In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we uncover the chilling story of Montana newlywed Jordan Linn Graham, who admitted to luring her husband of only eight days, Cody Johnson, to Glacier National Park and pushing him off a cliff. Join me as we delve into the unsettling details of their brief marriage, the events leading up to that fateful moment, and the shocking confession that followed. We’ll explore the investigation, the trial, and the emotional aftermath of this tragic betrayal. Tune in as we unravel the layers of this case and seek to understand the motives behind such a heart-wrenching act. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 Hey, guys, it's another super-hot week in Texas.
0:34 I tell you what.
0:35 We're in South Dakota and North Dakota last week and the weather was beautiful outside of the random hailstorm and little flood that we got while we were in South Dakota, which was weird.
0:49 We were gambling and all of a sudden, I started hearing hail like pelt the door that I was sitting next to and I got up and literally water was pouring in through the bottom of the door at the casino and everybody that worked there and that was, there was really surprised.
1:08 They're like, this never happens.
1:10 It was wild.
1:11 It lasted probably a good 10 or 15 minutes afterwards.
1:15 There were just piles of hail outside and water was running down the main street like a river.
1:24 There were a lot of bikes there because it was the week before the Sturgis bike rally.
1:28 I hope no one's bike got hail damaged, but I don't think the hail was that big, but it was coming down hard.
1:35 It reminded me of Texas.
1:36 How just, like, randomly you get this hailstorm.
1:39 But anyway, we survived.
1:42 It was just weird.
1:43 You know, the weather's been weird.
1:44 I'm sure y'all all agree, but it was 100 and seven here in Texas, I think.
1:52 And when we were there, we were getting cool nights.
1:56 I had to put a sweatshirt on at night and don't let anybody tell you that the mosquitoes aren't bad in South Dakota and North Dakota, we thought they were bad in Texas.
2:06 But evidently they’re a problem everywhere and I know a lot of the mosquitoes in our area are testing positive for West Nile.
2:14 So that's something to watch out for.
2:17 And I don't know if I've told y'all or not, but bugs love me.
2:21 I had malaria when I went to Africa to visit my daughter when she was in the Peace Corps.
2:27 And if anybody's going to get bit, it's this girl right here.
2:31 I am constantly coming up with welts on my legs where something bit me and I start itching and I don't even know what it was.
2:39 Most of the time.
2:40 It's probably a mosquito.
2:42 I wear black a lot.
2:43 They love black.
2:45 I heard that they love people who don't drink beer, and I don't drink beer.
2:49 So maybe I should start.
2:51 I don't know.
2:52 Anyway, vacation was great again.
2:55 I had gone to the IACME conference in Vegas, which was amazing.
3:02 But I came home for one day, washed my clothes, repacked and then left again for South Dakota.
3:09 And it's hard sometimes to enjoy a vacation.
3:12 I'm sure those of you that are going to school and have more than one job and actually are self-employed in any shape or form.
3:22 Have a hard time going on a vacation and enjoying yourself because you know, you're not at home and you're not making money.
3:31 There are still little fires to put out because your employees or your renters or whoever it may be are still text messaging you and asking you questions, and your mind still is working on advertising and things like that.
3:47 That's one thing about owning your own business is it never quits; it never quits and I'm not discouraging it.
3:55 But wow, it's a lot of work.
3:58 I think you work harder when you work for yourself than you do.
4:01 Sometimes when you work for someone else because you realize the hustle that it takes and sometimes it's just you anyway, I had run across some really cool stories.
4:12 One of them was actually covered or partially covered in a presentation that I heard at the IACME and I think I told you all last week, we don't always get certain deaths in our area because shark attacks.
4:27 We don't have an ocean in my county.
4:29 We have alligators, but we've never had an alligator related death.
4:34 And so there are things that they see in other parts of the country that we don't see in little Denton, Texas.
4:41And even though we think Denton is small with a population of a little over a million and a 950 square mile radius, there are other areas that are less densely populated and a lot of death investigators that cover large areas.
5:00 I mean, they have to drive over an hour sometimes just to get to a scene because the area is not densely populated at all.
