Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii — A United States Army officer stationed in Hawaii was sentenced to 23 years in jail on Thursday for killing his wife and unborn child last summer and attempted to cover up the crime by dismembering and throwing her body away.
Pfc. Dewayne Johnson II pleaded guilty earlier this week to voluntary manslaughter, obstruction of justice, and providing false official statements, according to a statement from the Army Office of Special Trial Counsel.
His wife, Mischa Johnson, died on July 12, 2024, at the age of 19 and six months pregnant. Her body has not been located.
Johnson, of the 25th Infantry Division, told the judge during evidence in a military trial that he assaulted his wife with a machete in their home at the Schofield Barracks military installation on Oahu after an altercation, according to KITV.
He claimed he snapped after his wife yelled that his child wouldn’t know he existed. He smacked her in the head, and she stopped breathing and had no pulse. He claimed he did not plan to kill her.
“I couldn’t picture my life without my child,” he told me. “I regret, I shouldn’t have done it.”
To conceal the murder, he hacked up his wife’s body with a chainsaw and placed her body pieces in rubbish bags that he threw into a dumpster in his flat. He had heard that the waste was hauled directly to an incinerator.
Johnson reported his wife missing on July 31, more than two weeks after she died. He joined search parties hunting for her on Oahu. He was accused with her murder on August 27, after Army investigators discovered blood, DNA, and other evidence in his residence.
Prosecutors said Johnson, of Frederick, Maryland, received the maximum punishment authorised under law. They dismissed the child sexual abuse image allegations as part of his plea agreement.
Johnson’s rank will be reduced to private, and he will lose pay and allowances before being dishonourably discharged. He will serve his time in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Marianna Tapiz told KITV that learning about her sister’s death was both startling and painful.
“As a family together, we’re just trying not to focus on the horrific details of her last moment with him,” Tapiz told the media. “And instead, right now, we’re trying to just remember the happy memories that we have and remember her in that life.”
Lt. Col. Nicholas Hurd, the Army prosecutor, expressed hope that the justice proceedings will help the family heal.
“While no amount of confinement will ever be able to truly ease the pain of the loss of Ms. Johnson and her unborn child for her family and friends, it is my hope that Pfc. Johnson’s admissions of guilt and the information he provided as part of the plea agreement can provide some element of closure and finality for the family and all stakeholders,” Hurd told reporters.