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Husband Kills Wife with Antifreeze for His Mistress · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this. I want you to like really put yourself
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in this setting for a second. Okay, you are standing
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in front of a picture perfect, just incredibly affluent home
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in a place called Carol.
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Speaker 2: Beach, which is in Wisconsin, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Kenosha, Wisconsin. It's this neighborhood of these beautiful, very
0:16
unique properties built right on the shores of Lake Michigan.
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And it's December third, nineteen ninety eight.
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Speaker 2: Ah, right in the middle of winter exactly.
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Speaker 1: It's a Thursday, exactly three weeks before Christmas, so there's
0:26
probably that distinct biting winter chill coming off the lake.
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Oh absolutely, And the neighborhood is completely idyllically quiet, you know,
0:37
just a typical peaceful morning in the suburbs. But then
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the sounds of sirens completely shatter that piece.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that would definitely wake the neighborhood up.
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Speaker 1: They pull up to this wealthy, perfectly manicured home, first
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responders rush inside, and what they find is just the
0:54
absolute darkest contrast to this whole holiday season affluence.
0:58
Speaker 2: It really is.
0:58
Speaker 1: A healthy forty year old mother of two is found
1:01
dead in her bed. Her husband is the one who
1:03
called it in and waiting right outside that bedroom door
1:06
literally in the hallway of this massive house are her
1:08
two young sons.
1:09
Speaker 2: It is the absolute definition of a nightmare behind closed doors.
1:13
Speaker 1: It really is.
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Speaker 2: I mean, you have this stark, almost jarring contrast between
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the pristine public facade of this family and the horrific,
1:22
just gruesome reality inside that primary bedroom, and that contrast
1:27
really sets the stage for everything we are going to
1:29
explore today.
1:30
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this because today we are diving
1:34
deep into the harrowing legal and psychological labyrinth of the
1:37
Julian Mark Jensen case. Yes, we have a massive stack
1:41
of sources in front of us for this deep dive,
1:43
like a sprawling transcript from the Law and Crime Network,
1:47
court documents, trial coverage, so much material. Yeah, and it
1:50
maps out of saga spanning twenty five years. We're talking
1:53
two separate murder trials, the rapid evolution of digital forensic science,
1:58
and most chillingly, a haunting letter literally sent from the grave.
2:03
Speaker 2: It's wild because this isn't just a true crime timeline either.
2:06
When you look closely at the source material, it serves
2:08
as a master class in several different disciplines. I mean,
2:11
it tracks how law enforcement learned to navigate early Internet.
2:14
Speaker 1: Footprints, which was so new back then.
2:17
Speaker 2: Exactly, And it's a deep, incredibly complex exploration into the
2:21
US Constitution, specifically the confrontation clause, like what happens when
2:26
a victim's right to be heard clashes with a defendant's
2:30
right to a fair trial. And at its very core,
2:33
it is a terrifying study of psychological warfare within a marriage.
2:37
Speaker 1: And for you listening, whether you are fascinating by the
2:40
mechanics of the law, the evolution of technology, or just
2:43
raw human psychology, this case challenges everything you might assume about.
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Speaker 2: Digital footprints, It really does.
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Speaker 1: It forces you to look at how society and investigators
2:51
interpret mental health crisis and how easily genuine despair can
2:55
be weaponized.
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Speaker 2: That's a huge part of this right, and it.
2:58
Speaker 1: Asks a massive question, which is how does our justice
3:01
system adapt when a victim actively tries to testify against
3:05
their killer from beyond the grave.
3:07
Speaker 2: It forces us to confront so many ingrained assumptions. I mean,
3:10
when someone walks into a doctor's office and says they
3:13
are depressed, how do we filter that information?
3:16
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do we just take it at face value? Right?
3:18
Speaker 2: Do we look at the environment creating that depression? And
3:21
what happens when a tragic, documented mental health struggle is
3:24
actively cultivated to serve as a perfect alibi for murder.
3:28
Speaker 1: It's just so dark. So to understand how we get
3:31
to that horrific morning in December of nineteen ninety eight,
3:34
we have to rewind they do. We have to look
3:36
at the battleground that this marriage had actually become. So
3:40
Mark Jensen was a wealthy investment advisor, very successful, yeah,
3:44
highly regarded in the community, bringing in a very substantial income.
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Julie was a stay at home mom. She was entirely
3:50
dedicated to their two.
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Speaker 2: Boys, David and Douglas, right.
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Speaker 1: David who was eight at the time of her dad's
3:55
and Douglas, who was four. But the inciting incident for
3:59
the entire tragedy actually happened seven or eight years earlier,
4:02
back in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety one.
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Speaker 2: You absolutely cannot understand the events of nineteen ninety eight
4:07
without understanding the rupture in nineteen ninety The sources show
4:10
that while Mark was away on a business trick, Julie
4:13
had a brief one night sexual relationship with a coworker Okay,
4:17
and shortly after she confessed this affair to.
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Speaker 1: Mark, which you know, regardless of the infidelity itself, that
4:23
is a massive moment of vulnerability and honesty. It is
4:27
like she didn't wait for him to find out from
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someone else, She brought it to him directly.
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Speaker 2: She did, and they reached a mutual decision on paper,
4:33
they decided not to divorce. They decided to stay in
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the marriage and ostensibly work through it. But the psychological
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reality was entirely different. How so well, that decision did
4:44
not lead to reconciliation or forgiveness. Instead, Mark used that
4:48
confession to initiate a campaign of intense, calculated psychological torture
4:54
that lasted for the better part of a decade.
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Speaker 1: A decade, let's get specific about what that torture actually
4:59
looked like, because the investigation details and the sources are
5:02
really disturbing. They are someone begins actively harassing and stalking
5:07
Julie Jensen inside her own home.
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Speaker 2: Her own safe space.
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Speaker 1: Right, We're talking about pornographic photographs being deliberately left around
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the house in places she would find.
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Speaker 2: Them, just to mess with her head exactly.
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Speaker 1: Bizarre silent hang up phone calls occurring constantly and sometimes
5:24
even when Mark was sitting right there in the living
5:26
room with her.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating about Julie's response to all this is her
5:29
presence of mind. Yeah, she doesn't just passively endure this
5:33
gas lighting. She meticulously logs it.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. She treated her own life like an ongoing investigation,
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keeping a physical log that stretched for pages and pages
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documenting the harassment over almost eight years.
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Speaker 1: Eight years of logging.
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Speaker 2: This, she noted the dates, the times, the specific nature
5:51
of every single incident.
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Speaker 1: She even took it to the police at one point, Yes,
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she did. Detective Paul Ratzberg, who he becomes a major
5:59
player late on in this deep dive. He gets involved
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early in this timeline.
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Speaker 2: He's the one who initially looks into it.
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Speaker 1: Right. He looks at this harassment and tells Julie, if
6:08
we want to know for sure who is doing this,
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get me some handwriting samples of Mark, a.
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Speaker 2: Very smart investigative move.
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Speaker 1: So she gathers his notes from around the house, hands
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them over, and the police run them up to the
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state crime lab and the crime lab confirms it undeniably.
