John Rairdon

This is bit of a strange case. In some ways it is much like the Susan Smith case in where one of the people spearheading the search for the missing is the one responsible for their death. In other ways I have to be left wondering about possible mental issues involving the defendant in this case. The latter may never be resolved as I am one of those who believes that no matter what position each side in a case takes they can always find an “expert” to agree with them. I have seen many cases in which one side or another have all but “expert shopped” until they did find such a person. There have been at least a few cases in which the prosecution was “caught” per se doing this.

Now, before I get any further I should state that whether I believe the defendant in this case has mental issues or not does not change the fact that I believe he was responsible for the crime he was convicted of committing. Although he confessed to the police and they seemingly had the evidence to prove this to be true he soon began stating that he was coerced into confessing to a crime that he claims he is unsure that he committed. This is not an uncommon claim among those who have confessed to a crime and so that alone is not why I question his mental stability. As you read on you will see other things that may too have you questioning this.

On May 20, 1985 thirteen year old Sarah Rairdon failed to return to her Underwood Minnesota home. Underwood is a very small community. The 2010 census showed that only 314 people lived in the town. According to previous census records the population in 1980 was nearly the same. By all descriptions it is a small farming community with lots of fields and space.

Sarah's parents, John and Linda divorced when she was very little. I have found only a small amount of information on this through a documentary and my research. The documentary I watched indicated that Sarah was an only child and that her stepmother, Marilyn came into her marriage with John with ten children. My research indicated differently. According to what I found John and Linda had five children, Sarah being the only girl. Upon their divorce in the early 1970's John retained custody of all of the children. This seems to be an oddity, especially in that time period but I found little information as to what caused the divorce and only that Linda, for reasons I could not determine, was not involved in the lives of her children. I did see an article was written after Sarah's murder that contained an interview with Linda but I could not fully access it so I cannot say what the article stated.

At any rate John married Marilyn in 1975 when Sarah was about three years old. My research indicated that Marilyn had four children of her own and over the next decade John and Marilyn would have two children together. This made the total number of children between them as eleven and it seems that at least ten of them were living in the Rairdon home. I cannot tell you the ages of all of the children but I can say that one of Marilyn's sons was named Jeff Barry and at the time of Sarah's death in 1985 he was sixteen years old. I can also say that at that time one of John and Marilyn's children, Matthew was about seven. However, my research indicates that Matthew was not living in the home in 1985. Matthew died in 2005 at the age of twenty-seven and according to his obituary he was injured in an auto accident at the age of three and in 1983 he went to live in a “treatment center” and then later to a group home where he would be involved in things such as the Special Olympics. While I never heard of anything involving Matthew's issues on the documentary I can only imagine the stress of his issues brought to the home on top of all of the other children.

I found the issues revolving around Matthew interesting. In fairness I had stumbled across his obituary when doing a later search on his mother, Marilyn. I found no mention of him specifically in the many articles surrounding Sarah's 1985 murder or the many “anniversary” articles that have been written since. However, it was later widely reported that her father John would confess that he began sexually molesting Sarah when she was eight years old. She would have turned eight in February of 1980, Matthew would have turned three in December of 1980. I am curious that those time period seem so close to each other. I am also curious to know which may have occurred first. I have learned while doing these blogs when using ages in articles or things of the like and not specific dates there leaves an opening of interpretation because the ages are not always completely accurate. I never found any other information pertaining to Matthew or his accident but as I said, I find this interesting. Not only do I wonder what the circumstances were involving the auto accident I also wonder what impact having a small disabled child had on the household. Marilyn would later say that she had no idea that her husband was molesting his daughter. While many have said they found this to be unreasonable I am not so sure about that. Seemingly none of the other children have claimed to have been molested by John but at least one of them told investigators that they had “walked in” on it happening at some point. I highly suspect that this was a very chaotic household with all of the children. As far as finances little information was available other than to say that John worked for a company that repaired tires, many for farming equipment. This does not necessarily sound like a very financially secure job to support so many but as is sometimes the case there may be much more to that than I was able to find.

