There are many myths and misconceptions about the case. We will discuss these in greater detail as the site is updated, but a few are addressed here.
Myth 1: Leonard received a benefit by implicating Johnson
FACT: Leonard received no benefit by doing so. When he was questioned in 2018, police had no basis on which to charge him, and didn’t represent that they did. Leonard didn’t seek a benefit in exchange for speaking truthfully about Andrea’s murder. Rather, he sought to limit the cost of doing so, by requesting that the death penalty be taken off the table. This did not represent a concession by prosecutors, who lacked a sufficient basis to charge him at all, and police, at the time, were focused on Johnson alone. Yet Leonard then repeated his confession to a Grand Jury in November 2021, after Virginia had abolished the death penalty, and again sought no concession. Prior to testifying at trial, Leonard asked prosecutors to make a non-binding phone call to the Department of Corrections to speed up a prison transfer for which, he said, he had already been approved. However, there is no evidence that such a transfer was ever approved, and Leonard made himself (at least temporarily) ineligible for such a transfer, based on the new 1st-degree felony conviction he received by making his statement. There is not even evidence in the court file that the non-binding call was actually made.
A paid defense private investigator claimed on 20/20 that Leonard had “nothing to lose” by making his statement, and Johnson’s defense attorney claimed at trial that geriatric parole could be a motivation. But the plain language of the relevant statute proves that they both spoke falsely. Leonard’s prior life sentence was for rape–a Class 4 felony in Virginia. However, both murder-for-hire and first degree murder are Class 1 felonies. One cannot even apply for geriatric parole with a Class 1 felony conviction. Yet Leonard testified anyway. He destroyed his eligibility for geriatric parole in a 2nd way, as well as his eligibility for a transfer to a lower security facility, as shown in the table below.
Neither Johnson nor any of his lawyers, to our knowledge, have offered an explanation for why Leonard would unnecessarily implicate himself in a murder-for-hire plot when doing so made him worse off. This makes Leonard different than the great majority of testifying co-conspirators, who generally not only seek–but actually obtain–a benefit in exchange for their testimony.
LEONARD DESTROYED HIS ELIGIBILITY FOR THE ONLY BENEFITS HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN: A TRANSFER AND GERIATRIC PAROLE
Item | Prior to Confessing or Testifying | Situation Now |
---|---|---|
Murder convictions | 0 | 1 |
Life sentences | 1 | 2 |
Agreement to testify in exchange for reduced charges?1 | No | No |
Facing Death Penalty 2 | 10/2018 Confession: Yes (if charged), but was not facing charges Prior to testifying: No (VA abolished death penalty on 3/24/2021) | No |
Approximate Release Date, if (1st) Life Sentence Suspended 3 | 3/7/2024 | Never |
Eligibility for Parole 4 | Never | Never |
Eligibility for Geriatric Parole 5 | 1/19/2028 | Never |
Near-Term Eligibility for Transfer to Buckingham (L3 facility)6 | None | None |
Near-Term Eligibility for Transfer to L4 facility 7 | Yes (immediate) | No (until 7/2027) |
- Testimony is not in the scope of Leonard’s agreement.
- At his sentencing, he asked for no leniency. The sentence he received is the same as the maximum sentence he would have received with no plea agreement (consecutive life sentence).3. Leonard was serving a sentence of life + 30 years, issued on 10/20/2000. However, 20 of those years ran consecutively to the other time. This means his sentence of consecutive time was life + 10 years. By rule, the non-life portion is served first. This implies that the life sentence started on approximately 10/20/2010, and all time (other than the life sentence) had been served by approximately 10/20/2020. Leonard had other time from other charges, which pushed that date to approximately 3/7/2024, based on a 2009 calculation by the Virginia
Department of Corrections. With a second life sentence, he now has no release date—even if the first one were suspended. - There is no (regular) parole in Virginia
- Geriatric parole eligibility starts at age 60. For life sentences, eligibility requires serving at least 20 years. Leonard met this criterion previously. Now, he won’t serve any of the second life sentence (because it’s consecutive) and therefore his confession/cooperation permanently destroyed his eligibility for geriatric parole.
- Buckingham is a level 3/4 facility. It’s virtually impossible to be transferred directly from an L5 to an L3 facility.
- Transfers to an L4 facility (from L5) generally require no violent felony convictions within the past five years. This means his cooperation destroyed that eligibility until July 2027.
- Asked for–and received– no leniency at sentencing
Myth 2: Leonard strangled many other women in the area between 1998 and 1999, without receiving a financial benefit for doing so
FACT: This statement is actually true, but very misleading. It is virtually unheard of to receive payment for strangling a person without killing them, and Leonard has no other homicide convictions. The victims were all people that Leonard knew well, and presumably had a conflict with. In most cases, they were domestic. Examples of individuals he is known to have strangled or attacked are his then-wife, a 13-year-old girl, and his cellmate in prison. He was living with each of those individuals at the time he attacked them. On the other hand, Leonard has no convictions in which he is known to have falsely implicated anyone else in his crimes.
Myth 3: Leonard was doing “what Leonard does” and he’s a serial sex offender
FACT: It’s true that Leonard is a serial sex offender. But there is no substantive evidence that Andrea was sexually assaulted, which means that Leonard apparently didn’t do “what he [generally] does,” and the Medical Examiner appears to have stated the evidence didn’t support a conclusion of sexual assault. In fact, a police presentation on the subject, with subject “Autopsy,” states “No signs of sexual assault.” The fact that Leonard committed this heinous act, with no apparent sexual assault, could suggest that he was there for a different purpose.
Myth 4: Johnson’s “Vision Statement” involved simply repeating lies told to him by police
FACT: We will likely never know whether this statement is true, because the first 20.5 hours of Johnson’s 28 hour of interviews are not recorded. However, the available evidence does not support this claim. In the recorded 7.5 hours (which are the final hours of the interviews), Johnson frequently summarizes what he’s been told so far. In the entire 7.5 hours, he repeats only two misstatements by police: that his fingerprints were found on Andrea’s neck, and that Andrea was alive at 6pm. The first statement is irrelevant because of the numerous innocent explanations with which Johnson’s fingerprints could have been on Andrea’s neck–including the one he offered (that he gave her a massage that morning). With respect to the second statement, Johnson also knew that Andrea was found in a closet. Thus, the only logical inference one can make from the two statements together is that she was alive and in the closet at 6pm. But that is not represented in the Vision Statement. Instead, Johnson describes pornography hidden from Andrea, a t-shirt, an argument about it, and a blow to the head. The evidence suggests that Johnson, not the police, introduced these items; and in fact, as we have seen, some of the items appear to be corroborated as true.
Indeed, the entire chronology offered in this myth’s scenario is unsupported, and borders on absurd. Under this chronology, the police would have introduced information that Andrea was hit on the head, and encouraged Johnson to repeat it, only to find out at autopsy that the true cause of death was strangulation. But Johnson made the Vision Statement on August 24th. The police had attended the autopsy, which showed the cause of death to be strangulation–on August 23rd.
It’s true that police could have introduced that information prior to August 23rd. But Johnson gives something of a running commentary in the August 24th video of everything he’s been told by police; he never mentions anything of the sort. The August 24th video suggests that it is Johnson, not the police, who introduced the key elements of the Vision Statement.