Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Famous Actor Lost His Mind - The Johnny Lewis Story

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Johnny Lewis was a troubled actor best known for his role on Sons of Anarchy whose life unraveled amid escalating violence, mental health struggles, and drug abuse. In September 2012, Lewis brutally attacked his 81-year-old landlady, Catherine Davis, inside her Los Angeles home, beating and strangling her to death, and evidence suggested he may have assaulted other residents before fleeing.

LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com slash small business.

now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Here, you're not the predator. You're the prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey. Critics are saying it's epic, stunning, and breathtaking. Many have come here. None have survived. Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. You remember when that actor,

on Drake and Josh committed murder? No, not this actor. Actually, this actor. Now the guy's name is Johnny and Johnny is 28 when all this starts and he's living in Los Angeles and Johnny he's been acting for a long time. You've probably seen him in stuff. Like I said, he was in an episode of Drake and Josh. He was on Malcolm in the middle. He was in an episode of criminal minds. He was on the OC. But he's probably best known for playing half sack on the show Sons of Anarchy. And In my opinion, he's really good in that role. So yeah, you get it. He's been acting for a long time with a lot of success.

But one night, in 2011, all that is thrown into jeopardy. Because Johnny is out riding his motorcycle on the highway, but in a remote desert area, when suddenly, skirt, he loses control and kaboon, he crashes. And poor Johnny, he gets taken to the hospital and he has a major head injury. Luckily, he doesn't seem to have a concussion. So eventually they clear him to leave and he leaves the hospital. But here's the thing. From that point on, Johnny's dad starts noticing that Johnny, he's acting kind of weird.

Like he's acting erratic and unpredictable. He also becomes super sensitive to light for some reason. And his friends have also been noticing that he's acting weird. Like sometimes he randomly starts speaking in a British accent and he doesn't realize he's doing it. So dad gets worried. and he schedules him to get an MRI. But Johnny doesn't want to get an MRI. He swears nothing is wrong with him.

So, because he's not listening to the people around him, things keep getting worse. Like one day in 2012, he's visiting his parents' condo, and he decides to go for a walk outside. And while he's walking, he thinks he hears cries of distress coming from inside a neighboring condo. Now, we don't know if he actually heard someone crying out, or if he was just hearing things in his head. Either way, he breaks into the unit to check it out.

But no one is there. Then, instead of leaving, Johnny just stays. And eventually, two men show up. Because, you know, they live there. And they're like, what the fuck, bro, you need to leave. But Johnny's like, nah, and pow, pow, he hits the both of them with a broken bottle and a fight breaks out. And after they punch him in the head 17 times, they eventually are able to pin him down. and call the police. And so, bam, Johnny gets arrested. Here's a mugshot. And while he's in jail for this

incident, he starts acting even crazier. Like he's smashing his own head against a concrete wall. He tries to jump off a second story part of the jail. And I guess he also tries to unalive himself. So they transfer him to a psychiatric hospital. Later, he gets out of that hospital and unfortunately things don't get better. He tries to unalive himself again. He also tamper's with his parents circuit breaker because the lights, I guess they're bothering him, because remember he's now sensitive to lights, and he doesn't stop there. Around a month later, Johnny walks up to some random guy outside a yogurt shop and ka-paw! He sucker punches the dude without even being provoked, like for no reason. And so, bam, he gets arrested again. And I guess he's, he's,

gets out after that because a few days later he walks into the ocean fully clothed and he has to be hospitalized for hypothermia. Then he tries to break into some random woman's apartment in Santa Monica and so bam he gets arrested yet again. Here's another mugshot. And so you can see the dude is having a full on meltdown like he needs help. In fact, he pretty much has to step away from acting because of all the legal trouble he keeps getting into. Now, eventually he gets a jail sentence over one of his past incidents. So he has to go and serve out this sentence in the county jail. However, he's not there long before he gets transferred to a mental health facility again

where he can get proper treatment. And at the facility, the doctors finally diagnose him and they prescribe him medications for bipolar disorder and psychosis, but unfortunately he refuses to take those medications. Like when they give them to him, he just hides them in his cheeks and then he will spit them out later. So ultimately, he doesn't get better. And several months go by. And he's now back in court again defending himself because I guess he decided he doesn't need a lawyer and he's just going to defend himself in court.

And so he gets sentenced to another 144 days in county jail because he had already served some of his time. So he goes to jail, but it turns out that the county jail is actually overcrowded. And Johnny only ends up serving about 44 days total before they let him out. And that's crazy that they let him out, but to be fair, after he's out, it seems like Johnny finally wants to make a change. Like he finally realizes that he needs to work on turning things around for himself, or he's just going to keep going back to jail over and over again. But instead of getting mental health treatment and going to,

on some kind of medication like I would hope someone in his position would do, he decides to jump back into his career and back into being creative. So he goes to his dad and he asks him to arrange a stay with this woman, Catherine. And Catherine, she is a nice older woman who's known around Hollywood for running what's called the Riders Villa, which is sort of a bed and breakfast where artists and writers will rent a room and they'll live there with other artists and they can all, you know, be creative. So Johnny goes to live there. And I guess he's lived there before and Catherine is actually happy to have him back. And Johnny, he's glad to be back there. I mean, this is going to be good for him and his recovery. And maybe now this will be the end of his

turbulent behavior and he can finally start getting his life back together. Until. Until it all falls apart. Remember how Johnny feels like he's sensitive. to lights and he has this habit of tampering with the circuit breakers. Well, one night, I guess he feels like the lights at the writer's villa are just too much for him and allegedly he takes the liberty of messing with the circuit breaker and cutting off the lights for the whole villa. And according to Catherine's friends, she finds out it was him and she gets all pissed off and she allegedly lets him know that that wasn't cool. And so now Johnny's all pissed off too. The next day, I guess, he's

He suddenly just snaps. And he goes to Catherine's room, and he confronts her. And at some point during that confrontation, he starts punching her. Then he grabs her, and he starts strangling her. And this, unfortunately, kills her. And if that isn't bad enough, then he goes and he unalives her poor cat.

Oh, and he's still not done. Then he goes outside and he picks a fight with a house painter who's doing some work. work on a neighbor's deck. And I guess Johnny starts arguing with that guy and then he starts beating him. Then a neighbor tries to step in and Johnny starts beating that neighbor. But that neighbor, even though he's in his 70s, he ain't no punk. He fights back and he punches Johnny and he somehow ends up hitting him with a chair. And while Johnny stunned, that neighbor and the painter both run away and into his house where they shut the door behind them. And pretty quickly, Johnny is there

trying to force his way through that door, but he can't get through. Meanwhile, one of them calls the police while Johnny tries to flee and get away. And he runs and he jumps a couple of fences and he ends up back at the Riders Villa. And from there, he climbs up to the upper patio or roof part. And here, it isn't actually clear what happened. He either jumped off the roof or he fell. Either way, he landed on the ground and he hit his head. And he died instantly.