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HUNTSVILLE — In a special called session here Tuesday morning, a grand jury indicted Douglas V. Whisnant for the murder of his ex-wife, Jean Johnson.

The indictment was handed down by the Scott County Grand Jury just two days after the one-year anniversary of Johnson’s disappearance from her Ditney Trail residence.

Whisnant was indicted on charges of first degree murder, especially aggravated kidnapping and theft in connection with the case, culminating a year-long investigation by the TBI and Scott County Sheriff’s Department.

Announcing the indictment Tuesday afternoon, District Attorney General Wm. Paul Phillips praised the tenacity of the Sheriff’s Department and TBI.

Whisnant’s bail has been set at $750,000, but he will remain in federal custody until prosecution of weapons charges against him has been completed. He is accused of illegally being in possession of firearms as a convicted felon. A trial on those charges is scheduled for May in U.S. District Court in Knoxville.

Phillips, whose office successfully sought the criminal indictment on the murder charge, said that the state’s case against Whisnant will commence once federal authorities have completed their case.

Whisnant, who has been in custody since March 9, 2007, had earlier had charges filed against him by the state. However, those charges — the state’s version of the charges the federal government ultimately filed against Whisnant — were dismissed in General Sessions Court last year at the recommendation of the D.A.’s office, after it was learned that federal prosecutors were seeking an indictment against Whisnant.

The case against Whisnant will be unusual, in that authorities have not recovered Johnson’s body. However, it is not unheard of for suspects to be prosecuted for murder without a body. In a short telephone interview with the Independent Herald, Phillips said that he has prosecuted a murder case under such a scenario during his tenure as the Eighth Judicial District’s attorney general. He referenced a 1996 case in Nashville, in which prominent attorney Perry March was convicted of 2nd degree murder of his wife, who disappeared in 1996 and whose body was never recovered.

THE DISAPPEARANCE

Johnson, who was 66 at the time of her disappearance, was last heard from on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007. Reportedly, she was to have traveled to Stearns, Kentucky, to spend the night with her boyfriend, and meet with her brother, Carl Harness, at a Kentucky flea market the following day. However, family members said she returned home to her Ditney Trail residence after her mother became ill. She spoke to Harness by telephone for approximately 10 minutes at around 9 p.m. that evening, the last known contact she had with friends or relatives. She was first reported missing that same evening.

Four days later (Feb. 28), after the time lapse before a person can officially be reported missing, Johnson’s daughter made that official report at the Scott County Sheriff’s Department, stating, “My mom’s normal routine of contacting her friends on a daily basis has not happened since 2-24-07.” That report was the first time Whisnant’s name publically surfaced in connection with Johnson’s disappearance, as her daughter stated on the report, “Ex-boyfriend Doug Whisnant has made threats against her and she had a restraining order against him.”

That same day, Johnson’s Ford Windstar was discovered in the parking lot of the old Food City building in Oneida, where it had apparently been parked since the morning following her disappearance.

Video footage from surveillance cameras at nearby McDonald’s and First Trust & Savings Bank revealed what appeared to be a male individual in a white dually pickup delivering a green Jeep Cherokee to the parking lot at around 9:20 a.m. on the morning of Feb. 25, 2007. An hour later, the video footage showed a male individual parking the van in the parking lot and leaving in the Cherokee.

The discovery heightened the investigation into Johnson’s disappearance, with authorities focusing their probe on her ex-husband almost immediately. Motor vehicle records showed that Whisnant owned both a green Jeep Cherokee and a white Dodge dually.

At a news conference two days following the discovery of the vehicle, Sheriff Anthony Lay never mentioned Whisnant as a suspect in Johnson’s disappearance, but said foul play was being looked at as a possibility, adding, “We’re looking and hoping and praying for the best.”

An affidavit filed by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Steve Vinsant days later revealed that authorities already suspected murder, and that they suspected Whisnant to be responsible. In the affidavit, which was filed in request of a warrant to search Whisnant’s Ditney Trail property, Agent Vinsant stated, “This search warrant affidavit is to obtain evidence in the disappearance of Jean Johnson . . . the affiant [Vinsant] believes that Johnson has been murdered.”

Vinsant’s affidavit revealed that circumstances at Johnson’s home led to the belief that foul play had been involved. Her front door was standing open. Family members said she never left home for an extended period without turning the thermostat of her home down to 65 degrees; it was discovered set on 75 degrees. A security camera she had attached to the exterior of her home was missing, along with a VCR cassette tapeto which it recorded.

On March 8, Whisnant — who was under surveillance by Sheriff’s Department officers — was arrested after leaving his home. He was charged with criminal trespass, a warrant that Johnson had taken out against Whisnant 12 days before her disappearance.

The search for Johnson’s body continued in earnest over the next few weeks. At a hastily called news conference one week after Whisnant was arrested, Sheriff Lay acknowledged that hope of a positive outcome was fading.

“There has been a big time lapse and we’re feeling a bit more on the negative side as far as finding [Johnson] in a positive manner,” Lay said shortly before dozens of law enforcement officers and volunteer firefighters embarked on a foot search in the rugged area surrounding Whisnant’s property.

That weekend, the search — described for the first time as being for a body — focused on ponds in the neighborhood, as Scott County Rescue Squad personnel were employed to assist the Sheriff’s Department.

