Posted on Fri, May. 06, 2005
Two charged with murder
Precious Doe case details emerge
By JOHN SHULTZ, CHRISTINE VENDEL and MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star
‘We have lost Erica, and yet it is a day of closure.'
Deep into an interrogation with investigators Wednesday, Michelle M. Johnson — Precious Doe's mother — flipped over a photo of her slain daughter, police said, and shakily scribbled something on the back.
It was an apology.
On Thursday, prosecutors charged her and her husband, Harrell Johnson, with murder in the 2001 death of 3-year-old Erica Michelle Marie Green. As Precious Doe, the girl haunted Kansas City with a mystery that lived longer than she had.
“(It's) a bittersweet day,” Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes said at a Police Headquarters news conference to announce the charges. “We have lost Erica, and yet it is a day of closure.”
Police were led to the Muskogee, Okla., couple through a tip from a determined family member.
The photo that brought Michelle Johnson to tears in front of police also was released to the public Thursday. It was the first time Kansas City saw an image of the girl as she was in life.
In death, she had been a series of increasingly lifelike artist renderings, a girl with a crescent-shaped birthmark and a chipped tooth. For some, she became an example of the plight of abused children; for investigators and community leaders, an unremitting goad.
With her identity revealed, authorities are now focused on prosecuting those they said were responsible for her death.
Harrell Johnson, 25, was charged with second-degree murder, and Michelle Johnson, 30, with felony murder, a charge filed when authorities allege a death results during commission of another felony.
Both also were charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
If convicted of the murder charges they could be sent to prison for life.
The Johnsons had come to Kansas City in 2001 looking for work, Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said. They stayed with a friend at a house at 4101 E. 59th St., half a block from where Erica's body eventually was discovered.
According to court records:
Michelle told police that sometime before Easter in 2001 she saw Harrell kick Erica in the head. The girl collapsed, unconscious.
Harrell told investigators that he had been high on PCP and alcohol, and that Erica wouldn't go to bed. He denied kicking her in the head but said he threw her down and she banged her head on the floor.
Erica remained unresponsive for hours, perhaps days, before dying.
Harrell and Michelle Johnson were wary of taking Erica to a hospital, both told police, because they had outstanding warrants. Michelle was on probation for a series of bad checks. Harrell was wanted on assault charges.
After Erica died, Michelle and Harrell Johnson brought the body to a nearby church parking lot at 59th Street and Kensington Avenue, police said. Harrell, a pair of hedge clippers in hand, carried Erica's body down a trail into a wooded area and cut off her head.
In interviews with police in Oklahoma, the two disagreed over Michelle's involvement in disposing of Erica's body.
Michelle said she left the scene before Harrell cut off Erica's head. Harrell said she removed the clothes from her daughter's body and stood watch.
Both agreed that Harrell put Erica's head in two black plastic trash bags and tossed it in a trash bin outside the church, and that Michelle argued that the head shouldn't be left there. Harrell said Michelle was concerned someone would smell the decay, so she pulled the bag out of the bin. He said the couple then walked back down the trail, and he disposed of it.
After police found the child's naked, decapitated body, investigators knocked on every door near the crime scene, including the house where the murder allegedly occurred, according to police records of the neighborhood canvass.
Michelle Johnson answered the door, those records show, and gave an officer a bogus tip: that a suspicious black male was wandering in the neighborhood the previous night, police said.
The Johnsons remained together after Erica's death and married on April 1, 2002.
While at an Oklahoma courthouse for the marriage ceremony, Harrell Johnson had to attend a hearing on several criminal charges involving a pair of assaults. In one case he was accused of hitting a man with a brick in February 2000. In the other he allegedly put a gun against the mouth of another man and shot him. Both cases were later dismissed.
Both suspects expressed remorse as they talked to police this week, investigators said. The couple acted as if they were “glad to get it off their chests,” police said.
The couple had three children together. Michelle's five other children, including Erica, were fathered by Larry Green, 33, of Muskogee.
On Thursday, Larry Green, who was in jail on a probation violation, told a reporter from the Muskogee Daily Phoenix that what happened to Erica was unbelievable and terrible.
Green said he met Michelle Johnson when she was 13 or 14 years old and he was 15. They had their first child when Michelle Johnson was about 17, he said, and they dated for 15 years. The breakup came when he went to prison, he said.
Police sent four more investigators to Muskogee on Thursday to interview relatives and friends of Michelle and Harrell Johnson. The detectives also will work to verify the whereabouts of Michelle Johnson's other children.
Community activist Alonzo Washington said the man who provided investigators with the break in the case, a relative of Harrell Johnson, contacted Washington on Saturday and began relaying the information about the Precious Doe case that he had tried to give to Kansas City police last spring.
“At that time, we did not have enough of a lead to go to Muskogee,” said a police spokesman, Capt. Rich Lockhart. “Keep in mind we have received more than 1,000 tips in this case, and we have to make judgment calls.”
At the news conference Thursday, officials thanked Washington for his persistence over the past four years.
Also receiving accolades was homicide Sgt. Dave Bernard, head of the Homicide Unit. Kansas City Councilman and MoveUp President Alvin Brooks said the Precious Doe case had “become a compulsion” for Bernard, who went to Oklahoma on Thursday.
But mostly, they expressed relief that an abandoned child whom Kansas City had adopted as its own was a mystery no longer.
“It's good to finally be able to give a name to the child,” Sanders said. “It gives us in the community and in law enforcement a sense of purpose because now we know whom we are going to be fighting for when we go to court.”
Around the neighborhood where Erica once lived, residents expressed dismay that her death occurred so close.
“It really makes me feel sad to know the child lived there and I didn't know,” said Anne Burnett, who has lived across the street from 4101 E. 59th St. for almost 40 years. “I can't even remember children's toys being out over there.”
A Precious Doe memorial sprung up in Hibbs Park, a grassy field across the street from the woods where her body was discovered, shortly after her death. On Thursday the site bore a new message: a shiny, fringed banner with the name “Precious Erica.”
At day's end, the vigil held for Erica took on a bright tone.
More than 300 people joined hands at the memorial at Hibbs Park to celebrate the life of a little girl who brought together so many.
The prayer circle grew to almost the size of a football field. Inside the circle was a smaller circle of 36 children. Every prayer of hope and thanks was dedicated to them.
Concerned residents, including MoveUp and the Precious Doe Committee, worked to have the child buried at Memorial Park Cemetery. It was unclear Thursday whether her headstone would be updated.
Brooks said a memorial service for Erica will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 2310 E. Linwood Blvd. The service would not be a funeral, he said, but a “homegoing.”
The Star's Benita Y. Williams, Lee Hill Kavanaugh and Jeffrey Spivak contributed to this report.
To reach John Shultz, call (816) 234-4427 or send e-mailto
[email protected].
