Judge: Newlywed must be released from custody

The Kalispell newlywed accused of killing her husband by pushing her off a cliff in Glacier National Park will be released from custody.

In a written order issued Sept. 12,  U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch said the U.S. Attorney’s Office concedes that Jordan Linn Graham, 22, is not a flight risk and therefore, Lynch said, she must be released. Lynch cited the two-month long investigation as proof that Graham does not pose a flight risk.

Lynch’s decision was reaffirmed on Sept. 13 by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy after prosecutors filed a motion to stay Graham’s release and Lynch denied the motion.

Graham had been held in the Missoula County Detention Facility since she made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court on Sept. 9. Assistant U.S. Attorney Zeno Baucus at that time presented a complaint alleging Graham killed Cody Lee Johnson, 25, in Glacier Park on July 7. If charged with murder in the second degree, Graham faces up to life in prison.

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Accidental shove?

The case has garnered national and international media attention, including popular TV talk shows. Johnson, who worked at Nomad Global Communications, had moved into his newly bought home in Kalispell on June 22. He and Graham were married seven days later. Thirteen days after their wedding, Johnson’s body was found at the bottom of a steep cliff along the popular Loop Trail to Granite Park Chalet. Now Graham stands accused of killing her husband eight days after they were married.

During a hearing on Sept. 11, Magistrate Lynch listened to both sides present their case on whether Graham should be released pending her trial. Graham’s attorneys said Graham does not have a history of violent behavior and asked that she be released to home confinement with electronic monitoring.

Prosecutors said that while Graham didn’t pose a high flight risk, they cited correspondence suggesting she might harm herself because of the stress she’s undergoing. They also noted that Graham had made false statements to agents investigating a serious crime and said they will file a motion Sept. 13 explaining why Graham should be held in jail.

Graham’s defense attorney, Michael Donahoe, told Judge Molloy on Sept. 13 that Graham was acting in self-defense when she accidentally pushed her husband off the cliff. Donahoe said Graham was trying to free herself from Johnson after he grabbed her arm, and her push was part of a single motion to get free.

Assistant U.S. Attorney for Montana Kris McLean replied to Donahoe’s claim by noting that Graham didn’t report the accident right away and lied to authorities about what happened. McLean said Graham was certainly capable of murder if the allegations were true.

In response, Donahoe didn’t dispute that Graham had engaged in deceptive practices, but he insisted those actions didn’t indicate malice or premeditation by Graham. Donahoe also claimed that prosecutors had misrepresented events so the media could influence the public against Graham.

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False statements?

The search that ensued after Johnson was reported missing soon turned into an investigation involving the FBI — a murder inside a national park falls under federal jurisdiction. And it was Graham’s statements that apparently broke the case, even if the public was left in the dark for two months.

The newlywed’s story about her husband taking off toward West Glacier in a dark car with Washington plates seemed plausible to many people in the Flathead — at least one local newspaper presented a speculative article based on her claim just 12 days before the U.S. Attorney’s Office made its allegations public.

But the FBI and other investigators were not fooled. To begin with, it was Johnson’s uncle, a co-worker at Nomad Global Communications, who reported Johnson was missing, not Johnson’s wife. When Johnson failed to show up for work on Monday, July 8, according to the 911 dispatch log, Johnson’s uncle reported to police that Graham had told him her husband left Sunday night for a joy ride with friends.

When investigators interviewed Graham, according to FBI special agent Stephen Liss’s affidavit, certain details in Graham’s account stood out. Graham said she received a text message from Johnson sometime after 9:45 p.m. on Sunday saying he was leaving with a friend from out of town. Graham also said she saw a dark-colored car pull out of their driveway as she arrived home, and she was sure Johnson was inside. But in a subsequent interview, Graham said she and her husband routinely deleted text messages, and Johnson’s last message couldn’t be retrieved.

