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Who would have the motive to kill a mother and her baby? Despite the suspicion that continues to surround an individual connected to the little boy, police in Stamford, Connecticut are still struggling to build a case against anyone almost 30 years later. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Rhonda and Karan Johnson on Dark Downies.
In the fall of 1996, 18-year-old Rhonda Chantel Johnson was a recent graduate of West Hill High School in Stamford, Connecticut. She was popular in school, with a lot of friends and a serious boyfriend. Rhonda was also an incredibly dedicated and bright student. She was committed to her studies, even when she became pregnant during her senior year.
A member of the staff at West Hill High School remarked that Rhonda, at eight months pregnant, had begged to attend a bus tour of colleges along the East Coast with her classmates. Despite her insistence and eagerness to join, the staff member told Carrie Tesoriero of The Daily Advocate that he couldn't let Rhonda come because she was just too close to her due date and he wasn't equipped to deliver a baby on the bus.
Rhonda stayed on top of all her classes, all while managing the physical and emotional elements of pregnancy. After her son, Koran, was born in March of 1996, Rhonda returned to school with the same dedication she had before and graduated with her class.
She then enrolled at Norwalk Community Technical College, where she took a full course load during the day for her Mass Communications major, and she also got a job working nights as a dietary aide at the Stamford Hospital, where her aunt and mother also worked. I can't imagine it was easy, being an 18-year-old single mother, going to class during the day and working at night. But challenges and all, Rhonda loved being a mother, and she was building a great life for herself and her baby boy.
Although Karan's father wasn't involved in their day-to-day lives, Rhonda had a loving village around her to help with the baby. A sitter took care of Karan during the day while Rhonda was at school, and then at night when she worked, her mother, Blanche, watched her grandson. That was the plan on the evening of September 12, 1996. That Thursday afternoon, Rhonda picked up Karan from his babysitter on Oak Lawn Avenue around 3.30 p.m.,
Eric Detweiler reports for the Daily Advocate that her next stop was the Stamford Hospital, where she was supposed to start her shift and trade off the vehicle and Karan with her mother. They shared the family vehicle that Rhonda was driving that day, a blue Toyota Camry. Blanche waited and waited for her daughter to pull up to the hospital and hand over the keys with her grandson safely buckled into his car seat. But Rhonda never arrived.
Rhonda's shift was supposed to start at 4 p.m., and so when there was no sign of her by 4.15, an immediate unease settled over Blanche. James O'Keefe reports in the Daily Advocate that Rhonda was a new driver and Blanche worried that she'd been in a car accident. According to Don Maselli's reporting for the Justice Journal, Blanche called another family member to pick her up and once she got home, she started calling up Rhonda's friends and the babysitter.
The friends she spoke to said that yes, they saw Rhonda earlier in the day, and Curran's babysitter confirmed that Rhonda picked him up after her classes at 3.30 right on schedule. Blanche waited at home, willing the phone to ring, praying that the feeling in her stomach was just an overreaction to a misunderstanding and that Rhonda would turn up safely soon. She was wracked with anxiety as the sky grew dark.
Sometime after 7.30 p.m., Blanche decided to go out for a walk to shake the nerves out. Meanwhile, less than two miles away from Blanche's home, residents of Grenhart Road and Stamford's West Side were out for a walk of their own when they made a devastating discovery.
Dan Mangan reports for the Daily Advocate that around 5:45 p.m. the same night, a man on his way to the store noticed a blue Toyota Camry parked between Victory and Diaz Streets on Grenhart Road, not far from exit 6 off I-95. The person in the driver's seat, a woman, was slumped and leaning against the window, which was rolled down slightly.
The man thought she might be sleeping or was possibly intoxicated, and he considered waking her up but opted to leave her alone and continued on his way. At 8:00 PM the same night, a woman walking her dog down Grenhart Road also saw the blue Toyota. But one look at the driver and it was clear this woman was not sleeping. The woman hurried to find a phone and soon called the police.
When first responders arrived at the scene, they found a deceased woman in the driver's seat and discovered that in the back, still strapped into a car seat, was a baby, an infant boy, also deceased. Both had suffered multiple gunshot wounds, including close-range shots to their heads. Authorities identified the woman as Rhonda Johnson, and the baby was her son, Karan, just six months old.
It was a double homicide of the most heinous of circumstances. Stamford police processed the car and were able to collect physical evidence, fingerprints, DNA, hair, and fibers. Though the murder weapon was not recovered at the scene, later analysis of the bullets also allowed investigators to determine the type of gun used to fire the fatal shots, though that information was not publicly disclosed.
Simultaneously, law enforcement tried to piece together the hours of Rhonda and Caron's lives before their vehicle was found on the side of the road. After interviewing family members, investigators learned that Rhonda had no discernible reason to be on Grenhart Road that day.
