The Arne Johnson Murder Trial

On the evening of February 16, 1981, in the small Connecticut town of Brookfield, a twenty-year-old man named Arne Cheyenne Johnson drove a folding knife into the chest of his landlord, Alan Bono, during what began as an argument over the handling of a young girl. Bono died of his wounds, and Johnson was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. What should have been a straightforward criminal case instead became one of the most extraordinary legal proceedings in American history when Johnson’s defense team announced that their client would plead not guilty by reason of demonic possession. It was the first time such a defense had been attempted in an American courtroom, and the case drew the attention of the nation, raising profound questions about the intersection of faith, law, psychology, and the supernatural.

The roots of the Johnson case reach back not to the defendant himself but to an eleven-year-old boy named David Glatzel, whose terrifying experiences in the summer and autumn of 1980 set in motion a chain of events that would end with a man dead and another imprisoned. The story that unfolded in the months between David’s first visions and Arne Johnson’s act of violence remains one of the most disturbing and controversial cases in the annals of American paranormal investigation, a case that defies easy categorization and resists simple explanation.

The Haunting of David Glatzel

The events began in July 1980, when the Glatzel family of Brookfield, Connecticut, asked Arne Johnson, who was engaged to their older daughter Debbie, to help them clean out a rental property they had recently acquired. The house at 1533 Lindley Street in nearby Bridgeport had been the site of reported poltergeist activity in 1974, though whether the Glatzels were aware of this history is unclear. While helping to prepare the property, eleven-year-old David Glatzel reportedly encountered an elderly man who appeared to him in a vision, a figure with dark, sunken eyes, a thin face, and wearing a flannel shirt. The figure spoke to David, warning him that he was going to be hurt and that terrible things were coming.

In the days following this initial experience, David’s behavior changed dramatically. He began having nightmares of extraordinary intensity, waking in terror and describing visions of the old man returning, now accompanied by other figures that David described as demonic in appearance. The boy reported being scratched, hit, and squeezed by invisible hands. He would wake with marks on his body that his family could not explain. He began speaking in voices that were not his own, uttering obscenities and blasphemies that were foreign to the well-mannered child his family knew.

As the weeks progressed, David’s symptoms intensified. He exhibited what his family and the investigators who became involved described as classic signs of possession: convulsions, levitation, knowledge of hidden things, speaking in languages he had never studied, and displays of physical strength far beyond what an eleven-year-old boy should have possessed. He would enter trance states during which his face contorted into expressions his family described as inhuman, his voice dropping to guttural tones that bore no resemblance to his normal speech.

The Glatzel family, devout Catholics, turned to their parish priest for help. The priest, alarmed by what he witnessed, contacted the Diocese of Bridgeport, which eventually authorized a series of minor exorcisms to be performed on the boy. It was during this process that Ed and Lorraine Warren became involved in the case.

The Warrens Enter

Ed and Lorraine Warren were, by 1980, perhaps the most famous paranormal investigators in America. Ed, a self-taught demonologist, and Lorraine, who claimed to be a clairvoyant and light trance medium, had been investigating cases of alleged hauntings and possessions since the 1950s. Their most famous case, the investigation of the Perron family’s farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, would later become the basis for the film “The Conjuring.” The Warrens had established a working relationship with Catholic clergy throughout New England and were frequently called upon to assess cases that parishes felt exceeded their capacity to handle.

The Warrens arrived at the Glatzel home and, according to their account, immediately recognized the situation as a genuine case of demonic infestation and possession. They documented David’s episodes, recording audio and video of his outbursts, and worked with local clergy to arrange for formal exorcism rites. Ed Warren later stated that David’s case was among the most severe he had encountered in decades of investigation, involving not one demon but as many as forty-three distinct entities.

Over the course of several months, multiple exorcism sessions were conducted, involving priests from the local diocese as well as clergy brought in from other areas. The sessions were, by all accounts, harrowing experiences for everyone involved. David would thrash, scream, and contort during the rituals, his voice changing from his own to deep, growling tones that seemed to emanate from somewhere other than his small body. He reportedly recited prayers backward in Latin, a language he had never studied, and demonstrated knowledge of the private sins and secrets of those present in the room.

