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February 24, 2006
MYSTERY SOLVED Ballarat Bandit identifiedMAN WHO KILLED SELF AFTER LEADING COPS ON A YEARLONG CHASE A CANADIAN MARIJUANA FARMER
By ROBIN FLINCHUM
If the pig, belonging to a neighboring farmer on Canada's Prince Edward Island, had never found its way into the field of 4,000 marijuana plants being cultivated by 43-year-old George Robert Johnston in 1997, things might have been different for a lot of people. For instance, life might have been a little easier for Inspector Dave Van Norman of the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office, who spent more than a year doggedly following every lead, no matter how unlikely, in a fruitless effort to identify the corpse of John Doe #39-04, AKA the Ballarat Bandit. Van Norman then spent another four months shopping from one Canadian agency to another, through INTERPOL and back again, for a fingerprint search before finally receiving positive confirmation of the man's identify from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last week. Things might have been less complicated or frustrating for the people whose vehicles, weapons, food and other supplies were stolen during Johnston's eventual crime spree through Death Valley, Nye County and other parts of the American West. Things might have been different for the hundreds of officers in at least four states who pursued him uphill, across the scorched desert, through blinding snowstorms and into thin air between August of 2003 and July of 2004. The burden of sorrow might have been a little easier to bear for Patricia Johnston, loving mother and proud widow of a World War II hero in her home on Prince Edward Island, who hadn't seen her son in seven years and was bewildered by the news of his death and the nature of his recent exploits. But most especially they might have been different for George Johnston, whose marijuana crop, according to previous writings by his former wife Tommi Johnston, earned him an eight and a half year sentence in a Canadian prison; whose prison sentence separated him from his terminally ill wife and his four young daughters; and who, some time after the death of his father in 1999, jumped parole in Vancouver and fled to the United States, where he surfaced in Death Valley in 2003 and soon became a legend. Starting with a string of thefts in and around the desert ghost town of Ballarat, Johnston (then known only as the Ballarat Bandit) led law enforcement officials in at least four western states on a massive manhunt for nearly a year. They tracked him on foot, on horseback, using all terrain vehicles, four-wheel drives, and even airplanes, calling in extra manpower and coordinating efforts between a number of federal, state, and local agencies interested in the capture. They looked for him by day and by night using infrared vision equipment. In Nye County law enforcement officers doubled and tripled their forces, spending sixteen hours a day in the field - and the mission wreaked havoc on Sheriff Tony DeMeo's overtime budget. They spoke of the frustration created by the elusive Bandit and quietly marveled at his seemingly superhuman endurance. But they couldn't catch the mystery thief who could run five miles straight uphill into the setting sun and cross 60 miles of snow-covered high desert on foot. Not until the following year, when the searing heat of a July day in Death Valley drove him to the end of his rope. Then, when misstep after misstep brought him to the brink of capture, he took his own life. That was in July of 2004, the end of a massive manhunt pursuing the lean, blue-eyed Bandit through Death Valley's Inyo County, Nye and Washoe counties in Nevada, and on into Utah and Oregon. In the end, the Bandit put a finish to the pursuit in a sandy wash just over the Inyo County line, outside the edge of Death Valley National Park, in San Bernardino County. Surrounded by police on the ground and in the air above him, he stripped off his clothing and shot himself in the head, leaving an already overworked coroner to answer the burning question - who was this man? Investigator Van Norman struggled with the case for more than a year, finding not one single fingerprint or missing person description match in any of the U.S. databases he tried, before he received a suggestion from a source who now wishes to remain unnamed. In July, a year after the still unidentified Bandit's suicide, Van Norman buried him in San Bernardino County's potter's field. That October, a colleague of Van Norman's received an e-mail tip from a visitor to Death Valley who had heard the Bandit legend and given the matter some thought. The colleague considered the message "bizarre," but passed it on to Van Norman. "Who talks like an American, looks like an American, acts like an American, but isn't American?" the anonymous tipper wrote. "A Canadian. Maybe the Bandit was a Canadian ... Maybe the (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) ... might be able to provide some help." Intrigued by the idea and willing to try anything, Van Norman began the long and tedious process of connecting across national boundaries with Mounties. Since October of last year, Van Norman's requests for a fingerprint search on his John Doe #39-04 have been bouncing around through various Canadian agencies, through INTERPOL and back again, finally resulting in a solid match last week. Now, pieces