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The handwriting on those harassing pornographic photographs is a definitive
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match for Mark Jensen.
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Speaker 2: The power dynamics of this marriage become glaringly obvious. Right
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at this moment, I mean, the police have.
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Speaker 1: The proof they haven't in their hands, right.
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Speaker 2: Detective Ratzburg essentially lays it out for Julie, confirming her
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worst fears, like, we have him. The stalker is your husband.
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Speaker 1: God.
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Speaker 2: That must have been devastating, But her reaction defies what
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many people might expect. She halts the investigation. Wait really, yeah,
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she tells the police she wants to drop the charges
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and handle it as a private marital matter.
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Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, you're saying she meticulously documented his abuses
7:03
for years, went to the police, got literal, forensic proof
7:07
that her husband is waging a psychological war against her. Yeah,
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and she still stays.
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Speaker 2: In the house she does.
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Speaker 1: I mean, to an outside observer, that makes zero sense.
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It sounds like living in a domestic Cold war, you know,
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where you have a peace treaty on paper, but there's
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constant covert espionage happening in your own kitchen.
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Speaker 2: That's a really good way to put it.
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Speaker 1: Why on earth wouldn't you just take your kids and run?
7:30
What does that tell us about the trap of keeping
7:32
up appearances?
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Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about the sheer paralyzing complexity of domestic abuse,
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particularly when the violence is psychological rather than physical. Right,
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Mark couldn't or wouldn't let the betrayal of the affair go,
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but rather than leave, he used it as permanent leverage
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to perpetually victimize Julie, just.
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Speaker 1: Keep punishing her forever, Exactly.
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Speaker 2: By making her the constant villain of their private life,
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he could justify his own escalating cruelty. And he did
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all of this while seamlessly maintaining his pristine public image.
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Speaker 1: Right, the successful, wealthy investment adviser.
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Speaker 2: The perfect Carol Beach father, So he gets.
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Speaker 1: To play the wounded victim in his own mind while
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actively operating as the tormentor in reality.
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Speaker 2: Exactly that dynamic. And for Julie, the barriers to leaving
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were massive.
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Speaker 1: I can imagine.
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Speaker 2: Leaving meant detonating the life she had built for her
8:23
two young sons. It meant a messy, highly public divorce
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for a woman who is a stay at home mother,
8:30
entirely financially dependent on a man who had spent years
8:33
actively trying to break her down.
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Speaker 1: Mentally, Yeah, she was trapped.
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Speaker 2: When you have been subjected to nearly a decade of
8:39
gas lighting, your grip on reality becomes completely warped. If
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we connect this to the bigger picture, it perfectly explains
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a highly scrutinized event, which is her visit to the
8:49
family doctor on December one, nineteen ninety eight.
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Speaker 1: Okay, yes, that's just two days before she is found dead.
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She goes into the doctor's office and confesses that she
8:58
is quote depressed and miserable.
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Speaker 2: And she had every right to be depressed and miserable.
9:03
She was living in a psychological war zone. She was exhausted, terrified,
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and isolated.
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Speaker 1: You know who wouldn't be.
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Speaker 2: But as the investigation uncovers that very real, highly justified
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despair was about to be weaponized against her to build
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a perfect alibi.
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Speaker 1: Wow, And that brings us to the morning of December third,
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nineteen ninety eight. First responders arrive at the house. Julie
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is dead in her bed. Mark tells the police that
9:25
she had been severely sick for three days prior. He
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claims that by that morning she was completely unable to
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even get out of bed. Okay. The responders note the
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scene right, She's largely covered by heavy bed covers and
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her body position appears as though she had been lying
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flat on her back and was then rolled onto her side.
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Speaker 2: The initial steps the investigators take here are standard, but
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they become the foundation of the entire case.
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Speaker 1: What do they do first?
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Speaker 2: They searched the immediate surroundings, specifically the kitchen and bathroom areas.
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They find a cabinet filled with various prescription models. O yeah,
10:00
but they specifically sees prescriptions for ambion, which is a
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potent sleep aid, and paxel and antidepressant.
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Speaker 1: Because she had just gone to the doctor.
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Speaker 2: Exactly and crucially, acting on instinct. In nineteen ninety eight,
10:12
they seize the beige tower of the family computer.
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Speaker 1: I love that detail. Just a big, clunky beige tower.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally nineties tech.
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Speaker 1: So the very next day, December fourth, they conduct the
10:23
autopsy and the result comes back as pending. They literally
10:26
cannot determine what killed this healthy forty year old woman.
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Speaker 2: Appending autopsy is incredibly frustrating for law enforcement, and it's
10:33
important to understand why this happens.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, explain that, because you'd think they would just know
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right well.
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Speaker 2: A standard toxicology screen in nineteen ninety eight looks for
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the usual suspects like opiates, barbiturates, heavy metals, common prescription overdoses,
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standard stuff. Exactly, if a person hasn't suffered obvious physical trauma,
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so no gunshot wound, no blunt force trauma, and the
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standard talk screen comes back clean, the medical examine is stuck.
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Speaker 1: Because there's no smoking gun.
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Speaker 2: As one investigator noted in the source material, if you
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don't know what caused the death, you can't take the
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next step to determine the manner of death.
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Speaker 1: Right you don't know if you are looking at an accident,
11:13
a bizarre natural medical event, a suicide, or a homicide.
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Speaker 2: You are completely stalled.
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Speaker 1: But while the physical body was keeping its secrets, the
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digital body that seized family computer started screaming.
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Speaker 2: The computer forensics in this case are absolutely pivotal, and
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we really have to put ourselves in the mindset of
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nineteen ninety eight.
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Speaker 1: Here, Oh yeah, dial up Internet.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, the Internet is in its infancy for home use.
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We are talking about dial up modems, shared family computers
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in the den, and very rudimentary web browsers.
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Speaker 1: People probably didn't even realize they were leaving a trail.
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Speaker 2: They didn't People didn't fully understand that browsers stored hidden
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index files and cash data right on the hard drive.
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So investigators dive into the search history, recovering deleted files,
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and what they find is horrifying.
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Speaker 1: Horrifying is an understatement. I mean, you have a typical
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suburban family with a four year old and an eight
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year old, and someone on that home computer is searching
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for ways to kill Yep. They are searching for boculism.
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They are searching for how to build pipe bombs, pipe bombs. Yeah,
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and specifically repeatedly, they are searching for ethylene glycol poisoning.
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Speaker 2: Ethylene glycol is a sweet tasting, odorless, highly toxic chemical.
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It is the primary active ingredient in automotive anti freeze.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's pause here, because this is where the defense
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strategy really takes root. If I'm looking at this from
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the outside, playing devil's advocate, the defense is going to
12:37
look at that search history and say, wait a minute,
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you just told us Tuly Julie went to the doctor
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in December first saying she was depressed and miserable.
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Speaker 2: And she was prescribed Paxel.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, so couldn't she have been the one on that
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computer desperately searching for ways to enter her own life.
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I mean, how in the world do we separate a
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suicidal digital footprint from a homicidal one.
