| Bruce Johnston Sr | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 27, 1939 |
| Died | August 8, 2002 (aged 63) Graterford, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Charge(s) | Murder of five, attempted murder and theft |
| Penalty | 6 consecutive life sentences |
| Children | son Bruce Jr (born 1959) and son James (born 1960) |
Bruce Alfred Johnston Sr (March 27, 1939 – August 8, 2002) was the leader of one of the most notorious gangs in the history of Pennsylvania, USA. The gang started in the 1960s and was rounded up in 1978 after his son, Bruce Jr, testified against him.
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The gang and its wide network stole primarily in Chester County, according to a 1980 Pennsylvania Crime Commission report, but they made their way into Lancaster County on several occasions. They also crossed the state lines to Maryland and Delaware. They stole items ranging from antiques to drugs.
In each break-in or theft, gang members used their skill in picking locks, cracking safes and disarming or averting security systems. They used walkie-talkies and police scanners. While planning a job in one part of the county, they would divert the state police by phoning a false report elsewhere.
August 1971: Dutch Wonderland's castle on Lincoln Highway East. One of the men pried open the door to the park's shop, a small building hidden from the road. The burglars gathered a hammer, crowbar, rope and torch. They brought their own walkie-talkies. The men prepared for descent into the park office, in what would later become the worst-ever burglary of the popular tourist attraction. The police believe the culprits were David, Norman and Bruce Johnston Sr and their associates—all members of the "Johnston Gang". The burglars got $33,000 worth of loot.
The gang broke into the pro shop at Meadia Heights Country Club in Lancaster, PA. They made off with $15,000 in money and golf equipment later that year. They drilled holes in the side of the Meadia Heights pro shop and disarmed the alarm system. They dynamited the safe. None of the merchandise was recovered.
Janet Gazzerro and her husband Frank were convicted of bribing a juror who was on the Chester County Common Pleas Court where among others Bruce Johnston Sr was accused of the theft of a tractor. Janet and Frank received $83,000 in stolen Oriental rugs, jewelry and furs. Janet said that Bruce Sr gave her two or three garden tractors, she kept one or two and the third one went to the juror. Bruce Sr, David and Norman Johnston and Roy Myers were acquitted of the theft charges.
April: The brothers transported $21,900 in stolen cigarettes across state lines. They all pleaded guilty to this crime in 1981.
May: The three brothers stole $28,000 from Longwood Gardens in Chester County. In 1981 they were serving two- to four-year sentences for convictions on state charges of this crime.
In 1977 Bruce Johnston Jr. started the Kiddy gang under supervision of his dad Bruce Sr. With the Kiddy gang, they stole small garden tractors, dealt in cigarettes and a lot more. They also stole car parts for Bruce Sr. to resell.
In the summer of 1977, while Bruce Jr. was in prison for petty crimes, his girlfriend Robin Miller claimed she had been raped by Bruce Sr. Bruce Jr., then 20, agreed to testify against the family, according to newspaper accounts of the gang. He had been planning to marry his girlfriend and got angry, so, on Aug. 9, told a federal grand jury in Philadelphia what he knew.
As investigators began questioning other members of the gang, including Bruce Sr.'s stepson James "Jimmy" Johnston, the three senior Johnstons plotted to kill the informants.
In August 1977, Jimmy Johnston and three other members of the Kiddy gang were shot in the head in a field and buried in a common grave. Kiddy gang member James Sampson—whose younger brother was killed earlier—demanded to know where his brother was and was killed in the same way and dumped in a landfill.
Norman and David tried to carry out a $15,000 contract placed by Bruce Sr. on his son. On August 30, 1977, Bruce Jr. was hit by eight bullets during an attack outside his then-fiancée Robin Miller's area home as they were in a Volkswagen Rabbit . He survived and later testified against his father and uncles. Miller died in the attack by two shots in the face.
Bruce Jr was placed in the federal witness protection program and, two weeks after the attack he suffered, he testified at a preliminary hearing. He has since left the program and goes by his real name.
When the police were gathering information about the burglary ring, Manheim resident Gary G. Hauck was asked to testify. Hauck had unknowingly bought a piece of farm equipment stolen by the Johnston gang in 1976. Police traced it back to the ring and wanted Hauck to testify who he had bought it from. Hauck, then a self-employed auto body worker, told a reporter he had gotten a call at 2:00 the morning before the preliminary hearing. The caller urged him not to identify anyone at the hearing. To convince Hauck that he wasn't fooling, the caller said Hauck would find dynamite under the seat of his truck, but that it wasn't hooked up. Hauck looked and found five sticks of dynamite, and did not identify at the hearing. Later, during a trial of the brothers, Hauck said he had lied at the hearing because of the threat.
In 1972 an associate of the Johnston brothers murdered two Kennett Square patrolmen. After that, police began heavily pursuing the gang's activities.
The brothers were found guilty of stealing farm tractors in Ephrata and selling them to an associate. They were sentenced to four to nine years for the thefts. Bruce Sr appealed, but the police were already hot on the trail of the brothers for murdering the young members of the operation to cover up other burglaries.
Bruce was convicted of the murders of Gary Crouch, James Johnston, James Sampson, Robin Miller, Wayne Sampson and Duane Lincoln and for the attempted murder of Bruce Jr. He received 6 consecutive life sentences.
David and Norman were convicted of the murders of James Johnston, Robin Miller, Wayne Sampson and Duane Lincoln. They both received 4 life sentences.
The Johnston brothers returned to the courts seeking new trials. Their attorneys were claiming that in the former trial it wasn't revealed to the defense that key witness James Griffin, a former gang member, had testified under an immunity agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office. The attorneys wanted to know whether or not he made a similar agreement with local and state authorities in exchange for freedom. On the witness stand Griffin testified that he was never prosecuted for committing about 150 burglaries while a member of the gang.
David is serving his time in Greene, Pennsylvania. Norman was in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, but he was transferred to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania after his 1999 escape. He is currently located in Forest, Pennsylvania. Bruce was in Graterford, Pennsylvania until his death in 2002.
When Norman escaped, Bruce Sr and David were moved to solitary confinement. Bruce appealed against this many times.
Norman was on America's Most Wanted on August 15, 1999.
Norman is only 9 years older than his nephew Bruce Jr.
James Johnston and his brother Bruce Jr. were raised by Grandmother Harriet Steffy and Great-Aunt Sarah Martin and only started hanging around with their father a few years before the murders.
Three of the Kiddy Gang murder victims (Wayne Sampson, 20, Duane Lincoln, 17, and James Johnston, 18) had disappeared in August and were shot and buried along the infamous Devil's Road/Cult House Road [Cossart Road] along the Northern Delaware/Pennsylvania Border in Pennsbury Township, Pennsylvania. This road is also the location where some of the film The Village (2004 film) was filmed.
Bruce Mowday, a Chester County reporter who covered the Johnstons' trials for the West Chester (Pa.) Daily Local News, wrote Jailing the Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murders to Justice in 2009. It is published by Barricade Books.
I spent more than two years of my professional life trailing the investigative team from courtroom to courtroom and to several counties in Pennsylvania following the legal proceedings. I was out at nights when the bodies of the Johnstons' murder victims were unearthed. My most memorable days as a reporter were during the reporting of these murder cases.
1999: "We asked him [Norman Johnston], 'Was it worth it?' and he said, 'Not for 20 days.'"
1999: According to the state police, Norman Johnston was tired and said, "You [troopers] wouldn't quit."
The movie At Close Range was based on the thefts leading up to the murders in 1977.[1] Christopher Walken plays Brad Whitewood Sr, the alias in the movie for Bruce Johnston Sr.[2]