Update: Danny Ray Johnson, who has been facing sexual assault allegations, killed himself on Wednesday night. According to AP News, the 57-year-old shot himself on a bridge in Mount Washington, Kentucky.
A deep investigation into allegations of sexual assault by a prominent Kentucky state representative has brought to light some of Danny Ray Johnson's more outrageous claims that he made during his rise to political power.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (KCIR) looked into Johnson's life after he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman who was 17 at the time, in 2012. The victim, Maranda Richmond, said that she was a member of Johnson's church. She thought of Johnson as a "second dad," and befriended Johnson's children; during a sleepover at the church, she claimed, he molested her.
The case gets stranger from there.
Richmond told KCIR that she never wanted to drop the case against Johnson, but police closed the case "by exception" — a term used to refer to cases that were either withdrawn or in which the complainant refused to cooperate with investigators. KCIR noted that four criminal justice experts who analyzed the records involving Richmond's case concluded that the investigation had been botched. They drew particular attention to the fact that the police had wrongly classified the accusation against Johnson as a misdemeanor when it should have been classified as a felony.
Indeed, Johnson has a long history of shady behavior. He has been allegedly involved in two arson cases — one involving a car, the other his church — and has made a number of claims about his past that have either not been corroborated or have been outright challenged by individuals in the know.
Johnson claimed to have been a White House chaplain during the presidencies of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He said he worked with the United Nations, and performed miracles, including healing a man of deafness. He claimed to have been present during the Rodney King riots in 1992, creating "safe zones" throughout the city of Los Angeles. He also insisted that he worked in Venezuela and Colombia and received a "doctorate of divinity” from Kingsway University and Theological Seminary in Des Moines, although a spokeswoman for the school says he worked there but never earned his degree.
Johnson has also managed to avoid legal trouble despite serving alcohol at his church without a license and openly promoting the political candidacy of President Donald Trump, even though churches are supposed to lose their tax exempt status when they back political candidates. Perhaps most notoriously, Johnson claimed to have set up a morgue in New York City after the September 11th terrorist attacks and performed last rites for everyone pulled from the World Trade Center.
As KCIR reported:
Looking out a hotel window, he watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center. He raced to Ground Zero. He pulled a body from the outstretched arms of first responders.
He set up a morgue right there, right near the rubble. And for two weeks — two heinous weeks — [Johnson] gave last rites for “all of those” pulled from the towers.
But Storm Swain, a Philadelphia theology professor who wrote a book about chaplains at Ground Zero, has never heard of Johnson. She said it’s highly unlikely that any civilian, let alone an out-of-town clergyman, would have been asked to — or would have been able to — set up a morgue in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
And a spokeswoman for New York City’s medical examiner’s office said she checked with several colleagues who were at the scene. No one remembers Danny Ray Johnson.
Despite the tenuousness of his connection to New York City on September 11th, Johnson collects workers' compensation from New York. According to his financial disclosure forms, public benefits were his only source of gross income in 2015 and 2016.
Johnson also attracted controversy during his state legislative campaign last year when it was revealed that he had posted racist material about President Barack Obama.
Media reports highlighted racist posts he shared. One image depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoonish apes. Another showed a young chimpanzee with a caption, “Obama’s baby picture.” A third post showed former President Ronald Reagan feeding a small chimp a bottle. It was titled, “Reagan babysits a young Obama.”
Johnson dismissed the criticism. He said Facebook was “entertaining.” He claimed that the posts were simply satire and fair game.
Read the full piece here.
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