She'd picked up Karan from the babysitter on Oaklawn, which is about three miles north of Grenhardt, and her next stop was supposed to be the Stamford Hospital, which was roughly halfway between Oaklawn and Grenhardt. So it's not like the area they were found was on the way to her ultimate destination.
Knowing that she left the babysitter sometime around 3.30 and didn't make it to her shift at the hospital by 4 o'clock, and that the man who first discovered the car saw Rhonda inside around 5.45, investigators were particularly interested in speaking with anyone who may have seen the blue Toyota Camry during that window or any other time that day.
police had reason to believe that whoever shot Rhonda and Koran was inside the vehicle. And so talking to witnesses who may have seen who was in the car was crucial to the developing case. From the jump, investigators said they felt that Rhonda knew her killer, but declined to discuss possible suspects any further.
Interviews with Rhonda's family and friends continued, and police were beginning to piece together the circumstances of her life and understand the web of those closest to Rhonda and her son. Soon, the investigation turned its gaze to Karan's father.
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20-year-old Andre Messam also attended West Hill High School like Rhonda, but was a few years ahead of her. Rhonda's mom, Blanche, said that, to her knowledge, Rhonda and Andre were never together as a couple. But Koran was Andre's son, and Rhonda wanted him to grow up knowing his father.
However, Blanche said that Andre wasn't really around. He would only occasionally give Rhonda money to help pay the babysitter, and that was the extent of it. Andre wasn't necessarily happy about making those payments either. Blanche said that the money was a point of contention between Rhonda and Andre. Before being questioned as part of the double homicide investigation, Andre had a prior history of run-ins with police, mostly drug-related offenses.
Patrice K. Johnson writes for the Daily Advocate that on December 12, 1995, the year before the murder, undercover officers surveilling a house on Connecticut Avenue in Stanford watched as a white truck slowed to a stop and honked the horn as the occupant sat in the idling vehicle. A man police identified as Andre Messam exited the house, and it appeared to the officers that negotiations were happening between Andre and the occupants of the truck.
When the undercover officers approached the truck, Andre ran back inside the house and slammed the door shut behind him. The officers waited outside until he left the house again later that day. But when they tried to speak with Andre, he denied ever being near a truck and started pushing the officers away. He struggled with police until they were able to handcuff him. It sounds like the house where Andre was spotted that day was his grandmother's home, and she allowed officers to search Andre's bedroom.
Inside, they found over $200 in cash, a .38 caliber Cruz semi-automatic pistol, a six-round clip of ammunition, two dishes believed to contain residue of crack cocaine, and about nine baggies also containing crack cocaine. Law enforcement were able to run the details of that firearm and determined that the pistol hadn't been stolen.
A ballistics test was also underway to determine if the gun had been used in any previous crimes. However, the results of that analysis are unclear. Rhonda was pregnant with Karan at the time of Andre's arrest in 1995. And just over two weeks after their murders, Andre was arrested again.
On October 1st, 1996, officers of the Coat Pack Street Narcotics Unit in an unmarked car were patrolling the 200 block of Connecticut Avenue in Stanford when they saw two men on the front porch of a house. It's unclear what prompted the officers to stop, but as they exited their patrol car and started walking towards the porch, the two men bolted in different directions.
Eric Detweiler reports in the Daily Advocate that the officers split up and after a foot pursuit were able to catch up and apprehend the men. One of them had jumped a fence and hidden a bush. The man was identified as Andre Messam. Police arrested him on a laundry list of drug-related and interfering with police charges. He paid his $35,000 bond and was released the same night.
So he had a growing criminal record. But as for the investigation into Rhonda and Karan's murders, all investigators would say about Andre was that they talked to him. He was never referred to as a suspect. And although he had a firearm charged to his name, police weren't saying if the gun in question for that 1995 arrest was connected to the double homicide.
Andre remained on the case radar while the investigation moved into its second month without an arrest. At the end of October, police disclosed that they'd interviewed four people who they believed had firsthand knowledge of what happened to Rhonda and her baby. However, Stamford Police Lieutenant Frank Lagan told David Lopez of The Daily Advocate that all four of the individuals either refused to say anything helpful or denied having any knowledge of the crime at all.
Still, Lieutenant Lagan was adamant that someone could put all the pieces of the case together for them. He said that Rhonda was well known and even though she had no reason to be on Grenhart Road that day, she did frequent the west side of the city. So he firmly believed that someone saw her and recognized her and possibly saw the person who was responsible for the shootings too.
The section of Grenhart Road where the car was found appears to be a mix of single-family style homes and apartment buildings. One side of the street was all residences, but the other side is just a chain-link fence and some overgrown vegetation separating the neighborhood from a busy highway off-ramp. It's definitely plausible someone saw something that day given the residential area, but I'm wondering if anyone heard anything.
