Lawmaker who spun a story of heroism ends his life in suicide
FRANKFORT, Kentucky — The Kentucky lawmaker’s resumé included enough material for an award-winning memoir: He was a peacekeeper at the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, a White House chaplain to three presidents and a 9-11 first responder who gave last rites to hundreds of people at Ground Zero.
But Republican Dan Johnson’s carefully crafted history crumbled this week following an extensively reported story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The story tore down his claims and portrayed him as a con man whose deceptions propped up his ministry of a church of outcasts in Louisville and hid a sinister secret: a sexual-assault allegation from a 17-year-old girl.
Johnson denied it all, declaring his innocence Tuesday from the pulpit of the church where he was the self-appointed “pope.” By Wednesday night, he was dead, his body found on the side of a secluded road with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The death of the 57-year-old jolted Republican leaders, already struggling with a sexualharassment scandal that toppled the state’s first GOP House speaker in nearly 100 years, along with three other Republican committee chairmen. Most in the party had already turned their back on Johnson, calling for his resignation following the sexualassault allegation and his history of posting racist photos on Facebook that depicted former U.S. president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
By Thursday, many were offering messages of sympathy while acknowledging Johnson’s complex life. Johnson’s wife, Rebecca Johnson, said her husband was the victim of a “high-tech lynching” and announced she would run to replace him in the legislature.
Elected in 2016, he was part of a wave of Republican victories that gave the party a majority in the Kentucky House for the first time in nearly 100 years. But before that, he was the pastor of Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, which prided itself on welcoming “real people.”
“It was a biker church, so there was lots of leather jackets, lots of long hair and people that if you ran into them on the street, you might have a different first impression,” said David Adams, a political operative who worked with Johnson on his campaign.
On the church’s website, Johnson claimed to have healed sick people during a visit to South America in 1991, including the incredible story of raising a woman from the dead.
The sexual-assault allegation came from Maranda Richmond, a former member of Johnson’s church. Richmond said she was spending the night at Johnson’s house on New Year’s Eve 2012 when she awoke to find Johnson standing over her. She said he stuck his tongue in her mouth and put his hands down her pants and into her vagina. She said she begged him to stop and eventually he did.