Mother's remains discovered
The 28-year-old mother of two from Kirkland disappeared on a spring morning in 1996, when she left home to meet a friend for lunch in Bellevue and never arrived.
Police found clues over the next several days and treated her disappearance as a homicide, though her body had not been found.
Her loved ones passed out thousands of fliers, looking for help, and her family visited several psychics to try to drum up new facts. Her daughter and son, then ages 3 and 5 respectively, were eventually told that their mother was dead.
Tuesday, the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office announced that highway workers had found Johnson's remains along Highway 410 near Greenwater, Pierce County, last month. The King County Sheriff's Office reopened the case, and Johnson's friends began to get answers.
"It was like being knocked over, like the wind being taken out of you," said Vicky Fulkerson, a friend who was baby-sitting Johnson's kids the day she disappeared. "It's something you hope for and pray for a long time."
Fulkerson, who now lives in Ravensdale, King County, said she assumed Johnson was either dead or being held somewhere against her will. In the months after her disappearance, friends and family said Johnson never would have left her two children, Kaitlyn and Sean.
"She cared more about her kids than herself," Fulkerson said. "The idea that she could just disappear, I couldn't fathom it."
Johnson and her husband, Greg, were separated at the time of the disappearance. He and the children moved to Las Vegas a few years ago, Fulkerson said.
Neither he nor Johnson's father could be reached for comment.
A year after the disappearance, King County detectives arrested a 43-year-old man in connection with her suspected killing, but prosecutors released him three months later because of a lack of evidence.
The man worked with Johnson at the Bowen Scarff Ford car dealership in Kent. The two had a platonic relationship and would occasionally eat together, police said after the arrest. The man later moved to Montana, but it is unclear where he lives now.
The original detective on the case was promoted, so a new detective is taking over the case this week, King County Sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said.
The detective will examine the paperwork and evidence with a "new set of eyes," Urquhart said.
"The good news is we did find the body and we learned from [the] Green River [killer case] that that can bring closure to the family," he said. "It conceivably brings us one step closer to solving this case."
Johnson was last seen on April 26, 1996. She called Fulkerson that morning to say she was going to run a few errands and would come to a party later that day for Fulkerson's son.
An hour later, she made or received a four-minute call on her cellphone, which was traced to a bank near Bellevue Square.
At noon, Johnson was scheduled to meet a friend for lunch at Cucina! Cucina! in Bellevue but didn't show up. That night, Fulkerson left a message with Johnson's husband, saying his wife hadn't picked up their kids that day.
Johnson's husband got the message the next morning and called police. Johnson didn't show up for a birthday party later that day for her son either.
A day later, Johnson's wallet was found in the parking lot of an Eagle hardware store in Seattle's Rainier Valley neighborhood.
Two days after that, police found Johnson's Ford Escort station wagon at a Thriftway supermarket near Tukwila. The car's keys were in the ignition, the doors were unlocked and her cellphone was in plain view inside.
Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com