Ex-wife of Bluffdale murder suspect said judges denied protective order requests

BLUFFDALE — Before Jacob Holt Johnson was accused of killing Summer Roney and leaving her body in a car at a Bluffdale gas station, Johnson's ex-wife said she endured years of emotional abuse in their marriage, and when she attempted last year to secure protective orders amid her ex's increasingly disturbing behavior, judges denied her requests.

Christina Owens spoke in detail Thursday about the nine-and-a-half-year marriage with Johnson and what she said were failures by the criminal justice system to protect her children.

"I knew that he is capable of murder," Owens said. "I knew he was capable of this and I reached out to people and they didn't listen."

The marriage

Owens said it wasn't all bad at first when Johnson regularly showered her with compliments and acted sweetly.

In their pictures together, she acknowledged they looked the part of a happy couple.

"I had the biggest smile on my face the whole time," Owens said. "Honestly, our marriage was hell on earth."

Owens said from the very early days her ex-husband struggled with addictions to alcohol and drugs, and those addictions fueled his paranoia, as well as jealousy and attempts to control her.

"I stopped going to the grocery store," Owens said. "He was convinced if I was going to the grocery store, I must be going to meet up with a boyfriend."

Instead, Owens said it was her ex-husband who cheated through multiple affairs. She said he also routinely gaslit her, and during the pandemic, he installed cameras "at every angle" of their house.

"He would accuse me of plotting to have him killed," she said.

Last year

Owens finalized a divorce in 2022, but as she continued to navigate custody with her ex last year, she said Johnson's behavior grew increasingly disturbing.

In May, she said her ex-husband left their children home alone all night and came home with apparent injuries. Owens said Johnson claimed he had been jumped in Herriman.

"My 10-year-old son came home and said, 'So, mom, dad had a huge cut under his eye and he had scratch marks all over the front of his neck and said he got beat up by some gang members in the middle of the night."

Owens said she feared it was possible a woman may have been attacked at that point.

"You don't get scratch marks all over the front of your neck by getting beaten up by men," Owens said. "You do that when you are assaulting a woman."

She said her ex then had what she described as a "complete meltdown" in August.

"He called me and my children and said that Summer (Roney) had tried to kill him, that they were in his home, and he had knife marks on his face, that he had all of these wounds all over his body from trying to get them out of his house," Owens said.

Owens said Roney was a woman her ex-husband had seen on-and-off since their separation and his outlandish claims came at a time of other hallucinations.

"He was throwing knives at the door at invisible people and that's horrifying," Owens said. "That could have been my children."

Owens said someone else called police on Johnson two days later.

"He was out on his front lawn fighting an invisible person and screaming and yelling," Owens said. "The police came, and he admitted to the police at that time that he had six drinks and he had been using cocaine, but there were these demons that were after him."

Attempts to secure protective orders

Because of the suspected drug use and hallucinations in August, Owens said she attempted to obtain a protective order for her children.

"It was denied," Owens said. "The 4th District Provo court denied that because they said that it was mental health, and he should be protected. My children needed to be protected from those knives that were being thrown."

Owens said another disturbing chain of events unfolded in November.

"He got in (my kids') faces and said, 'You guys, Summer and her brother are here and they are going to murder you guys,'" Owens recalled. "He took them outside behind his house in a field and pointed to a window, my daughter's window, and said, 'Can you see those dark figures in your room?' 'You can't see them because they hide in the walls.'"

Owens said when she was prompted to show up at the house, her ex had backpacks prepared by the door to take the children "into hiding."

She said she persuaded Johnson to keep himself safe and not take the kids, and then she subsequently contacted child protective services workers, as well as once again attempted to secure a protective order — this time through a different court.

"This particular judge at the justice court — I thought at least he's going to hear us," Owens said. "There's no way. We have all of this evidence. We have the DCFS preliminary report where my son says that he's wobbling and drinking and driving with them, that he's seeing invisible people, where my daughter is saying he's drinking and driving with us every day that he has us and we feel scared of our own dad. They had all of this information. The judge would not even review it. He just said, 'This sounds like a custody stunt so you can take care of this in the other 4th District Court.'"

Owens said when Johnson entered in-patient drug and mental health treatment in December, she was able to get a judge to grant supervised visitation. According to Owens, Johnson walked away from the care facility around Christmas Eve and a week later he was arrested on suspicion of murder in Roney's death.

"She was so brutally murdered that they couldn't tell," said Owens as she turned emotional. "I had police banging on my door that almost cried when I opened the door, and they asked if my children were alive. That could have been my children."

Hope for Change

Owens said she was sharing her story in hopes of raising awareness about emotional abuse inside relationships and marriages and also in hopes of getting judges, lawmakers, and other decision-makers to pay attention to what she views as a significant shortcoming in the justice system.

"My hope and my prayer and my ask is for people to have eyes that see, for judges to have eyes that see, that are willing to look at the evidence in front of them," Owens said. "We need change in this world. These children need to be protected."

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