Man’s bid for new trial in 2009 double homicide of 2 Mount Union women denied
Johnson found guilty of 2009 double homicide
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The life sentence of a former corrections officer who was convicted of murdering two Mount Union women in their apartment 17 years ago has been upheld in an opinion issued late last week by the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
Morico Tyrone Johnson, 52, is presently incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution in Coal Township, Northumberland County, for the murders of Christine McWhorter, 22, a mother of two, and her aunt, Beatrice Daniels, 31, while they were in their bedroom on Jan. 3, 2009.
The bodies were found after a child in the apartment awoke to the sounds of his younger sister crying.
According to the Superior Court opinion, the child sought help from a family friend, who summoned state police.
Initially, the only information police had was that a man had come to the door of the apartment and had been let in by Beatrice.
A forensic team, in examining the scene, was able to locate seven handgun cartridges, two of them live, from a .25-caliber handgun.
They also were able to find three specks of blood, including one on the interior storm door leading to the kitchen.
The investigators believed the specks came from the killer and that he had somehow suffered an injury.
Samples of the blood were collected for DNA analysis.
Also, officers found crack cocaine hidden in a laundry basket and more than $2,000 in cash, leading them to believe that the motive for the murder may have stemmed from "drugs and money."
That later turned out not to be true, but it took several years of dogged police work to eventually solve the murders.
The Superior Court, in reviewing the opinion by Judge Oliver J. Lobaugh of Venango County, reported that believing drugs may have been involved eventually led to more than 50 arrests of individuals for alleged drug crimes.
However, despite that crackdown, progress as to who killed the women slowed and the killings were placed on PSP's cold case list.
In 2013, however, State Trooper David Clemens, serving as a cold-case investigator of the murders, sent the blood samples to Parabon Nanolabs of Reston, Va., described as a genetic service company.
Parabon did a phenotype analysis that determined the blood came from an African-American male with medium brown skin and green eyes.
After Clemens retired, Troopers Jonathan Thomas and Dana Martini in 2018 had Parabon do a genetic genealogy analysis that produced "a list of potential suspects."
Johnson's name was on that list as an African-American male with green eyes.
As the investigation continued, the troopers determined Johnson lived in Newport News, Va., and while visiting him, they learned that in 2008 and 2009, while living and working as a corrections officer in Mount Vernon, N.Y., he was dating and engaged to a woman from Mount Union, who turned out to be Christine McWhorter's best friend.
A sample of Johnson's DNA linked him to the three spots of blood that police initially believed came from the assailant.
Johnson, according to the narrative prepared by Lobaugh, claimed he was never in the apartment where the blood was found.
At the time Johnson was dating McWhorter's best friend, he was a corrections officer for the New York State Department of Corrections at the Bedford Hills Correctional Center.
Christine, a native of Philadelphia, and her aunt Beatrice went to her mother's house in Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2008, to celebrate New Year's Eve and were joined there by Christine's best friend -- Johnson's girlfriend.
However, when Christine and Beatrice returned to Mount Union, the girlfriend stayed behind to be with another man with whom she had become romantically involved.
Johnson, according to the Lobaugh narrative and reported as background by the Superior Court, suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him.
Examination of Christine's cellphone showed she spoke to Johnson and to Johnson's girlfriend with the girlfriend asking her to call, noting, "it's important."
The narrative stated, "Approximately 24 hours after this message was sent, Christine and Beatrice were killed."
The trial judge, in rejecting Johnson's appeal to his conviction on two counts of first degree murder, concluded the calls and text messages between the girlfriend, Johnson and Christine "do not provide a clear motive for the murders but do provide a framework within which Johnson had both the opportunity to kill the victims and a reason to show up unannounced in Mount Union in a highly angry state."
In the appeal to the Superior Court, Johnson, represented by Wayne E. Brafburn Jr. of State College, challenged multiple rulings by the judge.
The judge initially ruled, for instance, that the description by the youngster of the man who entered the home that night was not permitted as part of the testimony, noting the trauma the youngster experienced in finding his mother and aunt dead.
Another issue raised by the defense was the trial judge's decision to limit testimony as to Christine's possible involvement in the drug trade. Johnson maintained the murders were related to drugs.
"Based on our review, we find no merit to Johnson's third issue (Christine's alleged involvement with drugs)," the appeals court panel stated.
The defense objected to Parabon's involvement in the investigation.
The Superior Court opinion pointed out the Parabon genealogy lineage report that led to Johnson was never admitted during the trial and thus was not part of the trial.
The defense challenged the admission of messages recovered from Christine's phone concerning her trip to Philadelphia, another argument rejected by the appeals court as untimely.
Finally, the trial court denied a proposed demonstration by the defense showing how DNA can become cross-contaminated. That proposed testimony was properly denied because the trooper who was to testify had no involvement with the murder investigation, the Superior Court ruled.
The panel reviewing the Johnson case included judges Timika Lane, Deborah Kunselman and Kate Ford Elliott.