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Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host, Ann Marie Green, and today we're discussing [music] Sacramento Fire
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Captain Joe Hunter, who you might know from the CBS TV show Survivor. He competed in season 48, and he's going to
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be back again for next year's season, season 50. If you watch the show, you know that Joe talked about the profound
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impact of losing his sister Joanna. Back in 2011, 36-year-old Joanna was found dead in her Vakavville, California home,
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hanging inside a bedroom closet by a bathrobe sash. Her death was ruled a suicide, but her family believes that
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her husband and church pastor Mark Lewis killed her after a history of domestic violence. Now, to this day, Mark Lewis
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has not been charged with any crime relating to the death of Joanna. Joining me now to discuss this case is 48 Hours
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correspondent Natalie Morales, who was the one who reported on this. Natalie, there's there are so many elements to
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this case, so much to talk about. You know, I've done true crime stories now for more than a decade, and I got to say
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for me, and I also know for my crew, the team that worked on this, this is definitely one that stands out. It had
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such an impact on all of us. Probably the most meaningful and heartfelt, I think, in my career. And I've never
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really felt more purpose in telling a story than I have with this one. I am not surprised. As you know, after I
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watched it, I immediately emailed you. I was just my mind was blown. I found myself, you know, speaking to the screen
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over and over again. I want to remind everyone if you haven't listened to this episode of 48 Hours, head on over to
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your podcast feed. You're going to find the full audio of this episode right below this podcast. Go listen. Come on
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back. We're going to have a conversation. So, a bit of a recap for everyone. Since Joanna's death in
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October of 2011, her brother Joe and mother Patricia have never wavered in their belief that Joanna's husband Mark
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killed her and staged the crime scene to look like a suicide. Joe was especially
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close to his big sister Joanna and they often talked about competing together one day on the longrunning CBS series
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Survivor. >> Yes, he and Joanna had loved the show. They talked about competing on the show.
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He was never really thinking he was actually going to apply to be a contestant. But, you know, when he was
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overcome with his grief, he, you know, had lost his sister and then later lost his dad. Um, there was just so much
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trauma that he was dealing with. He was meeting with a counselor at the time and
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the counselor told him, you know, maybe you should do something with with your grief. Here's a clip that didn't make it
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into the hour. Why it was important for him to be a contestant on Survivor [snorts]
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>> and my counselor said to do something really spectacular would be to help you
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manage the situation with Joanna. Just do something for you and her to help close the door. And I thought back and I
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said, she had always mentioned it. She actually was a super fan. Wife is wife is too.
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>> And I thought she did tell me we should do this. And um I thought, "All right, I'll give it a
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shot." So on a whim, I said, "I'm going to give this a shot for her." And it took off. It just was awesome
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feeling. It took off. So [snorts] it, you know, my big sis again helping me out. and it went well and it landed me
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on the show. [laughter] [snorts] >> He said he sent in his audition and he didn't think it was going to go anywhere
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until he got that call back. Um, but he said his his true reason for wanting to be on the show was to bring awareness
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about domestic violence and and wanted to bring some sense of justice to her case and to her death. It's sort of
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stunning to me, maybe because I'm an only child, but how much they look like each other. And I feel like as I watched
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the hour, they began to look more and more like each other, almost like twins. Yeah. And you know, as you said, they
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were very close growing up. She always was sort of the protector as the older sister. Um, and that's why I think he
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struggles so much to this day is that in the end he felt like he couldn't protect
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her from what she was going through. Um, you know, as he said, he had so much regret. You hear that in the episode
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because they had actually had an argument in their last conversation before she died.
