Escapee Norman Johnston spotted in old stomping grounds
MS
but he has been seen in a park in Chester County; in fact, two park
rangers had him almost in custody, but he pulled off his shirt and ran
away. The rangers did not shoot at him because there were tourists
standing around and because they did not believe him to be armed.
I learned in the paper this morning that Norman probably is back in the
area to try to retrieve the money from all those robberies, money that
was never recovered.
There is an extensive story about the crimes that landed the Johnston
gang in jail in today's Inquirer, second section, but I don't have time
to transcribe it now. Maybe someone else will?
Martha
MS
>
> Martha,
> I understand that Norman Johnston's case was what they based the movie "At
> close Range" on....is this true? Could you give me some information on this
> case, or if not are you aware of any site on the web where I can get this?? Let
> me know and thanks..gerry
Here's the story from the Phila. Inquirer, by Bill Ordine:
For two weeks in the summer of 1978, the Johnston brothers, three career
riminals from the high ridge country of Mountain City, Tenn., made
bucolic, rural Chester County their personal killing field.
From mid-to-late August that year, the Johnstons, who had moved to
southern Chester County in the 1960s, were responsible for the murders
of four young men--all junior members of the Johnstons' prolific
burglary ring--and a 15-year-old girl. The Johnstons had feared the
boys were about to cooperate with police.
It took the combined efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement
to prosecute the brothers--Bruce Sr., David and Norman--and put them
away for the rest of their lives. However, none of the millions of
dollars reaped from their burglaries has been recovered.
The startling escape of Norman Johnston last Monday from a maximum
security state prison in Huntingdon renewed for some the bizarre horror
of what happened more than 20 years ago. And it set off immediate
alarms in Chester County. Witnesses in the case, as well as former
investigators and prosecutors, were alerted.
"This is exactly why capital punishment is needed and justified," said
Dolores Troiani, a Paoli lawyer who helped prosecute the Johnstons as a
young assistant district attorney. "There's no reason why people should
be afraid for their lives like this."
The murders occurred in a year when Pennsylvania was without the death
penalty. Still in state prisons are Bruce Johnston Sr., at Graterford,
and David Johnston, at Greene.
Norman Johnston's escape has many who helped prosecute the brothers
extremely worried about the safety of former witnesses, and no one
considers it an over-reaction. Not in light of what happened 20 years
ago.
On Dec. 30, 1978, then-State Trooper Tom Cloud was on his knees digging
at the frozen ground with a tablespoon in the middle of a sprawling
estate in Chadds Ford. Beside him was Chester County Detective larry
Dampman.
"It was a surreal scene," said Cloud, now a private investigator in West
Chester.
Battery-powered lights, like the ones used in a photo studio, cast an
eerie glow over the hilltop area. A bonfire was going nearby. Dozens
of police milled about. Investigators scraped away dirt carefully, so
as not to damage what they were looking for.
Finally, resistance to the digging turned soft. The police had found
what they were there for--and the stench was overpowering. Slowly,
spoonful by spoonful, the bodies of three young men were unearthed.
~more~
MS
Sampson, 20, and Duane Lincoln, 17, had been piled like firewood, one on
top of the other. Their faces were unrecognizable. One wore a Tweety
Bird shirt.
The discovery would eventually break up a notorious ring of criminals
that not only had eluded but had taunted police for years. There was no
jubilation, though.
"It was the most gruesome thing I ever saw," Cloud said. "And it was
sad. Here were these kids with their whole lives in front of them."
Troiani remembers that the best-preserved parts of the bodies were the
feet, because the boys wore heavy work boots.
"The smell was so bad, I threw away my clothes," she said.
Standing next to Troiani was Ricky Mitchell, the Johnston confederate
who had led police to the horrific find. He had decided to inform on
the brothers because if he didn't, "he knew he'd be the next one in the
ground," according to Troiani.
The three had been killed on Aug. 16, 1978. Mitchell himself had killed
Sampson, the last to be shot. David Johnston had killed Duane Lincoln.
And Bruce Sr. had taken care of his stepson. Later, another gang
member, Leslie Dale, would tell police that Bruce Sr. had told him that
Jimmy Johnston was still gurgling when he was dumped into the common
grave.
The day before the killings, Jimmy Johnston had been served with a
subpoena to testify in front of a federal grand jury to corroborate the
story of his stepbrother, Bruce Johnston Jr., about the burglary ring.
Bruce Jr., angry because his 15-year-old girlfriend, Robin Miller, had
been raped by Bruce Sr. in a motel room, had turned on his father and
two uncles, investigators said.
