Park Predators - The Volcano

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

The beauty of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is marred when beloved community figure Arman Johnson’s bullet-ridden body is found dumped on a trail. Few leads emerge and FBI agents are left to wonder if drug trade on Hawaii’s Big Island is to blame. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/episode-7-the-volcano/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and today you guys get two episodes from us. Two cases that on the surface don't appear to have any similarity, but both are unsolved. And the fate of the victims could have a lot more things in common than we think. In our first case, we're taking you to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. This park is home to two of the globe's most active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa. In 2018, some of you may remember a new eruption in Kilauea changed this park's landscape forever. In that year in May, two dozen lava vents erupted in the volcano, along with a violent earthquake, and that forced nearly 2,000 residents living in Leilani Estate's subdivision to evacuate. In total, more than 700 homes were destroyed, and the rivers of molten rock that flowed out didn't stop for weeks.

A little ways away from where all of that destruction took place is the Kahuku Ranch. Now, this ranch takes up roughly 116,000 acres, and in it there are tons of small trails and old cattle paths. There are at least six permanent designated trailheads in that area, and if you walk them, you'll see old pastures, lava channels, meadows, and rock formations. And it was on the evening of April 13, 2005, on one of these very trailheads that a hiker finds a man laying face down on the ground, and he'd been shot execution style. This is Park Predators. A man hiking in Hawaii Volcanoes National Parks is stopped in his tracks. He's shocked and confused by what he's just come across. He stoops down to a man's motionless body to check for

signs of life, but there aren't any there. When he first saw the body, he's thinking maybe this guy had just fallen or passed out or something, but quickly he realized the guy was dead. There was blood pooled around his head and what looked like a single bullet hole in the back of his skull. This hiker immediately calls police, and they're shocked when they get to the scene, because this isn't just any random victim. They actually knew the guy. He was a community member from the nearby town of Hilo, and this victim volunteered at a local high school in sports teams. The man laying on the ground was 44-year-old Armand Johnson. Armand was one of only a few African-American men living permanently on Big Island in the town of Hilo, not far from the National Park grounds.

Armand had a few minor police interactions in his background, but no major brushes with law enforcement on Big Island. Most of his run-ins with police were for nonviolent offenses like failing to appear in court and traffic tickets. Nowhere in his criminal record did he have any arrests for drugs or property crimes or any sort of violent crime. That's why it's so strange he's been found in this way. When police examined his body, he was wearing a dark tank top, bluish swim shorts, socks, and dark slipper athletic sandals. Investigators believe that the murder took place right where the body was found. No evidence pointed to a theory that he was shot elsewhere, then dumped in the park. Detectives never released information, though, on if Armand had a wallet on him,

or if any money or valuables were missing from him. Armand's murder marked only the second homicide to ever happen inside of the National Park on Big Island. So right away, the local investigators knew they needed some help processing this scene. They also would need help trying to find suspects. Resident agents from the FBI office in Honolulu came in to assist in the case. Their evidence response team helped process the crime scene to identify what kind of gun was used in the shooting. They also wanted to look for any trace evidence that maybe the killer had left behind on the trail or on Armand's body. Pretty quickly after the

medical examiner looked over Armand's body, they quickly ruled that he'd been killed execution style with a single gunshot to the back of his head. It was purposeful and immediate. Investigators working the case estimated that based on the shape and size of the wound, the bullet used in the shooting had to have come from a handgun. As the FBI agents spread out and start combing over the scene in the trail area, they also got with the local police department to figure out more about the victim, and they came to one conclusion. Armand seemed so out of place on this unpaved trail. He didn't belong here. He was from town. The special agents noticed that there was no abandoned

cars near the trailhead or the highway nearby, and it didn't appear that Armand had driven himself out to the trail area. His friends in town told the investigators that he drove an old beat-up sedan that wasn't well kept up, and as agents scoured the area in the park, they weren't ever able to locate that car. This left detectives wondering where it had vanished to and how Armand got out to the spot where he died. It appeared he had to have been brought out there by his killer. As the FBI starts working leads in this case, they released that they were looking for two vehicles in connection with the murder,

but they wouldn't give descriptions of the cars, or if they believed more than one person was involved in the crime. Now, I would assume one of those cars was probably the victim's, but we just don't know that for sure. The agents knew someone in the small town where he was living had to know something. For months, they didn't release any information about the evidence or circumstances surrounding the crime, maybe with the hopes that if someone did come forward with legit information, they could have the ability to vet it as the truth. People in the

town of Hilo were growing worried about who could be behind this execution and why that person had chosen Armand as their target. And that was the big task for the FBI, figuring out everything they could about this man, the people in his life, his job, his community, and what they would find out only added more mystery to this seemingly random crime. As the FBI worked each angle of Armand's life, agents received more than a thousand calls with tips and information in the weeks after his shooting. They learned that he moved to Hawaii from Seattle, Washington in 1984, and he graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington State. He had a degree in sports medicine, and his college

friends said he always enjoyed hanging out with the students from Hawaii and took a deep interest in Hawaiian culture. After a few years of living on Big Island, he'd become pretty self-sustaining working as a massage therapist at the resorts and as an aid to autistic children. In his spare time, he volunteered at Hilo High School as an athletic trainer. So this guy was in the community and a lot of people knew him. As year after year passed and he grew deeper roots on Big Island, Armand became very involved in community groups and an organization called Solid Rock Ministries. Now, Solid Rock is an Assembly of God Christian church in the town of Kona. Through different friends there, he eventually joined the Hawaiian Club, something that wasn't common for people to do if you weren't from Hawaii. Throughout the 80s and the 90s, Armand got so into

island life that he even learned hula dancing, and he participated in cultural tradition and graduation ceremonies all over town. By 1987, he'd gained some notoriety around the area when he started working for a local radio station, KWXX. The news manager there hired him to be the host of a reggae music show, which he thrived at and really enjoyed being the DJ of every week. All of the staff working at that radio station said that they loved Armand's booming voice and his cheerful, larger-than-life personality.

