Episode
Teenager Murdered AT WORK by Obsessed Coworker
- Podcast
- TRUE CRIME with Bratterstein
- Published
- Jul 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1994
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/true-crime-with-bratterstein-7162898/episodes/teenager-murdered-at-work-by-obsessed-coworker/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-with-bratterstein-7162898/teenager-murdered-at-work-by-obsessed-coworker.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
As always, thank you for hanging out and remembering Riley Whitelaw with me today. In June 2022, 17‑year‑old Colorado Springs high‑school student Riley Whitelaw went to her part‑time job at a Walgreens and never came home. When she didn’t return from a 15‑minute break, her manager went looking for her and found Riley dead on the floor of the store’s break room, with blood pooled around her and dozens of wounds to her neck and body. Detectives soon focused on 28‑year‑old coworker Joshua Johnson. Riley had already complained that Johnson made her uncomfortable and asked to be scheduled away from him, but when her hours increased their shifts overlapped again. Surveillance footage showed Johnson stacking plastic bins to block the camera’s view of the break room, and an autopsy later revealed 42 sharp‑force injuries and defensive wounds to Riley’s hands, along with “asphyxial wounding” from a lack of oxygen, consistent with a combination of stabbing and strangling. Johnson was arrested the next day walking along I‑25; prosecutors argued he’d become fixated on Riley and killed her over an unreturned crush, pointing to a multi‑tool with both their DNA that they said was used in the attack. In October 2023, a jury needed barely an hour of deliberation to find Johnson guilty of first‑degree murder, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Riley’s name now lives on through an art scholarship and, in Colorado law, through “Riley’s Law,” which was signed by the governor to better protect the identities of underage crime victims and witnesses in public records.