Here are the facts: on 16 February 1981, 19-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson, his sister Wanda, his fiancee Debbie Glatzel, her cousin Mary and Debbie’s employer/landlord Alan Bono all went to lunch at a bar in Brookfield, Connecticut. Over the course of the afternoon, Bono drank to the point of inebriated belligerence, and soon began to roughly handle young Mary. A visibly enraged Johnson intervened, tussled with Bono, drew a five-inch pocketknife and stabbed the man repeatedly. Bono succumbed to his wounds a few hours later, and Johnson was apprehended by the police two miles away from the scene of the crime.
That November, his trial became a media sensation when his legal representation pleaded innocence by cause of demonic possession, explaining that Johnson took on an unholy passenger while participating in an exorcism for Debbie’s little brother David with the noted paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren the previous fall. The judge swiftly ruled against the claim as unverifiable, and Johnson was convicted of manslaughter with a 10- to 20-year sentence, of which he served five.
