JAILING THE JOHNSTON GANG

Article BY Bruce Mowday

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Author Bruce E. Mowday is an award-winning journalist who has written history, business and true crime books. His latest, Jailing The Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murderers To Justice, details the murders committed by three Johnston brothers and their gang members in a suburban Philadelphia county. The book was released by Barricade Books of Fort Lee, N.J., in March 2009 and is in its third printing. Mowday is also a contributor to a number of magazines and has owned his own media relations company for more than 12 years. For more information, see www.mowday.com.

 

Killing Snitches, Witnesses and Family Members:
The story of the Johnston brothers

Late on a warm midsummer’s night a teenage couple returned to the girl’s rural farmhouse home after a date at HersheyPark, the amusement park in the home city of Hershey chocolates.

The 15-year-old girl, Robin Miller, and her fiancée Bruce A. Johnston Jr. gathered their mementoes from the amusement park and reached for the door handles of the couple’s Volkswagen Rabbit.  Gunfire immediate erupted as two gunmen stood at the doors to the car and fired at Johnston.

Nine of the bullets found their intended victim. Johnston was shot in the head, torso and arms. One stray bullet hit Robin Miller in the chin. After the firing stopped, Miller ran into the farmhouse to her third-floor bedroom. The severely injured Johnston followed his lover into the bedroom and Robin Miller died in his arms. Johnston, the intended victim, eventually recovered from his wounds but was unable to identify the gunmen.

As Pennsylvania State Police, Chester County Detectives, the FBI and other officers and emergency personnel gathered at the farmhouse outside of Oxford, Pennsylvania, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, August 30, 1978, they knew why the young Johnston was targeted for death. The reason was simple; he violated his family’s code. A Johnston gang member wasn’t allowed to cooperate with police. The penalty was death.

The murder of young Robin Miller wasn’t the first victim of the murderous gang led by Bruce A. Johnston Sr., the man found responsible for ordering the death of his son, Johnston Jr. In fact Johnston Sr.’s brothers, David and Norman Johnston, took the contract on the life of their nephew and were the two gunmen firing into the VW Rabbit.

Johnston Jr., a drug user and petty thief, had turned on his family members after his father raped his girlfriend. Robin had wanted to see her boyfriend who was incarcerated for stealing the backs off pick-up trucks. Johnston Sr. offered his son’s girlfriend a ride to Chester County Prison to see Johnston Jr. On the way to the prison Johnston Sr. and another gang member bet Robin she couldn’t drink a bottle of whiskey. The teenager took the bet, started drinking and woke up the next morning naked in a hotel room.

When Robin relayed the story of her rape, Johnston Jr. called the Chester County District Attorney’s office and began cooperating with a federal grand jury. At first Johnston Sr. tried to buy his son’s silence but Johnston Jr. wouldn’t recant his testimony. When money failed to sway his son, Johnston Sr. ordered his son’s death.

This wasn’t the first time Johnson Sr. murdered to protect his burglary operation. His gang had been terrorizing residents of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New York and some southern states for more than a decade. The gang specialized in stealing John Deere tractors. More of the tractors were stolen in the Chester County area than the rest of the nation combined. They also stole Corvettes, more than 200, and farm machinery. Their network of fences sold the goods throughout the region, including at a huge flea market at Cowtown, New Jersey.

Some of those who purchased the stolen tractors would have their hot goods retaken by the Johnstons. The gang knew the owners couldn’t complain to the police that their stolen goods were stolen. The gang members became more violent over the years and were always armed. They were excellent crooks as they did their homework by doing surveillance and employing lookouts. They were successful in robbing the world famous Longwood Gardens, a du Pont estate, and many other public places and private residences.

In July 1977, Johnston Sr. suspected another member of his gang, Gary Wayne Crouch of Maryland, was a police snitch. Crouch was invited by Johnston Sr. to take part in a robbery along with gang member, and admitted paid killer, Leslie Dale. Dale told the story of Johnston Sr. driving a stolen car along an isolated country road. Dale was sitting behind Crouch. Crouch pulled out a gun and shot Crouch to death. Johnston Sr. and Dale buried the victim in a grave and later burned the stolen car to hide evidence.

Crouch remained buried for more than 16 months until Dale began cooperating with police. Dale turned state’s evidence after law enforcement officials made a deal with an old criminal partner of Dale on a murder case. Dale and Richard Donnell were involved in the murder of a young Coatesville, Pennsylvania, resident Jackie Baen. Dale and Donnell were using Baen’s driver’s license to cash stolen checks. When Dale and Donnell became concerned that Baen would talk to police about their check-cashing scheme, they took Baen to the Brandywine River at McCorkle’s Rock, hit him in the head with a handgun and held him underwater until he drowned.