It was during one of these sessions that the event occurred which would later prove to have devastating consequences. According to the Warrens and multiple family members present, Arne Cheyenne Johnson, watching the boy he would have called his future brother-in-law writhing in apparent agony, rose to his feet and challenged the demon directly. “Take me on,” he reportedly shouted. “Leave my little buddy alone.” In the theology of demonic possession, such an invitation is considered extraordinarily dangerous, as it provides the entity with consent to transfer its attention to a new host. The Warrens would later claim that this was precisely what happened.

The Transformation of Arne Johnson

In the weeks and months following his challenge to the entity, Arne Johnson’s behavior began to change in ways that alarmed those around him. A young man described by friends and family as gentle, good-natured, and devoted to his fiancee, Johnson became increasingly volatile, prone to sudden rages and periods of disorientation. He would fall into trance-like states during which he seemed unaware of his surroundings, his eyes glazing over and his expression becoming blank or hostile.

Debbie Glatzel, his fiancee, later testified that Arne would sometimes speak in voices that were not his own, using language and expressing knowledge that seemed foreign to his character. He would growl, hiss, and make animal-like sounds. On several occasions, he appeared to enter a state of altered consciousness during which he did not recognize the people around him and responded to stimuli that no one else could perceive.

The Warrens, who had maintained contact with the family, expressed concern that the demonic entity or entities that had afflicted David had indeed transferred their attention to Arne. They urged him to seek help from the Church and warned that the situation could escalate if left unaddressed. Whether Johnson took these warnings seriously or dismissed them as superstition is unclear from the historical record, but no formal intervention was arranged for him in the months leading up to the killing.

Johnson continued to work as a tree surgeon and to maintain his relationship with Debbie, but the episodes of strange behavior continued and, according to witnesses, intensified. Co-workers reported that he would sometimes stop in the middle of a task and stare into space, unresponsive for minutes at a time. Friends noted that his personality seemed to shift unpredictably, his normally affable demeanor giving way without warning to coldness, hostility, or a disturbing blankness that they found difficult to describe.

The Murder of Alan Bono

On the afternoon of February 16, 1981, the chain of events reached its violent conclusion. Arne Johnson, Debbie Glatzel, and several others were visiting their landlord, Alan Bono, at the kennel he operated in Brookfield. Bono, a forty-year-old man described as friendly but prone to heavy drinking, had been consuming alcohol throughout the afternoon. An argument developed, reportedly centered on Bono’s rough handling of a young girl who was present at the gathering.

The details of what happened next are disputed, but the essential facts are not. During the confrontation, Arne Johnson produced a five-inch folding knife and stabbed Alan Bono multiple times in the chest and abdomen. Bono collapsed and was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Johnson fled the scene but was apprehended by police a short distance away. He appeared dazed and disoriented at the time of his arrest, and witnesses who had been present at the altercation stated that he had seemed to be in an altered state in the moments before the stabbing, growling and assuming a posture that they described as animalistic.

When informed of what he had done, Johnson reportedly expressed confusion and distress, claiming that he had no clear memory of the attack. It was in the aftermath of his arrest that the decision was made, with the Warrens’ encouragement, to mount the most unusual defense in American legal history.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Johnson’s attorney, Martin Minnella, announced that his client would enter a plea of not guilty by reason of demonic possession. The defense would argue that at the time of the killing, Arne Johnson was not in control of his own actions, that his body had been commandeered by a demonic entity that had transferred to him from the possessed boy David Glatzel, and that Johnson therefore bore no criminal responsibility for the death of Alan Bono.

The announcement created a media sensation. Reporters descended on Brookfield and the surrounding area, and the case was covered by newspapers, magazines, and television programs across the country and around the world. The prospect of a demonic possession defense being argued in an American courtroom raised questions that reached beyond the specifics of the case to fundamental issues of law, religion, and the nature of human agency.

The presiding judge, Robert Callahan, faced a legal question without precedent. Could a defendant argue that he was not responsible for his actions because he was possessed by a supernatural entity? After hearing preliminary arguments, Judge Callahan ruled that the possession defense was inadmissible. His reasoning was straightforward: the court could not put the existence of demonic possession on trial. There was no legal framework for evaluating such a claim, no standard of evidence that could be applied, and no way for the prosecution to rebut testimony about supernatural events. To allow the defense would be to require the court to make a determination about a matter of religious faith, which fell outside the jurisdiction of a criminal proceeding.

