Lawmaker ends life in suicide
Sexual assault allegation drew calls for resignation
FRANKFORT, Ky. – The Kentucky lawmaker’s resume 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 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 17year-old girl.
Johnson denied it all, declaring his innocence from the pulpit of the church where he was the self-appointed “pope.” By Wednesday night, he was dead, his body found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The death of the 57-year-old jolted Republican leaders. Most in the party had already turned their back on Johnson, calling for his resignation.
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 office.
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 told the reporting center 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. Her public comments match what she told police two years ago, according to police documents obtained by the reporting center.