Certainly, multiple gunshots fired in the middle of a residential area would register for someone. Then again, a number of sources say it is very noisy over there since it's basically on the highway. If the shots were fired on the street, literal feet from houses and apartments, it wouldn't be too surprising if no one actually did hear them.
But police felt it was less about people not hearing and not seeing what happened on September 12th, but more that witnesses were afraid to come forward. Lieutenant Lagan said in the Daily Advocate, "...somebody that can kill a six-month-old can kill anyone." And yet, despite his acknowledgement that they were dealing with a dangerous person, he urged those with information to put aside personal fears and come forward.
He also said that if any potential witnesses who lived in nearby public housing were scared of retaliation, police could try to work with the housing authority to relocate them. At that point, the state of Connecticut was offering a $20,000 reward, and yet after three months it hadn't inched the investigation any closer to real answers.
Police disclosed in December of that year that they'd narrowed down a precise time that the murder took place, but they weren't ready to release that information, nor would they disclose what caliber of gun was used. Though they'd interviewed multiple people, including Andre Messam and an ex-boyfriend of Ronda's, neither were named a suspect.
Meanwhile, Rhonda's mother Blanche tried to stay busy. She visited Rhonda's grave all the time and talked to her daughter. She prayed constantly.
Blanche and Rhonda's other surviving family members celebrated what would have been Rhonda's 19th birthday that November. It was a day to reflect on the good times and keep Rhonda and Karan's memory alive. But it was difficult for the family to ignore the fact that with each passing day, the killer's trail grew colder and colder.
The week of the one-year anniversary of their murders, Rhonda's family ran an ad in local papers appealing to the public for information. It reads in part, quote,
End quote.
Eight months after the ad, in May of 1998, and with still no new leads, the reward for information in the case was increased to a massive $50,000.
Carrie Tesoriero reported in the Daily Advocate that a recently revised state statute increased the maximum reward allowed for the conviction of a felon, adding $30,000 to the possible payout for anyone who found the courage to disclose what they knew about Rhonda and Karan's deaths to police.
Law enforcement placed a lot of hope in that big reward because in the year and a half since the murders, Leeds had dwindled. They had nothing else to go on and Lieutenant Lagan said they were, quote, "...desperate for new information," end quote. Several more months passed, though, the more than double reward not changing much for the investigation.
On the second anniversary of their deaths, Rhonda and Karan's loved ones gathered on the spot where their bodies were found inside the family car. They prayed together over a memorial that Blanche had created out of two cinder blocks and a slab of stone with candles and balloons. Traffic flew by on the parallel lanes of Interstate 95 just beyond Grenhart Road.
The roar of cars made it difficult for Rhonda's father's voice to be heard as he spoke about the daughter and grandson he lost. Rhonda's parents had stayed relatively quiet in the two previous years. They told Carrie Tesoriero of the Daily Advocate they thought flying under the radar and keeping to themselves was the best course of action, just to give police space to do their jobs.
But their faith in the investigation waned, and the bereaved mother and father felt like they'd made a mistake by trusting police to bring the case to a swift conclusion while they waited in the wings. They asked the attendees that day to help hang up posters with the new reward amount, and asked that they write letters to the mayor requesting that he motivate police to make Rhonda and Caron's case a priority.
Frank Lagan, who was by then the police captain at Stanford PD, still wouldn't say anything about suspects or evidence. He assured the family and the public that their dedication to the case remained as strong as ever. Meanwhile, the next month in October of 1998, Andre Messam faced a judge on charges stemming from a new arrest in 1997.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of narcotics with intent to sell, among other charges, and was also convicted of interfering with a police officer and third-degree assault. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail, suspended after eight years with three years probation. Each time Andre's name came up, even in unrelated crimes, Rana and Karan's names came up too.
Andre's attorney, Matthew Maddox, was critical of the repeated mentions of his client's name in association with the unsolved double homicide. The attorney said he thought the sentence Andre received for the drug charges was beyond what was deserved for the level of crimes committed.
He says in the Daily Advocate that Andre was a, quote, small-time dealer, end quote, and that the sentence was basically persecution for the murders of his son and his son's mother, despite never being charged with those crimes. Andre had been interviewed numerous times in the homicide investigation, but he maintained his innocence.
Through his attorney, Andre insisted he had absolutely no motive to kill his own child or Rhonda, and there was no reliable evidence that connected him to their murders. There was no bad blood between Rhonda and Andre, he said. And as his attorney said, quote, the birth of the child didn't bring any shame to him, end quote. In fact, Andre had even bought his son some clothes just weeks before.
