New revelations cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson accidentally killed himself.

Nina Martin
Features Editor
Nina Martin (she/her) is the features editor for Reveal. She develops high-impact investigative reporting projects for Reveal’s digital and audio platforms and television and print partners. Previously, she was a reporter at ProPublica, covering sex and gender issues, and worked as an editor and/or reporter at San Francisco magazine, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Health magazine and BabyCenter magazine. Her Lost Mothers project for ProPublica and NPR examining maternal mortality in the U.S. led to sweeping change to maternal health policy at the state and federal levels and won numerous awards. Martin is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 6: Mississippi Justice
There have long been concerns about the quality of investigations into suspicious deaths of young Black men in the state, especially when police are involved.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 5: Star Crossed
Billey Joe Johnson was a Black boy dating a White girl. That made the story behind his death even more complicated.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 4: The Investigator
When a detective with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether Billey Joe Johnson’s case should be reopened.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 3: The Autopsy
The autopsy of Billey Joe Johnson helped a grand jury conclude that his death was an accident. But an independent review of the autopsy came to a different conclusion.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 2: The Aftermath
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system buckles as authorities fail to follow up on inconsistencies in the official story.
Mississippi Goddam Chapter 1: The Promise
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies.
Medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction. But in many states, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns.
The Post-Roe Health Care Crisis
Abortion bans are confusing doctors about what’s still legal. Reveal investigates the effects on pregnant women and the growing influence of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.
The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion
Now that the fall of Roe v. Wade has ended the constitutional right to abortion, many in the religious right have a new goal: undermining trust in, and limiting access to, hormonal contraception – including the pill.