Woman sentenced after DNA ties her to 2013 killing
A 20-year-old woman with a history mental illness has been sentenced to 19 years in prison nearly five years after she killed a disabled man who had befriended her when she passed his home on the way to school.
Jasmine McDonald, who entered then withdrew an insanity defense, pleaded guilty in April to first-degree reckless homicide in the Oct. 10, 2013, death of 84-yearold Robert J. “Bob” Johnson.
Johnson’s car was found crashed, abandoned and burning that day near North 53rd and West Hadley streets. A witness told investigators a young woman had run from the car after it crashed, then returned a short time later and apparently tried to set it on fire.
The car was registered to Johnson, and police went to his home where they found him dead inside from multiple stab wounds.
It wasn’t until last year that DNA found on the steering wheel of Johnson’s car was matched to McDonald, who was serving a three-year sentence for unrelated armed robbery in 2016. According to court records, she’d been in and out of Copper Lake juvenile prison, and treated both in jail and out for a variety of mental health issues, but never with a consistent diagnosis or treatment plan.
She told investigators she knew Johnson because she walked past his house on the way to school and the store since 2010.
In 2013, she said, Johnson, who was disabled, asked her to get him snacks from a convenience store several times and would let her keep the change from $50 when she’d drop off his Diet Dr Pepper and Nutter Butter bars.
McDonald said she ran the same errand for him about 10 times over about three months until one day he asked her to come inside while he got the money. She did and said Johnson tried to molest her and she wound up stabbing him and stealing his car.
She had just turned 16 at the time and never told anyone what happened, she told police, and when she did write about in her diary, she later tore out the page for fear her mother would see it.
Johnson’s sister wrote to the court from California. She said they had been separated when their parents divorced when they were young but had reconnected and spoke twice a week. “Now I’m 87 and have nothing to look forward to,” in life, as she and her brother were planning to live together in their final years.
McDonald’s family told the court that she had always been quiet and shy, especially after her grandmother died in 2012, but loved to help elderly neighbors with their yards and never accepted payment.
After her prison term, McDonald will serve 26 years of extended supervision, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner ordered.