| For Immediate Release Case # 04ZF0071
June 26, 2008 |
Susan Kang Schroeder Public Affairs Counsel Office: 714-347-8408 Cell: 714-292-2718 Farrah Emami |
SEX OFFENDER CONVICTED OF 1985 RAPE-MURDER OF 19-YEAR-OLD ANAHEIM WOMAN AFTER
DNA COLD CASE HIT
*The District Attorney is seeking the death penalty in this case
SANTA ANA – A sex offender linked through a DNA match was convicted today of the 1985 rape-murder of a 19-year-old Anaheim woman. Lynn Dean Johnson, 52, formerly of Anaheim, was found guilty by a jury of special circumstances murder during the commission of rape. As the District Attorney is seeking the death penalty in this case, the case now moves into the penalty phase of the trial, in which the jury will decide whether to recommend that the judge sentence Johnson to death or life without the possibility of parole. The penalty phase is scheduled to begin Tuesday, July 1, 2008, in Department C-35, Central Justice Center, Santa Ana.
Facts of the Case
In May 1985, Johnson was a 31-year-old sheet metal worker living in Anaheim with his girlfriend and her two young children, a girl and a boy, from a previous relationship.
On May 26, 1985, 19-year-old Bridgett Lamon was working as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim. After work, at approximately 10:30 p.m., Lamon walked to her nearby mother’s house and her mother drove Lamon back to her Anaheim apartment. Lamon was never seen alive again. Johnson met Lamon that night and raped her. He beat the victim to death using a hammer from his job and dumped her body several miles away in eastern Anaheim.
Lamon’s body was discovered at approximately 8:30 a.m. the next day in a dumpster alcove in an industrial business complex. The victim was naked from the waist down and her ankles, although not bound, had ligature marks to indicate that they had been tied with a rope. Lamon’s head and shoulders were wrapped in sheets and a plastic bag. Her skull and face were fractured, her ribs were broken, and she had defensive wounds to her hands. Semen was found in her body from being raped.
The Anaheim Police Department (APD) investigated the case, but the necessary DNA technology did not exist in 1985 and the case went cold.
Propensity Evidence
During the trial, the daughter of Johnson’s former live-in girlfriend, whom he shared a house with at the time of the murder in 1985, testified that the defendant had molested her when she was 10 years old while he was living with her and her mother.
Also during the trial, the People presented evidence that in July 1988, three years after the murder of Lamon, Johnson was arrested for exposing himself to a 17-year-old girl at a payphone in Tustin.