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What did they fight about? He thought she was going to leave Mark Lewis and she was so close. Joanna's mother,
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Patricia and Joe said, you know, the year before she died, she was almost going to leave and then she ended up
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going back to him. I I'm not surprised that he's doing Survivor again because he really was kind of a standout
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competitor. It it these reality shows can be cutthroat, but in this case, you have somebody who was just incredibly
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competitive, but incredibly compassionate. I don't know if you remember the episode where I mean, I
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think everybody it's it's the moment that went viral from season 48 where he helped a contestant, Eva, out in in a
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really big way. Um, Eva was the first cast member on Survivor to talk about living with autism. So early in the
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game, she told Joe, I guess she saw him, you know, as this great father always talked about his kids. She felt that she
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could trust him. So she confided in him and it was during a competition on the show that she did become overwhelmed and
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overstimulated and Joe could see that and he went over to her. He crossed tribal lines to be able to do that and
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he took her hands and and held her. It's still still thinking about that moment gets me emotional and it was such an
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incredible moment. Um, so in terms of the case, Joanna's case, she's got this brother who would always look out for
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her and I think that that is one of the things about this particular hour that really stood out to me. I think it
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really sort of reinforced how challenging it is for victims of domestic violence to get out of that
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situation. >> Yeah, that's right. And there had been a history of repeated abuse which was very
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much documented. She had taken out restraining orders against Mark Lewis. So that said, Joe really believes that
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that Mark Lewis killed his sister and then staged the scene to make it look like a suicide, what is called a hidden
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homicide. And we're going to talk about that more in a little bit. But I even asked Joe and Patricia both if she ever
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showed signs of being suicidal. Um, you know, Joe did say she may have been upset. Of course, you know, she was
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going through a lot, but in his heart of hearts, he believed she was ready to leave Mark Lewis. What's interesting is
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investigators did find this empty suitcase in the closet next to her with a note that read, "Take care of the
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dogs." So the investigators thought that was a suicide note. Now Patricia saw the
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note a few weeks later and she vehemently disagreed. She said that when Joanna had come home before, you know,
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she she didn't bring the dogs because Joanna's late father had severe asthma. So Patricia believes that she was just
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in her mind saying, "Take care of the dogs." Um, so an autopsy report determined that the ligature marks on
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her neck were consistent with the suicide. There were no signs of a struggle. Toxicology report comes back.
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It is clean. And the county sheriff's office then closes the case. Right. And I and I asked the Solano County
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Sheriff's Department spokesperson, Captain Jackson Harris, who's in charge of field operations. Now, according to
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to Harris, he pointed out again there was no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of force that another person
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was there even to kill her. Um, but as we reported in the hour, there were no homicide investigators responding to the
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scene. The bedroom was not treated at all like a crime scene. No fingerprints were taken. No DNA was tested. The cell
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phones, cuz there were cell phones in 2011, they were not collected. Um, officers did take pictures of the note
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and they did an external autopsy only, not an internal autopsy, meaning that, you know, they just looked at the
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injury, the liature marks on her neck. >> And they didn't see, you know, any signs
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of struggle on her body. Um, that said, they did do a toxicology test and that all came back clean. So the evidence
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according to the investigators supported a suicide. I think we should remind people too, medical examiners, you know,
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they certainly look at the body, but they also take the additional information that they get from um
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officers who were at the crime scene to help them kind of come to a conclusion. Which then brings me to the history of
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domestic violence. Was that not part of their investigation? >> Right. I, you know, I pressed Captain
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Harris on that. Mark Lewis, this was 15 years prior, was convicted of domestic violence when he uh sent Joanna to the
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hospital with a sprained neck. So, Captain Harris said because this was an incident that happened 15 years prior
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that that would not have been available to the deputy in the field at the time. So, then we learn that a little more
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than 2 years after Joanna's death, Mark Lewis is arrested and he's charged for something else. arson, stalking, and
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conspiracy against another woman who he had started dating, Sarah Noddingham. You spoke to Sarah. What did she say
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about that experience? What did you learn from her? Well, Sarah was a member of the church. Um, and she and Mark were
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friends at first and then the relationship evolved after Joanna's death uh into a romantic relationship.
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She told us that Mark Lewis became more controlling. He would sometimes become a
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little physically rough with her. The final straw, she said, was when she discovered that there were text messages
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that Mark Lewis allegedly sent to an underage girl. That's when she tried to end the relationship. She said at the
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time he wasn't ready for the relationship to be over. um she and her kids had at the time been living with
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her parents and he was calling constantly the house and by 2014 um we then hear of this incident where a um
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Molotov cocktail was thrown in the overnight hours into her parents' home and it lit a fire. I mean, fortunately,
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they they were all able to extinguish the fire before the uh fire department got there, but the police determined
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that Mark had hired three people. The three were picked up that night. They [music] confessed to the act, saying
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that Mark Lewis hired us to do this. He ultimately [music] pleaded no contest to
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the arson and stalking charges, but he was sentenced to eight years in prison, although he served five.
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Welcome back. Well, after serving 5 years of his 8-year sentence for the firebombing of Sarah Noddingham's house,
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Mark Lewis was released on parole. He's currently living in Arizona. He has a new wife. He is working for a plumbing
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and drain cleaning company. And 48 Hours reached out to him several times to see
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if he wanted to respond and participate. Um, he did not respond. And so you and producers actually went to his front
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door. You had a hidden camera. I'm curious about what that was like. And I want people to know that it wasn't about
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sort of catching him off guard. This is about giving him every possible opportunity to respond to these
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accusations. Absolutely. You're absolutely. Thank you so much for pointing that out. this was, you know,
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our intention truly going there was just to get his side of the story and we and
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we tried multiple ways to reach him. We sent him letters. We called people, you know, who were associated with him. We
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tried to call him. Um, we were able to find out though that he was living in Arizona with his new wife's family. And
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we approached him because we wanted to give him that chance. We didn't know even if he would be home. Turned out
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when we arrived there, he was standing outside his front door in the gated area with his wife and his dog.
