VALLEY PARK — Angie Wideman said she didn’t hesitate when she told Johnny Johnson to grab some food from her family’s barbecue. He was a family friend she’d known since childhood.
The mom of four didn’t hesitate again when she later offered up their couch. He had nowhere to sleep that night, and Wideman had never seen him be violent.
The next morning, Johnson lured Wideman’s 6-year-old daughter Casey Williamson out of the house and killed her using bricks and a heavy rock.
Johnson is scheduled to die by lethal injection Aug. 1 at Bonne Terre prison.
A three-judge federal appeals court panel granted Johnson a stay of execution last week, but the full court reversed the decision on Saturday. Lawyers for Johnson are expected to appeal.
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“I’ve been looking forward to putting this part of it to rest,†Wideman said. “I’ll never put Casey to rest, but just to put this part of it to rest.â€
Days before the execution, Wideman and her ex-husband Ernie Williamson talked about that July day in Valley Park, and Wideman reflected on how Casey’s murder catapulted her family into the ravages of addiction and anxiety, and led to the overdose death of her oldest daughter. Her family reminisced about how Casey loved Britney Spears, was obsessed with the movie “Titanic†and never turned down an adventure.
The two have mixed feelings about Johnson’s execution.
Williamson was quoted in a clemency application, filed by Johnson’s lawyers, saying he did not want Johnson executed.
But in an interview with the Post-Dispatch, Williamson said those quotes didn’t accurately represent what he wants to happen.
“I never said I didn’t want Johnny Johnson to die,†he said. “I would love to see him die a miserable death.â€
Williamson said he doesn’t support capital punishment. Having spent time himself as an inmate at Potosi Correctional Center, where Johnson is housed, Williamson said death row inmates suffer far more alive than dead.
Larry Komp, one of Johnson’s attorneys, said their hearts go out to Casey’s family but said “the clemency petition is faithful to the statements of everyone quoted in it.â€
Wideman wants Johnson killed, but she is adamant that she doesn’t want his family to suffer. Wideman said she sent Johnson’s sister a Facebook message in February when the execution date was announced.
“I just said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t wish this upon you. I never wanted you to feel this kind of hurt,’†Wideman said. “I wish for peace for her and for her family. I don’t want them to have this kind of pain.â€
Johnson’s sister didn’t respond.
The murder
Casey Williamson was killed July 26, 2002. Wideman was sleeping upstairs with her two youngest children as Williamson said he got up for his 7 a.m. shift at a cement factory. Casey asked him for a bowl of cereal, but they were out of milk.
Williamson told Casey he’d walk her across the street to her grandpa’s house for breakfast before he went to work. He didn’t know Casey followed him down the stairs. He also didn’t know that the 24-year-old Johnson had stayed the night, and the way the house was laid out, he didn’t see Johnson on the couch on the way to the bathroom.
“(He) was only in the bathroom for five minutes, and when he came out, Johnny and Casey were both gone — in a matter of minutes,†Wideman said.
Williamson searched for his daughter.
“I couldn’t find her, and her bike was right there,†Williamson said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what the hell happened, but she got lost.’ I wasn’t thinking something terrible happened.â€
Police found Casey’s body less than a mile away from the Benton Street home. Around the same time, Johnson was in police custody admitting he lured Casey from the house and killed her inside an abandoned glass factory along the Meramec River after she fought back against his attempt to sexually assault her.
Johnson has been in custody since then. A jury in January 2005 took about three hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder, along with armed criminal action, kidnapping and attempted rape. In March of that year, a judge sentenced him to die by lethal injection and told the court it was “perhaps the most heinous crime†he had ever presided over.
Robert McCulloch, who prosecuted the case and served as ºüÀêÊÓƵ County’s elected prosecutor for 28 years, said on Saturday that putting Johnson to death is the right thing to do.
“He’s had 20 plus years to go through all the appeals, everything has been litigated ad nauseam,†he said. “Now it’s time to carry out the sentence.â€
Johnson’s siblings and then-girlfriend told the Post-Dispatch in 2002 that Johnson had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and began unraveling after his release from a mental hospital in January 2002. Johnson had stopped taking his medication because it made him “feel like a zombie.†He was struggling to help take care of his 2-year-old child and also comply with his probation for burglary and felony theft charges.
