Snapped - Season 26 episode 5: A detailed case overview about Janice Dodson's case

Season 26, episode 5 of Snapped takes viewers through the case of Janice Dodson, who was convicted of murdering her husband, John Bruce, during a hunting trip. The incident took place in the Colorado wilderness in 1995.

While Janice claimed the incident was a hunting accident, investigations revealed otherwise. Finally, forensic evidence from mud samples and the murder weapon exposed the role Janice played in her husband's death, and she was convicted of first-degree murder and received a life sentence. The episode originally aired on September 29, 2019, and will re-air tomorrow, Friday, September 12, 2025, on Oxygen.

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Janice Dodson and John Bruce's relationship

On October 15, 1995, a frantic cry for help from Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest brought multiple law enforcement agencies to the site. When help arrived, they found John Bruce Dodson lying on the ground, bleeding, with his distraught wife crying beside him.

Newlyweds John Bruce Dodson, 48, and his wife of three months, Janice Kay Dodson, were on what was supposed to be a hunting trip at that time.

Bruce Dodson was a Vietnam veteran and a Navy man. He worked as a lab technician in Colorado, where he met nurse Janice Sanders Dodson. Janice was born in Houston in 1951, and she had endured a difficult home life.

She was previously married to ranch hand J.C. Lee, with whom she had two children. Following her divorce, she found companionship with Bruce, who helped her through her struggles. In July 1995, the couple got married.

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Bruce was found shot to death

When authorities arrived at the scene of the crime, Janice told them that she and Bruce had split up to hunt. She went uphill while Bruce waited in a meadow. At around 9:30 am, when she returned, she allegedly found him collapsed on the ground.

At that time, camping in the Uncompahgre National Forest were Doug Kyle and Michael Madewell, two off-duty police officers from Texas. Kyle had heard three gunshots near his campsite at that time and soon after, found Janice Dodson walking nearby. She told him she and her husband were hunting in the area.

An hour later, Kyle heard screaming and rushed over to find Janice next to Bruce, who was lying face down on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound on his back. A rifle and three spent shells were on the grass beside him.

Two .308-caliber shell casings were recovered at the scene, which did not match weapons owned by either Janice or Bruce. Moreover, Janice Dodson had also altered the crime scene by flipping Bruce’s body and covering him with a blanket.

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The identification of suspects

When investigators began to probe into the case and the couple's background, they found troubling details about Janice Dodson. Just weeks before marrying Bruce, she had attempted to reconcile with her ex-husband, J.C. Moreover, friends even confirmed that she still considered him her “soulmate.”

Janice Dodson was convicted of John Bruce's murder (Representative image via Getty)

Furthermore, Bruce had three life insurance policies totaling $450,000, all of which named Janice as the beneficiary. Within weeks of his death, she sold off his possessions, including his home, car, and horse, and was later spotted gambling at a Louisiana casino.

While Janice Dodson passed through several rounds of questioning, she failed a polygraph test. However, without the murder weapon or direct evidence tying her to the crime, authorities could not press charges.

Investigators then spoke with J.C. Lee, Janice's ex-husband, who was a regular camper at that area and whose campsite was less than a mile away from Janice and Bruce's.

He told authorities that a Remington .308 rifle had been stolen from his tent the day before Bruce’s murder. However, Lee had an alibi. He was with other hunters at the time of Bruce’s death, which erased him from the list of suspects.

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The case was revisited and finally solved

Three years later, investigators once again visited the crime scene with a new approach. They searched a pond near J.C. Lee’s campsite to collect soil samples from the pond, which were compared to dried mud found on Janice’s boots and overalls.

This was done because Lee had said the rifle was stolen from his campsite, and Janice claimed she had waded through a bog that day. The results were a perfect match, placing Janice at the scene of the stolen rifle as well as at the center of Bruce's murder.

Janice was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in 1999. At her trial, investigators alleged that Janice lured Bruce into the forest under the guise of a hunting trip, retrieved J.C.’s stolen rifle, and murdered her husband for financial gain.

In March 2000, a jury found Janice Dodson guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dodson remains incarcerated at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.

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Catch all about Janice Dodson's case on Oxygen's Snapped this Friday, September 12.