Earl Mann
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Earl Gene Mann is an American man responsible for the 1998 rape and murder of Judith Johnson and the rape of six-year-old Brooke Sutton. Clarence Elkins, Johnson's son-in-law, was convicted of the crime and served 6.5 years in prison before being exonerated.
Biography edit
Mann, originally from Melbourne, Florida, had a history of criminal convictions for robbery and assault. At the time of the murder he was living with his girlfriend Tonia Brasiel, who lived next door to Judith Johnson in Barberton, Ohio.
On June 7, 1998, an intruder broke into Judith Johnson's house. Johnson, sleeping on the couch, was attacked by the intruder, who raped her, beat her so severely that he broke her jaw, skull and collarbone, stabbed her and finally strangled her to death. Her six-year-old granddaughter Brooke Sutton was sleeping upstairs and was awoken by the noise. Looking out her door, she saw the intruder downstairs. Brooke hid back in her room, but the intruder had seen her. She hid under the covers and pretended to be asleep before the intruder pulled the covers back and beat her unconscious. He then raped her, strangled her and left a small cut on her throat before escaping. Brooke remained unconscious for several hours before she woke up and called a neighbour, leaving a message on their answering machine explaining the situation. She then went round to Brasiel's house and told her what had happened. Brasiel told the bruised, bloody child to wait on the porch while she finished cooking and did not call an ambulance for 45 minutes.
Brooke told police that the attacker "looked like Uncle Clarence", referring to Johnson's son-in-law Clarence Elkins. She was later adamant that she did not mean Elkins was the killer, only that the killer resembled him slightly, but had been too afraid to say this because everyone had decided it was him. Elkins also had an alibi backed up by multiple witnesses, and hairs recovered from Johnson's body did not belong to him or Johnson. Despite this, he was convicted of murder and rape based on the prosecution's interpretation of Brooke's statement and received two life sentences.
The Elkins family were convinced of his innocence and were able to convince an Ohio court to give them access to DNA evidence. DNA testing in Texas excluded Elkins, but the Ohio Court of Appeal refused to overturn his conviction. Further investigation discovered that Earl Mann, who lived next door to Johnson, was a convicted sex offender. He was also in prison by this time and was incarcerated at the same prison as Clarence Elkins. Elkins was able to get close to Mann and retrieve a cigarette butt discarded by him. DNA testing confirmed that the hairs and semen at the crime scene had come from Earl Mann. A second test by the Ohio prosecutor's office came to the same conclusion and Elkins was released in December 2005.
Earl Mann was now the prime suspect in Judith Johnson's murder. Evidence not disclosed to Elkins' defence was uncovered; four months before his trial Mann had been arrested for robbery and had immediately asked if it was about Judith Johnson. Tonia Brasiel was interviewed about the events of June 7 and, when asked why she had taken so long to call an ambulance for Brooke, admitted that a few hours before Mann had come home with scratches on his back and had demanded when Brooke arrived that she not let her in or call the police.
In 2008, ten years after the murder, Mann was charged with two counts of rape and one count of murder. He pled guilty to all three charges and was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 55 years.