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Speaker 2: That is the exact narrative Mark's defense team would spend
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years trying to build.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: But this raises a critical point about digital forensics. It's
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not just about what is searched. It's about the metadata,
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the timestamps. It's about when it was searched. The timeline
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is the ultimate truth teller. In this case, investigators didn't
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just pull the search terms, they pulled the time stamps
13:21
associated with those queries.
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Speaker 1: So the digital footprints have a clock attached precisely.
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Speaker 2: Several of the most damning searches, specifically the ones tracking
13:30
the hour by hour symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning, were
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conducted in the two days immediately prior to her death.
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Speaker 1: Wait, the days when Mark himself stating she was violently ill.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the physical evidence and Mark's own statements showed that
13:44
during those specific two days, Julie Johnsen was physically incapacitated.
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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she.
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Speaker 2: Was bedridden, unable to hold down food, and eventually unable
13:54
to even sit up in bed by herself.
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Speaker 1: So she couldn't have been at the computer.
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Speaker 2: Yet while she was trapped in that bedroom, someone else
14:00
was sitting down the hall on the den, logged onto
14:03
the home computer, searching for the exact progression of symptom
14:07
as she was currently experiencing.
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Speaker 1: Wow, So she is physically incapable of reaching the keyboard
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and someone else is sitting there typing these searches in
14:15
That is so sinister.
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Speaker 2: It shifts the entire narrative. It completely moves the needle
14:20
away from a tragic internal despair a suicide and points
14:25
directly toward cold, calculated external premeditation.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no other way to look at it.
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Speaker 2: The person on that computer wasn't searching for a way
14:33
to die. They were monitoring a murder in progress, checking
14:36
their work against the Internet to see if the poison
14:38
was acting on schedule.
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Speaker 1: That is bone chilling. But here's the crazy part. Even
14:44
with those highly suspicious computer searches, the medical examiner still
14:48
had a pending.
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Speaker 2: Autopsy right because they hadn't found it in her system
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yet exactly.
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Speaker 1: The police didn't have the physical proof in the body
14:56
to match the digital footprint on the hard drive. They
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needed a bridge.
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Speaker 2: Between the t and that bridge came from the victim herself.
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Speaker 1: Yes, a neighbor steps forward with what becomes the most
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famous and honestly legally controversial aspect of this entire case,
15:10
the Letter from the Grave. This is the absolute turning
15:13
point of the investigation. The day after Julie's body was discovered,
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a neighbor walks into the police station and hands them
15:21
a sealed envelope. Okay, He tells the offices that Julie
15:24
had quietly given this envelope to him a week and
15:27
a half before she died. Wow, and her instructions to
15:30
him were incredibly clear and terrifying. She said, if anything
15:34
happens to me, give this to the police.
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Speaker 2: Just take a second and put yourself in her shoes.
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Speaker 1: I know it's awful.
15:39
Speaker 2: Imagine being so terrified of the person you sleep next to,
15:42
the father of your children, that you have to draft
15:45
a covert contingency plan for your own murder and entrust
15:49
it to a neighbor.
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Speaker 1: It's hard to even fathom.
15:52
Speaker 2: And the specifics of what she wrote in that letter
15:54
are harrowing. She writes that she explicitly fears her husband
15:58
might do something to harm her. She describes their daily
16:02
relationship as having deteriorated to the polite superficial.
16:06
Speaker 1: That phrase, polite superficial. It perfectly encapsulates that domestic cold
16:10
war you mentioned earlier.
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Speaker 2: It really does.
16:12
Speaker 1: It's the terrifying quiet of a household where the threat
16:16
of violence is entirely masked by suburban pleasantries like asking
16:20
to pass the salt while wondering if it's poisoned exactly.
16:24
Speaker 2: But she doesn't just express fear. She anticipates his defense.
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Speaker 1: This is the genius of it.
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Speaker 2: She makes sure to clarify something incredibly important. She expressly
16:33
states in the letter that she would never harm herself.
16:36
She writes emphatically that she would never, under any circumstances,
16:40
leave her two sons without a mother. She is preemptively
16:43
from beyond the grave, dismantling the suicide narrative she knows
16:47
Mark is going to use.
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Speaker 1: And she doesn't just offer her feelings either, she provides
16:52
hard evidence. Included inside that sealed envelope is a photograph.
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Speaker 2: Oh, this part is wild.
16:58
Speaker 1: It's a picture she secretly took of a post it
17:00
note she found hidden in Mark's daily planner.
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Speaker 2: And the police look at the photo and the handwriting
17:05
on the note is unmistakably Marx. It's a match again,
17:09
and the list written on it is terrifying. It says
17:11
own drug supply, lirium bag hands, syringe.
17:15
Speaker 1: Lyrium bag hands. I mean, it reads exactly like a
17:19
brainstorm for a murder.
17:20
Speaker 2: It's a literal checklist of potential methods.
17:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because of this letter, because of this posthumous directive
17:26
from Julie basically acting as their own detective, the entire
17:29
investigation pivots right.
17:31
Speaker 2: They know what to look for now.
17:32
Speaker 1: The police immediately go back to the medical examiner. They say,
17:35
look at these computer searches for Andy Freeze, look at
17:38
this letter. We need you to specifically test her tissues
17:42
for ethylene glycol, which.
17:43
Speaker 2: As we discussed, is incredibly rare. Ethylene glycol is not
17:47
something a medical examiner tests for in a standard autopsy
17:50
without a specific reason to look for it.
17:52
Speaker 1: They need a reason to run that specific.
17:54
Speaker 2: Test exactly so, prompted by the digital searches and Julie's letter,
17:59
the lab conducts highly specialized second evaluation of her fluids,
18:03
and this time they find it. They find lethal levels
18:06
of ethylene glycol in her blood, in her stomach contents,
18:09
and in her urine.
18:11
Speaker 1: The investigator in the source material noted that this contradicted
18:15
what the first lab sweep had found, simply because the
18:17
first sweep wasn't calibrated to look for it right. Finding
18:20
the antifreeze was a massive case breaking moment. Yeah, nobody
18:24
just casually has ethylene glycol on their system.
18:26
Speaker 2: It forces the issue entirely. The medical examiner is now
18:30
looking at one of two scenarios, either an unbelievably bizarre,
18:35
agonizing suicide where a woman decides to drink automotive anti freeze,
18:39
or a calculated homicide.
18:41
Speaker 1: But again, I have to jump in here because the
18:43
psychology is so hard to grasp for.
18:45
Speaker 2: Me, it is complex.
18:46
Speaker 1: Julie is acting like a posthumous detective. She is literally
18:51
leaving breadcrumbs for the police to solve her own murder. Yeah,
18:55
but if she knew he had a literal checklist for
18:58
murder in his day planner, if she was terrified enough
19:01
to give a sealed envelope to a neighbor, why not
19:05
just grab the kids and drive away.
19:06
Speaker 2: That's the question everyone asks.
19:08
Speaker 1: I Mean, we talked about the trap of appearances, but
19:10
when you see a murder checklist, doesn't survival instinct kick in.
