Prosecution’s Case

NOBODY ELSE COULD HAVE DONE IT

• After Jerry Johnson was assigned to Janet's disappearance he was able to convince the DA to take his case against Paul to the Grand Jury under the theory that Paul had killed Janet in the house, and transported her body in the Bronco to a mine shaft where she would never be found. The DA’s explanation for the lack of physical evidence in the home and vehicle was Paul’s training as a police officer.

•Although the Rollins Lake skull and femur had been DNA tested, and excluded as being Janet (the femur and dentures were male), suddenly in 2007, a portion of the skull was cut off with a saw, transported with the DNA samples from Janet's children and parents, and retested. There was no nuclear DNA profile developed for Janet, so they used a kinship program to “guess” the likelihood the the skull belonged to Janet.

•There was a known mtDNA profile for Janet, and it is much easier to obtain mtDNA from an old skull than trying to extract nuclear DNA. An mtDNA match between Janet and the skull would have been more than  99% certain, yet no evidence of such testing was ever provided to the defense. Instead, the lab was only able to develop a partial (11 allele) nuclear DNA profile for kinship comparison, leaving open huge uncertainty about the real identity of the Rollins Lake Skull--especially given the original expert opinions that the male femur and skull belonged to the same person--presumably the man who had the dentures. 

•After changing the kinship program three times, and removing Janet’s father Leo (because he didn’t match the skull), they claimed that the skull likely belonged to Janet. That increased the charges to 1st Degree Murder with a firearm, and Paul Kovacich went to trial in 2008 on the Rollins Lake theory.

•That is the prosecutor’s summation to the jury about the evidence against Paul Kovacich—nobody else could have killed Janet.

•There was nothing to refute Paul’s alibi, but there was no way for the defense to confirm it since Auburn PD, and PCSO had refused to check with any of the locations or witnesses in 1982, and Paul was banned by the Sheriff from doing so. Tellman called it an “alib-lie,” and a con job while presenting absolutely zero evidence that any part of it was untrue.

•The sole motive offered was that Paul was angry at talk of a possible divorce, or he didn’t want the children to move to a different private school. Paul and Janet had originally looked at Forest Lake Christian School, but decided it was too far away on a dangerous road. The couple had been functionally separated for 18 months by Paul’s work assignment, with no issues between them about it. There was no money, life insurance, girlfriends/boyfriends, or other disputes.

•The prosecutor wanted to punish Paul for refusing to plead guilty to second degree murder, so he concocted a literally impossible scenario to explain the skull at Rollins Lake. 

• Since there was no evidence of a struggle or blood at Forest Court, nor inside the Bronco, the theory was that Janet accepted a ride to Forest Lake from Paul. She took her purse, but left her watch and wedding rings behind. The prosecutor told the jury that at some point, Paul “veered off course and proceeded away from [FLCS] and toward Rollins Lake...” He then harbored a dual or concurrent intent: “to take Janet against her will to a secluded location, and then kill her there.”

•There are plenty of “secluded locations” near Auburn—like any place up in the mountains off a dirt road. Hundreds of locations were within 20 minutes of the Kovacich home. Rollins Lake road was not such a place. The Auburn Journal described it as “one of Placer County’s most popular recreation areas.”

View of westbound Rollins Lake Road. The public boat ramp is visible on the left side of the road, the "finger lake" location of skull on the right.

•The prosecutor told the jury:  “She was taken against her will, driven up to Rollins Lake, made to get out of the car, and shot in the back of the head.” [Grand Jury] “He drove her to Rollins Lake, escorted her from the car, and murdered her.”

•During the trial, the defense requested a jury visit to the scene so they could see how narrow, busy, and public the road was, but the judge refused.

•In order for the skull to end up where it was, the forensic search team determined that it had to either roll down the seasonal creek from an area that was inaccessible to vehicles (indicating that it was a set of old remains from the gold mine on the hill, which would be consistent with the male femur, dentures, and an incorrect identification of the skull as being Janet’s), or brought by car to one of the two pullouts along the road. The murder case against Paul relied upon the car pullout theory:

 ROLLINS LAKE RECREATION AREA

 STATE'S ALLEGED SHOOTING LOCATIONS

•In order for Paul to be guilty of the crime as convicted, he had to have used one of these two narrow pullouts, in the full sized 1981 Bronco. It would have been 11:00 am, and on the only road leading to the public boat ramp, campground, and boat rental for the lake. It was a warm sunny Wednesday, two days after the Labor Day holiday. 

•The prosecutor told the jury that Paul pulled over, told Janet to get out on the passenger side, shot her in the head with his service revolver (without getting any trace of blood in, or on the Bronco), and pushed her body down the hillside next to the parking, and footpath leading to the swimming beach.

 •Nobody reported seeing Paul, Janet, the Bronco, or Janet’s body. Nobody heard a shot. Neither the prosecution nor defense investigators checked to see if the Bronco could fully fit off the road there, or open the passenger door in that position. 

•The prosecutor told the jury that Paul picked the most secluded place in Placer County to take Janet and kill her, and the side of Rollins Lake Road was that place. In fact, it is just slightly less public than a strip mall. It is the sole connector between a highway and the freeway, and the access road to all of the recreational activities at the lake. 

•Since Paul could not prove he was at Rock Creek Plaza—and didn’t have time to drive the route—the jury was free to believe that Paul was lying, and it was “possible” he had time to commit the murder.

•The judge ruled that the defense could not mention any of the other 10 unsolved Placer homicide cases, the EAR, or any alternate suspect. He said that there “isn’t a serial killer going around snatching women,” and that the defense would have to solve all of the cases if they wanted the jury to hear about them--after he ruled that the defense could not even read the unsolved case files. 

•The jury didn’t see the crime scene photos that showed the broken window that CalDOJ called "signs of forced entry" at Forest Court because the photos disappeared in Jerry Johnson’s custody. 

•They didn’t hear that Johnson had sued Paul Kovacich for pasture fees, or that Johnson had been functionally fired for abusing his police powers in a fee dispute with another citizen. The jury also didn’t know that Paul had turned down Johnson and Grizzly for the K-9 program, and that Johnson still harbored a grudge. 

•The jury didn’t know that Johnson had committed perjury in the warrant affidavits, or in his testimony at Grand Jury—the judge  barred the information. 

•The jury believed the prosecutor’s argument that because Paul was a trained law enforcement officer and carried a .357 revolver, he was the only person who had the knowledge and skill to kidnap and kill Janet.