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Lamar Johnson’s dream of walking his daughter down the aisle is fulfilled for exonerated Missouri man

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Kiera Barrow was just 5-months-old when her father Lamar Johnson was locked up for a crime he didn’t commit. After a nearly three-decade legal battle Johnson was exonerated. He walked out of a St. Louis, Missouri, courthouse as a free man on Feb. 14, 2023, Valentine’s Day. 

Johnson’s exoneration came at a very meaningful time for his youngest daughter.  

“I’m getting married in April of this year,” Barrow told “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty through tears. “It would just mean so much to me … for him to be able to give me away.”  

Barrow got her wish. On April 21, 2023, a beautiful spring day, Johnson walked his daughter down the aisle.

Lamar Johnson and Kiera Barrow
Lamar Johnson with his youngest daughter, Kiera Barrow, on her wedding day.

Ricky Kidd


Barrow said she always knew her father was innocent. In 1995, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the shooting of his friend, Markus Boyd. Johnson was just 21 years old at the time. Boyd, 25, had been shot to death by two gunmen on his St. Louis porch on Oct. 30, 1994. 

Johnson had an alibi: his girlfriend at the time, and Kiera’s mother, Erika Barrow. She told investigators he was with her the entire night of the shooting, except for five minutes, not long enough even to have traveled to the crime scene, about three miles away.  

Law enforcement never spoke with Erika Barrow. But they did question an eyewitness, Greg Elking, who said two men had attacked the victim. Elking later picked Johnson out of a lineup, and his testimony was largely responsible for Johnson’s conviction in 1995. 

Elking later recanted, and after Johnson’s conviction, two other men confessed to the crime. Despite all this, decades passed and Johnson remained behind bars. 

“The problem is, I don’t know what else to do,” Johnson told Moriarty during a 2021 prison interview. “I mean, what else is needed?” 

Moriarty has been following Johnson’s story for several years. She reports on the case in “Lamar Johnson: Standing in Truth,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, April 29, at 10/9c on CBS, and streaming on Paramount +.

In his first and only television interview, Elking tells his story.  Elking was with Boyd the night he died. They were sitting together on Boyd’s porch, when Elking says two masked men, with only their eyes visible, suddenly flew up the steps and shot his friend.

“It was the most horrifying thing I ever seen in my life,” he told Moriarty. “The third shot, I kind of seen Markus’ soul just go.” 

Elking said he only got a look at one of the attackers, and even so, he could only see his eyes because of the mask. When police brought Elking in for questioning, he was shown a lineup three times that included Lamar Johnson, and did not identify him. 

Yet, he finally said he was able to identify him, and testified about it at Johnson’s trial in 1995. At the time, Elking claimed he could identify Johnson only by the look of his eyes.

“You didn’t know at all, did you?” Moriarty asked Elking.  

“I didn’t know,” Elking replied. 

Elking alleged that he felt pressured by detectives to make an identification. He said, at first, he refused. However, he said investigators told him that his own life was in danger. They told him that Johnson was a violent man who may have been involved in as many as six other murders, Elking said. These claims have never been substantiated, and Johnson has never been charged with any other murder.  

The lead detective on the case, Joseph Nickerson, has denied under oath that he pressured Elking into identifying Johnson.

“I lied on the testimony,” Elking told Moriarty. “I lied because I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“48 Hours” also spoke with the prosecutor who decided to put Elking on the stand. Dwight Warren was a St. Louis circuit attorney in 1995.  

He told Moriarty: “I believed Mr. Elking, because I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘I want to know if he did it, tell me you’re sure of your identification. Please tell me the truth, because I don’t want to go and charge somebody who’s not guilty.'” 

When Moriarty asked what Elking replied, Warren explained: “Well, quote end quote, I couldn’t tell you, but he told me he was telling the truth that he, he knew who did the shooting.”

Warren continued: “I presented the evidence that I had, and a jury convicted him.” 

APTOPIX Wrongful Conviction Missouri
Lamar Johnson, center and his attorneys react on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, after St. Louis Circuit Judge David Mason vacated his murder conviction during a hearing in St. Louis, Mo. 

Christian Gooden / AP


Nearly three decades after that conviction, Johnson was finally granted an innocence hearing. Elking took the stand in a St. Louis courtroom in December 2022, facing Johnson for the first time since his trial all those years ago.  

Elking testified that he lied under oath and couldn’t identify Johnson. A man from Boyd’s neighborhood, James “B.A.” Howard, took the stand and testified that he and a friend were the real killers. Two months later, Missouri Circuit Court Judge David Mason exonerated Johnson, and he walked out of the courtroom a free man that day.

Now, Kiera Barrow will finally get to enjoy her father-daughter relationship in a whole new way — in person.  

“He’s a really good man,” Barrow told Moriarty.  

Despite her father being sent away before Barrow could even walk, the two formed a special bond while he was in prison.  

“I think that, just despite everything that he has experienced, who he is and who he shows up as, it is just — it’s remarkable,” she said. 

The day after his release, Johnson told Moriarty that he considers himself a blessed man.  

“It was like a weight had just come off of me,” Johnson said. “Just the vindication, just that somebody had finally heard me.” 



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Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, on shaky ground; Colorado deputies hailed as heroes for fiery home rescue

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Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, targeted in possible Iran-backed cyberattack, sources say

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Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was recently notified that he was the target of a potential Iran-backed cyberattack, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News.

The apparent hackers targeted his communications, but whether they succeeded and how much access they had to the data is still being investigated, the people said.

The FBI declined to comment. CBS News had also reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

The news of Iran’s potential targeting of Patel was first reported by Semafor.

This comes after months of warnings from the FBI and other federal agencies of Iranian cyber activity targeting Trump campaign staff leading up the 2024 presidential election. In September, Justice Department prosecutors charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with launching a broad hacking campaign against U.S. officials, including those close to Trump.

In August, Microsoft said that Iran was increasing its efforts to influence the November election, and in one case had targeted a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack. 

Trump and his allies, including members of his first administration, have been targets of Iran since the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, and U.S. officials continued to warn of those cyberattack campaigns in recent months.

The 44-year-old Patel served in intelligence and defense roles in Trump’s first term, including chief of staff to the secretary of defense. He was also designated by Trump to be a representative to the National Archives and Records Administration and fought a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case

He is an attorney and staunch Trump loyalist who rose to prominence as an aide to former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, fighting the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

He served on Trump’s National Security Council, then as a senior adviser to acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, and later as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.  



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Trump considering replacing Hegseth with DeSantis for defense secretary post, sources say

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Reaction to Pete Hegseth’s latest controversy


Senate Republicans hedge on Pete Hegseth support after latest controversy

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President-elect Donald Trump is considering selecting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as his pick for defense secretary to potentially replace embattled Fox News host Pete Hegseth, two sources familiar with the transition told CBS News Tuesday night. 

This comes after Trump and DeSantis attended a memorial for fallen law enforcement officers Tuesday in Florida. 

The Wall Street Journal was first to report this story. 

This is a developing story and will be updated. 



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