State parole board members think Willie Lee Johnson has probably spent enough time behind bars.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s not surprising. Johnson, now 59, has been in prison for more than 35 years, and unless the members of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles change their minds, he will walk out of the Macon Transitional Center after April 6.
“I must vehemently oppose this offender from being released and am hopeful that you will reconsider this dangerous decision,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Natalie Paine wrote to the parole board on behalf of the Columbia County Judicial Circuit’s DA.
Johnson was 24 years old when convicted of a slew of crimes in the sexual assaults of two women and the attempted rape of a third. He was sentenced to five consecutive life-in-prison terms with an additional 40 years stacked on top.
Johnson’s crimes were not spur of the moment, impulsive acts. He targeted specific women and developed a ruse to gain their trust. As the crimes progressed, so did the violence, according to the prosecution’s investigative file and a transcript of Johnson’s 1986 trial in Columbia County Superior Court, both obtained via an open record request.
“This man is a serial rapist. My experience as a prosecutor leads me to opine that this man possesses all of the traits of someone who simply cannot resist his urges,” Paine wrote to the parole board.
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Law enforcement would learn after Johnson’s arrest that his first possible attempt at sexual assault occurred May 6, 1986, at a Grovetown home where he gained entry with a door-to-door salesman pitch for a household cleaner, Purple Passion. Once inside, two women told officers, he started taking off his clothes. When he refused the stop, the women left, and the man, whom one woman identified as Johnson, left a short time later with an apology.
On May 27, 1986, Johnson had a different approach. Dressed in military fatigues and carrying a briefcase, Johnson approached the Grovetown home of a Fort Gordon soldier and his 24-year-old wife. The husband was at work on base. Johnson told the wife he was from the fort and needed to ask her some questions concerning her husband’s security clearance. She invited him inside. He pulled a gun and told her not to scream, that he was only going to rob her.
Johnson herded the woman to a bedroom and pushed her face down on the bed. He bound her wrists behind her back, blindfolded her and sealed her mouth shut with white tape. She could hear him rummaging around the home before he returned and raped her. He stole a couple of items on his way out. She was four months pregnant at the time.
Nine days later, another Fort Gordon soldier’s wife was walking up to her Grovetown home checking through her mail when a man dressed in fatigues stopped her. He said he was doing a survey about housing for Fort Gordon families and asked if he could ask her some questions. The 18-year-old woman invited him inside.
Johnson used the gun again to gain control of his victim whom he bound, gagged, and blindfolded, just like the first victim. This sexual assault though was longer, more involved and more degrading to the young wife. He again stole some items from the home.
The sexual assaults in the small Grovetown community had law enforcement officers on edge, according to the trial transcript. Grovetown Police officers increased their patrols. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were helping with the investigation.
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Just two days after the second victim was attacked, a third young wife of a Fort Gordon soldier was hanging up clothes to dry on an outside clothesline around 11 a.m., June 6, 1986. If the 18-year-old had heard of the other attacks, no mention is made in the prosecution’s file. She had left the backdoor open. She finished the chore and headed back inside not knowing that Johnson had sneaked behind her and entered the home first.
A neighbor saw the man and assumed he was visiting the soldier next door, but he didn’t see the soldier’s car at home. He saw the young wife at the clothesline and saw Johnson entered the home while her back was turned. The neighbor thought it was odd. When he saw the woman go inside and heard a scream, he grabbed his phone and dialed 911, he testified months later.
The young woman said she caught a glimpse of a man in the house and tried to make it to the front door because she knew he was too close to the back door for her to escape that way. She took off running, but so did Johnson, who tackled her to the floor then struck her in the mouth with a gun when she screamed.
He bound her hands behind her back and was about to gag her with tape when she convinced him not to cover her mouth because she wouldn’t be able to breath. He tied a cloth around her eyes as a blindfold then forced her into the bedroom where he pushed her down on the bed and stripped her of her pants. He was just beginning to rape her when there was the sound of a car door slamming outside. It was her husband, she told Johnson. He could get out the back before her husband came inside. She said it twice before Johnson decided to run out the back door. She ran to the front door, expecting to see her husband, but it was a Grovetown police officer whom she collided with.
Johnson ran from the scene, but officers chased him down. One fired a gun at Johnson three times. The officer explained at trial that their information was the rapist had a gun. The man he was chasing slowed at one point and took what the officer considered a shooting stand. Johnson wasn’t hit, but he was apprehended just before he was able to open the door to his vehicle.
In a search of Johnson’s home, officers found items stolen from the homes of first two victims. They also found a roll of white medical tape like that used to gag the women. Inside the second victim’s home they also found a fingerprint later compared to Johnson’s prints for a match. The victims independently picked Johnson’s photo from a lineup.
Johnson chose not to testify at his trial, and no defense witnesses were called. According to the investigative report, the owner of the company that marketed the Purple Passion cleaning product was interviewed. The man who stripped in front of two women had brought Purple Passion into the home. The owner said he had recently hired a Grovetown man as a salesman, but he hadn’t heard from him since early May of that year. The man told the owner he had recently left the Army.
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More than 35 years after the trial, the prosecutor in Johnson’s case still remembers the basic facts of the trial.
“I’m glad our DA office wrote a letter (of opposition to the parole board),” said Richard Goolsby Sr.
Johnson has been considered and rejected for release eight times, said Steve Hayes, the director of communications for the parole board. On Jan. 6, board members voted tentatively to release Johnson. They will accept any new information about the case for 90 days before issuing a final ruling, Hayes said.
The letter opposing parole from the district attorney’s office was filed immediately upon receiving notice.
“The last time that Mr. Johnson was considered for release, barely two years ago, his parole plan included living with his alleged grandmother … This woman was born in 1929 and is 92 years old,” Paine wrote. It couldn’t possibly be safe to put a convicted rapist in her home, Paine wrote.
When Johnson was considered for parole in 2020, the plan for his release required electronic monitoring and registration as a sex offender, Paine said. His plan was to go to New Jersey.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
