Brookfield

Brookfield: The Devil Made Me Do It

On 16 February 1981 in Brookfield, nineteen-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson stabbed his landlord Alan Bono to death. The defence, supported by Ed and Lorraine Warren, argued that Johnson was possessed by a demon passed to him from eleven-year-old David Glatzel — the first attempt in American legal history to enter possession as a defence. Judge Robert Callahan refused to admit it: it cannot be proved and the law has no such ground. Johnson was convicted of manslaughter. The boy's older brother Carl Glatzel later sued the Warrens, calling the whole affair an invention got up for a book contract.