Dr. Rebecca Johnson

     Everyone immediately knew something was wrong when Dr. Becky failed to make rounds on her patients the day she disappeared. This was absolutely against her character. She was a responsible physician and a compassionate friend to those she cared for. So, when her car was found abandoned in the Crawford Memorial Hospital parking lot, everyone feared the worst.  

  Dr. Rebecca Johnson, affectionately called Dr. Becky by her patients, was described by people who knew her as self-assured and not easily intimidated. She was also physically fit and active. She could bench press 200 pounds.   

  She was a family practice doctor working out of Ozark, Arkansas in 1992. She sent her patients needing hospitalization to Crawford Memorial Hospital, in Van Buren which is about thirty minutes down the road from Ozark. At the time of her disappearance, she had patients admitted there. In fact, the last time anyone had definitely seen her was in her car in the early morning hours of June 17th, 1992, sitting in that very parking lot where her car now sat abandoned. She didn't seem like someone who could be easily kidnapped. Had she left with someone?   

  Police started an investigation. When questioning her husband, Kurt, they found that the last time he saw her she was leaving the house with a large sum of money for what she called a "business transaction". When detectives inquired at her bank if she had withdrawn any money, they found that she had indeed, $1.431 million to be exact.   

  This was done the day before she went missing. She told her banker that she was taking the money out to buy art. Whether it's routine or something the bank did because they felt something was suspicious about her withdrawal, I don't know, but they had a record of all the serial numbers on every $100 bill. All 14,310 of them.   

  Two days after Dr. Becky disappeared, a couple walked nervously through the Memphis International Airport. Their names were Allen and Libby Johnson. This can get confusing. Yes, they did have the same last name as the missing doctor but that was a coincidence, they were not related. But the reason they were so nervous was directly related to Dr. Becky. You see, they knew exactly where that $1.4 million was. They had it, well what was left of it, and they were trying to sneak it through the airport when they got caught. Security thought they'd stumbled on a drug deal. They promptly took the duo into custody.   

  As Memphis police were investigating, they tracked down the hotel room the couple had stayed in and found Becky's Social Security card and credit cards. When they called her house, Kurt told them in no uncertain terms, no, they did not have any reason to have Dr. Becky's belongings. They also found the couple had been on shopping sprees where they bought a new RX7, a new Lexus and a Rolex since they had arrived in Memphis. The couple was charged with theft and extradited back to Crawford County, the location Becky was last seen and where the investigation started.  

     Maybe he was trying to save his wife, Libby, maybe his conscience was getting to him or maybe it was some fine interrogation techniques, but it didn't take long before Allen started spilling the beans. Becky was dead. But he claimed it was an accident. This is how the story unfolded, well, according to a man that was confessing to murder.  

     Libby worked for Dr. Becky as a bookkeeper in her medical office in Ozark. This is how Allen met her. Now, according to Allen, the two of them, Allen and Becky, conspired together to double Becky's money. The plan? They booked a room at the Sheridan Inn. While at the hotel, Allen was supposed to hit Becky over the head and knock her out (remember, he's claiming this is a plan she is aware of) and then hit himself over the head to make the situation look like a robbery. Becky would file an insurance claim, recoup her money plus keep the original amount claimed to have been stolen, then pay Allen for his trouble. Easy money, right. Except if something goes wrong. 

  He struck Becky too hard, he claimed by accident, and killed her. He then made the choice to cover up what had happened. He drove her car back to the hospital parking lot, where it would later be found. He put her dead body in the trunk of his car and drove her back to Ozark, where he dropped her weighted body off the Hwy 23 bridge straight into the Arkansas River.  

     Few believed this story, especially if they knew Dr. Becky. Not to mention, if this was fraud, why did they need to bring the actual money to the hotel room? If they were going to claim it was stolen, they'd have to make it disappear before the authorities arrived. And that's a lot of money to hide. And she voluntarily let him knock her out with a blow to the head? A doctor would have known how unsafe that was. Also, why drive her all the way back to Ozark to throw her off a very well-traveled bridge and risk getting caught?  

  No, nobody really bought this story. But it didn't matter. They had to try. Police assembled a dive team and set out to look for her under the bridge at the bottom of the Arkansas River. Crowds of townspeople gathered on the banks of the river to see what they would find. Didn't they realize, if they found anything, it wasn't going to be good? Still, Ozark was a small town, and this was big news.  

  They searched diligently for her body with no success. Officers felt he had to be lying, at least about where her body was. If he had told the truth, they would have found her already. The search was called off.  

  It was a good call because later that day, Becky was found but not in the Arkansas River, not even in Arkansas. A family canoeing on Cyprus Creek in a town called Florence, Alabama found her floating in a logjam. Her head had been wrapped in a plastic trash bag with duct tape around her neck. Duct tape was also found around one wrist as if she'd been bound at some point. Her body was identified using dental records, sent for autopsy, and Allen was re-questioned in light of the new discovery.    

The evidence didn't fit the story, so Allen came up with a new story. This time, Becky was still a willing participant in a crime but was unaware she was about to be double crossed. Allen had convinced her to trade $1.4 million of her clean money for $2.8 million in dirty money, in other words, money laundering.   

  But Allen says that wasn't really what he planned to do. When she arrived at the Fort Smith hotel with the money, he was going to hit her over the head, give the money to his adult son, Allen Johnson Jr, who was hiding outside the hotel room. Then, when she woke up, convince her they'd both been robbed.  

  But just like in the first story, something went wrong. When he struck her, she fell and broke her neck. So, he wrapped her head with a laundry bag and duct tape then bound her hands. Then he placed her in the trunk of his son's car and drove her to Memphis where he offered $10,000 and a car to his ex- brother-in-law to hide her body. Warrants were issued for Allen's son and former brother-in-law.   

The autopsy report wasn't complete yet, but prosecutors decided they had enough to wrap the case up anyway. They offered him life in prison with no parole and for some reason he took it.  I mean, that's only a step below the death penalty and prosecutors said this wasn't a death penalty case due to Allen's lack of a violent history and denial that he meant to kill her which they couldn't prove one way or another. You'd think he would risk it and go to trial, but no, he took life without parole.  

    I guess it makes no difference but when the autopsy report came out, it became clear, he lied.  Her cause of death was strangulation. Why did he lie about her cause of death? It would be hard to convince authorities that she was "accidentally" strangled to death. No, if you ask me, his plan from the very beginning was to kill her. 

So, what do you think? 

Would you kill someone for $1.4 million and if you did, do you think you could get away with it?