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#Post#: 93--------------------------------------------------
~ Ernest Johnson, 05Oct21, (MO) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: October 18, 2015, 11:01 pm
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Missouri inmate’s execution set for 1994 triple slaying--
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
[IMG]
HTML http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb388/cncp66/6a00d8345233fa69e2010536a3ab31970b-.jpg[/img]
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Missouri Supreme Court has
scheduled a November execution for an inmate convicted of
killing three workers at a Columbia convenience store more than
two decades ago.
The state’s high court issued the execution order Tuesday for
55-year-old Ernest Lee Johnson, scheduling his death by
injection for Nov. 3.
Johnson was convicted of bludgeoning 46-year-old Mary Bratcher,
57-year-old Mable Scruggs and 58-year-old Fred Jones with a
hammer at a Casey’s General Store where they worked in Boone
County. The killings took place in February 1994.
Johnson has appealed several times.
Source: The Washington Times
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#Post#: 96--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Ernest Johnson, 05Oct21, (MO) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: October 31, 2015, 8:54 pm
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Federal judge declines to block Missouri execution for man
convicted of killing 3 by hammer--
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
ST. LOUIS — A Missouri federal judge is refusing to block next
week’s execution of a cancer-stricken inmate who used a hammer
in killing three workers at a convenience store more than two
decades ago.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Greg Kays in Kansas City,
Missouri, on Tuesday threw out Ernest Lee Johnson’s request to
intervene.
Johnson claimed in an appeal filed last week that his brain
tumor constitutes a “unique medical condition” that could be
exacerbated by Tuesday’s scheduled lethal injection, possibly
causing uncontrollable seizures and convulsions.
The state counters Missouri has carried out 18 rapid, painless
executions since late 2013. Kays also sided with the state’s
argument that 55-year-old Johnson’s appeal wasn’t filed timely
enough.
Johnson was convicted of killing three people in 1994 at a
Columbia convenience store where they worked.
Source: The Topeka Capital-Journal
8)
#Post#: 97--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Ernest Johnson, 05Oct21, (MO) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: November 2, 2015, 5:48 pm
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Victim's family prepares for execution of their mother's killer,
Ernest Lee Johnson--
November 2, 2015
COLUMBIA — The night she found out her mom had been murdered,
Carley Schaffer sat outside her house in a Philadelphia ice
storm and smoked a cigarette. She waited for her sister to pick
her up so they could travel to Columbia for the funeral. She
listened to the ice crackle in the trees.
Saturday, more than 20 years after her mother's death, Schaffer
prepared once again to travel to Missouri from the East Coast —
this time to watch the execution of her mom’s killer.
Her mother, Mary Bratcher, was one of three people killed by
Ernest Lee Johnson in Casey’s General Store the night of Feb.
12, 1994. Bratcher, Fred Jones Jr. and Mable Scruggs were all
employees at the store closing up for the night when Johnson
knocked on the door.
Johnson, looking for money to buy drugs, robbed the store and
bludgeoned all three employees to death with a hammer. He hid
the bodies in the bathroom and in a cooler. Police later found
bloody shoes and a bank bag with a couple hundred dollars and
store receipts in Johnson's house.
He has been convicted of the murders and was sentenced to death
three separate times through his appeal process. His attorneys
have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court that argues Johnson
is mentally disabled and should not be executed, according to
the Associated Press.
Johnson, 55, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6
p.m. on Tuesday. If executed, he will become the seventh person
executed in Missouri this year.
Schaffer and her two siblings planned to be at the state prison
in Bonne Terre for the execution. For Schaffer and her sister,
Lorrie Heichelbech, who lives in Columbia, it's not about
vengeance or finding peace. It's about honoring their mother's
memory and supporting each other through the end of more than
two decades of legal proceedings.
“The only peace I’m going to get is to stop having to wait for
the next step in the legal process,” Schaffer said. “It’s not
bringing my mom back. I’ve known that since the first sentence.
It doesn’t change my reality. It doesn’t change that I’m going
to grieve for her for the rest of my life.”
Coffee and cigarettes
Mary Bratcher was dealt a bad hand in life, her children said,
but played her cards as best she could and with as much joy as
possible.
The fifth of 11 children, Bratcher grew up fast and tough. After
her husband was arrested and imprisoned for dealing drugs, she
raised their three kids by herself.
“Many people would have laid down a long time ago, given the
hand she was given,” Heichelbech, 45, said.
The three children were the free lunch kids, Schaffer said, and
moved from one rented trailer home to another as their mom tried
to make ends meet as a convenience store manager. Bratcher wore
hand-me-downs and shoes with holes in them so her kids could
have nicer things.
“She led by example,” Schaffer, 42, said. “You work hard. You
don’t make excuses, and you rise above your circumstances.”
She loved to sing The Supremes, Diana Ross and Frank Sinatra,
especially “White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” She
always smelled like coffee and cigarettes and had “quite the
potty mouth,” Heichelbech said. She giggled watching her girls
dance disco in their living room. Sometimes those giggles became
peals of laughter.
Bratcher’s laugh was a force. It was deep and seemed to come
from every part of her body, Heichelbech said. It made everybody
else in the room laugh.
“I could hear her in a store laughing, and I knew it was her and
exactly where she was,” Heichelbech said. “I would give my right
kidney to hear it again.”