"The cardinal sin you could commit in the eyes of these people was not
robbery, rape or murder," said Bill Lamb, a West Chester lawyer who was
the county district attorney in the 1970s and stayed on as a special
prosecutor for the Johnstons' trials. "The worst thing you could do was
rat on the family."
Jimmy Johnston made the mistake of telling Bruce Sr. about the subpoena.
~more~
MS
the Oxford Carnival, using a ruse that they were hiding the young men
from law enforcement. The next night, one by one, they were lured to
where a grave had been dug, and they were shot.
On Aug. 21, Bruce Johnston Sr. tricked Wayne Sampson's brother, Jimmy
Sampson, 24, with a similar ruse and killed him in the same way in the
Lanchester Landfill. Bruce Sr. would be convicted of killing Jimmy
Sampson, whose body was never found.
Then, on Aug. 30, as Bruce Jr., then 19, and Robin Miller were returning
from Hershey Park, David and Norman Johnston--at the direction of Bruce
Sr.--riddled the teenagers' car with so many bullets, it rocked.
Bruce Jr., hit eight times, survived the attack. Miller, shot once, was
killed.
The Johnston brothers had been a thorn in the side of Chester County
lawmen for years before the 1978 killing spree that made headlines and
formed the basis of the Sean Penn movie "At Close Range." The gang's
specialty was stealing farm equipment, specifically tractors, although
jewelry, televisions, cash, cars and even cigarettes were all fair game.
They didn't have to go far to turn the stolen goods into cash. As the
Johnstons worked through fences in the northern part of the county, most
of their hot tractors wound up in backyards and throughout the Pottstown
area.
What made the Johnstons stand apart, though, was how far they and their
accomplices were willing to go to protect their criminal livelihoods and
stay out of jail.
In 1972, a thief who also had migrated from hilly northeast Tennesee,
Ancell Hamm, ambushed and murdered two Kennett Square policemen outside
the town hall. Hamm, who was convicted and received a life sentence in
1974, was one of the earliest members of the Johnston gang. And
although police could never prove it, they believed Bruce Sr. was
involved in the killings.
Hamm's connection to the Johnstons resurfaced last week when sources
said a sketch depicting the home of Norman Johnston's ex-wife, Susan,
had been found in Hamm's cell at Huntingdon. Prison officials would not
comment on the map's existence.
That Norman Johnston, the target of a wide-ranging manhunt and the
subject of a planned segment on a forthcoming TV episode of America's
Most Wanted, was able to break out of prison had Lamb incredulous.
"If you picked out the half-dozen or so most dangerous criminals in
Pennsylvania, you'd have to say four of them were the Johnston brothers
and Ancell Hamm," Lamb said.
~more~
GBur940099
I understand that Norman Johnston's case was what they based the movie "At
close Range" on....is this true? Could you give me some information on this
case, or if not are you aware of any site on the web where I can get this?? Let
me know and thanks..gerry
>Subject: Escapee Norman Johnston spotted in old stomping grounds
>From: MS ma...@erols.com
>Date: Sun, 08 August 1999 12:26 PM EDT
>Message-id: <37ADAF...@erols.com>
MS
multi-million-dollar tractor-theft ring seemingly with impunity.
Once, state police tried to connect the Johnstons to a supermarket theft
using the odometer on a truck that was used in the heist. After that,
the police began finding stolen cars with the odometer wires ripped out.
Investigators knew it was the Johnstons leaving their signature.
"The knew that you knew they were committing the crimes," said former
FBI agent Dave Richter, who worked on the case and is now a private
investigator with Cloud. "And they were telling you that they didn't
care that you knew."
The Johnston gang had a clear hierarchy.
Bruce Sr., the oldest, was the leader. Norman and David were his chief
leiutenants, and other older career thieves, such as Leslie Dale and
Ricky Mitchell, were foot soldiers. Young locals, looking for easy
money, made up the lowest tier. Apprentices in crime, the "kiddie gang"
would steal small items and turn them over to the Johnstons, move and
help store the heavy stolen farm equipment, and act as lookouts. Bruce
Johnston Jr. was in the "kiddie gang."
The Johnstons' tight-knit group was held together by spreading money
among gang members and anyone who might be a witness. If that failed,
intimidation usually worked. One potential witness found dynamite in
the front seat of his car. Another had a barn burned.
However, when Bruce Jr., upset about Miller's rape, turned on the family
in midsummer, the burglary conspiracy began to unravel. It appeared the
other "kiddies," if implicated, would snitch, too.
When the Sampson boys, Lincoln and Jimmy Johnston disappeared in
mid-August 1978, Tom Cloud and Dave Richter were worried. After the
bloody ambush on Bruce Jr. and Robin Miller, the anxious suspicions that
Cloud and Richter harbored became certainties.
