Donna Johnson died hard

The Pike County Journal-Reporter

Donna Johnson with her mother Beulah Ogletree who died earlier this year without ever learning the identities of those who killed her daughter. Johnson lived on Vega Road in Pike County at the time she was brutally murdered.

Donna Johnson died hard

Posted by

Walter Geiger

in Crime and Arrests

Sunday, July 18. 2010

Comments (12)

By Walter Geiger

Twenty-six years ago this past Friday, Donna Johnson died a violent death.

Her murder remains unsolved and, for two generations, those in Pike and Lamar counties have remained largely in the dark as to how she died.

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#1 L.T. on 07/19/10 at 10:55 AM

I was 14 when this crime happened and lived ten miles from the murder scene. I am now 39 and live two miles from this location. I travel by this spot frequently and there has not been one single time in the last 26 years that I have come around the curve on Piedmont road where the dumpsters were once located that I have not thought of Donna. I never knew her personally, but this crime shocked more than one community. I can remember, after this happened, many fathers/husbands insisted that their wives/ daughters not travel this stretch of road, even in the daytime. I hope that this is not one of the crimes that will never be solved. I believe that someone has information on this case. It must be horrible for the family members to read some of these comments that have been written on blogs about this case, but I believe that if it were someone in my own family, I would encourage the conversation, hoping to stir someone’s memory and to keep the case fresh in the mind of citizens in the surrounding communities.

#2 dorthy on 07/19/10 at 12:14 PM

Was this lady married or recently divorced? Any small children in a custody dispute? Husband, ex-husband or boy friend violent or have a criminal history? Going to the dumpster is not inherently dangerous. Usually the murder victim knows the killer, why the lack of any information?

#2.1 Donna Jo on 07/19/10 at 01:43 PM

Dorthy, No! They were happily married as far as I knew. And Georgia is a very dangerous place for women. Donna was murdered a short while after Helen Ann Morgan disappeared. I think it was about a month and a half.

Helen Ann Morgan had a child and a recent divorce. She had told her mother she thought she was being followed during the divorce.

Women are murdered or missing all the time in Georgia. They have got better at it over time I think. Now when women get killed it looks like a accident or suicide. I think in some case's the law covers it up. After all it's just a woman.

#2.1.1 Anonymous on 07/20/10 at 06:29 PM

Domestic violence is dangerous around here. There are very few options for help. You can spell it out for the cops and give them a nice tight package of evidence and they do not care. It's always turned into a crazy lady trying to destroy and upright male citizen.

Did you know:

Intimate partner violence made up 20% of all nonfatal violent crime experienced by women in 2001.

33% of female murder victims were killed by their intimate partner.

Access to firearms yields a more than five-fold increase in risk of intimate partner homicide when considering other factors of abuse, according to a recent study, suggesting that abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.

Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners. The number of females shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner was more than three times higher than the total number murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined in single victim/single offender incidents in 2002.

50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse

#2.1.1.1 Donna Jo on 07/22/10 at 12:27 PM

You are so right. The biggest mistake I made was going to the law and reporting what I knew at the time. It put my child and I in even more danger.

It doesn't matter how violent the man is, or even if he's killed people before. They take up for the man. The more proof you have the madder they get.

I can almost bet Catoosa County wishes Tonya Craft's Ex had just killed her instead of helping him try to destroy her life and put her in prison. Now she's suing all of them for 25 million.

It go's to show lies can't stand.

#2.1.1.1.1 Anonymous on 07/22/10 at 02:34 PM

Yes, they never return phone calls. They won't answer emails. You become a bother to them. They say, "Why don't you leave then?" Well, you try the slipper on for size. It's a very powerful thing to have experienced repeated instances of pure rage from a man who wears a public facade. You are constantly having various powerful names shoved down your throat while you are being choked and beaten after you burned dinner or ironed a shirt wrong. I mean, hell...He has been out working all day to pay the bills for all the stuff you have and to support those brat kids that you had. Why can't you be grateful and do one dang thing right?!?! Don't you know the people that owe him favors? You think they are going to help you? He's told them you are insane. He wave his guns around and tells you if he finds out you speak a word to anyone, you will disappear. What are you going to do? Run to his buddies who wear uniforms?? Yeah right. These days you have to scream until someone listens and even when you finally do have the courage to do something, you learn quick that those who listen are few and far between around here.

#2.2 Edna S. Wilson on 07/19/10 at 03:03 PM

If you're the same Dorthy that has posted in earlier blogs about this same topic, you should already know the answers to these questions you're asking. I think Sheila explained in detail as to when, where, and how she was murdered and about her family. Now if we only knew who, what and why then this murder would now be solved. Unfortunately those are the unanswered questions that still linger to this day.

#2.2.1 Sheila Tolley on 07/20/10 at 11:10 AM

Correct Edna...it is those last three "W" questions that we need answers to now. I TRULY hope that Walter's exposure of facts and interviews with people involved MAKES PEOPLE THINK. I hope it makes them THINK so much that they toss their info out here also. It is the little facts that appear insignificant that become important after twenty-six years. I do wonder why Walter did not offer Jimmy Johnson a chance to comment. Surely he would love to see this case solved.

#2.2.1.1 Midge on 11/22/11 at 10:11 PM

Hats off to whoeevr wrote this up and posted it.

#3 kathy on 07/19/10 at 10:29 PM

did they find any evidence under Donna fingernails after they dug up the body and if so what was it

#4 Heartache - too graphic on 07/20/10 at 10:39 AM

This is heartwrenching to read. I was only six months old when Donna died - I am a family member, too young to remember this but it is too graphic. I was told about this when I was younger, asking who she was in photo's but this is TOO MUCH. People do not need all the graphic details of their family members plastered all over the news!

#4.1 Anonymous on 07/20/10 at 01:46 PM

People need to know the types of criminals we are dealing with. Tell every detail Walter!

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