﻿What would you do if a room full of witnesses told you that you had brutally killed your
friend and landlord, but you had no memories of the entire incident? Would you deny it,
take the blame, or would you blame the devil? In 1981, 19 year old Arne Johnson was faced
with this situation, and in a turn of events that would shock the country, Arne claimed that he had
not murdered out of his own free will but was forced to do it by the entities possessing him.
If you saw the most recent entry into The Conjuring film series,
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, then you should be familiar with this case.
However, despite having its’ accuracies, the movie did take some liberties with the case,
and today we’ll be focusing on the real facts of the actual case and letting you determine for
yourself if Arne Johnson is a cold-blooded killer, or if the devil really made him do it.
Arne Johnson was engaged to fiancé Debbie Glatzel, and the two were helping move the Glatzel family
into their new rental home in Brookfield, Connecticut. Inside the rental home was an
abandoned waterbed that the family members had taken turns laying on the bed and goofing around.
Later in the day, 11 year old David Glatzel, went into the room with the waterbed while alone.
David claimed he felt a strong force push him onto the bed, and when he turned around in the room,
he saw an old man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans who told him to beware and leave the house.
Terrified, David ran to tell the rest of the family about this ghostly interaction,
but they all thought he was simply trying to get out of helping unbox. Unfortunately, this was not
the end of David’s encounters with spirits. Not much later David saw the old man again, but this
time he looked much more demonic. The man’s plaid shirt and blue jeans were torn, and his skin was
much more ragged and appeared to be completely black like pitch. Worst of all, however, were his
eyes, which were much more sunken in and difficult to see, with a beady, white stare. This time the
man acted more like a beast than a man, growling, snarling, and even speaking in fragmented latin.
The man went so far as to threaten the safety of David’s life and soul. Soon after this,
David began to act differently. According to reports from various family members,
David exhibited weird behaviors, such as kicking, biting, swearing, and spitting.
At night David would be wracked by convulsions and would flail around fighting off attacks from
invisible hands that appeared to be strangling him. Family members would take turns holding the
boy down and would watch as bruises miraculously appeared on his body despite not being able to see
anything inflicting the wounds. Despite being a small boy of only 11 years, David somehow gained
unnatural strength that allowed him to throw off the full grown adults that were holding him down.
David’s young voice would also change, reportedly growing deeper and angrier,
as well as sounding as if multiple people were talking at once. David would start talking in
languages he did not know, including Latin, and in one particularly weird case he perfectly
quoted John Milton’s famous Epic Poem Paradise Lost, despite his parents insisting there is
no way he would have ever read it, especially not enough to have sections of it memorized perfectly.
The further into David succumbed to his apparent possession, the more and more scared the Glatzel
family grew, and Debbie eventually asked Arne to move in so he could help assuage her fears,
as well as help deal with David. With nowhere else to turn and David’s condition worsening by
the day with no end in sight, the Glatzel asked their local church for help.
Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church sent a Priest to assist at the Glatzel household. As one might
expect, the Priest first attempted to bless the house, hoping that making the house uninhabitable
for a demon would drive it to leave poor David alone. Unfortunately, this only seemed to worsen
things. David began to see the old man around the house constantly, and feared for his life.
It was at this point the family decided to turn to the famed Ed and Lorraine Warren for help.
The Warrens were a famed pair of paranormal investigators and demonologists, known at
this point for their work with the possessed Raggedy Ann Doll, the Amityville Haunting,
and the Enfield Poltergeist. While skepticism has always surrounded the Warrens by many who don’t
believe in the existence of ghosts, those who do believe in ghosts hold them in high regard.
With them the Warrens brought a mental health professional to ensure that this was not simply a
case of David having some sort of mental illness. While it was found that small learning disability,
they ruled out the possibility that this was what was causing David’s erratic behaviour.
With the Warrens now in the picture, the group began performing exorcisms over the course of
a few months. While this was happening David’s visions apparently worsented, and he began to
predict the future, apparently even predicting the murder that was soon in the family’s future.
Lorraine called the police to warn them when this occurred,
however this was unable to prevent any of the oncoming damage. The Warrens and the Glatzel’s
were able to find out some information about the demon supposedly possessing poor David, namely
that it was not just one demon but apparently 43 different entities, all of which were named
by David himself. During one of these exorcisms, Arne was heard taunting the demon and imploring
it to leave David alone and take him instead. This was the beginning of the end for Arne.