19:13
Speaker 2: It is the most common question people ask when looking
19:15
at severe abuse cases from the safety of the outside. Right,
19:18
what's fascinating and just deeply tragic is the psychological state
19:22
of being hunted inside your own home. When you have
19:25
been subjected to nearly a decade of constant gaslighting, of
19:29
having pornographic photos planted to make you feel insane, your
19:33
reality becomes completely warped.
19:35
Speaker 1: You don't trust yourself anymore.
19:37
Speaker 2: Exactly. The paralysis you see isn't necessarily a lack of action.
19:41
Sometimes it's the sheer inability to see a safe exit
19:45
route that doesn't result in immediately losing custody of your
19:48
children or instantly triggering the very violence you're trying to avoid. Oh,
19:52
because if she left, he might have hurt the kids,
19:55
or he would have used his wealth to take them
19:57
away in a divorce. She was trying to manage and
20:00
monitor the threat, hoping to outsmart it rather than detonate
20:03
the situation, and.
20:04
Speaker 1: Unfortunately the threat he used was chemical, silent and deeply deceptive.
20:09
We really need to talk about what ethylene glycol actually
20:12
does to the human body.
20:13
Speaker 2: It's important context.
20:14
Speaker 1: Because Mark's defense team heavily pushes the theory that Julie
20:18
drank the anti freeze herself in a fit of depression.
20:22
But when you understand the mechanics of how this chemical
20:24
kills you, the idea of choosing it for suicide becomes
20:27
almost impossible to believe.
20:29
Speaker 2: Ethylene glycol is a horrific, brutal way to die. It
20:34
is not peaceful, not at all. It is not like
20:36
taking too many sleeping pills and just drifting off. It
20:39
is a grueling, multi stage, agonizing progression.
20:43
Speaker 1: What happens when you drink it?
20:44
Speaker 2: When you ingest it, it initially makes you feel intoxicated,
20:48
like you're drunk, But then the body metabolizes it into
20:51
highly toxic acids, specifically glycolic and exalic acid.
20:56
Speaker 1: And what do those do?
20:57
Speaker 2: These acids crystallize in your kidneys, and it starts with severe,
21:01
violent sickness and vomiting.
21:03
Speaker 1: Which matches what Mark said she had.
21:05
Speaker 2: Yes, Then you develop cardiac arhythmia. Your heart rhythm goes
21:09
completely chaotic, You start to experience severe gasping difficulty breeding
21:14
as fluid builds up in your lungs oh I got,
21:16
and ultimately, over an agonizing period of days, your major
21:19
organs shut down one by one, and you die in
21:22
immense pain.
21:23
Speaker 1: It takes days. Mark himself told the first responders she
21:26
had been violently sick for three days. So to believe
21:29
the defense, you have to believe that Julie Jensen, a
21:31
woman who loved your kids, chose this specific, excruciating method
21:36
for suicide and then endured that level of agony slowly
21:40
over seventy two hours, without ever once picking up the
21:43
phone to call an ambulance or ask for help.
21:45
Speaker 2: It completely defies human logic.
21:47
Speaker 1: It makes no sense.
21:48
Speaker 2: It defies all logic. The physical pathology of the toxin
21:52
that slow, agonizing, debilitating progression over three days perfectly align
21:57
with her written warnings in the letter, and perfectly matched
22:00
the timeline of the computer searches mapping those exact symptoms
22:04
while she was incapacitated.
22:05
Speaker 1: It all lines up too perfectly.
22:07
Speaker 2: It completely forced investigators to drop any notion of Mark
22:10
as a grieving widower. He was now the primary glaring.
22:14
Speaker 1: Suspect, which sets the stage for a truly legendary showdown.
22:18
We're now four months after Julie's death. It's early in
22:20
nineteen ninety nine. Mark Jensen comes into the.
22:22
Speaker 2: Police station voluntarily.
22:23
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, he is not in handcuffs, he's not under arrest.
22:26
He comes involuntarily, likely thinking he's just going to politely
22:29
clear up some minor administrative details and go home.
22:32
Speaker 2: He probably thought he was the smartest guy in the room.
22:34
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely yeah. But waiting for him in that interrogation
22:37
room is lead Detective Paul Ratzburg.
22:40
Speaker 2: The other investigators referred to Ratzburg as a pit bull.
22:43
Speaker 1: A pit bull. I love that he.
22:45
Speaker 2: Wasn't just any detective. He was the exact same detective
22:48
who had responded to Julie's desperate complaints about the pornographic
22:52
pictures years earlier, in the early nineties.
22:54
Speaker 1: Oh, so he knows this guy.
22:56
Speaker 2: He intimately knew Mark's playbook of denial and gaslighting.
23:00
Speaker 1: And Rasberg doesn't waste time with pleasantries. He confronts Mark
23:04
right out of the gate about the harassment campaign from
23:06
nineteen ninety.
23:07
Speaker 2: He goes right for it.
23:08
Speaker 1: He reminds Mark that the state crime Lab definitively proved
23:12
his handwriting was on those pornographic photos left to terrorize Julie.
23:17
Speaker 2: And what does Mark say?
23:18
Speaker 1: Mark's response, sitting at a police station, he just flat
23:21
out denies it. He says, the crime lab went off.
23:24
They're wrong, it wasn't me.
23:26
Speaker 2: It showcases a truly unbelievable level of arrogance and narcissism.
23:32
I mean, he is sitting across from a veteran detective
23:35
who is holding physical forensic proof from the state lab,
23:39
and Mark simply declares that the science is wrong because
23:42
it contradicts his reality.
23:44
Speaker 1: It's just wild. But Radsburg is just getting warmed up
23:47
because Radsburg knows that murder requires motive, right, and the
23:52
motive in this case has a name, Kelly Labonte.
23:55
Speaker 2: This is where the timeline of Mark's behavior after Julie's
23:58
death becomes incredible, and Ratsburg knows it.
24:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us about Kelly.
24:03
Speaker 2: According to the investigation and family accounts, Kelly Labonte moved
24:06
into the Carrol Beach house shortly after.
24:08
Speaker 1: Julie died, like immediately after.
24:10
Speaker 2: Right, She didn't just visit. She essentially moved in and
24:14
seamlessly took Julie's place as the maternal figure to those
24:17
two young boys, almost as if the transition had been planned.
24:20
Speaker 1: So. In the interrogation room, Rathsburg casually asks Mark if
24:23
he's seeing anyone if Kelly Labonte. Is his girlfriend just
24:26
baiting him exactly? Mark dries to downplay it completely. He stammers,
24:30
he evades, He says maybe a date. She's just a friend.
24:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:34
Speaker 1: He aggressively claims they didn't have any romantic contact before
24:38
July of that year, which is long after Joy passed.
24:41
Speaker 2: But Ratzburg is holding all the cards, and he plays
24:44
one of his best ones here.
24:45
Speaker 1: What does he do?
24:46
Speaker 2: He confronts Mark with a printed email. It's an email
24:49
from Kelly to Mark dated October sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight.