The Trial and Conviction

With the possession defense excluded, Johnson was tried for first-degree manslaughter rather than murder, the charge having been reduced during pre-trial proceedings. The trial proceeded along conventional lines, with the prosecution presenting evidence of the stabbing and the defense arguing that Johnson had acted in the heat of passion during a confrontation with a larger, intoxicated man who was behaving aggressively.

The jury convicted Arne Cheyenne Johnson of first-degree manslaughter on November 24, 1981. He was sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison. He ultimately served five years before being released on parole in 1986. Upon his release, he married Debbie Glatzel, and the couple lived quietly in Connecticut for many years.

The Warrens, for their part, never wavered in their conviction that Johnson had been genuinely possessed and that the court’s refusal to consider the supernatural defense had resulted in an injustice. They collaborated with writer Gerald Brittle on a book about the case, “The Devil in Connecticut,” published in 1983, which presented the Warrens’ interpretation of events as factual.

The Controversy

The Arne Johnson case has generated controversy that extends far beyond the courtroom. Skeptics have raised numerous objections to the supernatural interpretation of events, pointing to factors that they believe provide adequate conventional explanations for everything that occurred.

Johnson had been drinking on the day of the murder, a fact that the defense did not dispute. The confrontation with Bono was, on its face, the kind of alcohol-fueled altercation that leads to violence with depressing regularity, regardless of any supernatural component. The possession symptoms attributed to both David Glatzel and Arne Johnson are consistent with a range of psychological conditions, from dissociative disorders to the effects of extreme stress and suggestibility within a family system that had become deeply enmeshed in a narrative of demonic activity.

The role of the Warrens has been particularly scrutinized. Critics have noted that Ed and Lorraine Warren had a financial interest in the case, as they collected fees for speaking engagements and media appearances related to their investigations. The book deal with Gerald Brittle was arranged before the trial concluded, suggesting that the commercial potential of the possession narrative was recognized early. Some observers have argued that the Warrens, whatever their sincerity, introduced and reinforced a framework of interpretation that transformed a troubled family situation into a case of demonic possession, with ultimately tragic consequences.

David Glatzel’s brother Carl later sued Lorraine Warren and Gerald Brittle, claiming that the events described in “The Devil in Connecticut” were fabricated and that his brother’s experiences had been exploited for profit. Carl Glatzel maintained that David had suffered from a conventional mental illness that was misinterpreted as possession by the Warrens and by the family’s own religious beliefs. The lawsuit added another layer of bitterness to an already painful story.

The Legacy

The Arne Johnson case established a clear legal precedent: American courts will not accept demonic possession as a defense against criminal charges. This ruling has been cited in subsequent cases where defendants attempted similar strategies, and it remains the governing principle in American jurisprudence. The law, whatever concessions it may make to religious belief in other contexts, draws a firm line at allowing supernatural claims to negate criminal responsibility.

The case also raised questions that remain unresolved about the relationship between religious belief and legal responsibility. If a defendant genuinely believes he is possessed, and if the community around him shares that belief, does the sincerity of the belief have any bearing on the question of culpability? The Johnson case suggests that the answer, at least in American law, is no. The court’s concern is with the defendant’s mental state as defined by medical and psychological criteria, not by theological ones.

The 2021 film “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” brought renewed attention to the case, dramatizing the events with considerable creative license. The film, like its predecessors in the Conjuring franchise, presented the Warrens’ interpretation as essentially accurate, depicting demonic forces as real and active. Whether this representation served the interests of truth or merely of entertainment is a question that each viewer must answer for themselves.

What remains beyond dispute is that a man died, another man went to prison, a boy suffered, and a family was torn apart. Whether the cause was demonic intervention, mental illness, alcohol, violence, or some combination of these factors, the human toll of the Arne Johnson case is real and undiminished by the passage of time. The devil, if he was involved, left behind only suffering. And the question of whether he was involved at all remains, like so many questions in the realm of the paranormal, a matter of faith rather than of fact.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “The Arne Johnson Murder Trial”
• JSTOR — Religious studies — Peer-reviewed research on possession and exorcism