What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent by Jennif

Description: What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? by Jennifer Toth On an icy night five years ago, Johnnie Jordan — just fourteen years old — brutally murdered his elderly foster care mother, leaving the state of Ohio shocked and outraged. He could not tell police why he did it or even how it made him feel; all he knew was that something inside him made him kill. At the time, few people predicted the swift emergence of a class of young so-called "super-predators" — criminals like Johnnie who injure and kill without conscience, personified to the nation by the Littleton, Colorado, tragedy in 1999.In "What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?" acclaimed journalist Jennifer Toth, author of "The Mole People" and "Orphans of the Living," once again takes a look at the people in our society whom we so often discard and altogether ignore. As Toth investigates Johnnie's crime and life, she unravels the mysteries of a child murderer unable to identify his emotions even after they converge in acts of fury and rage. In the course of her research, Johnnie grows dangerously into a young man who "will probably kill again," he says, "though I don't want to." Yet he also demonstrates great kindness and caring when treated as more than just a case number, when treated as a human. Through Johnnie's harrowing story, Toth examines how some children manage to overcome tragic beginnings, while others turn their pain, anger, and loss on innocents.More than a beautifully written narrative of youth gone wrong, this is the story of a child welfare system so corrupted by bureaucracy and overwhelmed with cases that many children entrusted to its care receive none at all. It is also the story of a Midwestern town struggling with blame and anger, unable to reconcile the damagedone by so young an offender. From Johnnie's early years on the streets to his controversial trial and ultimate conviction, "What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?" is a seminal work on youth violence and how we as a society can work to curtail it. Ultimately, Toth ponders one of the most difficult and important questions on youth violence: If we can't control the way children are raised, how can we prevent them from destroying other lives as well? FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description On an icy night five years ago, Johnnie Jordan -- just fourteen years old -- brutally murdered his elderly foster care mother, leaving the state of Ohio shocked and outraged. He could not tell police why he did it or even how it made him feel; all he knew was that something inside him made him kill. At the time, few people predicted the swift emergence of a class of young so-called "super-predators" -- criminals like Johnnie who injure and kill without conscience, personified to the nation by the Littleton, Colorado, tragedy in 1999. In What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? acclaimed journalist Jennifer Toth, author of The Mole People and Orphans of the Living, once again takes a look at the people in our society whom we so often discard and altogether ignore. As Toth investigates Johnnies crime and life, she unravels the mysteries of a child murderer unable to identify his emotions even after they converge in acts of fury and rage. In the course of her research, Johnnie grows dangerously into a young man who "will probably kill again," he says, "though I dont want to."Yet he also demonstrates great kindness and caring when treated as more than just a case number, when treated as a human. Through Johnnies harrowing story, Toth examines how some children manage to overcome tragic beginnings, while others turn their pain, anger, and loss on innocents. More than a beautifully written narrative of youth gone wrong, this is the story of a child welfare system so corrupted by bureaucracy and overwhelmed with cases that many children entrusted to its care receive none at all. It is also the story of a Midwestern town struggling with blame and anger, unable to reconcile the damage done by so young an offender. From Johnnies early years on the streets to his controversial trial and ultimate conviction, What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is a seminal work on youth violence and how we as a society can work to curtail it. Ultimately, Toth ponders one of the most difficult and important questions on youth violence: If we cant control the way children are raised, how can we prevent them from destroying other lives as well? Author Biography Jennifer Toth graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and went on to receive a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. She has written pieces for the Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, and Business Week, and she is the author of The Mole People and Orphans of the Living. She lives in Maryland. Table of Contents Contents Part I: Murder Part II: The Beginning Part III: Justice Part IV: Fallout Methodology and Acknowledgments Personal Acknowledgments Select Bibliography Review Francine Cournos, M.D.Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University, and author of "City Of One"This is an eye-opening work, a gripping and meticulously researched portrayal of an abused, dazed young boy tossed recklessly through a disjointed child welfare system on his way toward unspeakable crime. Jennifer Toth illuminates with extraordinary insight the path toward brutal juvenile violence.Jack NelsonChief Washington Correspondent, "Los Angeles Times"Jennifer Toths powerful and absorbing tale of a teenager whose tendency to violence turned to murder makes a convincing case that such tragedies can be prevented by proper intervention by welfare and juvenile justice systems. She lays bare the faults of both systems in telling how young would-be murderers can be stopped before they kill. It is must reading for anyone concerned about the increasing problem of youths prone to violence.Marvin KalbAuthor of "One Scandalous Story"Jennifer Toth is a very special writer, and she has now tackled a very special and important subject. Good for her. Better for us. Review Quote Marvin KalbAuthor ofOne Scandalous StoryJennifer Toth is a very special writer, and she has now tackled a very special and important subject. Good for her. Better for us. Excerpt from Book Chapter 1 The glory of the winters setting sun flashed red and pink across northwestern Ohios frozen horizon as Charles Johnson drove his tired green Chevrolet home from Sears with a space heater he hoped would save him from his wifes icy feet in bed. The two-lane rural highway was almost empty, but Mr. Johnson kept to the thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. At seventy years of age, with the remains of his hair grey and the memory of thousands of wide, proud smiles recorded in deep creases in his weathered red-brown skin, life was no race to Mr. Johnson. But this evening, he was hurried. He knew his wife was anxious for him to get home. A tall, willowy man with brown eyes regularly buffed by the wind and shining with the wonder he found in life around him, he genially bent to his wifes wishes. He smiled whenever he thought of her, even after thirty years of marriage. Jeanette Johnson, a petite, gentle woman, "held the Lords love in her eyes," as he put it. To say that Mr. Johnson loved his wife would understate the truth. She was his world on this earth. He loved even her cold feet, though the thought of them made him shudder slightly and shake his head with a low chuckle. A sharp cold had rolled down from Canada across Lake Erie and invaded the Johnsons one-story aluminum-sided house earlier in the week, and hadnt budged since. The two-bedroom home had no furnace, only a woodstove and a space heater which had broken sometime during the previous night. Mrs. Johnson always wore thick white socks to bed, but Mr. Johnson could feel the cold rush to her warmth, and though she protested, he knew how she melted when he rubbed her feet in his large work-callused hands before letting the space heater take over. Her quiet, shy smile thanked him more than any words. The light in her eyes warmed his soul. She was too good for this world, he would say. With his eyes carefully on the road, Mr. Johnson felt the sky. He said he could read the skies better than most weathermen with all their equipment, not just by looking up, but by soaking in the air it breathed. Mr. Johnson had a gift for feeling. He could feel the sky through his eyes, he told me with a humble smile, and even through his pores. This evening the sky was hard, icy, aloof, glorious, and unyielding. Though thick clouds approached, red smoldered through their darkness. Any way it was, the sky spoke to Mr. Johnson of some truth. He let the sky guide his thoughts regularly; it was how he lived. That moment, he recalled for me, he was thinking of the subject for his next sermon as a lay minister at St. Marys Baptist Church back in town. Redemption, he decided. Forgiveness and redemption rising like a phoenix out of the red burnings of life. The sun was now setting at a distance not too far. A dusting of fine snow outlined the sharp, bare trees, and rested in the crevices between frozen tufts of yellowed grass in fallow fields. Almost within reach, the sky met land. He took his last full, deep breath of wonder. Mr. Johnsons Ohio is quiet, still, flat, and vast. He visited Toledo, or "town" as he called the states fourth-largest city, for church and a few other necessities. But he preferred the rural life and chose to live mostly within the seven-and-a-half acres of Spencer Township. When he first came to Spencer in the late 1940s, migrating north from Georgia in search of work, there were no paved roads. People relied on outhouses then. Spencer educated its children in a one-room schoolhouse down the road from where he now lived. Natures fickle character never allowed stable prosperity to fall on the township, but even when farms suffered, people lived by neighborly goodness. There was little crime in the county. You could count the entire history of Spencers violent crimes on one hand. In the 1950s, a man stabbed his wife to death with eighty strokes. Some years later, a fight in the corner bar left a man dead in a ditch. Spencer was then, and remains today, the kind of place where neighbors look out for one another and usually leave their doors unlocked at night. The roads now are blacktopped, and the school closed in favor of busing children into the city, but Spencer has stayed much the same. Even as commerce and industry spread westward from Toledo, doubling the population of the counties it overtook, Spencer barely changed. The population even dropped a little, to around 1,700. City life, it seemed, stopped short just east of the township and then turned south, probably because Spencer still lacks public sewer and water lines. On this winter evening, Mr. Johnson drove past the more prosperous and larger farms of Harding Village, where red barns stand on flat plains a few acres from their white houses with broad