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>> I knew that, you know, we were in a situation where Mark Lewis probably would be surprised that we were there
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and maybe I had like two to three questions that I'd be able to get in. So, I point blank asked him, you know,
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if he wanted to say anything, if he wanted to tell his side of the story and and he said no and he walked back in the
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house and closed the door. So that's when we saw that, you know, the garage door was open and um Lewis's
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father-in-law was in the garage. And so we went over there and asked him a few questions and I asked him if there was
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anything he would like to tell the Hunter family and and he said anything he wanted to tell them. He already told
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them in prayer and he felt um you know that Mark Lewis had served the time that he had served for Sarah Noddingham's
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arson and the stalking charges. Well, you know, it is the conviction that he received for the Sarah Noddingham case
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that helped to reignite the pressure to reopen Joanna's case. The wheels start to turn. In 2014, the Salano County
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Sheriff's Office reopened the case and they tracked down Andrew Alvarado, who had actually called 911 the night Joanna
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died. And he'd originally told investigators that he had been with Mark playing basketball since 300 p.m. That
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would have meant that they were playing basketball for about 6 hours. But when they reintered him in 2014,
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we learned that he actually left during that time frame. And so he wasn't actually with Lewis the entire time and
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doesn't know what he was doing when he was gone. >> Yeah. You know, and and it's key nailing
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down sort of this timeline. Joe Hunter, as you heard, he found it hard to believe that Mark Lewis was outside
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playing basketball for 6 hours straight. Didn't go into the house once to go to the bathroom to get a glass of water. Um
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I should point out we tried to reach uh Andrew Alvarado. We never heard back from him. We multiple times. We tried
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calling him. He wouldn't return our calls. And I will give it to the sheriff's office because they had
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another forensic pathologist look at Joanna's case and that person agreed with the original uh coroner that
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Joanna's death was a suicide. The case was closed again. And then in 2015, the county district attorney's office
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announced its own investigation, which included testing DNA on Joanna's bathrobe sash, and the result is some
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quite interesting. They found uh her DNA, as you would expect, on her bathrobe sash, and they also found the
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DNA of an unknown male, not Mark Lewis. They tested it according to Captain Harris in COTUS which is you know the
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criminal database system and there were no hits on that. So to this day they still don't know who that male DNA
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belongs to. >> Um so then you know Joanna's family is stuck again but for years they kept on
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trying to sort of push this case forward. Then an advocacy group called Alliance for Hope asked for another
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expert to review the case. And the sheriff's office agrees. The expert is Dr. Bill Smok and he told you, I'm going
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to quote him here, "Every injury will tell you a story if you take the time to analyze it." Yes. And you know, he came
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to a very different conclusion about what he saw based on the photographs of the scene and the photographs of
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Joanna's body. So, you know, at the time, police reported that the noose was a bathrobe sash, as we've talked about.
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Well, Dr. Smok looks at the scene and three feet from Joanna's body, there is a nautical rope at the bottom of the
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closet. Um, which Dr. Smok said, you know, this is completely out of place. And this was something that was not seen
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before or was not taken in as evidence. And Dr. Smok points out there are two different what he sees liature marks on
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her neck. One is a red welt. He says it's red because her body was still alive. Her heart was still pumping
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blood. Whereas the bathrobe sash mark, which he views in the picture as sort of the wider yellowish mark, he said it was
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yellow because at that point in time that was the bathrobe sash was applied after she was already dead, meaning her
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heart had stopped. So he believes that Joanna had been strangled with nautical rope and then he believes that then the
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bathrobe sash was applied after Joanna was dead. You spoke to Captain Harris about this? Yes, I did. And Captain
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Harris questioned uh Dr. Smok's credentials. Let's play a little bit of that. >> Dr. Smok has never done an autopsy in
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his life. >> Dr. Smok has reviewed thousands of autopsies. So, he has correct >> and and he has
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>> I can review just just as many things and provide an opinion as well. >> So, I asked Harris then if he was
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discounting everything in Smok's report. He said he was discounting the conclusion. He was disputing it, saying
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um that there was no evidence it was a homicide, that it was a suicide. >> And we should note that Captain Harris
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also said that they had the former president of the National Association of Medical Examiners do a review and he
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also concluded it was a suicide. That's right. In the hour, we meet Casey Gwyn and Gail Stra, co-founders of Alliance
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for Hope International, which is an advocacy group for survivors of domestic violence and their families. They agree
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with Dr. Smok's assessment that Joanna's scene was staged in what they refer to as a hidden homicide. Hidden homicides
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are when homicides are staged to look like a suicide or an accident. And Casey told me, you know, domestic violence
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homicides are the number one staged murders in America. You know, Casey told us, if you kill your wife or you kill
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your girlfriend, everybody's going to be looking at you as a suspect. So, you have to stage it to make it look like
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something else. Um, you know, Joanna's history of neck injuries documented by her visits to the hospital, by the
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number of times that she took out restraining orders on Mark Lewis, that police had to come to the house. Um,
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that all informed them that they were looking at a case of a young woman who had experienced strangulation in the
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past. And they told me this astounding statistic. If a woman has been strangled more than once before, there is almost a
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750 times greater likelihood that she is going to be killed by her partner. This
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is based on an academic report, which is just stunning when you think about that.
