Zane Campbell

         If you saw Norman’s spot on America’s Most Wanted this past August, you know
         that he is a bad motherfucker and not to be toyed with. If you’d shoot your own
         brother’s son nine times, you’d probably shoot your own mother–and sure as shit
         he’d shoot you, dear reader, whom he doesn’t even know and probably wouldn’t
         like.Norman Johnston and the rest of his gang–known as "the Johnston Gang,"
         naturally–netted millions of dollars in criminal activities over a 20-year period.
         Their adventures were chronicled in the 1986 film At Close Range, starring Sean
         Penn and Christopher Walken. Johnston, 48, was serving four consecutive life
         sentences when, on this past Aug. 2, he escaped from a maximum security
         prison near Pittsburgh, having racked up no good behavior time whatsoever. The
         most important thing to remember about Norman is that he is a retarded hillbilly,
         which America’s Most Wanted foolishly failed to mention. If you don’t know this
         about Norman and encounter him, say, in a dark hollow, you are at grave risk. His
         family originally came from Tennessee. The fact that he is a retarded hillbilly
         explains why the FBI and hundreds of cops scouring his old stomping grounds of
         southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and northeastern Maryland, where I was
         raised and am now living again, couldn’t find him for 19 days.

         Without Norman’s escape from prison it would have been pretty dull around this
         rural part of Maryland this summer. The only other news was the drought, if that
         gives you any idea.

         Norman and his two older brothers, Bruce Sr. and David, were convicted in 1980
         of whacking those four teenagers–members of their own gang, who’d gotten
         caught and agreed to rat them out–in 1978. Bruce Sr. had killed his son’s
         girlfriend and tried to kill his own son and namesake, because Bruce Jr. was
         about to snitch on his father and his beloved uncles. It was feared when Norman
         escaped that he might seek revenge against his ex-wife, who had been placed in
         the Witness Protection Program, but foolishly left it 10 years ago. His ex-wife,
         now remarried, left town immediately upon his escape.

         The Johnston Gang gainfully employed more than 40 adults and teens, and
         continued even after the brains of the operation, Bruce Sr., went to prison. Their
         m.o. was to steal hundreds of trucks, tractors, cars and specialty farm equipment
         in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, and allegedly sell them down South,
         bound for South America. ("Receipts? We don’t need no stinking receipts!")

         The Johnston Gang’s downfall was in trusting their own sons. Bruce Sr. recruited
         the kids himself and encouraged them to set up their own burglary/fencing ring he
         called the Kiddie Gang, empowering them and letting them control the means of
         production and the rewards. This was no nickel-and-dime operation, either. They
         used walkie-talkies and surveillance during heists. Alarms? Fuck that. They
         peeled back roofs like tin cans to get at their sardines. These guys were not lazy.

         The shit hit the fan when Bruce Jr. agreed to rat out his father because his
         girlfriend said Bruce Sr. had raped her while Jr. was in the can for, what else,
         burglary and fencing. He wasn’t talking to the authorities until his girlfriend told
         him of the alleged rape. She paid for that bit of whining with her life at the hands of
         Norman and his brother David. They also shot Bruce Jr. at the same time, with
         Pop’s full knowledge and approval; shot him nine times, but as I said, he survived.

         And so, after 20 years, Norman got out of jail on Aug. 2 the old-school way:
         hacksaw on window bars. (A prison guard and a nurse were later fired for
         smuggling in the hacksaw and a special screwdriver for opening prison windows.
         The deputy superintendent abruptly retired.) He walked across the prison yard
         and "wriggled through a fence," as one news report put it, to freedom.
         Pennsylvania police immediately launched a slipshod manhunt, when prison
         employees (read: drug dealers) at the State Correctional Institution in Huntington
         "noticed the fence was loose." Like it was a white picket fence and they noticed
         the latch was up.

         Norman had left a life-size dummy sleeping in his bed, complete with hair,
         possibly a wig he took from prison spokesperson Diana G. Baney. The prison is
         outside Pittsburgh in a residential area and Baney wisely and astutely
         commented, "There’s houses right across the street from it." I feel so safe. Right
         across the street from the prison where "there’s houses," Norman stole a 1966
         Land Rover and made a beeline across Pennsylvania to his old stomping grounds,
         Chester County, in the southeast corner of the state. The whole tri-state area was
         suddenly in an uproar. Every parent in three states was suddenly locking up their
         teenagers at night, which is a good idea anyway. Before he left prison, Norman
         was alleged to have said, "I’m gonna kill me some teenagers."

