denise. So, you know, it's one of those things, yes, there was a guy questioned and questioned in detail, but it just wasn't, it just didn't pan out. Walker remembers Jim Mulford also looked into Denise's next-door neighbor, the man Donna Smithson and Karen Biddinger knew as Eric. This man was allegedly romantically involved with Denise.
Walker says he didn't come on board with the investigation until after those people were interviewed. He says he looked over their interview transcripts, but can't account for doing any of the actual interviews himself. There were so many people that were talked to. And I don't recall the people directly next door, but I do recall talking to Sergeant Mulford.
about they went to interview those people, and exactly why they decided to search that house, I truly do not know. I do not recall. I do recall that there was someone in the neighborhood of interest, but not, I hate to even call them a person of interest. They could very well have been, but as what I reviewed, I do not think they were.
It seemed Jim Mulford was the only detective to speak with the mysterious neighbor Eric and his ex-girlfriend. Because Mulford is no longer alive, I can't know how heavily they were questioned. Finding out how extensively he interviewed them is only knowable by looking at the case file.
While I mulled over the information Bill Walker and I had talked about, I wanted to investigate a little more for myself, Denise's life, and the timeline right before her murder. Where did she work? What was she doing? Donnie Johnson told me she'd worked at the Sanderling Resort and Restaurant. It's a huge employer on the Outer Banks, even to this day, so I figured someone still working there would maybe know about the case.
Thank you for calling the Sanderling Resort. This call may be recorded for quality assurance. For all other inquiries, please press 7. Thank you for calling the Sanderling Resort. This is Morgan. How may I assist you? Hi there. I'm looking to speak to a manager or a general manager. I am calling to try and pull up some employment records of a previous employee, and I didn't know if they could help me with that. They worked there years ago. Tomorrow, I can...
The Sanderlings' current general manager helped me as best as he could. Does anybody still work for you guys that would have been there in 1997? I don't even know that. And I will let you know that I have been here since 2008.
And if there's one thing I have learned, it's that at some point in time, especially back in the day, everybody that lives in the Outer Banks seems to have worked at Sandorling Resort at one point in time or another. It's kind of amazing. But I have never even heard this story. Wow.
And her name was Denise Johnson? Yes, sir. The resort has changed hands several times over the years as far as ownership entities and management companies are concerned. And we would have no records that would go back for employees, you know, 20 plus years ago.
It's a common problem I've run into with every employer of Denise's. No one keeps track of their employee records or time cards from 22 years ago. I wanted to try and find Denise's time card from the night of July 12th. Police and co-workers who talked to the newspapers in 1997 confirmed Denise had worked the night before her murder, but I wanted to verify it for myself.
The lack of documentation is just another reminder that the passage of time brings hurdles in this case that cannot always be overcome. It's a frustration both I and former Outer Banks Sentinel newspaper reporter Daryl Law share about the Denise Johnson homicide.
In our phone conversations over time, Law has thought a lot about the discussions he had with Jim Mulford, Bill Walker, and Chief Ray Davis. I think that Ray Davis and Lieutenant Walker and Jim Mulford and those two gentlemen that you reported in the beginning, I think they wanted to solve this problem. I just don't think they knew how.
I now understood for myself what Law was referring to. In my interviews with Walker, Davis, and Gradeless, I sensed an unspoken burden that had mounted after more than two decades. Bill Walker is exhausted by it. Why do you think this case has gone cold so long?
Geez, that's a tough one to put into words. And I say that from the standpoint of all of the people that we've talked to over the years. All the people that were interviewed, all the people that were talked to and talked about. There was nothing you could hang your hat on. Jim Gradeless is baffled by it.
Ray Davis is haunted by it.
Oh, Lord, I think about it quite often. I'll make informal inquiries of the people that I knew were somewhat involved in the case back then and inquire as to if they have heard anything or learned anything since then. Nothing new has turned up as far as I'm concerned.
What did you think about when you heard about the podcast? If you could go back in time, would you do anything differently or say anything differently after 21, 22 years?
In my heart, I believe we got it all our eyes and crossed all our T's and did what we could do to make a case that just didn't come to fruition. You know, after 21 years, I think a lot of people that listen to this podcast and, you know, know about the case kind of wonder, what can we do differently? What have we lost over the years that might we need to bring back up?
I think the biggest thing is just to keep the investigation fresh in the public's mind so that at some point maybe somebody will come forward with something we can use. Is there any message you would like to give to our listeners and to the Outer Banks about understanding that you were at the helm of this in 1997 and you still think about it? I would still encourage and hope
Anyone with any information would come forward to the police department and share with them what they have and for the police department to keep it fresh, like I said, in the minds of the area and the residents around here who may know something. And I really wish for the family that a case could be made and give them some closure.
Those closing words from Davis reminded me yet again that what's done is done. Someone knows something they're not revealing. There's no room for what ifs anymore. I need to push further. What was still out there I hadn't found? Well, I'm just glad they found the report after 21 years of telling me, oh, I don't think it was ever. I know it was because Denise called me that day. She found it. I know she found the report.
And was someone pointing us closer toward the truth? And when did you get this letter? If you're enjoying this series, follow us on social media to get the behind-the-scenes look at the investigation. We're on Twitter at at counterclockpod and on Instagram, look for the handle counterclockpodcast.
CounterClock is an AudioChuck original podcast. Ashley Flowers is the executive producer. And all reporting and hosting is done by me, Delia D'Ambra.
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