5:10 So anyway, one of the speakers was kind of talking about the challenges of search and rescue efforts in their area because it's a mountainous area and there are wild animals.
5:23 And again, that's something that we don't deal with in Denton, Texas.
5:26 I mean, we have coyotes that might eat a body that's been in a field.
5:31 But other than that, you know, we typically don't have to worry about being attacked by one or having treacherous terrain.
5:41 Be an issue when we go to get a body.
5:44 You know, we have to sometimes walk down a bridge or down an embankment or things like that.
5:50 But in our area, there just aren't mountains.
5:52 We don't have people that are hiking that get lost or that fall and die.
6:00 And that's kind of why I don't think I'd ever go hiking by myself.
6:04 It just seems so dangerous.
6:05 And when I heard some of his stories, I was like, wow, that's something I never really thought of, you know, was, is it safe for the investigator to go up this mountain and retrieve this body?
6:20 It's just not something we think about here again.
6:23 That's why I love the conferences because it just exposes us to things that we may not always see or think about.
6:31 But this particular death was in Montana, this Montana man, he was a newlywed, and his wife pushed him off a cliff.
6:44 And he said on the morning that he died that he had canceled plans to go kayaking and golfing because his wife told him that she had a surprise for him.
6:56 This was something I guess that Cody Johnson had told his father-in-law and a friend of his, they were on their honeymoon apparently, or just celebrating being married and being newlyweds and we're going to go kayaking and golfing.
7:16 But apparently, she had a surprise.
7:17 And so he thought, wow, this is important.
7:21 Let's not go.
7:22 There was evidence introduced in the trial that Jordan Graham who was 22 had maybe blindfolded her husband of eight days.
7:35 They'd only been married eight days before Cody Johnson, who fell around 200 ft off a cliff in Glacier National Park on July 7th of 2013.
7:48 So this has been a while.
7:49 This case is about 11 years old.
7:52 Another thing I love about this job is you can go back and look at old cases and learn things.
7:58 Now, Graham admitted to shoving Johnson during an argument, but she insisted that it was self-defense, and we know that sometimes cameras can catch things like this.
8:10 But you know, they're in the middle of the mountains.
8:12 There's no way that this was caught on camera.
8:16 What a place to go, right?
8:18 If you're going to commit a crime, she pled not guilty to 1st and 2nd degree murder and to making false statements.
8:27 But prosecutors contend that she intended to kill him and had told a friend in a text message that she was unhappy in her marriage.
8:36 Now, she'd only been married eight days.
8:39 So how unhappy can you be?
8:40 And if it's not a good relationship, why did you get married?
8:45 And what makes you think that murdering your spouse is the only way to get out of a marriage that you're unhappy in?
8:56 It doesn't make sense.
8:57 I don't know.
8:58 I just never can wrap my head around people that think this way.
9:04 Graham's stepfather, Steven Rutledge said that he spoke to Cody about going kayaking on that morning of July 7th.
9:15 And a friend of Johnson's said that Johnson told him that he had called off golfing because of this surprise that his wife had for him.
9:26 Richard Syne was the deputy coroner at that time.
9:30 And he testified that there was a black cloth found near the body which could have been used to blindfold Johnson.
9:40 And this is one reason as a death investigator that the surroundings at our scene are very important.
9:49 Now again, we could presume that different things at a scene were used in a murder.
9:58 I mean, you can sit there and look at a scene all day long and come up with ideas and things that may have happened and what could have been.
10:07 But really, I think it's important to get all of that in our photography.
10:13 And that's why the scene photos are very, very important.
10:16 Sometimes I've taken a photo, I've been at a scene, you know, I think I've noticed everything, and I've missed things and I go back and look at my photos and I'm like, wow, I didn't even notice that because your mind is not always focused on objects because you're thinking about things as you're taking photos, it can be overwhelming sometimes.
10:41 But I can tell you that I've walked into, I've walked into a death scene before, literally been looking at a detective while I'm talking to them.
10:51 And there is like a stripper pole in the middle of the living room that's right behind them.
10:56 And I literally didn't even see it and they made comments about it.
11:00 And I'm like, what are you talking about?
