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Scratch a prison reform poster boy, find a dismembered torso.
As life after incarceration goes, ex-con Sheldon Johnson Jr. seemed to be on the right path.
Armed with a degree he earned during his 25 years in prison, Johnson, 48, became the poster child for prison reform, working with the city’s Homeless Services Department, counseling at-risk youth at the Queens public defenders’ office and talking about his remarkable turnaround on a popular podcast.
The only question about Johnson Jr.’s new direction seemed to be about who would play him in the movie.
“I was just blown away by the level of accomplishment and mental wherewithal that he possessed to accomplish what he did while incarcerated,” lawyer Josh Dubin said last month on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
He called Johnson Jr. “a miracle.”
A monster, a miracle, who can tell the difference?
Sheldon Johnson, a 48-year-old staffer for the public law firm Queens Defenders, was led out of the 44th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs Thursday after police made the grisly discovery — a human torso in a blue bin and a head stashed in a freezer in the sixth-floor apartment, police said.
Sources said the victim in this week’s slaying, identified as 44-year-old Collin Small, may have had a beef with Johnson while both were doing time at Sing Sing prison in Westchester County.
Neighbors told cops the victim was heard desperately pleading with his killer shortly before two shots rang out in the apartment near Odgen Avenue and West 162nd Street shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday, sources and neighbors said.
“Please don’t,” the doomed man was heard saying.
“I have a family!”
Why were people fooled by this monster? Because they wanted to be. They wanted to believe. And there’s a long history of wanting to believe that criminals are just misunderstood products of an oppressed society, that Hamas was suffering from being in an open-air concentration camp, and that Hitler was just fighting for justice.
But monsters usually are monsters. The signs are always there.
Johnson Jr., sadly, isn’t the first in his family accused of killing another man.
That distinction went to his son — also named Sheldon Johnson — who in 2008 attacked a 24-year-old Columbia University graduate student, Mingui Yu, in Morningside Heights, punching his victim repeatedly in the face. Yu stumbled into traffic and was struck and killed by a passing SUV.
The younger Johnson was charged with manslaughter for Yu’s death and would spend 18 months in a juvenile detention boot camp.
Crime and incarceration run in the Johnson family. After abandoning his family, Johnson’s father — Sheldon Johnson Sr. — was arrested in 1986 for raping his 7-year-old stepdaughter three times.
The elder Johnson, who is deaf, spent time in prison on drug charges during the crack cocaine epidemic.
These people aren’t oppressed, they’re evil. And most of us don’t want to come to terms with that.
Talk about bad blood. Sometimes families are just bad. Those Johnsons sound worse than Charlie Manson.
Bad behavior is generally hardwired into the long-term memory of the brain.
I’m sorry, bad behavior is hardwired into every last one of us.
“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” the Bible reminds us. It is only the influence of some overarching moral framework that changes us from monsters to people with some love and care for their fellow man. All others just see their fellow humans as marks for use and abuse or as obstacles to be eliminated.
“bad behavior is hardwired into every last one of us” Some more than others. Blacks are dangerous to be around, male and female.
That’s for sure, and I like black chicks. I think they’re hot. But generally speaking, black people are dangerous to be around. Only fools think otherwise.
Yeah, well, I don,t see things that way and I figure I’m a pretty regular guy. Who the fuck wants to do something like that?
Yes but bad behavior is only hardwired so far into most of us. I can honestly say I’ve only killed one person and the law didn’t punish me but I’m sure God will make me do penance for quite some time when I kick off. Most of us don’t go around killing people like those Johnsons. Bad behaviour is something most of us avoid.
Hardwired to be soft in the head.
People like this is why Plea Bargaining and Parole for dangerous maniacs needs t be banned and kept in prison until the day they die Rehabilitation and counseling don work
Disguising yourself as a white woman isn’t a hate crime? I must not have my dei right. He’s a buddy of fat alvin.
Given the title of this essay– “When People Want To Be Fooled By Monsters”– I thought the author was talking about the Democ-rats applauding Joe Bite-Me’s recent state-of-the-union screed. Actually, he’s talking about Democ-rat elites applauding a particular cold blooded murderer. There’s a big difference between Joe Bite-Me’s murderous border policies and a perp with a human head in his freezer– right? To paraphrase a Russian mass murderer (Joseph Stalin), a single death is a tragedy but thousands of deaths are a statistic. Give him a standing ovation, Democ-rats. Uncle Joe Bite-Me is your made-in-America monster.
Biden is as close to being a corpse as is physically possible,
without actually being dead.
America elected this corrupt depraved psychopath as President of the USA.