24:54
Speaker 1: Wait October sixteenth.
24:55
Speaker 2: That is weeks before Julie was poisoned.
24:58
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
24:59
Speaker 2: In the email, Kelly writes to Mark, I do love
25:01
you even more now we would both need some time
25:04
to clean up our lives, so to speak, clean.
25:06
Speaker 1: Up our lives talk about a load and phrase. When
25:10
one of those lives ends in anti freeze poisoning a
25:12
few weeks later.
25:13
Speaker 2: It's incredibly suspicious.
25:15
Speaker 1: So picture this room. Mark is sitting there. He is
25:18
faced with forensic proof of his handwriting on the year's
25:20
old harassment photos. He is faced with printed emails from
25:23
his mistress, completely blowing up his timeline.
25:26
Speaker 2: Of innocence, and he's still denying it.
25:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Ratzburg finally lays the heaviest card on
25:32
the table. He reveals Julie's dying declaration, the letter from the.
25:36
Speaker 2: Grave, the ultimate trump card, and.
25:38
Speaker 1: Mark denies all of it. It's like watching someone try
25:42
to bluff in poker when their cards are facing outward
25:45
for everyone to see.
25:46
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate display of a controller's confidence. He
25:49
genuinely believed he was simply smarter than the police. Delusional
25:54
Razberg brilliantly laid out the evidence, systematically, boxing Mark into
25:59
a corner. Rasberg points out the reality of the timeline.
26:02
He tells Mark, Julie didn't just magically stop breathing. You're
26:06
the only person that was there for those three days.
26:08
You had to do something, which is true. Ratzburg even
26:11
pushes Mark on the physical mechanics of the death, asking
26:15
point blank if he got on top of her, if
26:17
he used a pillow to smother her at the end.
26:20
Speaker 1: Because by this point the medical examiner had advanced a
26:22
secondary theory based on the body position and the slow
26:26
action of the poison right, they suspected that after poisoning her,
26:29
when it was taking too long, Mark might have smothered
26:32
her with a pillow to finally end it exactly.
26:35
Speaker 2: And despite all of this intense pressure, despite the absolute
26:39
mountain of circumstantial and digital evidence thrown directly in his face,
26:43
Mark doesn't crack. He doesn't he doesn't confess. He just
26:46
continuously repeats in this flat affect, I don't know how
26:49
she stopped breathing.
26:50
Speaker 1: And here is the most frustrating part of the justice system.
26:54
Because he doesn't confess, and because all this evidence the
26:57
computer searches, the letter the mistress is technically circumstantial, the
27:02
police don't quite have enough concrete, indisputable evidence to lock
27:06
him up right then and there.
27:07
Speaker 2: They just didn't have the final nail in the coffin.
27:09
Speaker 1: No, so they have to let him go. Mark Jensen
27:13
literally stands up, walks out of the police station and
27:16
goes back to that lakeside home.
27:17
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
27:18
Speaker 1: He continues raising his two sons, David and Douglas and
27:21
Kelly Labonte. The mistress from the emails officially becomes their stepmother, and.
27:26
Speaker 2: That status quo held for years years. It wasn't until
27:30
March of two thousand and two, over three and a
27:31
half years after Julie died in Agne, that the district attorney,
27:35
a prosecutor named Robert Jamboy, finally pulls the trigger and
27:39
formally charges Mark with first degree intentional homicide.
27:43
Speaker 1: And the catalyst for Jamboy finally deciding to charge him
27:46
as wild It wasn't because they discovered some new, undeniable
27:50
piece of DNA under a microscope, not at all. So
27:52
what was it?
27:53
Speaker 2: Jamboys saw a photograph in the local newspaper. It was
27:56
a formal engagement announcement.
27:58
Speaker 1: You're kidding, Nope, Mark.
28:00
Speaker 2: Jensen and Kelly Labonte were officially getting married. Jamboy realized
28:05
in that moment that Mark had completely successfully moved on.
28:09
Speaker 1: He was getting away with it.
28:10
Speaker 2: He had replaced his wife, secured his wealth, and was
28:13
about to finalize this brand new life with zero consequences.
28:18
Jam Boy later stated that when he looked at that photo,
28:20
he saw victim number two coming down the pipe.
28:23
Speaker 1: Oh, he was worried for Kelly.
28:24
Speaker 2: He made the decision to charge Mark right then because
28:27
he felt a moral obligation to disrupt this dangerous reality,
28:31
to warn Kelly Labonte, and to finally show Mark that
28:34
he wasn't going to just walk away from murder.
28:36
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and two Mark is finally in handcuffs,
28:40
but the saga is just beginning, because it takes another
28:42
six full years for the case to actually see the
28:44
inside of a courtroom for a trial.
28:46
Speaker 2: Six years is a very long time for a trial delay.
28:49
Speaker 1: Why six year delay because of a massive fundamental constitutional
28:53
legal dispute over that envelope Julie handed to her neighbor,
28:56
the letter from the grave.
28:58
Speaker 2: This is where the Jensen case transitions from a fascinating
29:02
dark murder mystery into a landmark constitutional law debate that
29:07
law students literally still study today.
29:10
Speaker 1: That big of a deal.
29:11
Speaker 2: The entire six year hold up centered on the sixth
29:14
Amendment of the US Constitution, specifically a provision called the
29:18
confrontation close Right.
29:19
Speaker 1: And for those of us who aren't constitutional lawyers, the
29:22
confrontation clause is the part of the sixth Amendment. This states,
29:26
in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
29:30
to be confronted with the witnesses against him. Exactly in
29:33
plain English, if someone accuses you of a crime, you
29:36
or your lawyer have the absolute right to cross examine
29:39
them in front of a jury.
29:40
Speaker 2: The legal mechanics of this are deeply rooted in American jurisprudence.
29:44
The defense team looked at Julie's letter and argued, very logically,
29:48
under a strict textual interpretation of the Constitution, we cannot
29:51
cross examine Julie Jensen about the contents of this letter.
29:54
Speaker 1: She is deceased because she's dead.
29:56
Speaker 2: Therefore, this letter is an out of court statement being
29:59
offered for the truth of them matter asserted. It is
30:01
the very definition of hearsay, admitting it violates our client's
30:05
fundamental constitutional right to confront his accuser. It must be
30:08
thrown out.
30:09
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop and point out the massive
30:12
legal paradox here.
30:13
Speaker 2: It's a huge paradox.
30:14
Speaker 1: It's like a soccer player violently tackling the referee and
30:18
then throwing his hands up and complaining that the game
30:21
can't continue because there's no referee left to make the calls.
30:24
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
30:25
Speaker 1: It's like saying, you can't use my victim's words against
30:28
me because I successfully murdered her to make sure she
30:31
couldn't speak. I mean, how on earth does a rational
30:34
justice system untangle a knot like that? If you murder
30:37
your accuser, do you just get a free pass on
30:40
all their.
30:40
Speaker 2: Testimony, You've hit on a tension that touches on deeply
30:43
held legal philosophy.
30:45
Speaker 1: Okay.
