He was killed by police after he got out I think?
Walter O. Johnson, a former convict who is about to stand trial in the fatal shooting of a Metro Transit Police officer, attacked Mafia boss John Gotti more than seven years ago during a stay in prison, according to court papers.
Prosecutors mentioned the episode in recent filings in the murder case against Johnson. The incident also is recounted as one element of a federal racketeering indictment filed in 2002 in Los Angeles against the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group that Gotti allegedly hired to kill Johnson.
Authorities said Gotti's beating occurred in July 1996, while Johnson was serving a 10-year sentence for bank robbery at a federal prison in Marion, Ill. Gotti, who was serving a life sentence for murder, extortion and other crimes, was taken by surprise and did not fight back, but he was not seriously hurt, a law enforcement source said. The motive for the attack is a mystery, the source said. Gotti died of cancer in June 2002; he was 61.
Johnson, now 36, was not harmed while serving the rest of his federal sentence at Marion and, later, at a maximum-security prison in Colorado. He was paroled in May 2001. Within weeks of his release, he allegedly killed Metro Transit Police Officer Marlon F. Morales at the U Street-Cardozo Metro station in Northwest Washington.
In the months after Gotti was attacked, scattered news reports about the incident surfaced, though details were sketchy. The most detailed account of the confrontation came to light more than a year ago on
www.ganglandnews.com, a Web site about organized crime, after federal prosecutors in California obtained the indictments against 40 members and associates of the Aryan Brotherhood.
Johnson, who was arrested in Philadelphia four days after the officer's shooting, was attacked while jailed last June, days before his murder trial was scheduled to start. He was stabbed at least 40 times in a recreation area at the D.C. jail and was hospitalized for several days. No one was arrested in the stabbing and authorities said they do not know what led to the attack.
Some of Johnson's stab wounds were deep, his lungs were punctured and his blood was short of oxygen, according to a source familiar with that incident.
Now recovered, Johnson has been in D.C. Superior Court this week for arguments in his murder case. Jury selection is scheduled to begin next week before Judge Ann O'Regan Keary.
Prosecutors recently filed a list of questions they would like to ask prospective jurors, including one that inquires whether potential jurors have heard about an assault that Johnson carried out against Gotti.
The trial is expected to last several weeks. One of the top prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office, June M. Jeffries, will be trying the case against one of the D.C. Public Defender Service's most experienced attorneys, Renee P. Raymond.
Morales, a 33-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, was shot June 10, 2001, after he responded to the agent booth at the U Street-Cardozo station to investigate a report of a "fare beater."
Prosecutors said that Johnson was the fare beater and that he shot Morales in the face, stole his gun and some ammunition and left the officer to die. Morales, a father of three who had been on the Metro force for a year, died three days later.
Police in Philadelphia later stopped Johnson, who was driving a car reported missing by the owner, according to charging documents. When the officers asked him to step out of the car, Johnson reached into his waistband and then toward his ankle, apparently in an effort to retrieve a gun, according to the documents. The officers struggled with Johnson before subduing him and recovering a gun, which was the 9mm Sig Sauer that had been stolen from Morales, the documents say.
Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
Walter O. Johnson is arraigned in 2001 in the fatal shooting of a Metro Transit Police officer. Court papers say Johnson once attacked John Gotti in prison.