At the time of her daughter’s murder, Wideman said some news reports described Johnson as a drifter her family let sleep on their couch.
“That was definitely not the case. He was my best friend’s little brother,†she said. “I had known him his whole life. I babysat him when he was little.â€
She said child abductions were dominating the news cycle that summer, with notable cases such as Samantha Runnion in Stanton, California; Erica Pratt in Philadelphia; and Elizabeth Smart in Salt Lake City.
“I think everyone was just looking for a story bigger than the last one,†Wideman said. “At the time, of course, there wasn’t (as) much information out there.â€
In Valley Park, a city of about 7,000 residents southwest of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, connections between the families run deep.
Williamson had known Johnson for most of his life, and he briefly lived with Johnson’s grandmother before Casey’s murder. He said Johnson’s older sister regularly babysat his and Wideman’s kids. In 2002, the Post-Dispatch reported that Williamson gave Johnson’s sister her first kiss when they were young.
Wideman said her grandparents employed Johnson’s mom at the grandparents’ convenience store. Even Wideman’s fiance, Larry “Tigger†McClellan, said he knew Johnson through his older brothers, dating back to when they were kids.
McClellan’s aunt owned the funeral home that held Casey’s service.
Grief
Last weekend, Wideman sat in the cafeteria of Valley Park’s only public school with her victim’s advocate, Alissa Connelly, as her family’s annual safety fair wrapped up. She and McClellan were side by side in matching lime green T-shirts, the same shirts all her family members wore as they walked around the school filled with safety education and activities for children.
The fair had about a dozen booths. One, from the U.S. Coast Guard, focused on water safety. Another, by the Missouri Masonic Children’s Foundation, provided parents with materials to create identification kits for their children in case they go missing. Several first responders displayed fire trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles outside as dozens of people milled about eating hot dogs and soft pretzels.
Della Steele, Casey’s great-aunt, organizes the fair and said they started it a few years after Casey’s death as a way to funnel their grief into something positive. This year’s fair was the first since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Steele said many of Casey’s former classmates, now in their mid-20s, attended with their children.
Steele’s daughter sat with Steele at the fair and said they want Casey to be remembered more for who she was than how she died. The two laughed as they recalled the time Casey brought a frog into her grandma’s house during a holiday get-together, and how she was always singing Britney Spears in her husky voice that sounded more like Stevie Nicks.
Casey’s family at first hosted a memorial walk a year after she died. But the walk stirred up too much sadness, and it made coping with the loss even more difficult.
“So we started morphing it into the safety fair because we thought we could make a bigger difference that way,†Steele said. “We honor Casey by doing this but it’s not as focused, so it’s a little easier on (Wideman).â€
For Wideman and her family, the pain of Casey’s loss endures. The girl’s siblings, who were 2 and 4 when their sister died, struggle with mental health, nightmares and maintaining relationships.
“They were kind of cheated out of everything in life because they didn’t know anything other than their mom being a zombie for 10 years,†Wideman said.
She said her oldest daughter, who was 12 at the time, blamed herself for Casey’s death. She began to abuse opiates and alcohol, and she died of an overdose about eight years ago. She left behind two children of her own that Wideman and her mother are now raising.
“In my opinion, (Johnson) took her from us as well,†she said. “That’s how I see it — he took her away from us. She could not cope with life after losing her sister.â€
McClellan noted Wideman’s father, too, struggled with alcoholism and “drank himself to death†after Casey died.
McClellan lives with Wideman and said he sees every day how she struggles with anxiety, often has trouble getting out of bed and is easily triggered by certain songs or things on TV. But he also said Wideman has the “biggest heart.â€
Both Wideman and Williamson said they have leaned into religion to help them cope.
The last photo the family has of Casey was taken 36 hours before her death. Donning a denim jumper, a pink T-shirt and tan sandals, Casey has her hair pulled back into a ponytail and her hand near her heart.
Wideman said the photo is of Casey singing at a Wednesday night church service.
“I’m a Christian, and I have Jesus in my heart,†she sang. “And I will live eternally.â€