Newlywed who killed husband pleads guilty to second-degree murder

A Montana newlywed accused of killing her husband in Glacier National Park pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder after four days of trial -- half the time her marriage lasted.

Jordan Linn Graham, 22, accepted a plea bargain in the July death of her husband, Cody L. Johnson, 25. The plea was announced in federal court in Missoula, Mont., before the case could go to the jury, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office told the Los Angeles Times.

Prosecutors agreed to drop a first-degree murder charge and a count of making a false statement to authorities.

The agreement means Graham, of Kalispell, faces a maximum of life in prison when she is sentenced March 27, the spokeswoman said, adding that Graham was taken into custody to await sentencing.

Graham had reported her husband missing July 8, saying he left the night before after getting a cellphone call that upset him. But since their June 29 wedding, she had been confiding in a friend about how unhappy she was, and said she planned to talk to her husband about it.

On July 7, they went for a hike on a remote trail in a part of the park called the Loop. Johnson plunged to his death, and she came home alone without calling authorities. The day after reporting him missing, she led authorities to his body, which was wedged in such a remote spot that a helicopter had to be called in to aid recovery.

When the ranger told Graham it was unusual that she had found the body, she replied, “It was a place he wanted to see before he died,” according to an FBI affidavit in the case. “He would come here with friends to drive fast when his friends were visiting from out of town.”

In accepting her guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy told Graham to recount what had happened when Johnson died amid the rugged beauty of the national park.

She said she told her husband that she wasn’t happy and wasn’t feeling as she thought she should after they got married. She said they argued on a ledge, Johnson grabbed her arm, she brushed his arm away and pushed him.

“I wasn’t thinking about where we were.... I just pushed,” she told the judge, according to media reports from the courtroom.

The case drew national attention with its overtones of doubt in a new marriage, a form of buyer’s remorse that has arisen in many relationships.

The location, too, drew notice: the isolated mountains of Glacier National Park at a spot off Going-to-the-Sun Road, the only road through the park, which crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass.

The trial began Monday, and the defense wrapped up its case Thursday without Graham taking the stand.

The defense had introduced pictures and videos of Graham smiling as she had her hair done and tried on her borrowed wedding dress, then videos of the June 29 wedding and the couple’s first dance. Witnesses talked about her humanity and how she loved the children for whom she cared as a nanny.