11:02 And it's right behind them.
11:04 That's why our photography is very, very important.
11:07 Because you don't see everything.
11:09 You don't notice everything, it's so overstimulating sometimes when you go to a crime scene and, you know, you're talking to detectives and you're talking to family and you're trying to take in everything, you're noting the medications and then you've got the scene itself and you're trying to protect yourself from bloodborne pathogens and you're trying to protect your transport crew, there's just so much going on in your head that you don't see everything, you can't possibly notice everything.
11:42 And so it's kind of amazing when I go back and look at my photos and I was like, wow, it's right there.
11:46 I looked at it a million times and I never noticed it, this blindfold or this black cloth that could have been used as a blindfold was next to him.
11:57 And so the deputy coroner testified as to that again, we can assume that things were a part of the crime scene, but because we weren't there and because there are no cameras, we don't know Johnson had an eight-inch fracture on his forehead at the time.
12:18 He was found he was not wearing his wedding ring.
12:23 Now, there's a lot of men who don't wear wedding rings and women as well.
12:28 And a lot of times I think it depends on their job, but I mean, he wasn't at work.
12:33 He was with his wife.
12:35 There's that, I mean, he didn't have a ring on.
12:37 So that would indicate the possibility of problems.
12:41 Now Johnson's mother reported that he was more in love with Graham than she was with him.
12:49 And friends even said that the relationship seemed one sided.
12:54 I've always thought the saddest thing about relationships is that they can be one sided and you hate to see one person putting so much effort into it and the other person putting nothing into it.
13:07 I know we all see that all the time too.
13:10 One of their friends, Cameron Fredrickson said that he broke into their home after Johnson went missing because he felt like Jordan Graham was involved.
13:23 This case did not go without red flags.
13:26 Obviously, she's the first person that he suspected.
13:30 He broke into their home to try and find either him or evidence of what had happened.
13:38 He was looking for weapons, blood, a body, whatever he could find.
13:44 Jordan had told friends that she last saw Cody alive as he drove off with a friend.
13:51 And so she created a fake email and then sent a message to herself from someone named Tony saying that he fell while he was hiking again.
14:02 You have to know that the police have ways to see if a fake email was created by you just like they have ways to see what you've text message, your friends many, many times.
14:15 That's how cases are solved is text messages and emails.
14:20 She reported that she found him four days later saying that she knew where to look because it was an area where he hung out with his buddies.
14:31 She found him in an area that he goes to commonly Graham who was 23 was sentenced to 30 years for the murder.
14:40 He was originally reported missing by a friend and coworker.
14:44 So not even by her, she tried to withdraw her guilty plea asking for a 10-year sentence in exchange for a change in plea claiming that it was unintentional.
14:57 Graham told the judge that she was having second thoughts on being married so young and that she and Johnson went to the park to talk about it after she pushed him in self-defense, she ran back to where their car was parked because she was scared.
15:16 She said she panicked.
15:18 She didn't know what to do.
15:19 She didn't know where to go.
15:21 She drove an hour away without seeking any help.
15:25 But the weird thing is, and this is what kind of proves her guilt to me almost more than anything else is.
15:32 She starts sending text messages to friends pretending that nothing happened.
15:37 So from the very beginning, she attempts to cover it up or to try to start the efforts to cover up the murder.
15:48 He was reported missing on July 8th when he didn't show up for work.
15:52 Again by coworkers the day after not by her and she knew what she had done.
16:00 Graham said that Johnson left their house on July 7th with friends and the friends that he was supposedly with always kind of suspected Graham in his disappearance.
16:14 There was something about her that just rubbed them wrong.
16:16 It sounds like.
16:17 And, you know, we all have friends in that relationship who are with somebody and we're like, this is definitely not the person for them.
16:28 This is definitely not their forever soul mate, but there's nothing we can do about it.
16:34 And, you know, you don't want to lose a friend by coming clean and telling them what your thoughts are, and you want to be there, and you want to be supportive.
16:42 It's a hard place as a friend to be in having been in a bad relationship in the past.
16:49 I wish so many times that my friends had said something to me, but they didn't want to hurt my feelings.
