Image by Kevin Bird

"This summer a black cloud will dampen the five-year reunion of North Iowa High School's class of 2003," Andrew Potter wrote.  "Since the state of Iowa's failure to provide adequate safeguards for the mentally ill will deprive the class of one of its friendliest and most beloved members." 

Potter's letter to the editor refers to lifelong friend Jordan Johnson of Buffalo Center, Iowa.  Friends at age five, the two received their high school diplomas together, and continued to remain close friends even after college took them to separate cities. 


Potter watched and laughed at Johnson's practical jokes throughout their adolescence.  He laughs while recounting the night Johnson spent scouring Buffalo Center collecting every lawn-animal decoration he could find, only to reposition them to create a zoo, albeit plastic, down Main Street. 

Potter also watched in shock as Johnson's life was slowly torn apart by paranoid schizophrenia just a year after graduating high school, his grip on reality ebbing to the point of incomprehension.  To Potter, Johnson's downward slide is the subject of anger, not at Johnson, but at the circumstances that surrounded Johnson's mental decay.  

When Johnson was in the 8th grade, his father Kevin moved to Oregon.  It would be nearly three years before Johnson heard from his father.  Johnson's mother, Rita, had told her husband that neither she nor her son every wanted to speak to him again, Potter says.  "She tricked him into not being a part of [Johnson's] life," Potter said.  "She was evil to that guy."  Potter describes the relationship as abusive toward Kevin.  "She would throw s--- at his dad, belittle his dad, tell him how stupid he was."

Rita's treatment of her son was similar, Potter says, explaining how Johnson's mother would tear him down to the point that Johnson would avoid inviting friends over.  "She was horrible to him," Potter said.  "He wouldn't talk about it.  He thought the world of his mom."

At age 17, Johnson's mother left him as well, moving to Clear Lake, Iowa to live with her new boyfriend.  Johnson now lived alone in his parent's home, making payments on the rented home while working upwards of 70 hours a week at a local grain elevator.  Johnson still managed to prosper academically.

After graduating high school, Johnson attended the University of Northern Iowa, while Potter chose the University of Iowa.  Their friendship remained intact, however.  Potter made numerous trips to visit Johnson, staying at his house in West Pointe, Cedar Falls after nights out downtown.  Johnson would only come out occasionally, Potter says.  He had two jobs, working 50-60 hours a week while, once again, still managing good grades.  It wasn't until Johnson transferred to the University of Iowa in 2005 that Potter began noticing unusual behavior. 

Johnson moved into a house a few blocks away from the UI campus, staying with friends he knew from high school.  Potter visited often.

"What I noticed first of all is that he stopped making eye contact," Potter said.  "He would always stare at the floor."  Potter mimicked his friend's behavior, staring at his feet while shaking his head from side-to-side. 

One weekend, some of Johnson's friends Cedar Falls, Iowa came to visit.  They later confided in Potter that Johnson would not even look at them.  No longer able to look at those he once considered his closest friends, Johnson's peers were becoming concerned. 

Toward the end of Johnson's first semester at the University of Iowa, he told Potter about a woman from one of his courses, and how attractive she was.  He explained to Potter how he had e-mailed the woman, telling her that she was too attractive for him [Johnson], and to stay away. 

"Later, I found out that he thought she was stalking him," Potter said.  "I just thought he was acting weird.  Maybe a little depressed." 

In March 2006, Johnson's roommates began confiding in Potter.  They told him that Johnson was acting strange.  He was arguing with his friends from high school whom he had always gotten along with exceptionally well.  He was acting paranoid.  "I was busy working," Potter said.  "I wasn't over as often.  One day his roommate Aaron called me and told me, 'Jordan looked through my stuff in my room today.'  Obviously something wasn't right." 

It was 5:00 a.m. later that March when Potter received a phone call from Johnson asking for a favor.  He asked if Potter could pick him up at the sheriff's department in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a town about an hour south of Johnson's Iowa City residence.  After receiving directions, Potter arrived at 5:45 a.m., just as Johnson was being released.  Potter describes Johnson as acting standoffish, not elaborating on the circumstances of this early morning foray. 

Johnson's car had been towed to Wayland, Iowa, and Potter obliged, driving Johnson another ten miles to the towing company.  Arriving a half hour before the towing company opened its doors, Potter parked facing a tree to wait with Johnson.  It was now 6:00 a.m. and raining, and Potter remembers what his friend told him that morning vividly. 

"Do you see the triangles in the trees?" Johnson asked.  "When I get this pain in my side, I see things.  I know they're not there, but I see them."

"I was concerned," Potter says.  "He wasn't wearing shoes the entire time.  It didn't bother him that he wasn't wearing shoes."  When Johnson left the car, he left an admit-sheet from Henry County Emergency Room, though for what, the sheet didn't say.

It wasn't long after this that Johnson began deleting friends from the popular social-networking website Facebook.  Starting with approximately 200 friends, the numbers continued to Dwindle until only Potter, Potter's friend Tyler Burlage, and an unknown woman remained.  Then it was Potter and Burlage.  Finally, only Potter remained.  Similar to the Mount Pleasant situation that had occurred previous, the circumstances of this behavior remain mystery to Potter to this day.  On a similar social-networking website, Myspace, Johnson began uploading photos he had taken of himself to look like Satan. 