         Bruce "The Brains" Johnston was living in the town I’m living in right now, Elkton,
         MD, back in the 70s when they were doing their tractor-stealing and murdering. At
         the height of their reign I was living nearby in my hometown, North East, MD,
         oblivious of them and everything else. Bruce Sr. shot the first snitch, Gary
         Crouch, in the head in 1977. They found Crouch a year later in a grave. Crouch
         used to take his daughter to the same Tastee-Freez I frequented in my
         hometown.

         The Johnston Gang used to hang out at The Bastille, a bar I played at, on Rte. 40
         between Elkton and North East, back in those days. They were hanging out there
         at the same time I was playing there. So the Johnston Gang had to have listened
         to my rock ’n’ roll cover band in the mid 70s. I probably fired them up for crime on
         occasion, playing Stones and Who covers. I’m told they were all serious
         wake-and-bake potheads, druggies and drunks. Sounds like me back then.

         Back then, Jack DeWitt, a Cecil County sheriff based in the county seat of
         Elkton, tried to capture the gang singlehandedly with his posse of traffic ticket
         revenuers, up near Oxford, PA (illegally crossing state lines), and was outgunned.
         DeWitt took along a county jail snitch to show him where Johnston was, holed up
         in a remote farmhouse, and things got so out of control that the sheriff had to give
         a gun to the snitch to help them shoot their way out. (The snitch, Kenny Howe,
         was a member of the Johnston Gang. He’d been caught by infrared surveillance
         on his property, doing a little late-night bodywork with stolen car parts supplied by
         the gang. After the near-disastrous shootout at the farmhouse he entered the
         Witness Protection Program and went to Tennessee–where relatives of the
         Johnstons discovered and attacked him with the hillbilly weapon of choice,
         shotguns, shooting five or six times, and he lived. They were a tough bunch, even
         the snitches.)

         Harford County police nabbed Norman in 1979, in the town of Edgewood, MD, at a
         motel. Maj. William Jacobs, now of the Cecil County Sheriff’s Office in Elkton,
         was involved in Norman’s final apprehension, which took 12 state troopers and
         lots of guns, though no shots were fired. The cops got the drop on Norman
         through an anonymous tip.

         Hollywood made At Close Range to glamorize these killers for the teenagers of
         America (copycat killers). The Johnston Gang was much worse than the movie let
         on, and much less glamorous. They may have killed many more people than
         either gave them credit for. Bruce Sr. was convicted of killing six to his little
         brother Norman’s four, allowing for double-ups, but many other known
         blabbermouths in the tri-state area had gone missing during their reign.

         After his escape this August, there were soon sightings of Norman Johnston all
         over the Penn-Mar-Del region, as we call it, turning neighbor against neighbor.
         One damn near confirmed sighting of Norman was right up the road from here in
         Fair Hill, MD. Some women were reading the local rag with pictures of Norman
         plastered all over it, saw a fellow who looked just like him by the side of the road
         and did right-out-of-the-movies double takes. "Norman" saw the comic double
         take, laughed maniacally, and ran into the woods. Suspicious, no?

         I know something about Fair Hill because my father owned a country general
         store there for many years, the only store for miles, so I was bemused when I
         read that two typical rural Maryland waitresses at a local upscale restaurant there
         went looking for Norman in the basement of the restaurant. Their weapons? Lit
         cigarettes and full beer bottles. I was thinking, "These ain’t weapons. These are
         appendages. They would have had them in their hands anyway, at any given time
         of the day!" Good thing they didn’t catch Norman. Also in the Fair Hill area, police
         almost shot a 70-year-old man who looked nothing like Norman after they decided
         he looked suspicious walking down the road.

         The cops were out in droves, a tri-state coordinated task force overseen by the
         FBI, using more helicopters and infrared devices than ever before seen in these
         parts. They had K-9 dogs sniffing Johnston’s dirty underwear and salivating off into
         the woods after him. They had roadblocks set up looking for Norman in the trunks
         of cars. My sister Mavis did an obvious U-turn at one when it came her turn for
         inspection, and the police did not come after her. She could have had two
         Normans in her trunk and they wouldn’t have known.

         In Nottingham County Park near the PA-MD line, a park ranger spotted Norman
         making a phone call. He pulled his gun and asked for ID. According to a local
         paper, The Cecil Whig, "Johnston, who had tried to cover his face, indicated he
         as with a group of 10 junior rangers taking an environmental class under a nearby
         pavilion. Then explaining his lack of ID, Johnston reported that marijuana was the
         only thing he had in his possession. With the ranger’s gun still leveled on him,
         Johnston bolted as another park officer arrived. That ranger grabbed Johnston’s
         shirt, ripping it as the escaped killer broke free and headed for a line of oak trees
         and briars 100 feet away. Because the junior rangers were so close, the rangers
         didn’t fire their weapons as Johnston fled."