"Everyone knew this was real then," Cloud said. "Those boys were dead."
Even after the Aug. 30 attack on the teenage couple, police had a tough
time pinning things on the Johnstons. Bruce Jr. didn't get a good look
at the gunmen in the dark, and Bruce Sr. had a built-in alibi. He had
been spreading $100 bills aroun at a local tavern.
Then police persistence paid off. They arrested Leslie Dale, a Johnston
gang member, on theft charges. One of Dale's old partners in crime,
Richard Donnell, locked up in the Scranton area, was afraid Dale would
tell investigators about a 1970 murder the two had committed together.
So Donnell beat Dale to the punch and worked out a deal for himself
after telling Chester County Detective Charlie Zagorskie about how he
and Dale had killed Jackie Baen, a Coatesville man, eight years earlier.
Dale, confronted with Donnell's information, then turned on the
Johnstons.
He told Zagorskie and Troiani about the 1977 killing of still another
small-time thief, Gary Crouch. Dale and Bruce Sr. had shot Crouch in
the head and buried him near the Stottsville Inn in western Chester
County. And although he wasn't at the murders in Chadds Ford, Dale had
some details about the killings.
In late November 1978, Dale led police to Crouch's gravesite for a
midnight exhumation and siad the Johnstons had a contract out on Ricky
Mitchell. Mitchell, who was jailed in Delaware County on an unrelated
matter, had little choice. He took police to the grim finding in Chadds
Ford the night before New Year's Eve.
The end was near for the Johnstons.
In 1980, David and Norman were convicted of four murders, the three
young men in Chadds Ford and Robin Miller. Later that same year, Bruce
Sr. was convicted of six murders--the same four, Jimmy Sampson and
Crouch. All received consecutive life sentences.
Mitchell, convicted in the murder of Wayne Sampson, is still in prison.
Dale died several years ago, his only death-bed companions the police
who pursued him.
"We never thought they would stoop to killing these kids," ex-FBI agent
Richter said of the Johnston gang. "We thought we were dealing with
burglars. Who knew we were dealing with people who would wipe out their
own family?"
END
Martha
Maggie
>On Aug. 21, Bruce Johnston Sr. tricked Wayne Sampson's brother, Jimmy
>Sampson, 24, with a similar ruse and killed him in the same way in the
>Lanchester Landfill. Bruce Sr. would be convicted of killing Jimmy
>Sampson, whose body was never found.
***This has to be one of the first conviction-without-a-body cases in this
country.
And, BTW, Johnston is believed to have been spotted in northeast Maryland near
the PA state line early Sunday afternoon.
Maggie
"This would be a great country if you could keep the Republicans out of the
bedroom and the Democrats out of the boardroom."--Lowell Weicker
RetCop1035
George Byrd
on "Re: Long: The Johnston story, part 3"
MS <ma...@erols.com> wrote:
>. . . Bruce Sr. would be convicted of killing Jimmy
>Sampson, whose body was never found.
Interesting. These "no corpse" cases are unusual, but frequent enough
that there is plenty of case law on the subject back into the 1800s.
There seems to be a belief, more or less like a UL, that a corpse is
required to establish the corpus delicti (body of the crime) for a
murder or manslaughter prosecution. 'Tain't so.
CD can be established by circumstantial evidence.
One of the better known cases was L. Ewing Scott, convicted of
murdering his girlfriend or wife in So. Cal. Her body was never
found, although her glasses and/or some other personal effects turned
up in Scott's backyard BBQ pit. Diane Wagner wrote a TC book,
_Corpus_Delicti_, on the case.
A retired officer told me back in the late 80s that the smart money
said she was under some freeway. There were plenty of freeways under
construction there at the time of her murder. That's a lot of
concrete acreage to dig up.
GB
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc. & are NOT legal advice.
"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble.
It's the things we know that ain't so."
<< Artemus Ward >>
Janie
MS ha scritto nel messaggio <37AE51...@erols.com>...
(snip)
>Then, on Aug. 30, as Bruce Jr., then 19, and Robin Miller were returning
>from Hershey Park, David and Norman Johnston--at the direction of Bruce
>Sr.--riddled the teenagers' car with so many bullets, it rocked.
>
>Bruce Jr., hit eight times, survived the attack. Miller, shot once, was
>killed.
(rest snipped
So what is Bruce Jr. doing now?
MS
Bruce Jr. lived for some years under an assumed identity provided by the
Federal Witness Protection program, but fairly recently gave that up to
return to his old stomping grounds. He has been in and out of jail on
burglary charges since.
Martha