30:45
Speaker 2: The framers of the Constitution, heavily influenced by historical abuses
30:49
where people were executed based on anonymous letters, believe that
30:53
live in person cross examination is the greatest legal engine
30:57
ever invented for the discovery of truth.
30:59
Speaker 1: They wanted people to have to face their accuser.
31:01
Speaker 2: They did not want citizens convicted based on unchallengeable pieces
31:05
of paper. However, to address your exact paradox, the prosecution
31:10
argued a legal doctrine called forfeiture by wrongdoing.
31:13
Speaker 1: Forfeiture by wrongdoing, meaning you forfeit your rights by your
31:17
own bad acts.
31:18
Speaker 2: Precisely, the state argued that Mark Jensen intentionally forfeited his
31:23
sixth Amendment right to cross examine Julie because he was
31:25
the one who killed her to silence her. The equitable
31:28
principle is that no one should benefit from their own crime.
31:31
If you kill the witness, you wave your right to
31:34
confront the witness.
31:35
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. So the trial judge, Judge Schrader,
31:38
listens to these arguments and ultimately sides with the prosecution. Yes,
31:42
his logic is incredibly sharp. He concludes that if the
31:46
defense is going to stand up in front of a
31:48
jury and argue that Julie Jensen was suicidal, depressed, and
31:51
mentally unstable, then basic fairness dictates that Julie Jensen's own
31:55
words should be allowed into the trial to prove that
31:58
she was not. Admits the letter into evidence.
32:01
Speaker 2: And Judge Schrader's decision to let that letter in shaped
32:05
the entirety of the first trial in two thousand and eight.
32:08
It was a grueling seven week trial filled with complex
32:12
medical testimony.
32:13
Speaker 1: Whow seven weeks and when the.
32:15
Speaker 2: Jury returned a guilty verdict, they were later asked by
32:18
the press what the single most important piece of evidence
32:21
was in their deliberations.
32:23
Speaker 1: And every single one of them pointed to the letter.
32:26
Speaker 2: The letter was the anchor for the jury.
32:28
Speaker 1: It gave them the whole context.
32:30
Speaker 2: Without the letter, the computer searches could be spun as
32:33
a morbid curiosity or depressed woman's browsing. With the letter,
32:37
it gave the jury the structural permission to interpret the
32:40
digital footprint, the poison, and Mark's demeanor entirely through the
32:44
lens of a premeditated, cold blooded murder.
32:46
Speaker 1: And based on that conviction, Mark Jensen was sentenced to
32:49
life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was
32:53
the judge at his sentencing was absolutely brutal. He looked
32:57
at Mark and called the crime wicked, cruel, and a
33:01
method of execution that was contemplated and planned over a
33:04
terrifyingly long period.
33:05
Speaker 2: Of time, very strong arts.
33:06
Speaker 1: He told Mark he needed to be terminently removed from society.
33:11
It felt like finally the book was closed on Carroll Beach.
33:15
Speaker 2: But as anyone familiar with the American legal system knows,
33:18
the book is rarely ever truly closed after a.
33:21
Speaker 1: First trial, which brings us to the massive twist in
33:23
the timeline. Right three years after that conviction, a federal
33:27
district judge drops an absolute bomb on the case. The
33:31
federal judge orders a completely new trial, ruling that Judge
33:35
Schrader was wrong and that the letter should not have
33:38
been admitted into evidence.
33:39
Speaker 2: Now, you might wonder how a federal judge can reach
33:42
into a state murder conviction and overturn it.
33:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does that work?
33:45
Speaker 2: It happens through a process called habeas corpus, where a
33:49
federal court reviews state proceedings to ensure no federal constitutional
33:53
rights were violated. The Federal court looked at a recent
33:56
Supreme Court precedent and essentially ruled that the confrontation clause
34:00
violation in Mark's case was just too severe. They ruled
34:03
that the state hadn't definitively proven before the trial that
34:06
Mark killed her specifically to prevent her from testifying in court,
34:10
which is a nuance required for forfeiture by wrongdoing.
34:13
Speaker 1: Oh so, because they couldn't prove his exact motive for
34:16
the murder was to stop her testimony, he gets to
34:19
keep his right to confront her.
34:20
Speaker 2: Therefore, by taking away the state's most powerful anchoring piece
34:24
of evidence, Mark Jensen's conviction was vacated. He was, legally speaking,
34:30
once again presumed innocent.
34:32
Speaker 1: It was a devastating, gut wrenching blow to the prosecution
34:36
and to Julie's surviving family. I can't even imagine fast
34:38
forward all the way to the retrial in twenty twenty three.
34:41
Former District Attorney Robert Jamboy, the same guy who originally
34:45
saw the engagement photo and charged Mark back in two
34:47
thousand and two, he had actually retired. He has done,
34:50
but when he hears about the federal reversal, He decides
34:52
to come out of retirement specifically to try this case again.
34:56
Speaker 2: That's dedication, he tells the press.
34:58
Speaker 1: This happened on my watch. I am going to make
35:00
sure justice is done. He even brings his wife, Beverly,
35:04
who is also a brilliant trial lawyer, onto the prosecutorial
35:08
team to help them figure out how to win a
35:10
murder case without their star witness's letter.
35:13
Speaker 2: It is a monumental, almost impossible task. They have to
35:16
prove a twenty five year old murder without the victim's
35:19
own voice pointing the finger from the grave.
35:21
Speaker 1: So what do they do?
35:22
Speaker 2: In their opening statements in twenty twenty three, the prosecution
35:25
decides to lean heavily into the digital trail. They point
35:29
to the nineteen ninety eight computer forensics and tell the
35:31
new jury the person doing this hyper specific internet research
35:35
on ethelene glycol poisoning, that is, the person who killed
35:38
Julie Jensen right, and based on the timeline of her sickness,
35:42
we know for a fact it wasn't Julie.
35:44
Speaker 1: And the defense, now led by a lawyer named Mackenzie Renner,
35:48
leans aggressively hard into the suicide theory. They stand before
35:51
the jury and say, you are going to have to
35:54
decide if Mark Jensen is a calculating murderer or if
35:58
he's just kind of a jerk of a husband. They
36:01
argue that Julie's declining mental health, exacerbated by a bad marriage,
36:06
led to a tragic, albeit unusual suicide.
36:10
Speaker 2: To combat this suicide narrative, without the power of the letter,
36:13
Jamboy and the state have to rely on a string
36:16
of incredibly powerful live witnesses to build a web of
36:20
circumstantial corroboration.
36:22
Speaker 1: They have to recreate it exactly.
36:23
Speaker 2: They have to recreate the sentiment of the letter using
36:26
the people Julie interacted with.
36:28
Speaker 1: Let's break down these new testimonies, because they are fascinating.
36:30
Let's do it first. They call a woman named Ruth Forwald.
36:33
She was a neighbor and a close friend from Julie's
36:36
book club. She testifies about attending Julie's wake. Okay, she
36:40
tells the jury that Mark was standing maybe five feet
36:42
from his wife's casket, and he was laughing, joking with
36:46
a group of men the entire time, acting entirely as
36:48
though he were at a pleasant cocktail party.
