At eleven at night on May 14, 1990, Doug Johnston was on his way to work. A new employee of a Phoenix computer graphics firm, Johnston worked the night shift. He parked in the company parking lot, but failed to show up for work. A concerned fellow employee found him in his car at midnight. The police were called and so we’re the paramedics, the latter to no avail: Peter Douglas Johnston was dead. He had been shot, and at close range, no more than a foot away, the bullet entering behind his left ear.
Did he do it himself? Perhaps. There was just one problem: Johnston was right-handed. And assuming a right-handed person has decided to shoot themself in the head, chances are less than good that the bullet would end up behind the left ear. And if that wasn’t enough to arouse suspicion, there was this: the gun was nowhere to be found.
No one who knew Doug Johnston believed he had killed himself. At thirty-five, he had just “finished school” and landed a new job; suicide is frequently the response to one or more setbacks. When Johnston died, his life was running smoothly. And they appeared to be absolutely correct: not only was there was no gun at the scene, there was no gunshot residue on his hands. (Only a .25 casing was found.)
The fact that he died in Arizona may be significant, provided you believe Tuscon escrow agent Charles Morgan was murdered. In short, Morgan, who had worked for at least one organized crime family, was found dead on a dirt road forty miles from home. His family did not believe he was murdered. Nor did investigative reporter Don Devereux. And where did Devereux work? His office was across the street from the parking lot where Johnston was found. Johnston died in his Toyota station wagon; Devereux drove a very similar car. Could the investigative reporter, who lived such a short distance away from where Johnston was found, have been the intended target?
On February 7, 1990, just three months before Johnston was shot, Devereux reminded anyone interested in the Morgan case that he was alive, appearing in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Charles Morgan claimed to have escaped from kidnappers in March 1977; his body was found three months later. Three months passed between the airing of Unsolved Mysteries and the shooting of Doug Johnston. Coincidence? Or was the same person behind both deaths, waiting until everyone had forgotten all about Unsolved Mysteries? The program had caused quite a sensation, jogging memories and prompting viewers to call in with tips. Waiting gave the killer a chance to stage what would appear to be a random, senseless shooting, stopping a police investigation dead in its tracks.
Like Johnston, Morgan died from a single gunshot to the back of the head. And his death was ruled a suicide, despite the fact that his .357 magnum was not found near the body, but a short distance away, wiped clean of fingerprints. His family did not believe Morgan would have taken his life. Neither did Don Devereux. And by talking about the bizarre death on Unsolved Mysteries, Devereux rekindled interest in the case, the last thing the killer wanted.
After Johnston was shot, anyone curious about the death of Charles Morgan may have noticed a familiar time frame: Morgan was shot three months after he claimed to have escaped from kidnappers. Johnston was shot three months after Unsolved Mysteries aired. If that seems like reaching, consider this: six months after Johnston died, a reporter with a reliable CIA contact told Devereux yes, a contract had indeed been taken out on his life, but that the hit man botched the job by shooting the wrong man.
Miss Night Terrors 