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Johnson, James/OHM740520; "Boy X" identified after 35 years
Topic Started: Feb 5 2009, 12:03 PM (64 Views)
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http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/o...oyxfoloweb.html

Coroner confirms ID of boy found dead 35 years ago
By Jim DeBrosse
Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 04, 2009

DAYTON — Children's services officials in Montgomery and Hamilton counties say they now have strict guidelines for reporting missing children who run away from foster and group homes — policies that might have prevented the death of James Dean Johnson, the runaway Cincinnati youth whose body was found in Dayton in 1974.

Johnson was known only as Boy X for nearly 35 years until Wednesday, Feb. 4, when the Montgomery County Coroner's office announced the identity of the youth whose bound and strangled body was found along a railroad embankment behind a Stanley Avenue warehouse on May 20, 1974.

Johnson's sister, Rosie Johnson of Boaz, Ala., said Hamilton County child protection officials never reported her younger brother missing despite her repeated queries during his months-long absence from a children's treatment facility at the former Longview State Hospital in Cincinnati. Just prior to his placement there, she said, her brother had been shuffled from foster home to foster home since he was age 2.

Brian Gregg, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services, said children who run away from foster or group homes today are reported missing within 24 hours to juvenile court, police, guardians and family. In addition, the agency reports the case to the state's missing children clearinghouse and stays in monthly contact with police until the child is either found or the agency's custody ends, usually when the child turns 18.

In Montgomery County, it is up to the foster parent or group home to report the missing child immediately to police and to the children's services caseworker, agency spokeswoman Ann Stevens said. The caseworker will attempt to locate the child first and, failing to do so, will convene a meeting of agency staff, guardians and family to come up with a plan for finding the child. If the child's life is perceived to be in danger, Stevens said, the agency also will turn to the media in appealing to the public for help.

Why officials in Hamilton County didn't report the child missing in 1974 is a question "that only officials there at the time can answer," said Ken Betz, director of the Montgomery County Coroner's office.

Betz and Montgomery County Coroner James Davis held a press conference Wednesday to announce that Boy X had been identified through the persistence of his family and the help of modern DNA technology.

"We've had a burning desire to get this kid identified since 1974," Davis said.

Betz and Davis said Rosie Johnson contacted their office in August of 2008 with suspicions that Boy X might be her long-lost brother. James Dean had lived with her and another brother, Wayne, in their Aunt Sarah Zuern's home in Cincinnati in 1973. When Zuern divorced and moved to Dayton with her own five children, the three Johnson siblings were placed back into foster care in Cincinnati.

Rosie Johnson believes her brother may have been trying to find his aunt in Dayton at the time of his death.

Johnson's body — nude, bound and strangled — was in the early stages of decomposition when it was discovered in 1974, coroner officials said. Davis said Wednesday there was no evidence at the time that Johnson had been sexually assaulted, but he did not rule out that possibility.

In October 2008, the Miami Valley Regonal Crime Lab obtained DNA samples from Johnson's sister Rosie as well as from their mother, Cora Walls of Cincinnati, who now suffers dementia and resides in a nursing home, Rosie Johnson said. The body of Boy X was exhumed that same month. On January 29 of this year, DNA tests confirmed Johnson's identity, coroner officials said.

Five different families made inquiries and viewed the body soon after it was discovered in 1974, including Johnson's family, Betz and Davis said. None of the families could provide positive identification, they said.

However, Rosie Johnson and her cousin Ruby Simpkins of Dayton said that Johnson's aunt, Sarah Zuern, gave a photo of the youth to the coroner's office in 1974 but never heard back from officials there.

Davis, who was elected in 1980, was not the coroner at the time.

Betz said the case information has been turned over to the Dayton Police Department's homicide division, which will decide whether to reopen the investigation into the murder. Dayton police officials did not comment Wednesday.

Simpkins said officials in the coroner's office and at Memorial Park Cemetery in Butler Twp. where Johnson is buried have said they will work with the family to provide a new gravestone that includes the youth's real name and birth date.

The family has decided, however, that they want to keep his other identity as Boy X on the new marker.

"That's who he was for 35 years," Simpkins said. "I think it just tells the story of what happened to him."
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http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/c...xsvc=7&cxcat=16

Boy X now has a name and identity
By Jim DeBrosse

Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

DAYTON — Almost 35 years after his bound and beaten body was found along a railroad embankment in Dayton, the youth known only as Boy X now has a name and an identity, thanks to the persistence of his sister and the intuition of his aunt.

DNA tests have confirmed that the youth is Jimmy Dean Johnson, then age 14 and a runaway from a Cincinnati home for troubled children, his sister Rosie Johnson said Tuesday, Feb. 3.

Johnson, 55, who lives in Boaz, Ala., first thought the youth might be her long-missing younger brother after she saw a Dayton Daily News story about the case last year posted on a national Web site for missing and abused children. She contacted the newspaper, who put her in touch with the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab.

Johnson said the crime lab told her Monday, Feb. 2, that DNA testing had confirmed the youth's identity. Crime lab officials, however, would not comment Tuesday.

It wasn't the first time that someone from the youth's family had approached local officials about their suspicions. Soon after the May 20, 1974 discovery of Johnson's nude and bound body, his aunt, Susan Zuern of Dayton, read the original article in the Dayton Daily News and believed it might be Jimmy Dean, who had lived with her family briefly in Cincinnati the year before.

Zuern took a photo of the youth to the Montgomery County Coroner's office. "They said they would get back to her, but they never did," said Zuern's daughter Ruby Simpkins, who lives in Dayton.

Jimmy Dean Johnson was one of six boys and two girls, including Rosie, who were placed in foster care in Cincinnati during the 1960s and 1970s because their mother, who suffered from severe epilepsy, couldn't care properly for the children, Rosie Johnson said.

Three of the siblings — Rosie, Jimmy Dean and an older brother Wayne — lived for about a year with Zuern's family in Cincinnati.

Cousin Esther Zuern said she remembered the youth "as a sweet boy. He wasn't rowdy or mean or anything like most kids in foster care. He followed me around like a little brother."

Cousin Ruby Simpkins said Jimmy Dean was small for his age and looked much younger than his age. She said she didn't know who would have wanted to harm him.

When Susan Zuern divorced in 1973 and moved to Dayton, Jimmy Dean and his two siblings were all placed again in foster homes. Soon after, Jimmy Dean was labeled "a behavior problem" and sent to a children's facility at Longview State mental hospital in Cincinnati, Rosie Johnson said.

Jimmy Dean soon ran away from the facility but officials there did not report him missing, Rose Johnson said. "In those days, I was told, they didn't bother."

She said her younger brother was a victim of the foster care system.

"Jimmy Dean was taken from foster home to foster home since he was 2 years old," she said. "You don't belong anywhere, you don't belong to anybody. There are probably still foster kids out there today running away and they're missing and no one cares. But they're people, too. They're human, and they need a little patience and time and understanding."
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