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This is a very important red flag. Um, the experience working on Joanna's case actually led Casey and Gail to create a
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checklist of 10 factors to be considered by law enforcement and they began drafting a new law. The law included the
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red flags that could signal a homicide. Yes. And I'm going to look down and read
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a few of them because they're so important. Okay. First is if the scene of the death gives the appearance of
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death due to suicide or an accident. if there is a history of being victimized by domestic violence that includes
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strangulation or suffocation and if one partner wanted to end the relationship at the time. Now Casey and Gail told us
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that in Joanna Hunter's case there were all 10 factors present. So Anry, remember when I when I told you that
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Joanna had left the note in an empty suitcase? We didn't have time to include this exchange in the hour, but Gail
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explains why in a case where domestic abuse is involved, when a victim wants to leave the relationship, it is the
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most dangerous time in that relationship. Take a listen. >> When you analyze a suspicious death or
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when you analyze any death, you have to look at victimology. Was this victim who
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died at risk of being killed? So, a victim of domestic violence is at risk. a victim who has been strangled is at
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risk. Is she trying to leave her partner? Uh the most dangerous time for victims of domestic violence is when
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they leave and that's when those strangers become stalkers. And if they can't have her, no one will.
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>> Stranglers become stalkers and then sometimes even become killers. >> Yes. Casey Gwyn shared an interesting
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perspective as well. You know, often, you know, as we've heard in these cases of domestic abuse, so much of the focus
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tends to be about the victim. Why did they stay is the question. Uh, you know, instead of why did the abuser do this to
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them? That should be the question. That's where the focus should really be. So, let's talk about a bright light uh
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with this dark tragedy. And it's about the passage of Joanna's law. It became law in California, state law in
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California, January 1st, 2025. Joanna's law requires investigators responding to
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reports of suicide, drug overdoses, or fatal accidents to check for a history of domestic violence. Uh Casey Gwyn and
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Gail Stra helped write Joanna's law. How involved though were Patricia and Joe in
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pushing this law forward? >> Very, very involved. You know, Patricia went to every legislative hearing. She
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always had on the bench a large 8 by10 picture of Joanna right next to her. One of the points that I want to make about
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Joanna's law, you know, Mark Lewis um was the only person who was considered next of kin um back then because there
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was no obligation for law enforcement, you know, when Joanna died for them to call Patricia or Joe or the family to
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notify them. So, this happens often in domestic violence cases. And Patricia told me, you know, who is more next of
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kin than a mother? Uh Joanna's law has now changed that. Now, although Joanna's law is only in the state of California
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as of now, Casey and Gail are very hopeful that with all this attention on this case and others, that this will
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expand nationally. And I should mention we're also seeing um some cases that we're working on at 48 hours here in the
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state of California where Joanna's law is allowing those cases now to come under review again.
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>> Wow, that is interesting. So I I presume that that's what's next is is to push
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for kind of a national roll out of this law. Anything else? >> That's the hope. We also learned in
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terms of Joanna's case that the California Department of Justice has agreed to review the Solano County DA's
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decision not to bring criminal charges in the case. The hunters hope that that might change things. However, I should
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point out the California Department of Justice told us in a statement that they are not conducting a new investigation.
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Um, so Joe Hunter is returning to Survivor. He's going to be participating in season 50. It premieres February uh
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2026. Um I know I'll be rooting for him. >> Joe is and and Patricia the Hunter family really one of the most
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inspirational families I think I have ever met. And you know I think the message overall is that you can leave.
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You will survive. You just need to take that first big step and to find your support.
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>> Indeed. Um you and the producers did an excellent job. It's such a moving episode and I'm gonna say it's probably
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one of the best for the season for sure. >> Thank you. >> If someone you know is a victim of
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domestic violence, call 1 800799 SAFE or visit the hotline.org.