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Page 2A PLAYGROUND DAILY NEWS, Thursday Morning. April 28. 1983killerher performances and wrote about it in the February 1981 issue of his magazine:“Little groups of boys and girls gathered around tables visiting, totally unmindful of the dancers on stage ... Everything ran smoothly and relatively quiet until Renee came on stage. Renee is tall, young and pretty. She takes her work seriously. She's totally unassuming and she's a damned good dancer. Watching her body consume and respond to a bone-chillinglv beautiful number called ‘One in a Million was as entertaining and professionally tactful as any solo performance by the prestigious Lincoln Center. Customer nonchalance was broken up by Renee's dance and the applausethunderedJohnson worked late into the night of Oct. 11 at Carmicheal’s. After she got off she went to The Scene Lounge. Like another victim in an unsolved murder Bonnie Ryther in 1978 -The Scene was the last place Johnson was seenalive. ;;‘‘She was last seen driving from The Scene alone in the early morning of the 12th, Columbus Day,” says Keeler. “Her automobile (a Ford Mustang) was seen in front of her trailer at 3:30 that morning, and as far as we can determine that automobile never moved fromthat spot .”Oct. 12 came and went, and Johnson didn't show up for work. No one saw her in the next six days, either. Some people claimed they hadseen her. “but we now know they were mistaken,” Keeler saysFinally, on Oct. 18. someone grew concerned.A female friend of Johnson who also lived inVictoria Mobile Home Park went to Johnson’s trailer at I^ot 135 and knocked on the front door. No answer. She went to the manager.The manager sent his stepson to investigate.The boy said he found the front door to the rented trailer locked, so he tried the back door, which opened onto Johnson’s bedroom. It was unlocked When he opened it, one of Johnson’stwo cats padded inside. The second cat already was inside.The boy then made his gruesome discovery. The sheriff’s department was called at 6:22 p.m.; the first deputy was on the scene 33minutes later.French says he and other lawmen felt certain they had a homicide on their hands as soon as they entered the trailer. Nothing was moved until the scene could be preserved on film.When 1st Judicial Circuit Deputy Medical Examiner Edmund Kielman arrived, lawmen slowly stripped the heap of clothing from the bed, taking pictures after each article was removed. When they got to the bottom, at about 8 p.m., they had uncovered Johnson’s decomposed body.She was lying on her back, her head turned to the left. Her knees were drawn up and her legs spread-eagled. She was nude. The sheets under her chest and head were caked with blood.The body was removed and taken to the morgue for an autopsy.Kielman concluded Johnson had been stabbed five times, with four of the wounds piercing her heart. She also had received a small knife wound on her neck.He looked for evidence Johnson had tried todefend herself or ward off the knife. He found none.“If you see a knife coming at you. you tend to grab at the hand. Sometimes you'll miss andgrab the knife and cut your hand. There was none of that here,' he says. “Whoever did it did it before she could say anything. She was caught utterly off guard.”He says the position of the body indicates Johnson may have been stabbed while engaged in sexual intercourse. At the same time, he says, the repeated stabbing is characteristic of a homosexual murder.However, the body was too deteriorated to determine whether Johnson had had sex with anyone.Kielman concluded Johnson had died quickly. within minutes. Blood escaping from her heart had filled a sac around the wounded organ and suffocated its pumping motion.He told French to look for a knife about 5 inches long and half an inch wide. The knife would be sturdy, because it had sliced through the breastbone. Kielman could not determine ifJohnson s killer was left- or right-handed.For the record, Kielman placed the time of death at 10:55 p.m. Oct. 15, the death certificate says. For investigative purposes, he saidJohnson died 48-72 hours before her body was found. He could be no more exact, because the pile of bedding and clothing over her body had hastened decomposition.Even before Kielman issued his findings, lawmen were concentrating on the trailer and Johnson's neighbors.Johnson’s two-bedroom trailer was a shambles. The