         Translation: They knew it would just piss him off and he might turn on them. They
         probably couldn’t hit a tree at point-blank anyway, being "park" officers. Norman
         probably sensed this and ran, escaping into the woods with only a torn shirt,
         outrunning the park rangers, at his age. The park rangers didn’t want to go into
         the woods.

         Also at the park, Norman approached a "parker" bearing food. Norman said, "You
         know who I am. Give me the food and I won’t hurt you." Like most locals, the
         "parker" willingly covered for Norman, with no quid pro quo necessary, and didn’t
         report the incident until 12 hours later, giving him plenty of time to eat in peace
         and run.

         My aunt, Mary Owen, spotted him at her sister’s antique store in nearby Childs,
         MD. He came in the store asking directions; she didn’t know the house he was
         looking for and he left. She remembered him from 20 years ago when he used to
         come in her store at Oxford, PA. She didn’t even report it, saying only that "He
         looked so sad, I felt sorry for him. But I couldn’t say for certain it was him. It’s
         been 20 years."

         He was reputedly spotted at a Wal-Mart in Elkton by other Wal-Martians, and at
         Ted’s Lounge sucking up the suds and talking out his ass, but police later
         retracted those sightings when a local alcoholic’s car was linked to both scenes.
         Police spotted the suspicious car leaving Ted’s Lounge at some ungodly hour,
         gave chase and pulled it over, but as they approached the vehicle the alcoholic
         ran into the woods. Suspicious? Not in Cecil County. One more DUI and you’re in
         jail, then walking for a while when you get out. Quite understandable. Almost any
         driver on any given Friday or Saturday night around here would have acted
         similarly. The poor drunk left personal effects and receipts from Wal-Mart in his
         vehicle. But he couldn’t get to work now, so he foolishly went to reclaim the car,
         which had been impounded by the coppers, and was arrested for his trouble.

         (In the good old days when I was driving the roads around here drunk, the cops
         would merely comment on my state of inebriation and let me off with some jive
         traffic ticket, if that, and give me directions home for chrissakes, as you didn’t
         deny that you were drunk, which they didn’t like and would haul you in for, lying
         being worse than drunken driving. Land of the free, my ass. You can’t even drink
         and drive anymore. Designated drivers? They did a recent survey in Cecil County
         and found not one man or woman capable or willing to be one. Everyone had at
         least one DUI or court-ordered alcohol/drug rehab to their credit and were working
         on more, if they were allowed to drive at all anymore.)

         The Norman Johnston manhunt went on for almost three weeks. Since I bear a
         passing resemblance to Johnston (6-foot-1, 180 pounds–okay, 210–dark
         pompadourable hair, phrenologically questionable head shape, weird wild eyes), I
         decided to have a little fun with an ABC News crew outside of Oxford, PA, during
         all this hick hoopla. There were white news vans (ABC, NBC, CBS) swarming on
         the largely rural area like flies, racing after any drunken redneck’s Elvis-like
         "sighting" of Johnston. The (obligatory, token, cliche) Chinese-American
         newswoman was trying to interview the locals when I got up in her face wearing a
         green doctor’s shirt and spattered housepainter’s pants. I knew she was getting
         nowhere with the locals–they were all covering for Norman anyway; shit, he was
         probably hiding out in the back of the fruit stand–so I said, quite seriously: "Hi, I’m
         Norman Johnston. I hear you been wanting an interview with me." She backed up.
         She didn’t laugh, didn’t say anything, but the fruit stand crew and the locals were
         laughing their asses off.

         The other big local "news item" was the run on At Close Range at all the video
         stores in the Penn-Mar-Del region. Norman Johnston himself was spotted at a
         Rising Sun, MD, video store begging for a copy, probably having forgotten what
         he’d done 20 years ago and wondering why everybody was chasing him.

         Norman was spotted near Boy Scout Camp Horseshoe near Rising Sun on Aug.
         10. What was he doing there? Looking for teenagers to kill, obviously, or preteens
         so they wouldn’t grow up to be teens and rat somebody else out as they are wont
         to do these days, the little fucks. Around this time a state trooper spotted a man
         fitting Johnston’s description at a payphone outside of Johnston’s Liquor Store (no
         relation, according to Mr. Johnston, the liquor store owner). Johnston (the liquor
         store owner) got pissed when one of his soon to be ex-employees put "Run,
         Norm, Run" on the big lit-up liquor store sign outside and then called the local
         paper for a photo op, which they featured, along with a local beauty parlor’s offer
         to give Norman a free makeover.

