Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / Son of Anarchy - Johnny Lewis
Transcript
- 0:08Dispersions. On the twenty sixth of September twenty twelve, Los Angeles police responded
- 0:42to a nine to one one call in Los Felice from a concerned member of
- 0:46the public who had heard a woman screaming from inside of a house. In
- 0:50the driveway of the property, they found a man dead lying on the ground.
- 0:56Inside the home, an elderly woman had been beaten to death and one
- 1:00of the bedrooms. Her pet cat was found in the bathroom, also beaten
- 1:04to death. Both deceased people were quickly identified. The elderly woman was eighty
- 1:11one year old Kathy Davis, the owner of the house, and the man
- 1:15in the driveway was twenty eight year old actor Johnny Lewis, who had been
- 1:19staying with Cathy for a few days. Born in nineteen eighty three in La
- 1:25Johnny's acting career started when he was only six years old. He was a
- 1:29blondhaired, blue eyed kid, and his mother recognized that he had the potential
- 1:33to become a star in Hollywood. Several casting agents agreed, resulting in Johnny
- 1:38being offered small acting roles, first in commercials and then in popular TV shows
- 1:44like Malcolm in the Middle and The Nickelodeon series Drake and Josh. Later on,
- 1:49he featured on episodes of Criminal Minds and The OC. Even while Johnny
- 1:55was becoming more well known in the acting community, he didn't get sucked into
- 1:59the La lifestyle the way that many of the up and coming stars did.
- 2:02He was true to the stereotypes send several ways, though, starting up a
- 2:07relationship with singer Katy Perry and living in an area of Hollywood that was nicknamed
- 2:13frat Rowe. However, he kept to himself and he wasn't especially into partying.
- 2:19In an interview with Los Angeles Magazine, one of Johnny's close friends said,
- 2:23quote, that's what made Johnny special. No drugs, no alcohol,
- 2:28just poetry and philosophy. By two thousand and nine, Johnny had been starring
- 2:32in the drama series Sons of Anarchy for two seasons, and he was now
- 2:37in a long term relationship with actress Diane Marshall Greene. But he decided it
- 2:42was time for a change. He had just discovered that he and Diane were
- 2:46expecting a child, and he wasn't a fan of the recent violent storylines his
- 2:51character in Sons of Anarchy had been given his character name by the way,
- 2:54was half sack, and it means exactly what you think it means. He
- 3:00wanted to step away a little bit from acting and spend some time with Diane
- 3:04as they built a family together, and he even began to write a novel.
- 3:07Unfortunately, for Johnny, things did not go to plan. Diane gave
- 3:13birth to a baby girl, who the couple named Culla May in twenty ten,
- 3:17but during this time their relationship began to fall apart. Instead of enjoying
- 3:23becoming a family, Johnny and Diane entered a legal battle for custody of Cola,
- 3:28which Diane ended up winning. Late the following year, Johnny got into
- 3:34a motorcycle crash. He received a medical examination afterwards, which did not find
- 3:38any symptoms of a head injury, but Johnny also refused to get any more
- 3:43MRIs of his head, and sometimes when he was speaking, he would suddenly
- 3:46begin to talk in a British accent. According to Johnny's family, he was
- 3:52never the same after that incident, an incident, by the way, in
- 3:57which he was not wearing a helmet. In early twenty twelve, Johnny had
- 4:02his first brush with the law. He was staying in an apartment owned by
- 4:06his parents, and he suddenly decided to break into the neighboring condo. Two
- 4:12men inside the condo told him to get out, but instead of leaving,
- 4:15Johnny picked up a glass bottle and started hitting them with it, resulting in
- 4:19his arrest. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, trespassing,
- 4:25and burglary. During his time in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, Johnny tried
- 4:30to take his own life, and he was sent to spend seventy two hours
- 4:33in a psychiatric ward. When he was discharged from the ward, things did
- 4:39not get better. Johnny started to show a strange hypersensitivity to light and when
- 4:45as far as disabling the fuse box and his parents' condo so that he could
- 4:48spend all day in the dark. He had a second suicide attempt, tried
- 4:54to break into somebody else's apartment a second time, physically assaulted a random man
- 4:58on the street, and at one point he was seen walking straight into the
- 5:01ocean while still fully clothed. Ordinarily, any normal person seeing that might think
- 5:10he's so high he could duck hunt with a rake, But remember the non
- 5:14head injury that he had recently suffered. I'm not saying that was the cause
- 5:18of his sudden bizarre behavior, but I'm not saying that either. That summer,
- 5:25Johnny received treatment at the Ridge View Ranch, a drug and alcohol treatment
- 5:29facility that also catered to people experiencing psychological distress. He started a course of
- 5:35medication to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. During July, Johnny wrote in his
- 5:42journal about the improvements he was noticing, saying felt more whole today, more
- 5:46complete, like parts of myself had been stolen in my sleep and scattered all
- 5:51over the world, and now they've begun to return. In fall, Johnny
- 5:57was sentenced to a year in prison for the assault charges again, but because
- 6:00the facility was overcrowded, he served less than two months of his sentence.
