Death of Peggy Lynn Johnson-Schroeder: Jurors hear LaRoche’s own words on recordings | Crime and Courts

RACINE — Jurors in the homicide trial underway in Racine County Circuit Court heard from the defendant on Friday via recordings made during the course of the investigation.

Linda LaRoche, 67, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the 1999 death of Peggy Lynn Johnson-Schroeder, 23.

The defendant was also accused of driving from her home in McHenry, Illinois, to rural Racine County to dump the woman’s body in a Raymond cornfield, for which she is charged with hiding a corpse.

LaRoche pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied having a hand in the woman’s death.

History

The Racine County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to Raymond on July 21, 1999, after a Department of Public Works employee found a young woman’s body in the first row of a cornfield.

The woman was badly beaten, malnourished, and evidence suggested she had probably been tortured. She also had an infection her weak body could not fight.

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The young woman had never been arrested, so her fingerprints did not turn up an identification.

She was buried in a Jane Doe grave and went nameless for 20 years until modern methods of DNA testing turned up an identification.

Once she was identified, investigators learned that Schroeder’s father had abandoned his family when she was young and her mother was deceased. She was described in court as cognitively slow.

She met LaRoche at a free clinic where the older woman was working as a nurse. LaRoche offered the young woman a job helping at her house with housework and her six children, according to testimony.

When Schroeder moved into LaRoche’s home, she brought almost nothing with her, just a two-person tent.

investigator

Lt. Brian Van Scyoc, the lead investigator, took the stand on Friday and outlined the years that went by while the Sheriff’s Office worked to identify Racine County Jane Doe.

He decided to continue working on the case even after he was promoted.

“I felt strongly about the case,” Van Scyoc told the jurors. “I felt there was serious injustice done here, and I wanted to see it through.”

He outlined the steps investigators took to identify “Racine County Jane Doe,” which included exhuming her body to make another attempt at DNA identification.

In 2019, investigators decided to attempt a new process for identification: forensic genealogy, the process of identifying people through their relatives.

Through that process, investigators learned that Racine County Jane Doe was Peggy Lynn Johnson-Schroeder; however, in roughly the same time period, they received a tip through the RCSO Facebook page they had launched to spread the word about the young, unidentified woman.

The tip allowed investigators to focus on McHenry, Illinois, and the family the young woman was living with in July 1999. The tipster advised that LaRoche’s oldest child, HK, would be cooperative.

After that, they interviewed LaRoche and her children simultaneously, so they wouldn’t have time to communicate with each other, which could “taint the investigation.” Portions of the interview with the defendant were played for the jury.

tape

LaRoche told investigators she took Schroeder in because she identified with her situation. The defendant, too, had lost her mother while she was still quite young.

“I had a troubled childhood,” LaRoche told the investigators. “I didn’t have anyone, either.”

Later, she added: “I felt bad for her because I knew she didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“I loved Peggy,” she told investigators. “I gave Peggy lots of chances.”

However, LaRoche sought to characterize Schroeder as a problem in the house and someone she could not trust.

She alleged there were times when she would come home and find men on the property visiting Schroeder, that she was mentally unstable — especially after the suicide of her younger brother — and was too cognitively slow to be trusted to take care of the children.

LaRoche told investigators there came a point when she just could not have Schroeder in her house any longer.

She said she came home and one of her children said Schroeder had been in the crawl space under the house where LaRoche kept the medications she used for her private business, contracting with detention centers to provide medical care to inmates.

On the day in question, LaRoche said she found Schroeder at the kitchen sink with a handful of medications, which she then dropped into the sink.

The medications, LaRoche told investigators, were not scheduled or controlled substances. Rather, they were more like heart medications.

She said after dropping the medication into the sink, Schroeder fainted and was out for about 15 minutes. LaRoche said she took her outside to get some air.

When Robert Johnson—then LaRoche’s husband, now her ex-husband—came home, she told him to take the kids to town for ice cream because she wanted them out of that situation.

Johnson confirmed from the stand that when he came home the first time, Schroeder was on the lawn, and when he came home the second time she was in the car.

He described her at various times as “unconscious” and “lifeless.”

LaRoche said she drove Schroeder to a gas station, where she contacted her grandmother, they met at a restaurant, and LaRoche left Schroeder with her grandmother.

LaRoche never saw Schroeder again, she said.

patterns

The case against LaRoche is largely circumstantial. There is no DNA evidence, fingerprints, or anyone who can place the defendant in Racine County in 1999.

The DA’s Office has used witness testimony to illustrate a pattern of violence inflicted on the victim by the defendant.

The interview tapes also show a pattern, one of deception.

On the tapes, jurors hear investigators confront LaRoche about the stories she has told her family over the years.

She claimed that two years after Schroeder left, the young woman contacted her business and asked to come back and live with the family.

However, as Schroeder had been dead for two years, this could not possibly be true.

LaRoche also claimed to have heard from Schroeder’s grandmother, who relayed the message that Schroeder moved to Nevada to live with her father.

In 2018, LaRoche sent out a text message claiming Schroder had friended her on Facebook, she was doing well in Nevada, and she had “forgiven them.”

Evidence was presented that the defendant sent a photo that was purportedly Schroeder, happy in her new life; though, her children previously tested that they knew the person in the photo was not Schroeder.

So why lie to her family?

LaRoche claimed she was trying to get some peace on the issue. She had one son, in particular, who would not let the matter rest.

He “brought it up over and over, taunting her,” she said, and added she just “wanted it to go away.”

In fact, during one interview at Schroeder’s house — she was then living in Florida — her son walked in and encouraged her to just tell the truth.

Her ex-husband also threatened to go to the police about Schroeder.

Previous testimony

LaRoche’s allegations about the young housekeeper were refuted by her children, who said they did not see men come to visit.

While the defendant described the acrimony in the house as though it were mutual, as though she and Schroeder had fights, the children described their mother using violence against the young woman and abusing her emotionally.

They never saw Schroeder attack anyone or defend themselves.

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