Chapter 4
August 12, 1978
The daily newspaper was already on the burn pile by the time I woke up and made my way downstairs for breakfast. Mother had decided at 15 I was old enough to make my own breakfast, particularly since I wasn’t out of bed until she had already begun thinking about lunch and dinner. I emptied a carton of 2% milk into my bowl of Cheerios and walked out to the back porch tossing the cardboard container onto the burn stack. That’s when I saw the bold headline: One Year Later: Raymond Johnson Awaits Appeal. My stomach tightened as the haunting photograph of Raymond Johnson jumped off the page. Abruptly, I turned away and hurried back into the kitchen. I took one look at the milk-soaked Cheerios and nearly puked into the bowl. Leaving breakfast on the table, I darted through the living room and up the stairs into my bedroom. Closing the door with a bit too much momentum – damnit, Dad hates that sort of thing – I crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over my head and squeezed my eyes closed. But his face, that ugly, black, druggie, pitiful, innocent face remained on the inside of my eyelids.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen his picture. Despite my parents’ efforts to shield me from this sort of news, they weren’t by my side 24/7. I’d managed to catch a glimpse of him when a commercial for the evening news interrupted “The Love Boat”. During the past year, I’d easily pieced together the story since everybody in town was talking about it.
The story: On August 12, 1977 at approximately 12:05 a.m. 24 year old Raymond Johnson, a known drug dealer and overall drain on society, stabbed and killed James Martin and Fred Fullmer. Martin 27, an African American allegedly owed Johnson money and Johnson got tired of waiting for repayment. As the prosecution presented it, the two men got into a ruckus in the parking lot at the corner grocery store where Johnson repeatedly stabbed Martin. Returning from his girlfriend’s house, 19 year old Fullmer, pulled his car into the parking lot, encountering the two men fighting. He and his mother lived above the store. Fullmer, an all-state football player, home for the summer from college, exited his vehicle and apparently attempted to run into his house to call the police when Johnson ran up behind him and inflicted multiple fatal stab wounds into his back. Both Martin and Fullmer were pronounced dead at the scene. Police quickly found Johnson hidden behind a dumpster in the rear of the parking lot, covered in blood and partially incoherent. Investigators found the murder weapon in the dumpster with Johnson’s prints on the handle.
This was a slam dunk case for the prosecution. The community was calling for justice. Few people seemed worried about the death of Martin, but Fred Fullmer was the town hero. The son of a single, hardworking mother, Fullmer was both an outstanding student and athlete. He and his mother, the minorities in that area of town, were constantly working to clean up the neighborhood and lend a hand to anyone who needed it.
If my sister Frances had been alive, she and Fred would have been classmates and I’m sure they would have been friends – maybe even boyfriend and girlfriend. He was very handsome and popular.
You get the picture. Raymond Johnson was going to pay for his ghastly crimes. Anything short of the death penalty just wouldn’t do.
The problem: Raymond Johnson was innocent. And I was the only one who seemed to know.
