Johnson was born on January 6, 1969 and was living on the street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, addicted to crack cocaine. He had been in and out of psychiatric care and had a record of assault.
Between 1999 and 2000 he strangled women in the neighbourhood, most of them also homeless or working as prostitutes: Patricia Sullivan, Rhonda Tucker, Joanne Feliciano, Elizabeth Tuppeny, Vivian Caraballo and Laura Nusser. The bodies were left in abandoned buildings, in a boiler room, and beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The New York press called him the Brooklyn Strangler. The New York press called him the Williamsburg Strangler.
He was arrested on August 5, 2000 after DNA from one of the bodies matched a sample taken from him, and he confessed to five killings. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole on March 10, 2001.
The range of five to six reflects the difference between the confession and the sixth attribution.
What the case documents, and what New York reporting at the time made the substance of it, is that the women were killed over more than a year in a small area of one borough and their deaths did not register as a series until DNA connected them. The victims were homeless and addicted, and so was he.