He was such a good DJ for that show that he stayed on until 1989. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported that he went by the disc jockey name Mondo Lopez. And that was just one part of his really fun and creative personality, according to his friends. Armand had continued living in various towns on Big Island, doing massages and earning a living the best that he could. He was getting to be in his 40s, and despite not having a wife or kids, he seemed to just enjoy life for what it was and how he could help people. After digging more and more into his background, the FBI starts conducting interviews with Armand's friends and

acquaintances on Big Island. They went to both the towns of Hilo and Kona because Armand had lived in both of those towns his entire time in Hawaii. Some of Armand's friends told local reporters with the Star Bulletin that they were aware Armand had used drugs from time to time, but didn't think drugs alone explained why he would have been murdered in cold blood. They described him as the type of guy you can meet as a total stranger, but end up being friends by the end of your conversation. He didn't have any enemies. But some people who he'd lived with on and off for a few years knew there could be a different side to Armand. They said his drug habit may have gone a bit deeper than most people knew. It was actually these friends that had recently asked him to move to the town of Hilo

to get him away from his drug use back in Kona. And like I said earlier, Armand did have a minor criminal history with local police, but never for anything to do with drugs. Friends said in their interviews with the FBI that Armand was in Hilo on April 11th, two days before his murder, and he told them that he had plans to live permanently in Hilo. Some of his college classmates, whom he knew from Washington State, had moved to Big Island around the same time he did. One of those men was a guy named Steve Bader, and according to the Star Bulletin, Bader told reporters that he'd let Armand live in his mother's home for four years when Armand

first moved to Hawaii. At the time, Armand was having a hard time finding a full-time job as a massage therapist at the resorts. Steve says Armand worked hard and was not homeless or even close to someone living on the fringe of society. Steve said that sometimes Armand would even do massages for free with people who had been through a lot or lost a family member. He said it was just the kind of giving man he was, despite how it may have affected his financial savings or stability. Armand's shocking murder took everyone that he knew by surprise. After just a few months into working the case, the FBI hit a dead end, and then another dead end, and then all of the leads for suspects just dried up. No new information came forward for

10 years, and I scoured newspaper archives, FBI bulletins, press releases and TV stations in Hawaii, and literally there was radio silence on this case for a decade. But in March 2015, the FBI field office in Honolulu makes an announcement. They release a bulletin saying that the Bureau was still actively investigating Armand's homicide, and they were just waiting for the right person to come forward to secure the identity of a suspect. They came out with that announcement because they said they had substantial forensic evidence from the crime scene that they intended to use to make an arrest and seek a conviction, but they wouldn't tell the public what that evidence was. Immediately following this big announcement, the FBI increased the reward for information in Armand's case to $10,000. But that's where the story ends. No more leads.

No new announcements in the last five years. Nothing. Armand Johnson's family in Seattle and his friends on Big Island continue to mourn their loss, and they want justice for their murdered friend. But right now, they're left with no answers as to who murdered him and why. One big theory that emerged is that perhaps Armand got tied up with the wrong people, using drugs, or maybe he owed someone money for drugs. But that seems like the only plausible reason for anyone wanting him dead and killing him execution style.

However, that theory has never been supported fully by law enforcement. Several of Armand's friends believe the two vehicles authorities were searching for back in 2005 were Armand's sedan and the killer's. They suggested that Armand was lured out there and possibly even drove his own car, and they parked along the highway to access the park trail system. But then he was murdered, and the killer and an accomplice each had to drive a vehicle away. One took Armand's car, and the other took the killer's car. But again, the FBI has never said anything about if that's true, but I think it's a scenario that could make sense.

His friends and family also had the thought that maybe Armand went willingly into the park with someone he knew, and for some reason they turned on him and killed him. Maybe it had nothing to do with drugs. Then there's the theory that he was targeted specifically by someone lurking in the park, who just found a victim of opportunity, but that doesn't explain why his car wasn't at the park with him. The fact that he was shot point blank in an execution-style way makes me think he was forced out there from Highway 11 and killed. He didn't seem like a man of a lot of wealth or means, so I don't think a robbery was a motive.

The clothing he was wearing also doesn't strike me as something one would wear to trek the volcanic landscape of that park. But I've never been there myself, so I don't know. Maybe slip-on sandals with socks and swim trunks and a tank top is appropriate attire for such a hike. The mystery of who his killer is and why it appears they only wanted to take his life is something we may never know. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original podcast. This series was executive produced by Ashley Flowers. Research and writing by Delia D'Ambra with writing assistance by Ashley Flowers.

Sound design by David Flowers with production assistance from Alyssa Gastola. You can find all of our source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?