The Baen case remained unsolved until it became part of the Johnston investigation. After a re-examination of Baen’s body in a fog-shrouded cemetery on a Saturday morning in November 1978 uncovered new evidence, the prosecution went to Donnell, who was in a federal prison on interstate transportation of stolen property changes, to offer him a deal he couldn’t refuse. If Donnell would testify against Dale in the Baen murder, Donnell would not have to serve any additional time. Donnell agreed and the result was Dale was facing a life imprisonment term.

The murders of Crouch and Miller weren’t the only killings of potential witnesses. After Johnston Jr. began cooperating with FBI, his stepbrother Jimmy Johnston and two other young gang members were given subpoenas to testify before the grand jury. The last thing the police told Jimmy was not to tell his stepfather about the subpoenas.

Jimmy attended a carnival in Oxford in August 1978 and saw Johnston Sr.            He told his father about the subpoenas. The next night Jimmy and his young companions and co-gang members, Dwayne Lincoln and Wayne Sampson, were murdered. Ricky Mitchell, another admitted murderer, helped dig a grave on the property of a former mayor of Wilmington, Delaware. The young gang members were given drugs and led, one-by-one, to the grave where they were shot and buried. Johnston Sr. personally shot his stepson, Jimmy Johnston. David Johnston and Mitchell shot the other victims.

Wayne Sampson’s brother, Jimmy Sampson, complained to the Johnston brothers when his young brother was missing. He threatened the Johnstons if any harm had come to Wayne. Soon after the confrontation, Jimmy Sampson went to a landfill in northern Chester County to steal a tractor with the Johnston brothers. At one point Norman Johnston pulled a gun and murdered Jimmy Sampson, according to witness and accomplice Ricky Mitchell. The victim’s body was buried under the trash.

Until Robin Miller was murdered, the police didn’t know anyone had been killed. The Johnstons weren’t involved in the Baen murder. Plenty of Johnston gang associates had been missing but no bodies had been uncovered.

Police believed immediately that the Johnston brothers were responsible for the murder of Miller and the shooting of Johnston Jr. For the next four months the police put together the case against the Johnstons and turned Dale and Mitchell against the Johnston brothers. Mitchell led police to the bodies of Jimmy Johnston, Lincoln and Wayne Sampson. Jimmy Sampson’s body was never recovered from the landfill.

For a year legal maneuvering across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania delayed the murder trials of the Johnston brothers. Because of a great amount of publicity, the first trial of Norman and David Johnston was held in early 1980 in Ebensburg, Cambria County, Pennsylvania. A six-week trial led to the convictions on four counts of first-degree murder for the brothers. They weren’t charged in the Crouch murder and the jury acquitted them in the Jimmy Sampson murder since a body was never found.

Johnston Sr.’s trial took place in West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania, later in 1980 with a jury of residents of Erie, Pennsylvania. This trial resulted in six guilty verdicts of first-degree murder.

The six murders weren’t the only ones Johnston Sr. was responsible for committing. Though never charged with the murder of two Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, policemen in the mid-1970s, gang members said Johnston Sr. freely admitted being involved in the murders. He was charged with ordering the killing of an inmate after the fellow inmate stole Johnston Sr.’s typewriter. The offending inmate had lighter fluid and a match thrown on him. Johnston Sr. and his hired killer were acquitted of the crime.

Another unsolved murder was attributed to Johnston Sr. While researching the book Jailing The Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murderers To Justice, Roy Myers Sr., Johnston Sr.’s former brother-in-law, said Johnston Sr. admitted murdering a transvestite outside a bar in Coatesville. Pennsylvania State Police are looking into the information.

The release of the book has shown the impact the Johnston brothers had on the community, even after more than a quarter decade. Large groups have gathered to discuss the book, including family of murder victims. At one talk a victim’s relative sat directly in front of the son of the killer.

Norman Johnston escaped from prison in 1999 and eluded police for weeks before being recaptured after an extensive manhunt. Norman and David Johnston continue to serve their sentences. Bruce Johnston Sr., Dale and Mitchell have all died.

Chester County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Joseph A. Carroll has called the leader of the gang, Bruce A. Johnston, Sr., the most notorious criminal in the history of the suburban Philadelphia county.