| For Immediate Release Case # 04ZF0071
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Susan Kang Schroeder Public Affairs Counsel Office: 714-347-8408 Cell: 714-292-2718 Farrah Emami |
SEX OFFENDER SENTENCED TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR 1985 RAPE-MURDER OF 19-YEAR-OLD ANAHEIM WOMAN AFTER DNA COLD CASE HIT
SANTA ANA – A sex offender linked through a DNA match was sentenced today to life without the possibility of parole for the 1985 rape-murder of a 19-year-old Anaheim woman. Lynn Dean Johnson, 52, formerly of Anaheim, was found guilty by a jury on June 26, 2008, of special circumstances murder during the commission of rape.
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. One month later, Johnson met a woman in Anaheim and took her and her two children, including her 11-year-old daughter, to a bowling alley. When the 11-year-old girl ran out of quarters for a game, the defendant gave her the keys to his car and told her there were more quarters inside. While the victim’s mother was distracted, Johnson followed the little girl outside and told her that her mother had given him permission to take the child out for a coke. Johnson drove away with the victim and then pulled out a gun, ordered her to undress, and sexually assaulted the victim by forcing her to masturbate and orally copulate him.