On July 11, a friend of Graham’s and Johnson’s identified in Liss’s affidavit as K.M. told investigators that Graham told her she was having second thoughts about her recent marriage. K.M. said Graham said she would discuss the matter with her husband the Sunday night Johnson turned up missing.

K.M. said she then received a text message from Graham at 8:56 p.m. on Sunday stating, “Oh well, I’m about to talk to him.” K.M. responded, “I’ll pray for you guys,” and Graham texted back, “But dead serious if u don’t hear from me at all again tonight, something happened.”

Another friend of Graham’s and Johnson’s, identified in Liss’s affidavit as A.H., told investigators that Graham mentioned an e-mail she had received when they met at Faith Baptist Church on July 10. According to A.H., Graham said the e-mail stated that Johnson had left with three friends, gone hiking, fell and was dead. The e-mail also said the search should be called off. Prosecutors told Magistrate Lynch on Sept. 11 that the e-mail came from a computer at Graham’s family home.

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Finding Cody

The strangest break in the story occurred about 8:30 p.m. on July 11 when a Glacier Park ranger responded to the Lake McDonald Camp Store. A visitor there reported finding a dead body below The Loop, a big switchback on Glacier Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road. The visitor was Graham.

With all the efforts underway to locate Johnson, it seemed a huge coincidence that Johnson’s wife would be the one to find the body. When the ranger commented on this point, according to Liss’s affidavit, Graham replied that The Loop “was a place he wanted to see before he died,” and that her husband “would come up here with friends to drive fast when his friends were visiting from out of state.”

The body was also located in a place where Park visitors were unlikely to see it — down in a deep, narrow gorge out of sight from people standing at the overlook at The Loop. A short-haul helicopter rescue team from Parks Canada was brought in on July 12 to help recover the body from the gorge.

According to Liss’s affidavit, Graham’s confession came on July 16, nine days after Johnson went missing, when she admitted she had lied about her husband’s death. She allegedly admitted getting angry during an argument with Johnson while walking on the Loop Trail, above a steep cliff on the opposite side of the narrow gorge from the Sun Road.

At one point in their argument, Graham allegedly told investigators, she started to walk away, but Johnson grabbed her by the arm. After removing his hand from her arm, “Graham stated that she could have just walked away, but due to her anger, she pushed Johnson with both hands in the back and as a result, he fell face first off the cliff,” Liss’s affidavit states.

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Friends react

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20, and although many of Johnson’s friends may have fallen for Graham’s story about a dark-colored car with Washington plates, and suspected foul play, some have said publicly they were not surprised when Johnson’s wife was the one accused of his murder. Some have noted that the two were not a suitable match from the beginning.

Siblings Levi and Lytaunie Blasdel, who said they’ve known Graham since she was three and had introduced her to Johnson, said they stopped being friends with her about a year ago. But they had glowing remarks for Johnson.

Levi Blasdel noted that while Johnson was madly in love with Graham, she seemed emotionally distant. Levi noted that while he was speaking at the podium during Johnson’s funeral service, Graham was “messing around on her phone.” His sister concurred with her brother’s assessment.

“I don’t think anyone suspected her directly until all of us heard different stories from her,” Lytaunie said. “That’s when it got weird.”

While other friends of Johnson’s said they weren’t surprised by the news about Graham, many wanted to know why it took so long to arrest her. Levi, however, said it was important to get it right.

“It’s very important that people remember that this two months of waiting means they were getting all of the evidence necessary to make sure that justice was served,” he said.

A law professor at Ohio State University has suggested Graham could see as much as a life sentence or as little as straight probation. Douglas Berman presented his analysis based on federal sentencing guidelines on his online “Sentencing Law and Policy” blog site.

While federal guidelines advise a sentence up to 20-25 years, acceptance of responsibility and no prior significant history could reduce the sentence to 14-18 years. And a plea deal to involuntary manslaughter could conceivably lead to an alternative to incarceration, such as straight probation, Berman said.

Graham is being represented by Andrew Nelson, Michael Donahoe and the Federal Defenders of Montana Inc.