pillared porches. Spencer rests like a horseshoe around Harding. In recent times, politicians have been accused of drawing town boundaries here along racial lines, but in fact they were made and stiffened by religion. Around the turn of the century, invisible borders were marked between Catholics and Protestants. One group prospered; the other did not. That was well before Mr. Johnson left the South in search of opportunities. He had made his way from a very poor sharecropping family up to the Cleveland area as a teenager. Scavenging for work, he stayed in the basement of a church. He worked in the steel mills around Cleveland before the steel mills went bust, then landed a job in a glass factory in Toledo. He stayed with relatives in Spencer and commuted into Toledo until he got on his feet. Much later, he worked as the janitor of the school down the street. He had found Jeanette Collins by then, demurely nestled in a church gathering, and they were happily married. She carefully packed a baloney sandwich for his lunch every day, which he doled out to children who had "forgotten" their own lunches. There were many families in Spencer too proud to ask for subsidized lunches. When they had saved enough, they bought a house. It was difficult in that era for a black man to do all these things with almost no education, but Mr. Johnson never spoke of those hurdles or complained. Life, to him, was a blessing and a miracle, and he did what he could to help people less fortunate. Leaving the broad farmland, he drove into Spencer, where small houses are squeezed alongside each other in random fashion. There is no reason or plan to this township. Houses grow as randomly as weeds on land that is bought slowly and built on with almost no rules. Some houses stand near the street, others far back, their numbers skip, jump, and are interrupted by spurts of forest and fields. This evening, his neighbors thick chimney smoke dissipated gently into the thin air. The land lay lifelessly brown, awaiting the spring thaw. The gravel road crunched as he drove toward his yellow house, standing quietly against the gurgle of a nearly invisible creek winding under his driveway. Mr. Johnson pulled the Chevrolet carefully into his garage. The swing set he built for the scores of children he and his wife had foster-parented over twenty years sat idle, a sad wind tinkling its chains. The sky had darkened suddenly in the early winter evening, with no flicker of light. The houses silence made him uneasy. Jeanette did not call out his name as usual. He hurried his step to the back door, suddenly wanting to hear her voice and feel the warmth of their kitchen. The back door he would always step through was locked. It was never locked. The air felt unusually quiet and tense against his skin. He fumbled with a key. The sky went cold. He smelled something wrong. When he opened the door, black smoke rushed at him. Something was on fire. He found his wifes lifeless body on the linoleum floor before him, her hand reaching for the door, her blood seeping toward his feet. Her eyes -- he breaks, recalling the terror and confusion still staring out of her one undestroyed eye. Thankfully, he did not notice her charred legs, only the flame licking at her clothes. When he turned to get the extinguisher, the fire was gone. He went into the bedroom and pulled a white bedspread from their mattress and wrapped it snugly around his wife. She wouldnt want people to see her like this, and he wanted to keep her warm. Briefly, and only in his heart, she was still alive. Only there could he feel the flutter of her heart, of her breath. The stillness of life and the silence of death, of what his senses knew to be true, he could not take in. Instead, he was struck by a sadness so thick and heavy that it knocked the breath out of him, a sadness so bottomless and profound that he felt irretrievably numb. Charles Johnson does not remember walking to the telephone or dialing. But he recalls waiting on the line, hoping Johnnie Jordan would come up behind him and finish the day by killing him too. That would be a mercy. He knew it had been Johnnie. He knew it as he knew his last strong grasp of faith was draining from him. With his wifes unprovoked, senseless death, by a child they had agreed to take into their home and foster-parent, Charles Johnsons beliefs in goodness and caring for others, in mans capacity for redemption, became hollow shells without the warm core that fed them. His faith remained. But for the year he lived on after his wifes death, it was a ghost of what it had always been. * * * I pray every day that I wake up soon, that the Lord gives me some reason, because I dont see no plan to this at all and I cant rest until I do. I cant sleep knowing that Jeanette is going to die again in some other person. -- Charles Johnson At the trial of Johnnie Jordan half a year later, Charles Johnsons Details ISBN1416576673 Author Jennifer Toth Short Title WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHNNIE JORDA Language English ISBN-10 1416576673 ISBN-13 9781416576679 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2007 Pages 320 Subtitle The Story of a Child Turning Violent DOI 10.1604/9781416576679 UK Release Date 2007-09-11 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2007-09-11 NZ Release Date 2007-09-11 US Release Date 2007-09-11 Publisher Simon & Schuster Publication Date 2007-09-11 Imprint The Free Press DEWEY 364.15230977 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:18806835;

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