         When the man at the liquor store fitting Johnston’s description saw the trooper,
         he high-tailed on a motorcycle, reportedly reaching speeds of more than 130 mph.
         He crossed the state line near Little Britain (no relation to any part of Britain) into
         Pennsylvania and dumped the bike, running into the woods. Suspicious? No. Just
         a typical Maryland resident in fear of losing his motorcycle license again. State
         police Sgt. John ("Gay") Blades said it couldn’t have been Norman because he’s
         been on ice for 18 years and just couldn’t operate a motorcycle at such reckless
         speeds. Yeah, right. Sgt. Blades just don’t understand hillbillies and don’t know
         they learn to ride a fucking motorcycle before they get their tricycles; Norm
         Johnston could outride a state cop after being cryogenically frozen for 40 years.

         Police believed Norman was taking advantage of our rural terrain, hiding in caves
         and eating tree bark and roots, or perhaps eating foods illegally picked from the
         surrounding farms, which they swore to prosecute him for, if they ever caught him.
         Killing teenagers is one thing, but this is farm country, and fruit and vegetable
         theft is no joke.

         Of course there was the mandatory plea from his mother, who raised him wrong in
         the first place, to "give yourself up." He was probably hiding in her pantry with her
         full knowledge when she was saying this into the cameras at WPVI-TV in
         Philadelphia. "Norm, I don’t know where you are" (why did she have to say that?),
         "but I wish you would give yourself up because you’re going to get killed."

         Meanwhile the reward kept going up. As of Saturday, Aug. 14, the reward was up
         to $40,000. By then police in all three states were involved in the manhunt, along
         with the FBI, and they still couldn’t catch one retarded hillbilly. That Saturday
         America’s Most Wanted ran a 10-minute segment on Johnston.

         If the law enforcement authorities were too stupid to catch Norm, you can imagine
         what the local vigilantes were like. A resident of Fair Hill, Patrick Foster, was out
         cruising for Norman, no doubt thinking $40,000 is a lot of beer money, when he
         came upon a dead ringer for Norm. He chased him with "a piece of iron" down the
         railroad tracks near Elk Mills. I think Patrick says it best when he says (quoted in
         the Whig), "I seen him about 50 yards down the tracks. I picked up a piece of iron
         and chased him down to the trestle crossing at Big Elk Creek. I don’t know
         whether I got scared but when I was about to cross the trestle my kids popped
         into my mind–" Translated: he got scared. "–and I turned back to call police.
         Johnston went across the trestle like he was an Olympic sprinter and ducked into
         the woods." Later on he says, "If I would have caught him, I would have beat him.
         I would have beat him hard. I am going to search around some more for him this
         afternoon."

         Law enforcement responded to this with, "This is a dangerous man and we don’t
         want citizens trying to apprehend him. That’s best left to the professionals." Who
         was the "dangerous man" they were referring to, Norman or Patrick?

         As it turned out, the "dead ringer for Norman Johnston" was 17-year-old Todd W.
         "Billy" Birney Jr., who on his way home for lunch from the lumberyard where he
         worked when Patrick the ever-vigilant vigilante spied him. After lunch, Birney
         started back to the lumberyard along the tracks when all hell broke loose.

         "About 12:35 I saw people on the trestle," he told the Whig. "I just thought they
         were railroad employees. I didn’t think they were cops. They were yelling at me
         and I just kept right on going. It might have looked like I was running, but I wasn’t.
         I was just going down a steep bank. The next thing I knew, cops came up from
         behind me, told me to freeze and get on the ground. They were coming down the
         embankment and said, ‘If he moves, shoot him.’"

         Things got so out of hand they canceled a Charlie Daniels concert in Fair Hill,
         claiming it was too dangerous. One of the local rumors was that Norman was
         looking for millions in stolen money, buried somewhere in the tri-state. However,
         the area has changed so much in the last 20 years that I don’t even recognize it
         anymore, only having come back a few times, to dry out, in that space of time
         from NYC. The money could have been hidden under a housing development and
         long since spent by corrupt construction workers or new home owners.