of the puzzle of the Bandit's enigmatic life and American criminal career are slowly rising to the surface. Though the story has not been officially confirmed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, writings by Tommi Johnston indicate that her husband George first began cultivating marijuana because she chose it over morphine as a form of pain relief for her terminal leukemia. While 4,000 plants was certainly far more than one ailing woman could use, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assumed it was grown to sell, Tommi Johnston spoke out about what she considered the injustice of her husband's arrest and the treatment her family received. According to her writings from the late 1990s, the couple's four children were taken into protective custody, their property seized, and Johnston herself was remanded into a rehab program when she admitted to using marijuana for her illness. Though her daughters were eventually returned to her, she railed against Canada's harsh anti-drug policies as she struggled to secure the return of her home and belongings. In a diary she kept in the third person, Johnston recorded her thoughts about her incarcerated husband one night while she looked out the window, wondering if she and he might be watching the same stars in the sky. "Is he sleeping and does he know what a foolish world [we] live in?" she wrote. "A world that puts a man who nurtures and grows the only peace [his wife] knows in prison? A world that takes a father from his children...when they love him more than magic? That takes a husband from his wife when she needs him so, and loves him more?" Later, one of the things anyone who spoke with Johnston during his time in Inyo and Nye counties would remember is that he had an intense hatred of government. In the last days before his death Johnston was still actively cultivating marijuana plants inside Death Valley National Park, and died with a handful of marijuana seeds in the pocket of the shorts found near his body. To date, further information about what happened to the Johnstons, either George or the ailing Tommi or their children, in the intervening years has been difficult to extract over international boundaries. Sources at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not yet cleared the release of further background information and Patricia Johnston, still reeling from the shock, declined to be interviewed at this time. How George Johnston made the transition from a man with a name, a family, a home and a history to the mysterious Ballarat Bandit, a man who died nameless, naked and alone on the empty desert by his own hand, remains a mystery. Detective Jeff Hollowell, of the Inyo County Sheriff's Department, who dedicated many hours to the pursuit of the elusive Bandit, said the identification had come as a relief. "I stared at that picture of him on my computer many times and wondered all the time who he was," Hollowell said. But while law enforcement officers now have a name to apply to the man who caused so many sleepless nights among them, they are still working to piece together the history that brought him into their territory. And relics of his Death Valley adventures continue to surface. A blue and white 1980 Ford Bronco was recently recovered from a very remote area in the national park's Butte Valley region, according to Detective Hollowell. The vehicle was stolen in Mancos, Colo., in 2003 and had apparently been collecting dust in Death Valley for more than two years before it was spotted and towed out about two weeks ago. Hollowell said authorities suspect the vehicle was another of the Bandit's casualties. So far there is no indication that George Johnston, whom his wife described as having worked as a painter and drywaller for 25 years, ever received any specialized military training, though many law enforcement officials, especially Nye County's Sheriff Tony DeMeo, wondered if he had. However, Patricia Johnston indicated that her husband, George Johnston's father, had been a brigadier general in the armed forces and had been present at D-Day during World War II. One officer speculated that having grown up with a career military man probably exposed Johnston to a great deal of the knowledge and procedures that so impressed and worried authorities responsible for the military facilities in Nye County. Van Norman said he notified Patricia Johnston of her son's death on Feb. 17, and said that she was "bewildered" to learn not only of the manner of his death but his exploits in the year leading up to it. According to Van Norman, Johnston said she had last seen her son seven years ago, around the time of his father's death, and had no idea of where he had gone or what he had been doing since. "She didn't say so directly, but my impression was this just didn't sound like the son she knew," Van Norman said. Now that the Ballarat Bandit has been identified, his family will have the option of claiming George Johnston's remains from the lonely potter's field in San Bernardino County and returning them to Prince Edward Island for reburial, Van Norman said, but as yet no decisions had been made in the matter. Meanwhile, as has been the case all along, George Johnston, better known in Death Valley country as the Ballarat Bandit, still leaves in his wake many mysteries unsolved and many questions unanswered. |
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