The Guardian

‘Something went on in that house’: did the devil drive a teen to murder?

Here are the facts: on 16 February 1981, 19-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson, his sister Wanda, his fiancee Debbie Glatzel, her cousin Mary and Debbie’s employer/landlord Alan Bono all went to lunch at a bar in Brookfield, Connecticut. Over the course of the afternoon, Bono drank to the point of inebriated belligerence, and soon began to roughly handle young Mary. A visibly enraged Johnson intervened, tussled with Bono, drew a five-inch pocketknife and stabbed the man repeatedly. Bono succumbed to his wounds a few hours later, and Johnson was apprehended by the police two miles away from the scene of the crime.

That November, his trial became a media sensation when his legal representation pleaded innocence by cause of demonic possession, explaining that Johnson took on an unholy

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