According to various sources, not long after Arne had egged on the demon he was involved in a freak
accident where he claimed that something had taken control of his car and forced him to ram into a
tree. Arne claims that following this accident he went to investigate a well behind the Glatzel home
where the demon apparently lived. Arne states that this was the moment he became fully possessed by
the demon, accidentally letting it take hold of him as he locked eyes with it. The Warrens have
since stated that they had specifically warned the family off from intersecting with the old well.
Tragically, despite the demons apparently now also possessing Arne, David’s condition continued to
worsen. Debbie and Arne eventually moved out of the family house, and into an apartment owned by
the person who had just hired Debbie for a job at a local dog kennel, a man named Alan Bono.
Even though the couple was now away from the house and from David’s erratic behaviour, Arne
also began experiencing bouts of odd behaviour here and there, such as growling, hallucinating,
and memory loss. Debbie feared he was befalling a similar fate to that of her brother.
February 16th, 1981, Arne called out of work sick and went to visit Debbie at work with
his sister Wanda , as well as Debbie’s cousin Mary who was only 9 years old.
Alan Bono treated the group to lunch at a bar and reportedly drank very heavily before
taking the group back to his apartment. Debbie later took the younger girls out to grab Pizza,
but later said she felt a lingering dread, like something awful was about to happen,
so she quickly returned to the apartment with the girls in tow. Alan got irritable when the girls
returned, and Debbie began urging Arne and the girls that they should leave. At this point Alan
grabbed 9-year-old Mary’s hand and refused to go in order to keep the group from leaving. At this
Arne, who had left the room at Debbie’s urging, came back and yelled for Bono to let Mary go.
Bono let go of her hand and Mary ran for the car outside while Debbie jumped in between
the two men, sensing a fight was about to break out. Little did she know it was going to be much
worse. Arne began to growl like an animal and pulled out a pocket knife, flicking it open and
lunging at Alan and stabbing him a reported 22 times, going so far as to slice him from heart
to gut. Arne then got up and left, leaving the girls to deal with the aftermath.
The police were called and eventually picked Arne up as he wandered in the nearby woods
roughly two miles from the scene of the crime. He was promptly arrested and placed in jail with
a bail of $125,000. Alan had managed to briefly survive his wounds but died several hours later,
making this event the first murder in the history of Brookfield, Conneticut.
The next day Lorraine Warren went to the police to tell them that Arne had been possessed at the
time of the murder, and once this news went public the media around the case exploded. Martin Minella
was hired to defend Arne and not only didn’t drop the case as soon as he heard the possession story,
Martin completely ran with it. In an Article from the New York Times published on March 23rd,
1981, Martin was quoted as saying “The courts have dealt with the existence of God,
now they’re going to deal with the existence of the Devil.”. As one might imagine this case was
incredibly controversial throughout the country, not only marking the first time demonic possession
would be used as a defense, but occurring as Christian and Occult beliefs flourished,
and the country was beginning to be swept up in a wave of Satanic Panic. Martin travelled to Europe
to talk to lawyers that had been involved in a similar possession case that hadn’t made it
to court, and was even threatening to subpoena the local church’s priests when they refused to
cooperate. By all accounts it seemed as though the possession case as presented by Martin might hold
enough water to protect Arne. However, when they presented Judge Robert Callahan with Arne’s plea,
not guilty by virtue of possession, Judge Callahan refused the defense. He was quoted telling them
there was no evidence to prove this defense that wasn’t “...irrelative and unscientific…”. This
forced Martin and Arne to change his plea to not guilty by virtue of self-defense, hoping to
highlight Alan’s final acts of aggression towards young Mary. The trial began on October 28th, 1981,
and on November 24th, the jury went through 15 hours of deliberation, after which they found Arne
Johnson guilty of first-degree manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 10-20 years in prison.
Arne would end up only serving 5 years of his sentence, being released early due to
his model behaviour in prison, and was even able to marry Debbie while still in prison.
Not a ton is known about what happened to Arne after his release,
however Lorraine was quoted around the time of his release, stating that Arne was “...ready to
work for a landscaper in town, and he’s coming home to live in a very good family atmosphere…”.
The case has since been recalled in several books, TV shows, and of course now in the new Conjuring
film, once again renewing the public’s interest in the Devil Made Me Do It case, and the interesting
tale of Arne johnson. Do you think Arne was actually possessed, or was he just a cold-blooded
killer? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments, along with any other cases you’d like us
to talk about. Like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video and we’ll see you in the next one!