The Back Alley Archives

Jason Smith was losing it. “I [screwed] up; I think I killed this woman,” the Atlanta narcotics cop told partner Arthur Tesler in the yard behind a small brick bungalow on Neal Street. “You guys got to help me.”

Inside, a 92-year-old woman lay dead, killed by a fusillade of police bullets. Officer Gregg Junnier, his face grazed by a bullet and bleeding, stalked through the home looking for suspects and contraband.

But there were no dealers, no kilo of cocaine. The tip that brought police to 933 Neal St. was as bogus as the story they used to sell a judge on the raid.

Desperation and self-preservation kicked in. Smith remembered the marijuana seized earlier that day. Better make it look like a drug house, he reckoned. He pulled baggies of pot from his sleeve, nodded to Tesler, and planted them in the basement.

The Nov. 21, 2006, killing of Kathryn Johnston, two days before Thanksgiving, outraged residents of the northwest neighborhood, shocked the nation and rocked Atlanta’s police force. It laid bare the corruption of an out-of-control narcotics squad that lied to get search warrants and planted drugs on suspects.

This time, Smith had authored the trumped-up affidavit. For all three, it was business as usual.

...

The tragic string of events had started at 4 p.m. Nov. 21, 2006, when Tesler roughed up and arrested small-time dope slinger Fabian Sheats and threatened him with prison unless he gave up someone bigger. The nervous suspect eventually picked out Johnston’s home — apparently at random — where he said he saw a dealer named “Sam” with a kilo of cocaine just an hour before. The officers were pumped. A kilo was a huge score for cops used to seizures measured in grams.

But Sheats was unreliable, so they called White at 5:05 p.m. to come make a buy to prove a dealer lived there. White couldn’t come. But for this squad, it didn’t matter. They’d just invent the facts they needed.

The officers were at the Fulton County jail a half hour later to get a warrant from a magistrate. Smith told the judge they had watched “Sam” greet their informant, go inside and sell him drugs. At 5:53 p.m., they had their “no-knock” warrant. It would allow them to batter down the door and catch the criminals inside by surprise.

By 7 p.m. Johnston lay dead, shot five or six times. Believing intruders were at her door, she’d fired her revolver once. The entry team responded with 39 shots.