"He started getting really bad," Potter said.  "He was scaring the living s--- out of his roommates.  He accused them of plotting against him.  He still trusted me at this point."  Johnson was hearing voices and searching his home for surveillance equipment.  In April 2006, Johnson's roommates made the difficult decision to go to court and have him committed to a psychiatric hospital via court order.  Difficult as it might have been to do this to their friend and roommate, they received a telephone call from Johnson soon after his admittance to the hospital.  He thanked them for what they had done, agreeing that he did, indeed, have problems to deal with. 

Johnson's mother disagreed.  About a week and a half after Johnson was admitted to the psychiatric hospital, his mother took him out.  She also took him off of his medication.  Johnson dropped off the face of the earth.

Not long after Johnson had been taken out of the hospital, his now-ex roommates woke up to a disturbing view.  Just outside a window lay Johnson's jacket, a pair of sunglasses with both lenses knocked out, and some Slim Jims.  He had been camped outside of his former roommate's windows.  

The last time any of Johnson's friends would talk to him was in June, 2006, when he called Potter "out of the blue," while Potter enjoyed a few beers with close friends,  The two talked for 37 minutes, Potter remembers.  It was one of those innocuous details that stays with Potter to this day.  The reason for all of his problems, Johnson explained, was dehydration. He tried to explain to Potter that he was perfectly fine.  The visions of axes chopping hammers in the sky, the voices from across the block, the paranoia, the triangles in the trees was all for lack of hydration, and lack of hydration alone.

Potter was concerned to say the least, but any attempt to reach Johnson was futile.  He tried contacting Johnson through his cellular phone, only to hear Johnson's Mother's voice answer the call.  "She didn't say not to call back ever again," Potter said.  "But she made it pretty clear that calling him was pointless."  Johnson was a ghost, and would remain a ghost for the next year and a half.  

In January 2008, Potter's parents were in Iowa City visiting the weekend before their son's 23rd birthday.  They had planned to go out that night, but first Potter wanted to take a shower. 

The mood in the room had hanged drastically by the time he had finished.  His mother was crying.

"Did you hear about Jordan?" She said through tears.

"What?" Andrew asked.

"He killed Rita with a hatchet." 

At approximately 11:00 p.m. on January 19, Johnson locked Phil Seely, Rita's new husband, in the basement of their Mason City home.  He approached Rita and struck her in the head and neck 14 times with a hatchet.  When Phil was able to escape, Johnson was missing. 

Johnson later turned himself in to the Clear Lake Police Department, telling them that he had done "something very bad." 

Potter was absolutely shocked, but shock gave way to pragmatic cynicism.  "Well, it finally happened," Potter said, recounting his thoughts at the time.  "That's what happens when you have a dangerous schizophrenic thinking everyone is out to get him, take him out of the hospital and off his mediation." 

Charged with first-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping, the trial began April 20 and ended may 2.  It took the Jury an hour and forty minutes to convict him on both counts, despite an uncontroverted statement from a psychiatric professional that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.  Johnson would not be going to a psychiatric facility.  He would be spending the rest of his life in prison without parole, a mandatory sentence for first-degree murder conviction. 

Potter testified in the trial.  He was shocked at how quickly the jurors came to their unanimous decision.  "I don't contend that Jordan should be free, but in the hospital where he can get help," Potter says.  "The prosecution's case rested largely on Jordan's confession and the physical acts of murder.  Jordan also confessed on numerous occasions that radio towers beam energy into him and the mafia planted assassins in his college classes.  Jordan would never hurt anyone had he the slightest grasp on reality." 

The victim Phil Seely spoke to the media on numerous occasions in the wake of the trial.  "Nobody remembers her being mean or cruel to any of the kids," Seely told the Globe Gazette.  Seely told CBS network KIMT that nobody cared more about Johnson than his mother Rita.  When asked about these statements, Potter called them "bulls---."

Johnson's closest friends also tell a different story.  "In the years that I knew both Jordan and Rita, I had not seen her treat him with respect at any one time."  Former roommate Aaron Jacobson said.  "In fact, she belittled him in front of people and cut him down.  I feel like this is where his insecurities with himself stemmed from."  Kim Gray, the mother of two of Johnson's best friends also raised questions regarding Rita's treatment of Johnson, going on to express how her heart went out to Johnson when news of the killing reached her. 

Aaron Jacobson, the man who lived with and worried about Johnson wrote the following statement after the trial's conclusion.

"The cold, hard truth of the matter is that Rita was not only the worst example of a parent that I have come across, but she kept herself and everybody around in constant danger by keeping Jordan off the mediation that was absolutely necessary for him.  The man who committed murder was not the Jordan Johnson that many could tell you was a great guy.  the horrifying mugshot of him that I have seen is not Jordan Johnson.  The real Jordan was a moral, caring person who would never hurt anybody.  More than anything, I am furious that this opportunity to live a normal life was taken away by the person who should have cared the most." 

To understand this case, one must understand Johnson's story, 23 years in the making.  As an inmate, he will be identified as Jordan Johnson, but that is no longer who this man is.  Jordan Johnson played football.  He worked two jobs to put himself through college.  He loved practical Jokes.  The man spending the rest of his life in a jail cell is anything but Jordan Johnson.  

[Mugshot Photo]