Over the next several months, investigators continued to follow up on leads to Johnson’s possible whereabouts. In July 2007, a team from Texas EquuSearch traveled to Scott County to aid investigators with the search of a deep hole of water along Buffalo Creek near the Ditney Trail community. All of the searching, however, failed to turn up evidence of the missing woman.

A SHORT MARRIAGE

Circuit Court records indicate that Whisnant and Johnson were married on May 26, 2005, when she was 64 and he 58.

That marriage came just three weeks after Whisnant was arrested by law enforcement for allegedly being in violation of Tennessee’s sexual offender registry requirements. The arrest — carried out by law enforcement from various agencies participating in a newly-formed Sex Offender Registry Enforcement (SORE) team — was followed by a search of Whisnant’s property, which allegedly uncovered a stockpile of illegal weapons and munitions.

Many of those charges were later dismissed, but Whisnant did plead guilty to three counts of feloniously possessing prohibited weapons in July 2005.

By September, Johnson and Whisnant were separated. And divorce proceedings had been finalized by Dec. 28, 2005.

But the two apparently remained friendly after their divorce. In a statement to investigators before his arrest, Whisnant said, “I spent many nights with Jean before we got married and after, up until early January of 2007. Jean got mad at me and ran me off in January. She was accusing me of having girlfriends.”

Soon thereafter, Johnson began reporting a person or persons harassing her. Statements taken from various persons and made part of the court records indicate that in addition to the windows being shot out of a vehicle belonging to Johnson’s boyfriend and parked at her residence, all four tires on her van were slashed during a trip to a Somerset, Kentucky, flea market.

Police records indicate that Scott County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Gene Yaden stopped by Johnson’s residence on Jan. 17, 2007, to take a report on her male companion’s vehicle being vandalized.

The following day, Johnson traveled to the Scott County Courthouse to apply for an Order of Protection against Whisnant, stating, “I am in fear of my life.” At a hearing six days later, General Sessions Court Judge Jamie Cotton issued a No Contact Order against Whisnant.

Two and a half weeks later, on Feb. 11, Johnson took out a criminal trespass warrant against Whisnant — the warrant eventually used by law enforcement as the basis for his arrest — claiming that she was notified by her neighbor that the neighbor had seen Whisnant parked in Johnson’s yard.

Through the statement made by Whisnant to investigators, Johnson had even told Whisnant that she believed he intended to kill her.

“She stopped at my house on January 11, 2007. She accused me of bothering her. She wanted me to leave her alone. She told me I wanted to kill her,” Whisnant stated.

But, he added, she had told him in a later telephone conversation that “she wanted me back.” And, he said, he knew nothing of her disappearance.

“I don’t know anything about Jean’s disappearance,” he stated. “I don’t know where Jean has gone, unless she had a boyfriend. She was due insurance money for an accident in Kentucky. She may have taken a long vacation. But, she should be back. I don’t know of any enemies she had. I don’t know of anyone who would hurt her.”

MAKING THEIR CASE

In his statement to investigators, Whisnant stated that he had been home all day on Feb. 24, and that on Feb. 25 — the morning the van turned up at the Oneida parking lot — he had driven to DJ’s Pitstop in Fairview for his customary Sunday morning breakfast biscuit.

But according to an affidavit filed by Vinsant, employees at the store told authorities that Whisnant typically stopped by for a breakfast biscuit on Sunday mornings, but that he had not stopped on the morning of Feb. 25.

Video surveillance from the McDonald’s security camera revealed a van similar to Johnson’s van driving through the drive-thru at the restaurant shortly after 10 a.m. that morning, just minutes before Johnson’s van would be parked at Food City nearby. However, investigators said that the video footage did not reveal the driver’s face.

Vinsant wrote in an affidavit that there was no obvious evidence of physical violence inside Johnson’s van, which was sent to a TBI crime lab in Nashville for analysis.

Four residents of the Ditney Trail area told investigators that they were awakened by the sound of a gunshot from the direction of Johnson’s residence at 4 a.m. on the morning of Feb. 25. Two of those residents said that they had observed Whisnant on Sunday morning, standing near what appeared to be a tarp or a bed sheet outside his home.

At Whisnant’s residence the following week, no overwhelming evidence of Johnson’s disappearance were recovered. But, court records indicate that authorities did recover a pink suitcase — like the one missing from Johnson’s home — and a security camera.

Investigators also took swabs of a bathtub drain, as well as wallpaper samplings, which they sent to the TBI crime lab for analysis. Authorities have not said whether that examination revealed any forensic evidence.

While Whisnant was not charged with Johnson’s disappearance at the time, the state did add additional weapons charges against him after allegedly discovering a cache of weapons inside his home, some of which were allegedly stored in a hidden compartment inside an interior wall of the residence.

In mid March 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Whisnant on a charge of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, an indictment that was recommended by ATF agents participating in the search of his home. In light of that indictment — which stemmed from a pair of Ruger 10-22 rifles allegedly recovered from the home — the state’s weapons charges against Whisnant were dropped.

Since that time, Whisnant’s attorneys have protested the method used to recover the evidence against their client, saying that recovery of the weapons by Detective Donnie Anderson — who would later be fired by the Sheriff’s Department and indicted on criminal charges — was not credible, and that the scope of the search exceeded provisions of the search warrant.

Whisnant has maintained his innocence since the time of his arrest.