KNOXVILLE – After the murder of their 21-year-old daughter in 2004 – and in the years that followed without an arrest – Joan and Mike Berry channeled their grief and their rage into a fight for stronger victim protections.
Johnia Berry was stabbed more than 20 times by a home intruder six weeks after she moved to west Knoxville to attend graduate school at the University of Tennessee. She was found in the hallway of her apartment building after pounding on neighbors’ doors for help in the middle of the night. No one answered.
The only evidence investigators recovered was a partial fingerprint and drops of a stranger’s blood on the knife wielded by her killer.
While the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation tested the evidence against more than 1,000 samples of DNA from convicted felons on file to find a potential match – then the largest and most expensive undertaking in the state’s history – the Berrys pressed lawmakers to widen the net.
The Johnia Berry Act, passed in 2007, expanded on an existing Tennessee law requiring DNA collection from individuals convicted of violent and sexual crimes. The law added DNA swabbing requirements to those arrested and charged with those crimes, too.