16:54 They didn't want to make me feel like I was making bad choices.
16:59 But I feel like a true friend is not going to not be your friend anymore because you were honest with them.
17:06 Sometimes we see things that they don't see because they're in the relationship again.
17:13 If my friends had said something and I know they all felt it.
17:16 I know they all knew because they told me later, you know, oh, you know, I just had a feeling and I'm like,, but sometimes from the outside looking in, you notice more you get caught up in the feelings and you get caught up in the moment and you're excited because you're in a relationship and you're not alone and you have this person who it isn't wonderful, but they're not the worst case scenario either.
17:47 You allow yourself to continue the relationship.
17:50 Your friends start coming around less or, you know, it's because they don't really want to tell you what they notice because they don't want to.
17:58 Number one hurt your feelings.
18:00 Number two lose your friendship.
18:02 It's a hard place to be in.
18:03 It's a very hard place to be in.
18:06 Graham later, quote, unquote found the body.
18:11 Now she appealed her conviction in October saying that she was improperly labeled a sociopath.
18:21 She came back and said, hey, you all call me a sociopath.
18:25 I'm not, I want to appeal this conviction.
18:29 Now, the two Graham and Johnson had actually dated for two years.
18:36 She told friends that she wanted to meet a nice guy, get married, have kids and be a stay-at-home mom, two years isn't really rushing it.
18:47 But obviously he cared more about her.
18:50 She had goals, and she probably felt like her biological clock was ticking.
18:56 The marriage happened.
18:57 And here we are now Johnson's friends said that Graham really never looked him in the eye during the wedding ceremony.
19:06 I went back and looked at their wedding pictures and of course, I didn’t see pictures of the ceremony itself.
19:13 I just kind of see the photos that they took together.
19:15 I mean, they look happy but a lot of couples look happy.
19:19 I mean, we've talked about that on Instagram and Facebook.
19:22 You know, everybody tries to make their life look great, but there's been domestic violence in the marriage or whatever.
19:28 You know, nobody's going to say the bad things on Facebook because they don't want their life to look bad.
19:34 They want everyone to want to be like them and they want to be an influencer and all the things.
19:41 But we know logically that everyone's life cannot be perfect all the time.
19:47 Who would want to share the bad things on social media.
19:51 But anyway, friends did notice that she never really looked him in the eye and, you know, that's concerning and usually as a friend, you know, you can tell again when a relationship isn't going well.
20:04 And I always say my friends, ok, y'all, I have to talk about my high school friends because they're amazing women and they have all married their high school sweethearts and I was always so jealous because I didn't meet my soulmate until I was 50 after having been married twice.
20:22 And they're all still married to their high school sweethearts, and they have the most beautiful little families and some of them have grandchildren.
20:29 I was always kind of jealous of that, but not everybody has that.
20:33 You know, and I've told him that before, like, y'all are so lucky because you're still happy you're together after 30 years.
20:39 And that's amazing.
20:41 But it doesn't look like Johnson and Graham were ever going to have that Johnson was found face down in the water.
20:49 But what's disturbing is that according to reports, Graham had actually told him about a month before they got married that she could kill her mother and stepfather.
20:58 So I don't know what they did to her, but this is probably what deemed her a sociopath when they went to trial.
21:05 But she had made mention to him before about killing her parents.
21:10 This is not normal.
21:11 I mean, those are not normal things that you just say to your spouse.
21:14 Hey, you know, I could kill my parents.
21:17 I mean, and we've probably said things like that, you know, I want to strangle her or, but we don't always mean it, but for some reason coming from her, it was different.
21:27 People felt like she truly did mean it.
21:30 The couple got married on June 29th and again, here she is killing him on July 7th.
21:37 I mean, they'd only been married for eight days.
21:40 She had texted a friend that she was going to talk to him about their marriage and she said to her friend, if you don't hear from me again tonight, something happened.
21:52 Ok, there's your clue.
21:54 She said she felt physically ill at the thought of having sex with her husband and was intimidated and told friends that he might make her do things that she didn't want to do in the marriage.
22:08 But my God, I mean, there are other ways to solve that problem than to just push him off a cliff.