36:50
Speaker 2: Which speaks directly to demeanor. Now, laughing at a wake
36:54
doesn't legally prove you committed murder, but it utterly shatters
36:58
the defense's image of Mark as a grieving, confused widower.
37:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks terrol.
37:03
Speaker 2: Then the state brings in Teresa Defosio, who was a
37:06
school teacher for Julie's young son. Julie had confided in
37:10
this teacher at a parent teacher conference.
37:13
Speaker 1: What did she say?
37:14
Speaker 2: Defasio testifies that Julie explicitly told her she was terrified
37:18
Mark was going to try to kill her, possibly with
37:20
an overdose.
37:21
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
37:22
Speaker 2: And crucially, when the teacher asked about the possibility of suicide,
37:26
Defasio testified that Julie told her she was enduring all
37:29
of this misery specifically to protect her kids, stating emphatically,
37:32
I would never leave my children.
37:34
Speaker 1: So the prosecution is essentially reconstructing the lost letter through
37:38
the living memories of the people Julie spoke to. Yes,
37:40
but that's just motive and state of mind. To prove
37:43
the act, the prosecution brings into highly critical, highly controversial
37:48
male witnesses Edward Klugg and Aaron Dillard.
37:52
Speaker 2: Edward Clud's testimony is staggering. He was a former co
37:56
worker of Marx. He takes the stand and testifies that
37:59
during a conference, he and Mark got drunk together in
38:01
a hotel room, okay, And during this drinking session, Mark
38:05
casually started talking about ways a man could kill a
38:08
wife that would be totally undetectable at a normal autopsy.
38:11
Speaker 1: Wait, really just casually brings it up. Yeah, Clug says
38:14
Mark specifically mentioned putting something in her drinks to put
38:17
her to sleep, and he explicitly named the chemical ethelene
38:21
glycol he named it. Clug testified he didn't even know
38:25
what that chemical was until Mark patiently explained to him
38:29
that it was anti freeze. And when Clug asked why
38:32
Mark was researching this insane topic, Clugg testified that Mark
38:35
said he simply didn't want to lose his wealth, paying
38:37
maintenance and a divorce, and he wanted his new friend
38:40
Kelly to be able to move in.
38:41
Speaker 2: It's just so cold. And Clugg admitted on the stand
38:45
that he was terrified to come forward to the police
38:47
earlier because he reasoned, if Mark is capable of slowly
38:50
poisoning the mother of his children to death, what could
38:53
he do to a coworker who snitched?
38:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be terrified too.
38:56
Speaker 2: It is incredibly damaging testimony because it connects Mark or
39:00
directly to the specific poison used.
39:02
Speaker 1: But then we get to the state's most controversial witness,
39:05
Aaron Dillard, And okay, we really have to stop and
39:07
talk about the elephant in the courtroom here.
39:09
Speaker 2: It's a big one.
39:10
Speaker 1: Aaron Dillard is a jail house informant. He takes the
39:14
witness stand wearing a prison jumpsuit. On cross examination by
39:18
the defense, he flat out agrees with them that he
39:21
is a professional con man.
39:23
Speaker 2: He owns it.
39:24
Speaker 1: He casually admits he has a special skill set for
39:26
getting people to talk to him so he can get
39:28
things he wants. He admits he purposely pushed Mark for
39:31
information in jail, specifically so he could trade it to
39:34
the prosecutor for a lighter sentence for himself. Right as
39:38
a listener, how in the world can you trust a
39:40
single word a jailhouse informant says, when they are literally
39:44
trading a murder confession for their own freedom, It is.
39:46
Speaker 2: The most valid, necessary skepticism you can have in any courtroom.
39:50
Jail House informants are notoriously historically unreliable. They have every
39:55
incentive to lie. So this raises a vital question, why
39:59
would a seasoned prosecutor like Robert Jamboy risk tainting his
40:03
entire case by using a known con man.
40:06
Speaker 1: Why would he?
40:07
Speaker 2: The answer lies entirely in circumstantial mechanical corroboration. The prosecutor
40:13
argued that Dillard, despite being a con man, knew physical
40:16
details about the murder that an inmate simply couldn't have
40:20
invented from reading a newspaper.
40:21
Speaker 1: Well kind of specific details.
40:23
Speaker 2: Dillard testified that Mark confessed to him in their cell.
40:27
Mark allegedly told Dillard that he put the anti freeze
40:30
in Julie's juice, but then, Dillard said, Mark complained that
40:33
the poison was taking too long. Okay, So Mark described
40:36
rolling Julie onto her side and then onto her stomach
40:39
to check if she was still breathing. When Mark got
40:41
nervous that she was surviving the poison, Mark told Dillard
40:44
he physically sat on her back and pressed her face
40:47
deep into a pillow to smother her and finish the job.
40:49
Speaker 1: And that bizarrely specific sequence of events matches the medical
40:52
examiner's secondary.
40:53
Speaker 2: Theory, Yes it does.
40:54
Speaker 1: The emmy had suspected smothering as an accelerant to the poisoning,
40:58
based on the pooling of blood and the position the
41:01
first responders found the body in which was rolled.
41:03
Speaker 2: Over exactly, the prosecution argued to the jury, Aron Dillard
41:08
is a con man, yes, but he is not a
41:10
forensic pathologist. He couldn't have accurately guessed the highly specific
41:14
physical mechanics of rolling her over, sitting on her back,
41:18
and pushing her face into a pillow unless the actual
41:21
killer had sat in a cell and described those exact
41:25
motions to him.
41:26
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, the defense is
41:29
fighting back furiously with their own experts. They call a
41:32
forensic psychiatrist, doctor Sarah west Okay. She reviews the historical
41:37
medical notes from nineteen ninety eight and testifies that with
41:40
a reasonable degree of medical certainty, Julie Jensen was at
41:43
a very high risk for suicide on the week of
41:45
December third, based on what she points specifically to notes
41:49
indicating Julie was sleeping far too much, citing it as
41:52
a classic sign of severe clinical depression.
41:54
Speaker 2: It sound like a strong medical defense on the surface,
41:57
but Prosecutor Jamboy steps up for cross ex emanation and
42:00
absolutely demolishes this theory.
42:03
Speaker 1: How does he do that?
42:04
Speaker 2: He forces doctor West to read the medical notes closely
42:07
and admit a devastating fact. The clinical notes about Julie's
42:11
severe sleep problems didn't come from Julie. Wait what they
42:15
were reported to the doctor by Mark Jensen.
42:17
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
42:18
Speaker 2: Jamboy points out to the Jerry that the very person
42:21
diagnosing her sleep issues, the person feeding the doctor the
42:24
symptoms of depression, is the murder suspect himself.
42:28
Speaker 1: Think about how terrifying that is.
42:30
Speaker 2: It's chilling.
42:31
Speaker 1: The person you trust most in the world, the person
42:34
you are trapped in a house with, is the one
42:36
actively feeding the family doctor the fake symptoms that will
42:40
ultimately be used in a courtroom to cover up your murder. Yeah,
42:43
it's a devastating CounterPunch by the prosecution. The entire foundation
42:47
of the defense's psychiatric evaluation was built on manipulated information
42:52
provided by the.