         Norman evaded capture for almost three weeks. Not bad. In the end he was
         undone by modern technology more than anything else: newfangled cars (he
         could only steal old ones he knew how to operate, without all the bells and
         whistles); automated teller machines (he hadn’t even heard about them in prison);
         self-service gas pumps (he never did figure those out, and had to buy gas in a
         can). Some cop spotted him in a stolen car leaving a gas station in Chester
         County and there was the standard high-speed chase, the ditching of the car after
         almost hitting a house, the chase on foot and his eventual, uneventful capture,
         capped by Norman’s matter-of-fact, goes-without-saying quote: "You guys just
         don’t give up."

         But the question remains: Why did Norman come home in the first place? He
         could easily have driven one of those stolen cars to another state and beyond. He
         came back to the only region he had ever known. He’d come home. Maybe he
         only felt comfortable on these rural roads. He knew places he could hide out, but
         there were so many ugly new housing developments it must’ve been confusing. In
         fact, it was in one such cul de sac that he got caught. Trooper Louis Robinson
         said when he saw Norman careen into a development called Deerfield in
         Mendenhall, Pennsbury Township, PA, with him in hot pursuit, "I knew when he
         went in there, there was no way out of that development" (a fact residents of
         Deerfield probably know all too well, mortgages and all).

         Was there really hidden loot? All the money they found on him was a pathetic
         handful of quarters for making phone calls. Maybe he couldn’t find the money, the
         place having grown up so much he didn’t recognize it. Maybe there was no
         money, all of it having been spent long ago.

         Was it a hope for revenge on Bruce Jr. for not dying after the nine bullets and
         ratting out the whole family all those years ago? If so, he doesn’t seem to have
         acted on the impulse. Trooper John Malone, one of his captors, said when they
         caught him, "He wasn’t arrogant with us at all. He was very humble. He said he
         just wanted to be free."

         He didn’t know about cellular phones or how to steal one, which is why he
         collected quarters from the cars he stole to use on payphones. Who did he call?
         Relatives? Yes, at least in one case. The day those park rangers saw him, he
         was making a payphone call to a relative; said relative was picked up en route to
         the park to aid and abet Norman’s getaway. It is "rumored" that the relative had in
         his pickup truck three shotguns, assorted handguns, materials for amateur
         bombmaking, a six-pack and a sandwich. As I’m writing this the police won’t
         release the name of this relative. They also want to know who else Norman called
         during his three weeks of freedom. If anybody else aided and abetted him, or
         tried, authorities have promised to prosecute them to within an inch of their rights.
         Since it took said authorities so long to find him, they suspect everyone in the
         whole tri-state area, not without merit.

         It is believed Norman spent most of his unsupervised out-time in the woods,
         perhaps in places he played in his childhood: caves, abandoned barns and
         farmhouses, heavily wooded areas. What did the fresh air feel like after almost 20
         years in jail? They think he hid out around the Elk Creek and along the railroad
         tracks, the only area that hadn’t changed much in 20 years and connected the
         two confirmed sightings of him. I hike around this area a lot myself and let me tell
         you, you never see anybody. All summer long I’ve hiked around the Elk Creek and
         the railroad tracks and I have yet to see one person, except maybe the conductor
         on the Amtrak if you look real hard and the passengers whizzing by.

         Norman ain’t talking much about what he did or where he was while he was out.
         He’s only said that it was a daily struggle to survive with police dogs constantly
         on his trail. Pennsylvania State Police Capt. Henry Oleyniczak said, "The best we
         can tell from our encounters, he was living in the woods a lot." Johnston did tell
         police he hid out by day and went to convenience stores for food at night only,
         listening to the radio newscasts and reading newspapers to keep one step ahead.

         Oleyniczak said that when troopers asked him why he stayed in the area,
         Norman said it was hard for him to get out of the area. He felt the heat was too
         hot. But wouldn’t the heat be less hot elsewhere? It doesn’t add up. Then the
         cops asked him, "Was it worth it?" and Norman said, "Not for 20 days." He
         refused to say anything to reporters as he was being led back to prison.

         Norman is now in an 8-by-10 cell in a new prison, with a light shining on him 24
         hours a day (can’t even jerk off in peace), allowed only underwear to wear, allowed
         no tv, radio or even books (might hide a hacksaw in one). He spends 23 hours a
         day in his cell with round-the-clock monitoring on all four sides. He gets out one
         hour a day to exercise. No interviews for me or anyone else for a while.

         I miss his being out, the commotion he caused, Cecil County’s 15 minutes of
         national fame for the first and possibly last time. In the end, like my Aunt Mary at
         the antique store, I just felt sorry for Norman, a hunted animal in a world he no
         longer recognized, understood or could operate the gas pumps of.