- 6:05His loved ones were concerned about how he would adjust after being released from jail,
- 6:10so his father organized for him to spend some time living at an La
- 6:14residence called the Writer's Villa, which was a popular place for actors and writers
- 6:19in the area to spend time. In fact, Johnny had stayed there before
- 6:24a few years ago and enjoyed it. The owner of the Writer's Villa was
- 6:28eighty one year old Kathy Davis, who had been inviting guests to stay at
- 6:31the house on thirty sixty five Lowry Road for three decades. Some past famous
- 6:39guests that you may recognize Val Kilmer, Parker Posey, Paula Poundstone, and
- 6:45Chris Parnell. They all lived at the villa when they were on the rise,
- 6:48enjoying the company of Kathy Davis. When Johnny left prison, he immediately
- 6:55began to stay with Kathy, but only a few days into his stay,
- 6:59his behavior took a turn for the worse and it was clear he was in
- 7:02distress. Although it was never confirmed what happened, Johnny's loved one's guests that
- 7:09he might have tried to disable the house's fuse box because of his light sensitivity,
- 7:14causing Kathy to confront him. When first responders found Kathy and Johnny's bodies
- 7:18on the twenty sixth of September twenty twelve, Johnny had only been out of
- 7:24prison for five days. From the injuries both people had sustained and the reports
- 7:29of eyewitnesses from earlier that day, it was clear to investigators what had happened.
- 7:34Johnny had attacked Kathy in her bedroom, choking her and then fatally bludgeoning
- 7:40her. He hit her with so much force that he destroyed half of her
- 7:44face and broke her skull, leaving pieces of her brain visible on the carpet
- 7:47around her body. After killing Kathy, he also bludgeoned her cat to death.
- 7:54Then, Johnny had gone into the yard of one of Kathy's neighbors,
- 7:58who he had introduced himself to earlier. He then attacked the neighbor and a
- 8:03man who had been hired to paint the house, and chase them around the
- 8:05house. The victims reported that they had tried to fight him off, but
- 8:11they felt that he was completely immune to pain. Once the neighbors fled inside
- 8:16their home, Johnny went back to the writer's villa. There were no eye
- 8:20witnesses to the events that took place next, but whether Johnny jumped off the
- 8:24villa's roof or fell accidentally, he plummeted fifteen feet onto the concrete of the
- 8:31driveway, and he died from his injuries at the scene. Because of the
- 8:35circumstances surrounding Johnny's death and the fact that he had brutally murdered an innocent lady
- 8:41shortly before dying, many media outlets assumed that Johnny had been under the influence
- 8:46of some sort of mind altering drugs during the incident. In an LA Times
- 8:52article, it was stated that the investigators believed he had been taking a type
- 8:56of synthetic drug which had caused hallucinations. However, these theories were quickly disproved.
- 9:03Johnny's autopsy toxicology reports came back clean, with absolutely no evidence of drugs
- 9:11in his system at all. With the realization that Johnny's actions seemed to be
- 9:15the result of mental health issues, the public blame shifted towards the actor's parents.
- 9:20Both his mother and his father were scientologists, members of occults that's notorious
- 9:26for discouraging people with mental health issues from seeking conventional treatment from psychologists and psychiatrists.
- 9:33However, Johnny's father publicly denied these accusations, emphasizing that he had actually
- 9:39done the opposite. He encouraged Johnny to get treatment, which was confirmed by
- 9:46Johnny's lawyer, Jonathan Mandel in an interview with CBS News, Jonathan stated,
- 9:50quote, I give a lot of credit to Johnny's parents. They were really
- 9:54strong and trying to help him out. They really went to bat for him.
- 9:58But I guess they couldn't to do enough. Kurt Sutter, the creator
- 10:01of Sons of Anarchy, made a public statement the day after the tragedy,
- 10:05saying it was a tragic end for an extremely talented guy who unfortunately had lost
- 10:13his way. I wish I could say that I was shocked by the events
- 10:16of last night, but I was not. I am deeply sorry that an
- 10:20innocent life had to be thrown into his destructive path. That his ten minute
- 10:33murder for today brief and binge able true crime. I'm Joe, that's my
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