Former Bliss soldier on trial for 1970 cold case acquitted

A judge acquitted the former Fort Bliss soldier accused of murdering an El Paso woman who rejected his advances nearly 47 years ago.

Police arrested 72-year-old Willie James Johnson in 2015 in Mississippi, where he was living.

Wednesday, the judge said DNA evidence would not be allowed as evidence because a “chain of custody was not established,” it was not stored properly, and all witnesses are dead.

“We disagree very strongly with the judge’s ruling. I did believe there was sufficient evidence for the jury to consider,” said Assistant District Attorney James Montoya.

Montoya told ABC-7 the prosecution’s case was entirely based on a DNA match obtained in 2015 when the victim’s fingernail was scraped.

“The person who collected the fingernail scraping back in 1970 is deceased, he’s been long deceased,” said Montoya, “However, there’s another police officer present who observed the fingernail scraping being taken. We believe his testimony was sufficient to prove what was tested in 2014 or 2015 was the item collected in 1970.”

Montoya said the judge “did not find that to be sufficient and the DNA evidence was not allowed.”

El Paso Police said Johnson’s DNA was found in the blood on the fingernail clippings of Doris Rivers, stabbed to death in a South-Central El Paso apartment complex in 1970.

Rivers’ son, now in his 50s, was the one who discovered his mother’s body in 1970.

Police originally had two suspects in Rivers’ death — Rivers’ ex-boyfriend and Johnson. Her ex-boyfriend was eliminated as a suspect in June 2015 after a DNA swab from him didn’t match the DNA taken from the blood on Rivers’ fingernail clippings.

Willie James Johnson (2015)

El Paso Police Det. Mike Aman said at a news conference in 2015 Johnson was an original suspect in the case when the slaying happened, but there was no evidence at the time linking him to the murder.

Police said Johnson wanted a romantic relationship with Rivers, but she was not interested in having that type of relationship with him.

“The key thing is DNA can be extracted from various items, bodily fluids, bones, skin cells, hair,” Aman said. “It’s not 100 percent. It doesn’t work 100 percent of the time. What’s critical is that the evidence collected is being preserved in the proper manner. If it’s not preserved or stored properly, in other words if environmental conditions destroy it, than its useless.”

Det. Aman went on to say when the evidence was collected in 1970, it wasn’t collected with DNA evidence in mind, because it didn’t exist at the time.

“Back then they didn’t have anything,” Aman said. “They could not do anything with it. There was no DNA in 1970. That came years later. They did not collect that with DNA in the background because they didn’t know about it. They did an excellent job though of collecting that for us, storing it and collecting it properly so we could work with it.”

“It was extremely frustrating,” said Shavon Prince, Rivers’ granddaughter. “Back then, we didn’t have the witnesses we needed to go forward so it became cold. Now, 40 years later, when we have the technology to bring the physical evidence in, they throw it out. It’s extremely frustrating, especially because 12 people didn’t get to decide, it was the judge, the judge threw it out.”

Prince told ABC-7 that “at the end of the day, that DNA got there and it was his and it was at the crime scene, so everything else is irrelevant. He got off on a technicality.”

“God will be the ultimate judge,” Prince said.