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| Report: Wife of Correctional Officer Claims He Confessed to Killing Sheriff’s Deputy |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/15/2002 |
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The estranged wife of a former prison officer said her husband admitted 12 years ago he shot and killed a sheriff's deputy a crime for which two other men went to jail, new police documents show. Gwenda Johnson told a police informant she went with her estranged husband, Andrew Johnson, to scatter pieces of the dismantled revolver right after the murder of Patrick Behan in 1990, the Miami Herald reported in Wednesday's editions. Her account, contained in a 99-page file released Tuesday by the Broward Sheriff's Office, appears to lend credibility to boasts about the slaying that Andrew Johnson made to undercover agents posing as drug dealers on Oct. 4, 2001. Those secretly recorded statements were released separately Tuesday. Officials announced last week there wasn't enough evidence to charge Andrew Johnson in Behan's murder, saying they could not independently verify key facts. Officials have been unable to find the gun parts allegedly hidden by the Johnsons, the Miami Herald reported. In addition, Andrew Johnson has since insisted he only confessed to the murder plot to impress the undercover officers he thought were criminals. But lawyers for Timothy Brown, serving a life sentence in the murder, said they will use the new documents in their bid to free him. Brown's co-defendant, Keith King, served eight years in the case. ''There is a massive amount of stuff and we have just cracked the surface,'' said Brenda Bryn, Brown's attorney. According to the documents, Andrew Johnson bragged to the undercover police that he intended to kill Deputy Brian Montgomery for getting him fired from his job as a jail officer. Behan and Montgomery had swapped shifts the night Behan was killed. ''I knew that they had snagged somebody, but I never cared,'' Johnson said of Brown's arrest, conceding Behan ''may or may not have been the right guy.'' The statements were secretly recorded by the undercover officers. ''But I still did the job and I did it clean,'' Johnson insisted. ''I made an example out of somebody.'' Brown and King were convicted mostly on the strength of confessions their attorneys say were beaten out of them. Then just teen-agers, the pair said they killed Behan on a dare. |
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