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We are coming together to combat problems. All I know about Joe's past is what I read in the papers. He pulled us together. The people weren't there Monday for Joe Colombo, but because their pride had been excited."
Hospital authorities were understandably nervous about Colombo's presence and the activity that accompanied it. Executive Vice President Peter Terenzio refused to discuss the matter at all. One hospital guard, however, voiced a common fear. "If this guy dies," he said, "they'll probably turn the hospital upside down. These kind of people—it's a pleasure to stay away from them. They are ready to explode at the drop of a hat. They are really touchy."
Troubled Assassin
Fearing just such an explosion, New York City police worked feverishly to determine who wanted Colombo dead. The trail began with Johnson. By matching spent bullets with the pistol, a 7.65-mm. automatic of foreign manufacture, taken from Johnson's body, police established with some certainty that Johnson had shot Colombo. A film made at the time of the attack showed Johnson photographing Colombo just seconds before the shooting, and partly confirms eyewitness reports that he had an accomplice. In one sequence, Johnson walked over to an Afroed black woman with a shoulder bag and handed her his movie camera.
From relatives, friends and police records, investigators pieced together a sketch of Johnson as a deeply troubled character, part sadist, part con man, part dreamer. To coeds at Rutgers University's campus in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was a frequent drop-in in recent months, he was known as "Pisces Man" because of a fascination, bordering on obsession, for astrology. He could be a spellbinding talker, pleasant to be around—for a while.
To others, he was darkly sinister. One woman told police of meeting Johnson at Rutgers. Not much later he appeared at her apartment, she said, and that was the beginning of "three months of torture." The woman alleged that she was periodically beaten and raped by him while being threatened with a machete or sword. She also told of Johnson's talking far into the night, contending that he was God and praising Italians. When she heard that Colombo had been shot by a man named Johnson, she said, she knew instantly who it was.
Born in Waycross, Ga., Johnson was raised by his maternal grandmother until, at nine, he moved to New Brunswick to join his mother. After high school graduation in 1964, he moved to California and from there drifted through a patchwork of odd jobs, wanderings and scrapes with the law. Police records list at least seven arrests on charges ranging from burglary and rape to grand larceny and narcotics possession. He was last arrested in New York City on June 4, on charges of possessing hashish and marijuana, but the charges were dropped.
Johnson's last known address was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Among the belongings found there was a box of 7.65-mm. bullets. The remainder of his worldly goods consisted of a monkey, a curved 3½ sword and sheath, a flute, a solid wooden cane, a riding crop, a bottle of English Leather lotion in a wooden box, stolen blank checks, a book titled Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, a scrape and a crimson, gold-threaded cape.