living-room floor was littered with out-of-place items: a pile of coins, a hairbrush. a toothbrush, small cardboard boxes, a billfold, bottles of makeup, lipstick, a marijuana pipe and cigarette packs.Had the killer ransacked the place, looking for something that would tie him to the crime? A snapshot? An address book?A burglar would have been looking for valuables. Keeler and French say they know of nothing valuable missing from the trailer.The kitchen, according to Kielman, wasnauseating. Food had spoiled and roaches ran rampant. It was so bad. he recalls, that he tucked his pants legs into his socks.In the bedroom where the body was found,clothes apparently had been torn from their hangers and flung across the room. Again,either the killer or a burglar could have beenresponsibleIf it was the killer, Kielman says, he probably did it to hide the body from his sight.Keeler says Kielman’s speculations could be correct. “I think it was someone who knew her. and I think some kind of sex was involved, although we couldn't tell. It may be stupid to say. but he (the killer) was pretty damn upset.’’Interviews with Johnson’s neighbors were a hint of things to come The lawmen learned Johnson had been a private person, so private that one neighbor didn't even know anyone had lived in the trailerOthers, of course, did know someone had been living there, and they said Johnson usually kept to herself. They had heard no unusual noises - such as a scream coming from the trailerThe lawmen turned to Johnson’s friends, coworkers, bosses and former bosses in search of information and suspects.Johnson knew many people, but was close to only a few. She had no steady boyfriend. One man claimed he was engaged to her, although he wasn't. For days, the man wore a black bandaround his arm to mourn her death. He was not a suspectA girl with whom Johnson had worked said Johnson had thought about getting married, butnot to the man with the black armband. The intended. she said, was in the Air Force and was soon to be transferred to Germany. Johnson didn't like the prospect of living in Germany.Through their interviews, the investigators put together a record of Johnson’s employment. Since moving to P ort Walton Beach in 1977, she had worked exclusively at bars andburlesque houses, including the Matador Club in Valparaiso.Through her job she got into trouble with the law. In July 1981 she was arrested on twocharges of engaging in lewd and lascivious conduct. She was acquitted. In November 1981 she was arrested again on the same charge. That time she pleaded guilty and was fined $100.She had one other brush with the law, but on the right side. On July 23, 1982, Johnson told Deputy Gary Loafman someone had stolen a suitcase containing four dancing costumesfrom her car while it was parked at the Black Angus Restaurant on Eglin Parkway.Fred Caliti i. owner of the Matador Club, says Johnson worked for him on two occasions. Heknew her as a “kind-hearted’’ yet “street-wise” woman fully capable of taking care of herself. He said she had been on her own since she was 14.While some lawmen pounded the pavement talking to Johnson's acquaintances, others homed in on clues that came rapid-fire in the days immediately after the murder wasdiscovered.A boy living in Victoria Mobile Home Park found a fishing knife and told authorities about it. It wasn't the murder weapon; it was too big.Another wrong knife, this one found in some bushes in Fort Walton Beach, would be turned in weeks later.In eight days' time lawmen questioned 28 people who had boasted of killing Johnson or claimed they knew who did.The investigators fielded calls from anonymous tipsters. All the leads were tracked down.Industrytional competitiveness, which will eventually create more jobs,” he said.But Ernst noted that many businesses were forced by the economic slump to pare payrollsand cut costs, so the productivity report does not necessarily foreshadow “a quick fall” in the nation’s 10.3 percent civilian unemployment rate.He said employers, looking for firmer signs of a lasting recovery, will be unlikely to rehire workers immediately after the recovery picks up steam.Jerry Jasinowski, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said: “The productivity improvement reflects both the increased output now that recovery is underway and the fact that output is rising more rapidly than employment.