22:14 But, you know, again, there are no cameras.
22:17 I mean, if you're in a remote area like that, you know, you're not going to get caught but just remember your text messages, even if they've been deleted can be taken from your phone and conversations that you've had with your friends are not forgotten and those friends will be interviewed, you can run but you can't hide.
22:36 Basically, I think that is the moral of that story.
22:41 And so what I'm going to take from that is if you have a friend that, you know, is in an unhealthy relationship, I'm going to encourage you to speak up and I know it's challenging and I know that it may be difficult and I know that there's always that fear of risking your friendship, but you could essentially save their life.
23:03 I mean, if that other person is a sociopath like this again, coming from somebody who has remotely been in relationships where domestic violence was involved, it's always good to speak up.
23:22 It's always good to speak up and let them know what you see from the outside looking in because they may not always see it.
23:28 I just think that that's very, very important.
23:32 I did see the photos of this scene.
23:35 I did see him lying face down at the bottom of a mountain.
23:40 It's horrifying to think that a spouse did that to him.
23:43 But, but she did, she claimed self-defense again.
23:48 We don't know if that was true.
23:51 I believe that they just had an argument because she probably said that she was unsure about being married and of course, that would upset him because he'd only been married for eight days.
24:03 But I don't think there was any history of violence directed at her by him in the relationship.
24:11 I don't believe that that was an issue.
24:13 I don't believe that he tried to push her, and I don't believe that she pushed him in self-defense.
24:19 And no, I mean, she was unhappy, and she took the easy way out.
24:25 This is what resulted anyway, in this particular case.
24:29 I don't think the recovery of the body was difficult because he was down at the bottom of a mountain, kind of near a stream or in a stream, I believe.
24:38 And so recovery was not a big issue, but still, you know, it was in the mountains and the terrain is sometimes difficult.
24:48 Many times they use helicopters to get these bodies out.
24:52 And again, that's not really something that we commonly have to do in Texas.
24:55 I mean, in my area anyway, we've done it before, but it's not common because we have flat land and everything's dry and everything's dead basically right now in the middle of summer because it is so blooming hot y'all.
25:11 I cannot even get over this weather and it's only just begun.
25:16 We have our big North Texas fair and Rodeo coming up here in a couple of weeks and my med spa boutique is going to have a booth there.
25:27 Thank God we're indoors.
25:28 I can't imagine the vendors that are outside.
25:31 I don't even want to think about having to be stuck outside when it's over 100 degrees, but it's going to be hot.
25:38 It's going to be very, very hot.
25:40 Try to protect yourself kids.
25:44 We always have kids found in hot cars and I noticed the other day even my work car gives me a reminder if my backpacks in my backseat, it tells me to check my backseat for Children.
25:54 I kind of like that.
25:56 I can't imagine leaving a child in a hot car, but it happens everywhere every year, every summer and it's devastating.
26:05 The heat is deadly.
26:07 Take care of yourself, drink lots of water and try to stay cool.
26:13 Oh, I got to tell y'all, my advanced pathophysiology class, it was absolutely kicking my butt, is over.
26:20 Advanced pharmacology starts in a couple of weeks.
26:23 I'm kind of enjoying a couple of weeks without school trying to play catch up and get some projects done that I really need to work on.
26:31 Yeah.
26:31 So I made out with a B, and a B is normally not good enough for me.
26:35 But you know what, that class kicked my booty.
26:38 And so guess what?
26:39 I'm fine with a B I'm fine with a B I'm going to take it and I'm going to run with it and be happy anyway.
26:47 I hope all of y'all have a great week.
26:50 Looking forward to more stories and I am overwhelmed by the number of people who have reached out to me and wanted to be interviewed.
26:58 I will be sending you a calendar link to schedule those interviews probably today.
27:04 I very much look forward to that.
27:06 There are a lot of stories that a lot of people want to talk about.
27:10 That's very exciting.
27:11 Have a wonderful week again.
27:13 Stay cool, stay hydrated, stay out of trouble and I'll talk to you soon.
27:18 Bye.
27:19 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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27:31 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
27:34 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.