Lives of chaos end in tragedy
2 years after moving from Ohio, children found dead in trunk of car in Balto. Co.
By Jean Marbella, McKenna Oxenden and Jessica Anderson
At 5, Joshlyn Johnson was going to school, being a big sister to her 3-year-old brother Larry and living happily, relatives said, in Dayton, Ohio, with their mother and the couple they called Papa and Nana.
James Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Phillips-Simon, had themselves raised the children’s mother, their niece Dachelle Johnson, from the time she was 7, away from her family in Baltimore.
But on Sept. 20, 2018, Phillips-Simon died while recovering from surgery, according to an obituary, devastating her niece.
“I recently lost a very important person” to me, “a women that raised me and loved me for many many years,” an Instagram user who appeared to be Johnson posted the following month.
After the loss followed a series of decisions — including to move back to Baltimore the following year — and many still unexplained events that would thrust Johnson and her small children from a life of relative stability and into one of chaos and ultimately tragedy.
It culminated on July 28, with a horrifying discovery in Baltimore County: the bodies of Joshlyn Marie James Johnson and Larry Darnell O’Neil III, decomposing in the trunk of a car.
Shortly after 11 p.m., county police officers saw the car speeding and pulled the driver over at Eastern Boulevard near Wagners Lane in Essex. The driver was Nicole Michelle Johnson, Dachelle’s sister. Officers found she had a fake tag and registration, and no driver’s license.
When the officer told her she would have to report to district court within five days for her traffic citations, she responded, “It don’t matter, I won’t be here in five days. Y’all going to see me on the news making my big debut,” according to the charging documents.
Officers had noticed a “strong foul odor” when they approached the car, the police report said, and it grew stronger as Johnson began to unload items in preparation for the car to be towed for the traffic violations. They soon discovered the long-dead children.