42:53
Speaker 2: Accused killer, which perfectly tragically encapsulates the extreme gaslighting that
42:58
define their entire marriage. Mark Jensen controlled the narrative at home,
43:02
he controlled it in the neighborhood, and he even controlled
43:04
it in the doctor's office.
43:06
Speaker 1: That intense cross examination brings us to the climax of
43:09
the twenty twenty three retrial.
43:11
Speaker 2: We're finally there.
43:12
Speaker 1: The judge asks Mark Jensen if he is going to
43:14
take the stand and defend himself. Mark stands up and says,
43:18
I want not to testify. He relies on his right
43:21
to remain silent. But his older son, David, who was
43:25
just eight years old when Julie died and is now
43:27
a grown man, takes the stand as a witness for
43:29
the defense.
43:30
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly emotional, complex moment in the courtroom.
43:35
Even the prosecutor noted gently how proud Julie would have
43:38
been to see the man her son had become.
43:40
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure.
43:41
Speaker 2: David testified for his father about the morning his mother
43:44
was found dead. He told the jury that the first
43:46
time he had ever seen his dad cry and his
43:48
entire life was coming down the hallway after finding Julie's body.
43:52
Speaker 1: The defense desperately hopes this memory shows the jury genuine grief,
43:56
proving Mark is a loving father not a cold blooded killer. Right,
43:59
But after closing arguments, the jury retreats to deliberate, and
44:02
they return with their verdict. We the jury find the defendant,
44:07
Mark D. Jensen, guilty, of intentional homicide of the first degree.
44:10
Speaker 2: For a second time, a full twenty five years after
44:13
the murder, A totally new jury looks at the digital forensics,
44:17
the toxicological mechanics of anti freeze, and the witnesses and
44:21
they condict him. Wow, and this time they do it
44:25
without ever reading Julie's letter.
44:26
Speaker 1: Let's look at the sentencing phase that followed, because this
44:29
is where the generational psychological damage of this case really crystallizes.
44:34
Speaker 2: It really does.
44:35
Speaker 1: Mark is given the opportunity to speak to the court
44:38
and he offers absolute zero remorse for his wife's agonizing death.
44:43
He doesn't even acknowledge the murder. Instead, he focuses entirely
44:47
on himself and his sons.
44:48
Speaker 2: Of course he does.
44:49
Speaker 1: He begs the judge to grant him parole eligibility in
44:52
the future, saying, I made every effort to continue to
44:54
be there for my sons. Please grant parole eligibility so
44:58
that the family and I can move forward and heal.
45:00
I can be there from my family who needs me.
45:02
Speaker 2: It is a staggering, almost pathological level of cognitive dissonance.
45:06
Speaker 1: Mark's plea is jarring to listen to. He is literally
45:09
begging a judge to let him be a father to
45:12
the boys he effectively orphaned. He is asking for the
45:15
opportunity to heal the exact family he methodically destroyed with anti.
45:20
Speaker 2: Freeze, and the judge thankfully sees right through the manipulation.
45:24
The judge firmly denies parole. He addresses Mark directly stating
45:28
that the defense theory that Julie Jensen voluntarily drank anti
45:31
freeze to commit suicide is a fiction he simply does
45:34
not buy.
45:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody bought it.
45:36
Speaker 2: He calls the crime highly intentional, meticulously researched, with a
45:39
purpose for evil, and far too vengeful to ever allow
45:43
for the possibility of parole. He sentences Mark Johnson to
45:46
life imprisonment, explicitly stating it is a sentence to be
45:49
carried out in a box.
45:50
Speaker 1: The legal system did its job, but the real enduring tragedy,
45:54
the lasting scar that can't be fixed by a verdict,
45:57
is on the suns David and Douglas.
46:00
Speaker 2: Yes, neither of the sons attended that final sentencing hearing,
46:03
but Douglas, the younger son, who was just a four
46:05
year old father when his mother died, sent a written
46:07
letter to the court to be read aloud.
46:09
Speaker 1: And what did it say?
46:10
Speaker 2: And what he wrote is truly heartbreaking. He wrote that
46:13
his mother had been completely systematically erased from his life.
46:17
He started that he actually learned more about his mother,
46:20
about who she really was as a loving person, while
46:23
sitting and listening to the witness testimonies at the trial
46:26
than he had ever been told in his entire life
46:28
growing up.
46:29
Speaker 1: Because Mark Jensen and Kelly Labonte raised those boys exactly,
46:33
the killers controlled the narrative of the victim for decades.
46:37
Think about that level of brainwashing. First, as the boys
46:41
grew up, Mark told them their mother abandoned them because
46:44
she was weak and committed suicide terrible. Then, as the
46:48
boys got older and the murder trials approached, Mark evolved
46:51
the lie to protect himself. He told his sons that
46:53
not only did she commit suicide, but she was so
46:56
vindictive and evil that she intentionally arranged her own agonizing death,
47:00
specifically to frame their innocent father for murder.
47:03
Speaker 2: It is an almost incomprehensible level of psychological abuse inflicted
47:07
upon his own children. He didn't just murder their mother,
47:10
He spent the next twenty five years murdering her memory
47:14
actively turning the victim into a villain in the minds
47:17
of the people she loved most.
47:18
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the end of this incredibly dark,
47:21
winding journey from a toxic secret affair in nineteen ninety
47:26
through almost a decade of agonizing psychological warfare to a horrific,
47:32
calculated murder in nineteen ninety eight. It took a twenty
47:35
five year battle for justice to grueling trials, and it
47:38
all relied on the digital ghosts left behind on a
47:40
nineteen ninety eight Beige Family computer. And the chemical trace
47:44
is Julie left behind in her own body.
47:46
Speaker 2: And if there is any light in this case, it
47:47
speaks to the profound, stubborn resilience of the truth, even
47:50
when it is intentionally buried under decades of gaslighting, manipulation,
47:54
and complex legal maneuvering.
47:56
Speaker 1: For you listening, this case serves as a stark, chilling
47:59
reminder of the power of documentation. Julie's meticulous note taking
48:03
in the nineteen nineties, her agonizing, terrifying letter handed to
48:07
a neighbor, even her desperate visits to the doctor. These
48:11
were the silent patient witnesses that refused to stay buried.
48:15
Mark thought he had silenced her, but our documentation eventually
48:18
spoke up and convicted him, which she no longer could.
48:22
Speaker 2: If we connect all of this to a final thought
48:24
for you to mull over after this deep dive ends,
48:27
I want you to consider the concept of narrative murder.
48:30
Narrative murder Mark Jensen didn't just take his wife's physical
48:33
life with a chemical poison. He successfully systematically assassinated her
48:37
character and her memory in the minds of her own
48:39
children for a quarter of a century. The legal system
48:42
can eventually put a dangerous man in prison. They can
48:45
lock him in a box for the rest of his life,
48:47
But how long does it take to deprogram a family
48:49
from a quarter century of stolen history.