Joliet Mass Murderer Terrorized Area 35 Years Ago

JOLIET, IL - It's been 35 years since Milton Johnson terrorized the Joliet area during his mass murdering spree over the hot summer months of 1983. Johnson's killing rampage began with the deaths of two older women on the outskirts of Joliet. Some have dubbed Johnson "The Weekend Murderer." A Joliet native, Johnson turned 68 years old in May. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection in the 1980s, but his sentence was changed to life in prison after then-Illinois Governor George Ryan abolished the death penalty.

Here is a rundown of the murders Johnson is suspected of:

June 25, 1983: Sisters Zita Blum, 66, and Honora Lahmann, 67, were found shot to death and their bodies were burned inside of their home in Joliet Township.

July 2, 1983: Lockport businessman Kenneth Chancellor, 34, and Terri Lynn Johnson, 19, a Joliet housewife, were both found shot to death near the Will-Cook County line. The two were shot inside of Chancellor's car, which was parked in a field, according to news media reports.

July 16, 1983: A total of five people were slain in Homer Township — three civilians and two Will County Sheriff's Department auxiliary deputies killed near 147th Street. The victims were George Kiehl, 24, Cathleen Norwood, 25, Richard Paulin, 32, and the two sheriff's deputies were Denis Foley, 50, and Steven Mayer, 22. The killings were described as ambush-style murders and they happened on a remote stretch of road.

July 17, 1983, just one day after the Homer Township massacre, downstate Illinois teenager, Anthony Hackett, 18, was fatally shot four times as he slept in a car parked along Interstate 55 near Wilmington. He and his girlfriend were heading home from Great America in Gurnee, Illinois. Milton Johnson raped, bound and gagged her and dumped her on a road south of Joliet, but she survived and was found by a motorist. She later testified against Johnson at his Will County Courthouse murder trial.

August 20, 1983: The Greenware by Mary Ceramic shop murders, at 1405 East Cass Street. The victims were Marilyn Baers, 45; Barbara Dunbar, 38; Anna Ryan, 75; and Ryan's daughter-in-law, Pamela Ryan, 29. The four women were stabbed a total of 43 times. A Chicago Tribune story from 1986 noted that Assistant Will County State's Attorney Steven White called Johnson "an animal" during the jury trial. "What you have here is five people in that ceramics shop. Four of those people were butchered by an animal, and that animal is sitting in this courtroom today."

March 1984: Seven months later, Johnson was arrested for the Hackett murder. He was also subsequently tried and convicted for the Joliet ceramic shop murders.

In 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan granted numerous Death Row inmates a sentence commutation to life in prison. Johnson was one of those murderers.

About Milton Johnson: He was paroled in February 1983 after serving half of a 25-year to 35-year sentence for raping a woman in Pilcher Park in 1970 when he was 20 years old.

Quotes About Milton Johnson: "He was completely amoral," current Will County Judge Ed Burmila told the Chicago Tribune for a news story in 1996. "He was a stone-cold killing machine."

Johnson's M.O.

The Criminal Minds Encyclopedia website states that Milton Johnson's "known crimes always occurred on the weekends, whenever he had access to a truck. During this time, he would drive around the communities surrounding Joliet until he found a victim that he randomly selected. Johnson would always kill them by shooting them with a pistol and/or stabbing them with a knife."

How was Johnson caught?

According to former Chicago Tribune reporter Jerry Shnay's 1996 article, Johnson's stepfather, Sam Myers, was interviewed by Will County police because a receipt for repairing a broken fishing reel was found under one of the murder victims in Homer Township. Myers had a solid alibi that he was in Mississippi at the time of the massacre. That fall, the police began to question Milton Johnson, then 33, for the Interstate 55 slaying of Hackett.

In February 1984, Charles Malinowski, a 10-year veteran of the Will County Sheriff's Department, stumbled across a police report of two women who reported being harassed by a man driving a black pickup truck on the outskirts of Joliet during one of the weekends in July 1983.

"She said she could give me the license plate, which she wrote down on a piece of paper that was in her purse since then. Seems that no one ever asked her for that," Malinowski told the Chicago Tribune. Although the truck belonged to Myers, the connection between Myers and Johnson helped break the case wide open, the newspaper reported.

Milton Johnson Finds Pen Pal: In July 2014, The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom published a story on a 94-year-old woman from Ottawa, Illinois, who had been corresponding with Milton Johnson as her pen pal since 1990. The article stated, "Now, 24 years later, the 94-year-old Margaret Seeman and serial killer Milton Johnson have done more than kept up a regular correspondence. They have become fast friends and until she was incapacitated ten years ago, she would make the hour-long trip from her home to visit with the man who, she tells MailOnline in an exclusive interview, 'touched my heart.'"

Milton Johnson's Ottawa pen pal told The Daily Mail, in 2014, "Milton has also found God since he entered prison. And there isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t read his Bible for at least an hour. His letters talk about the weather, and he loves talking about sports. And he often signs his letters, Love thru Christ, Milton."

In 2018, Johnson is living out his days in downstate Illinois at the Menard Correctional Center. He is listed as 5-foot-9, 240 pounds. On the Illinois Department of Corrections website, under the category of projected discharge date, Johnson is listed as "ineligible."

Mugshots of Milton Johnson via Illinois Department of Corrections