Bratcher was the manager at Casey’s and had gone to the store to
help Scruggs, a new employee, the night she was killed. When
Johnson knocked on the glass, Bratcher recognized him and let
him in, Heichelbech said.
“She always managed to find the good in people,” she said. “That
might have led to her death.”
Johnson's other victims had people who relied on them, too.
Jones, 58, took care of his elderly mother and his twin brother,
who had been disabled by a stroke. He was a quiet man who liked
to laugh, according to previous Missourian reporting. After his
death, his brother's care was turned over to a state agency,
according to an obituary in the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Scruggs, 57, was a single mother and worked at Casey's and as
the chief clerk at the MU Student Health Center. Her co-workers
at the health center described her as unusually dedicated and
said the job meant “everything” to her, according to previous
Missourian reporting. The night she was killed at Casey's she
was covering a shift for another worker.
“You could sum her attitude up in four words — 'I want to
help,'” a friend said at Scruggs' funeral, according to an
obituary in The Columbia Daily Tribune.
Scabs
Heichelbech remembers little about the weeks after her mom's
death besides seeing her aunts, buying the casket and speaking
at the funeral, which more than 300 people attended.
Her brother, Rob Bratcher, was 18 at the time and the only
sibling living in Columbia. He struggled with his mother's death
much more than his sisters, Heichelbech said. Rob Bratcher
declined to speak to the Missourian for this story except to say
that his mother was a good person. He lives in Kansas City now
with his wife and two kids and works in commercial banking.
Most of those weeks after the murder are a blur for Schaffer,
who was 20. But winter, cold and ice storms always bring back
the memories and reminders of the absence they surround.
“I let myself grieve during the winter,” she said. “My family
knows what to expect. It’s not easy, but we get on.”
Schaffer’s children, 10 and 13, know Bratcher as Grandma Mary,
their guardian angel who looks out for them from heaven.
Teaching them about their grandmother and how she died has been
bittersweet, Schaffer said. Telling the good stories passed on
her memory. Explaining her death and why they’ll never know
Bratcher hurts all over again.
Her daughter once cried for the loss of her grandmother,
mourning a woman she had never known. That’s the worst part,
Schaffer said: watching her mother’s murder hurt her child. It
makes her angry.
Heichelbech's son met Bratcher when he was a child, but he
doesn't remember the grandma that doted on him.
“I can tell stories, but it doesn’t cut it," Heichelbech said.
"I can’t even convey half of her spirit. It’s a void in his
life.”
Schaffer became a drug counselor to help people with addictions
like Johnson. She wants to help people stay away from the path
Johnson chose.
“Part of trauma recovery is taking that trauma and creating a
new meaning for it," Schaffer said. "I think what I’m doing now
is an honor to her memory.”
Johnson's execution on Tuesday will be the end of the legal
proceedings that repeatedly forced the siblings to revisit that
trauma.
“I struggled so long to deal with the anger and the horror of
her death,” Schaffer said. “Sometimes I want to wad it up in a
ball and stick it in the back of the brain. Times like this we
have to unwad the ball and rip off the scab.”
Any anger the sisters had toward Johnson has dissipated, they
said, though they don't sympathize with him.
“Once I came to the reckoning of it all, being angry at him was
only destroying me," Heichelbech said. "It wasn’t going to touch
him in any way. It does nothing but wreck you as a person.”
The execution will be an opportunity to put the crime of their
mother's death to rest. No longer will they have to find
babysitters when they're called to court. No longer will they
have to face their mother's murderer. No longer will they be
left in limbo.
The loss will last forever, they said, but at least now they'll
be able to deal with it on their own timetable.
“I feel that I need to ride this out. To stand it out and
survive it,” Schaffer said. “I'm ready for this to be done.”
Source:
HTML http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/victim-s-family-prepares-for-execution-of-their-mother-s/article_f4c9f4ec-7f3a-11e5-9f69-e754a006f459.html
8)
#Post#: 469--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Ernest Johnson, 05Oct21, (MO) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: October 5, 2021, 7:20 pm
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Ernest Lee Johnson is EXECUTED in Missouri for slaughtering
three--
Tuesday, October 5th, 2021
MURDERER Ernest Lee Johnson was executed in a Missouri prison
today, after the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution in a
last-minute attempt from his attorneys to gain clemency.
Johnson, 61, was pronounced dead by lethal injection of
pentobarbital at 6:11pm at the state prison in Bonne Terre.
Johnson's death is the fourth death row killing since Joe Biden
took office.
Johnson was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing
three people during a robbery in 1994 at a convenience store in
Columbia.
"Mr. Johnson was tried and convicted for the brutal murder of
three innocent victims during a robbery in 1994," Missouri
Governor Mike Parson said in a statement.
"The evidence showed Mr. Johnson went to great lengths to plan
and conceal his crime. Three juries have reviewed Mr. Johnson's
case and recommended a sentence of death."
In February 1994, Johnson walked into a general store near his
home in northeast Columbia and bludgeoned, stabbed, and shot
three employees.
The victims were identified as Mary Bratcher, 46; Mable Scruggs,
57; and Fred Jones, 58.
Johnson proceeded to hide their bodies in a walk-in cooler and
rob the store for drug money.
HTML http://www.the-sun.com/news/3799452/ernest-lee-johnson-execution-missouri-death-row/
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