That in itself tells me where America is, and where it is going.
Take care of yourself, your family, and kindred spirits/friends.
The devil take the hindmost.
The real America and her Patriots from the historical past
seem more like a mirage with each passing day.
The left will always choose to ignore talk about ‘evil’ because of it’s religious inference (and they’ll have NONE of that) and because it puts them and their policies squarely in the crosshairs. Generally, it’s human nature to wish for rehabilitation, but reality doesn’t always work like that, if ever. The secular world puts their ‘faith’ in their own abilities to fix broken people so, of course, they’re “blown away by the level of accomplishment” in a feeble attempt to fool themselves…and to pat themselves on the back as well.
There’s only One Way to fix broken people…and He doesn’t prescribe pills, but He does make house calls.
The Left doesn’t believe in evil because it places blame/responsibility on the individual. They can’t conceive that a person himself or herself is evil because the Leftist removes “agency” from people and considers all such behavior as the result of defects in systems in society. Plus, Leftists are largely out of their minds and fail to appreciate or understand reality, so there’s that.
Indeed. The Left believes society is evil, not people, and so the only evil out there comes from conservatives who want to keep society the way that it is.
Thanks Daniel! I was raised to believe people were basically good, and paid the price for that belief all my life.
I think you’were taught right and that most people are basically good. But we have to watch out for the bad ones. I’ve run into plenty of them. Just one is all it takes to possibly kill you or people you love.
F…people can be evil. Anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling himself. I’ve met too many assholes to count. Theyr’e everywhere, man.
Thanks Jeff!!!!
Let’s make the movie anyway! Criminal sentencing is about punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is rare. Make a documentary about the harm wrought in our communities by the over-emphasis upon rehabilitation. Think of the abundant material that could be marshaled in service of this film – all the criminals who were let out who went on to destroy the lives of others!
The leftists who control media have been very successful in softening us up to believe evil is done because people are basically good, but are victims of their environment. This presupposition has killed many thousands of innocent lives.
Denzel Washington needs another Oscar. The movie can change history to explain that he was just misunderstood.
Denzel seems like a good guy to me.
Some people are just bad, Kynarion. Any of us us with sense realize that. There are just some people you don’t turn your back on. They’ve always been around.
Does any remember Jack Henry Abbott?
It’s an old story. Norman Mailer championed him and got him released from prison. Another misunderstood individual.
“On the night of July 17, Mr. Abbott and two women were at the Binibon, a restaurant in the East Village, when Mr. Abbott got up from his table and asked Richard Adan, a 22-year-old waiter and aspiring actor, to direct him to the toilet. Mr. Adan explained that the toilet could be reached only through the kitchen, and because the restaurant did not have accident insurance for customers, only employees could use the bathroom. Mr. Abbott argued with him. They took their dispute outside, where Mr. Abbott stabbed Mr. Adan to death, early in the morning of July 18.”
Leftists have a difficult dealing with reality and should not be allowed to make any serious decisions of consequence.
I was going to mention him, but the post would have gotten too long.
I did write about Abbott back in the day. And Caryl Chessman.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2007/04/caryl-chessman-and-triumph-of-evil.html
There’s a reason the Left loves monsters. Because they are monsters.
Speaking of Mailer… he stabbed his wife at a party, was briefly committed and then went on being a darling of the literary set
Who stabs their wife? I hate my ex wife but I’ve never thought about stabbing her. Only a full on psycho does something like that. You have to be seriously crazy to do that.
The Caryl Chessman story is interesting. It was a big headline story in the SF Chron in the 1950s. My Mom was a big opponent of the death penalty, I think she found such a thing shocking. So I was raised seeing that story over and over. I don’t remember how I felt about it, I think I was ambivalent, being able to see both sides as usual (wishy washy 🙂
Not so much wishy washy or ambivalent but judicial.
But I tell you brother, when you run into bad people like that, you’ll make up your mind real fast. I figure you’re like me. You’re likely to give people the benefit of the doubt but common sense kicks in real fast when you’re faced with that do or die stuff. Give up and die? Fuck that shit.
Darn right they’re evil just like the Days of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Days of Noah when corruption and evil were at an all time high. 2 Timothy 4:3. says For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ‘They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to mythts.
Proverbs 10:11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
This has always been the dividing line between me and the leftists I once allowed around me. There is evil, and there is little in human nature that is good. To be good is a choice made. It’s not something that nature grants, and neither does it come from government nor from some loose (and silly) notion of community. It comes with choice being made, and the leftist will never understand this.
This individual has made himself a monster, and no doubt will have some benefit yet again given him by the usual mob of fools.