Truth elusive in Bogalusa icepick murder
In the Fall of 1984, sometime between Friday evening, October 18th, and Saturday morning, October 19th, a monster wielding an icepick and a two-tined fork stabbed 18-year-old Angela Bond until her breathing stopped. Babysitting at her home in Bogalusa, Angela died by her bed with her one-year-old and her sister’s six-month-old in the same room.
At 9:30 the following morning, Angela’s sister, Decrease, and her boyfriend arrived to pick up her child. After knocking multiple times, Decrease entered the house through an open kitchen window. She found her sister’s body on the floor of her bedroom, naked and stretched out on her back at the foot of the bed.
An oversized chair, possibly used to drive the icepick and fork further into her chest, covered Angela’s face.
Decrease phoned the police from a neighbor’s home. The officers who arrived at the scene secured several items of evidence, including a shower cap found near the body and a stick used to prop open the kitchen window. The police could not lift any fingerprints from the residence. However, they subsequently secured other evidence, including hair samples and the suspected murder weapons, the ice pick and fork.
Decrease told investigators that Angela’s boyfriend, 27-year-old Anthony Johnson, had been inside the home when she dropped off her child. Officers with the Bogalusa City Police Department arrested Johnson at his home just after 11:00 that morning.
District Attorney Walter Reed indicted Johnson for the murder two months later.
At his arrest, Johnson, an orderly at Bogalusa Medical Center, wore a plastic shower cap that he voluntarily provided to the police.
While at police headquarters, Johnson recounted his version of the facts to Bogalusa City Police Officer Wayne Kemp. Kemp later testified at trial that Johnson told him that at approximately 9:00 p.m. on October 18th, he and the victim argued, so he left and went to a nearby bar.
Johnson told Kemp he returned to Angela’s around midnight but that she had locked the doors and would not let him in. Johnson claimed he then went home. However, according to Kemp’s testimony, Johnson had “special knowledge” of the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death.
Kemp said Johnson told the officers he would not have killed her “like that.” Kemp asked Johnson what he meant by “like that,” Johnson replied, “With the pick and the fork.”
Kemp said he asked Johnson how he knew the weapons used. After a pause, Johnson answered, “Well, I just figured that’s what it was because she slept with them under her pillow all the time.”
According to Kemp, he then asked Johnson how he knew the victim was in the bedroom. Johnson stated he did not want to talk anymore and wanted an attorney.
The autopsy revealed the victim had been sexually assaulted and suffered multiple wounds, including five injuries to the neck. One punctured the jugular vein, and the icepick through her breastbone pierced her heart. The fork wound split Angela’s abdomen and cut into her liver.
According to the pathologist, the latter two wounds required tremendous force.
Investigators found no fingerprints on the icepick, fork, or other items taken from the house. However, they believed hair samples taken from the plastic shower cap at the scene nearly matched those in the shower cap Johnson provided.
On June 26th, 1985, as Johnson awaited trial, someone murdered Bevalina Brown. She died in the same Bogalusa bedroom as Angela Bond. Weeks later, on July 12th, someone killed a third woman in Bogalusa. Police found Regina Jackson’s body near an airport, three miles from Angela Bond’s bedroom. The district attorney’s office indicted Matthew Brown for both murders.
Anthony Johnson went to trial in the 22nd Judicial District Court the following February. His lawyer waived Johnson’s right to an opening statement.
During the trial, Robert Magee, who lived across the street from Angela Bond, testified to seeing Johnson’s car at Angela’s home around 1:00 a.m. on October 19th. Another neighbor Carl Magee testified that he saw Johnson drive down the victim’s street, blow his horn, and wave. This event, he remembered, occurred around 6:00 a.m. the morning he took out his trash.
Johnson testified that on the night of the murder, at approximately 9:30 p.m., he asked Angela if she wanted some crabs from a nearby bar. She told him she did, and he left to get them.
Around 10:30 p.m., he returned with the crabs and found the door locked.
Angela said he had been out too long and to go home. Johnson went back to the bar, returning to Angela’s occasionally. However, each time, she refused to open the door. Johnson said he gave up around midnight and went home.
The following morning, officers knocked on his door, waking him.
Officer Phillip Collins, he said, told him they believed he stabbed Angela to death and that the crime scene looked awful. En route to the police station, Johnson testified, Officer Laverne Spikes told Johnson about the fork and ice pick. On the stand, Johnson denied telling the officers the victim slept with anything under her pillow.
Officer Collins testified that he only told Johnson that the victim had died. He did not, he insisted, mention the stabbing, and Officer Spikes testified that he never spoke to Anthony Johnson.
Anthony Johnson maintained his innocence, saying that he did not have “special knowledge” of the murder; the police had told him about the knife and fork.
Joseph Rogers, a former inmate in the Washington Parish Jail, testified for the Defense. While in jail, he said, Matthew Brown told him that he had murdered three women. He also said that police charged another man with one of the three.
The prosecution stipulated that Matthew Brown had confessed to the murders of Bevalina Brown and Regina Jackson but not the murder of Angela Bond. When the Defense put Matthew Brown on the stand, he refused to testify, asserting his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.
A jury convicted Anthony Johnson of second-degree murder on February 25th, 1986, sentencing him to life in prison.
In 2004, after losing multiple appeals, Johnson enlisted help from the Innocence Project of New Orleans. The organization filed a petition for DNA testing. On March 26th, 2006, a lab confirmed that the DNA under Angela Bond’s fingernails did not come from Anthony Johnson.
On February 21st, 2007, Anthony Johnson appealed again, winning a new trial. In addition to the DNA test results, the court found prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence.
The suppressed evidence included statements two people made to police, each saying Matthew Brown admitted that someone else “took the rap” for Angela Bond’s murder.
The suppressed evidence also included testimony regarding the trash collection, which is critical in establishing when Johnson left Angela’s house. Trash pickup occurred Friday morning, October 18th, and not Saturday morning, October 19th.
On February 21st, 2007, Johnson bonded out, awaiting trial.
The prosecution appealed the order for a new trial and won in October 2007. However, in June 2009, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered the case back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing.
Following that hearing, the court again ordered a new trial on July 22nd, 2009.
By then, prosecutors had linked the DNA recovered from Angela Bond’s fingernails to Matthew Brown, then convicted and serving time for killing Regina Jackson and Bevalina Brown.
At the new trial, evidence for the Defense seemed overwhelming.
Brown had confessed to killing Angela Bond. A suspected co-perpetrator in the murders of Bevalina Brown and Regina Jackson also admitted to a role in Angela’s murder.
Two witnesses placed Brown at Angela’s home within hours of discovering her body, and neighbors testified that Angela had an affair with Brown.
The state dismissed the charges against Johnson on September 15th, 2010.
Johnson filed a civil wrongful conviction lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in October 2010. Both parties settled for an undisclosed amount in 2013, and the state of Louisiana separately awarded Johnson $330,000 in compensation.
However, officially, the rape and murder of Angela Bond remain unsolved.