There were reports by witnesses who would say that they had seen Sarah walking towards the direction of her home after she had attended some after school activities. At least one person stopped and offered her a ride and claimed that she declined the ride saying that her dad would be picking her up at some point. And yet, John Rairdon was not on the investigators radar for quite some time. Several of the family members, including Marilyn and at least one of her children had gone to search for Sarah when they became worried that she had not returned home. It was alleged that John had done the same, separately and alone, and that was believed for quite some time. Investigators had asked for alibis for many of the older family members and early in the investigation they seemed solid. John had told them that he was repairing a farm equipment tire for a farmer several miles from the area in which it was believed that Sarah disappeared. Well... it seems that he kind of told him that. Later in the investigation they would discover that he had in fact helped with a tire for that particular farmer but that it had not occurred on the farmer's actual farm that was several miles from where it was believed Sarah had disappeared but only a few miles away. But again, this would not be discovered for quite some time.

John was instrumental in leading the search for his daughter and finding resources in finding her. Just a few months prior a non-profit organization had begun placing the pictures of missing children on the sides of milk cartons. Sarah became one of the earliest profiled in this manner.

The case appeared to go fairly cold in a short period of time. It is not completely clear how much investigators really knew about John's relationship with his daughter prior to her body being found some six weeks after she disappeared on July 6^th. A farmer found her body, which was significantly decomposed, some twenty-five miles away from Underwood. However, there was one thing found of significance. In Sarah's shirt was a round hole that seemed to coincide with a hole on her body even though that area too had decomposed around the area. Investigators believed she had been stabbed with some sort of round, blunt weapon.

As I stated it is unclear how much investigators knew about John's relationship with Sarah prior to the discovery of her body but it did not take them long afterwards to learn. At some point Marilyn's sixteen year old son, Jeff Barry had been a suspect and was questioned about his relationship with Sarah. It appears that it was Jeff who informed investigators about John having sexual relations with his daughter. Also, a notebook or journal belonging to Sarah had been discovered very early in the investigation but for some reason had never fully been looked at. Inside the journal were some strange writings by her that would later raise the antennas of the investigators. It does not appear that her writings completely stated what was going on but they did indicate that there was more going on in Sarah's life than anyone knew. Jeff was cleared fairly quickly once he was a suspect for a few reasons. Apparently his whereabouts at the time of Sarah's murder could be accounted for and secondly he did not have a drivers license or a car which would have prevented him from being able to move the body so far from the area.

A month after her body was discovered investigators brought John in for questioning again. It appears that he all but readily admitted to molesting Sarah from the age of eight but initially denied that he had anything to do with her murder. As the interview went on and investigators told John they knew he was closer to the scene of her disappearance John began changing his story. He informed investigators that over the last several months Sarah had began fighting against his advances towards her and had done so the day prior to her disappearance. He would continue on to say that on May 20^th she again fought against his advances and that in the midst of this he had retrieved an awl from his truck and had stabbed her with it. He told investigators that he hid her body in a nearby barn, finished up his day at work and returned home. By then it was nearly 8:00 and Marilyn and the other children were concerned that Sarah had not come home. Marilyn and Jeff had gone out looking for her while he stayed at the home. However, after they left he too then left and retrieved her body, taking it to the area in which she was later found.

This was enough for investigators to arrest and charge John. It appears however that while he never retracted his statements about sexually abusing Sarah he did attempt to retract his statement involving her death. Sometimes he would say that he was coerced into making a confession to something he did not do; sometimes he would say he confessed to something that he was not sure that he did; sometimes he would say that Marilyn and Jeff helped him dispose of Sarah's body. It appears that throughout the years he has more consistently stated that he does not remember what happened, making it possible that he was responsible but still refusing to fully accept responsibility.

For her part Marilyn would claim that not only did she not know, or even suspect John was involved in Sarah's death but she was unaware of any sexual abuse going on. Initially after he was arrested she would make statements indicating she intended to stand by him, not condoning what he had done but indicating that she believed there may be some mental issues going on. However, it does not seem that she continued that stance for very long because by December of that year she had filed for divorce.

In January of 1986 John pleaded guilty to two counts of “intrafamilial sex abuse” which in lay terms was incest. It appears that he was not sentenced until after he faced trial later that month on the charges of both first and second degree murder. In February he was convicted on all counts and the following month he was given a life term for the murder charges (those were mandatory) and given eleven and a half years on the sexual abuse charges to be served consecutively. This meant if he lived long enough to serve his life term, or those charges were successfully appealed he would then begin serving his time for the abuse charges.