“1 would expect productivity to rise quickly during the recovery because of the efficienciesachieved by many businesses during the recession,” he said.Investigators considered a variety of theories behind the slaying. The killer may have been a nut with a grudge against strippers, a close friend, someone Johnson had jilted ... or none ofthose.They re-interviewed people who already had been questioned and who had been reluctant to divulge information. Some of these people would answer direct questions but not volunteer anything.In November the three-man team puttogether a list of possible suspects. Eventually, seven people took polygraph tests and passed.Was the killer another woman? Three of the seven possible suspects were females.Avenue after avenue of investigation led nowhere. The last person to take the polygraph test is an example.That person, a woman, lived in the sametrailer park as Johnson. According to Keeler, one day her husband answered the door and she walked up behind him. The woman pointed to the man who had knocked and screamed,“That's the man I saw in the trailer park with the blood all over him!''Keeler already had put the woman on the polygraph. Now he interviewed her again,thinking maybe she had seen something after all She hadn’t. She had seen “the man with the blood all over him” in a dream French pulled possibilities out of left field. Could the number and placement of the knife wounds, he wondered, be symbolic?The knife wounds made a roughly rectangular pattern in Johnson’s chest. Frenchsays he considered their possible significance, but will not elaborate.The investigation now was a month old, and authorities looked for similar murders. Theycompared notes with lawmen in Leon County, who were investigating the strangulation death of a stripper No link was found.They checked out the stabbing of a teenagegirl in Pensacola. Again, no connection.They checked to see whether a suspect in the murder of a Pascagoula, Miss., prostitute had been in Okaloosa County at the time ofJohnson's death. He hadn’t.French, Keeler and Vinson have pursued the case with intensity. They have become familiar with Johnson's private life, her habits and herviolent death, but the crucial question remains unanswered.To Johnson’s mother, the three men were a crutch who helped her through the ordeal thatfaced her when she came to Okaloosa County last October.In an open letter she submitted to the Daily News in November, Judith Johnson had this tosay of the three lawmen, her daughter’s murder and an apparent false sense of security her daughter felt (the italics are her own):“I found them dedicated police officers and I know they will find my daughter Renee’s killer. This person must be found.“My daughter told me she felt so safe in this area. She wanted us to make our home there,because there was no crime and she felt safe and planned to settle in Niceville. How ironic!“This person must be found. I have faith that the sheriff’s department will do this.”TOMORROW : The 10-year record of unsolved murders in Okaloosa ('ounty, and the search for a common thread.Recdebate t i o n . d e s i f! Democichief sthe issi Reaganproach Americi Dodd, the Se Relatioiand a v o 1 u n Domini from 19“the pj that r highest to knowCentra]1983 as Indochi ‘ ‘ I nstdo somlt; factors revolul ministred to m buildup hundre dollarssaid.But ICongrehis full for al Ameri about i 1984. “1one-te Ameri t this vDamiPtlt;s*lt;MainCircuhCNews.CircuitSulBy carric month %i\ only $2 2 25c. Sui payable Sunday: $39, 3 moi Daily onl $3(), 3 mlt; Sunday o ths $13 .] month $2MenBurtRiver Stages(At 10 a.m. (Wednesday)Apalachicola River at Blount-17.1 ft.15stage,stown,(Flood ft.)Apalachicola R i v e r a t Chatahoochee, 56.5 feet (Flood stage, 67.5 ft.)Forecast for the Apalachicola Riverat Blountstown 7 a.m. today, 17.0 ft., 7 a.m. Friday, 16.0 ft.Forecast for the Apalachicola River at Chattahoochee 7 a.m. today, 54.0 ft., 7 a.m. Friday, 53.0, ft.OR-rOV)RNATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE...forecasts showers in the Northwest. Rain is also expected in the Great Lakes region. Locally, mostly sunny and mild today.We don't sell low priced bedding sell qualitr biddim* at low pricesSAVE UP TO 60%Off Suggested Retail PricesY • NATIONAL • DORMIR
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Fort Walton Beach Playground Daily News
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, US
Thu, Apr 28, 1983
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