At his trial psychiatrists for the state testified that they believed John's alleged memory lapse was a ploy and they did not believe him. Of course the defense had their own experts to say they did believe he had mental issues and that his memory could have and was hampered. Neither of these positions were really evidence of any kind prove one way or another if he had actually murdered his daughter. I did find it interesting again though that throughout all of this research I had heard nothing about the significance of having a disabled child in the home and later living in a group home or the stress that it could have mentally caused. Then again, while I believe it is significant that the abuse on Sarah seemingly began about the time of Matthew's accident the trial was focused on the murder and less on the abuse since he had already pleaded guilty to those charges. I also do not give a lot of weight to the state experts and I have a personal reason behind that.

I have a brother in law who committed the crime of arson. There is a significant family history of mental illness and at the time of his crime while he was not officially diagnosed with anything everyone in the family knew there were issues with him. After he committed his crime he was evaluated by a group of doctors who decided that during the examination he was “pretending” to be “crazy,” therefore he was not. I have no doubt that he went into the examination portraying himself as being “crazy” in a way in which he thought he should act. However, reality of the situation is that if he had gone in and been himself he would have in all likelihood been found to have issues. In fact, once he was incarcerated for his crime and in prison he was diagnosed with mental issues and part of his release mandates that he continue medication.

After his conviction John's attorney's filed an appeal but for reasons that were not adequately described or understood they would later withdraw the appeal. It appears that his first appeal then would not be filed until 1996, some ten years after his conviction. The appeal was denied but part of the appeal revolved around what the attorney's claimed was prosecutor misconduct. I agree with the courts in their denial and yet I still found the argument interesting. Part of the argument stated that the prosecutor had made comments about John's behavior and personality to the jury that the attorney's felt was inflammatory. In fairness the statements I saw in the appeal that were being commented on were things you see every day in court cases. The state was accusing him of molesting his daughter, murdering her when she rebuked his advances and pointed to his behavior and ability to “fool” the community when he was allegedly attempting to find her. The appeal also argued that the prosecutor had failed to include evidence that could have linked his stepson, Jeff Barry to the crime. The courts ruled that there was a lack of “foundation” to that alleged evidence, therefore the trial judge and prosecutor had been right to exclude it.

Where I disagree with the courts revolves around their argument that he was all but time barred from making these arguments. I say this because if there was a clear violation of rights or laws then in general I disagree with time barred arguments. We have seen case after case in which new evidence has come to light or new valid arguments are found. Evidence or evidence of concealment sometimes takes years before it is discovered and in my opinion that should not be held against a defendant.

By March of 1986, some three months after she divorced John, Marilyn had already remarried. Just after his conviction Marilyn was indicted on a charge of “knowingly permitting child abuse.” Apparently a grand jury had decided that she knew of the abuse by John to Sarah and had failed to protect her or report it. I made several searches and found nothing more on this so I cannot say that the charges were ever followed up on. However it was through this married name that had led me to the information about Matthew.

In the end I do believe that John was responsible for the murder of his daughter but as I said early on I question if there not undiagnosed or discovered mental issues. The fact that he was taken to trial eight months after her disappearance, six months after the discovery of her body and five months after his arrest also leads me to believe that a full investigation into those issues were looked at.

I believe in prison being a place of punishment but I also believe it should be a place of help and rehabilitation also. I do not believe in a “one sentence fits all” mentality when it comes to sentences or mandatory sentences. What may be teach one person a “lesson” or punish them may not be the same to someone else. Keeping prisoners behind bars without any resources to rehabilitate them can, and often does, make inmates more of a danger when they return to society than they were when they went in.

After all these years it is unlikely that John will ever be released and the way resources work in prison that is probably a good thing. A few years ago John did an interview that may have likely sealed any chance he would have ever gotten at parole, if it was possible. When discussing his daughter he stated that he “rarely” thinks of her. This infuriated many of her friends and family as well as those in the community. The question left is if he said this because he is evil to the core or because he has issues that have not been resolved during his prison time.