Andre felt like he was being railroaded and insisted it was an unsubstantiated rumor that had gone on for too long. Several years later, while Andre was in prison in 2001, Captain Lagan of the Stamford Police spoke with Eve Sullivan of the Daily Advocate about his ongoing work on the case. He was no longer with the detective bureau, but the double homicide wasn't something he could just leave behind.
He reported that police had recently teamed up with the FBI to re-examine everything they had to date, the physical evidence and the fingerprints, DNA, hair, and fibers. The previous five years had brought advances in forensic science that held the promise of identifying a suspect. If a $50,000 reward for information wasn't shaking out any new leads to follow, DNA might.
But the results of that testing wouldn't happen overnight, and so it was more waiting for Rhonda's family. As the five-year anniversary came around in 2001, Blanche still lived in the same house on Bridge Street in Stamford, and her living room walls were still adorned with the photos of her only daughter and her only grandchild. She continued to lean on her faith and pray that someone would start talking and give police something new to work with.
And over the next few months, that's exactly what happened.
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In October of 2001, a 21-year-old Norwalk, Connecticut man named Kenneth Brickhouse pled guilty to federal gun and drug offenses stemming from an arrest that year for attempting to sell 30 bags of crack cocaine while carrying a semi-automatic handgun.
As he awaited his sentencing hearing, court records show that a U.S. probation officer drafted a pre-sentence report, which was a routine document that basically describes the risks and needs of offenders and explains any circumstances to aid in appropriate sentencing.
A pre-sentence report might cover the defendant's conduct, criminal history, background information, details on any uncharged offenses, and other factors for the court to consider while determining a sentence.
In Kenneth Brickhouse's pre-sentence report, there were two paragraphs under the "Other Criminal Conduct" section that suggested he had critical information about the murders of Rhonda and Karan, and that Kenneth himself, at just 15 years old in 1991, had been a subject of the investigation from the very beginning.
Paragraph 25 of the report reveals that both Rhonda and Caron had been shot with a .25 caliber bullet, a detail that had never before been released publicly. The paragraph also says that he testified before a grand jury in 1997 as part of the investigation, and then three years later in December of 2000, he voluntarily submitted to a polygraph test.
The FBI agent conducting the test analyzed the results and felt the responses indicated Kenneth was being deceptive.
The next section of the report, paragraph 26, reads, quote, "'After being advised of his rights, Kenneth Brickhouse admitted to selling what he believed was the murder weapon to Andre Messam for $150 in August of 1996. He admitted to lying about this to the grand jury in 1997 because he feared that Messam and his brother, Adrian, would have him killed.'
He said that Adrian Messam paid him $100 after his testimony and that Andre Messam had offered to pay for his legal fees before his testimony. He stated that prior to his testimony, Andre Messam had contacted him and told him not to come to court and not to say anything about selling Messam the gun.
A second polygraph examination on April 4th, 2001, subsequent to the statements, found these statements were indicative of deception." At his sentencing hearing in January of 2002, Kenneth objected to paragraphs 25 and 26 being included in his pre-sentence report and requested they be removed because they made him "irreversibly connected" to the double murder case.
The court did not grant his request, saying that the paragraphs appeared to be factually accurate and relevant to his potential sentence, and so they wouldn't be removed. After some discussion about the content of those paragraphs and whether they should be removed, the sentencing hearing continued. At the end of it all, Kenneth was sentenced to 132 months in prison, and later received an additional six years.
Kenneth later appealed the court's decision to leave the paragraphs in. But as explained in the 2003 appeal decision, a pre-sentence report can contain an extremely broad scope of information. And the court felt that Kenneth selling a gun or saying he sold a gun and his admission to making false statements to a grand jury could all be important details for the Bureau of Prisons to know someday.
Kenneth's attorney, Francis O'Reilly, has stated that his client had no involvement in the double homicide case. But after that revealing testimony at his sentencing and the details outlined in black and white in his pre-sentence report, the name Kenneth Brickhouse is inextricably linked to the case of Rhonda and Caron Johnson.
But still, police have not brought charges against anyone in the case of Rhonda and Caron Johnson, and the double homicide remains unsolved.
There's an article by Don Maselli I've been referencing that was published in the Justice Journal, a once-monthly newspaper that ran from about 2004 to 2007 and covered issues of local and national security in collaboration with police and other law enforcement agencies. According to the sub-headline in the paper's masthead, it focused primarily on topics relating to fighting crime in Connecticut.
The article in the Justice Journal includes information from Rhonda's mother, Blanche Johnson, and Stanford Police Lieutenant John Forlivio that I hadn't seen anywhere else.
Ordinarily, I might be skeptical of using an article from a source that 1. doesn't exist anymore and 2. wasn't necessarily a recognizable, long-running mainstream newspaper, but I was actually able to get in touch with the writer of the article. After learning about her background and getting some context around the interviews she conducted and the piece she wrote, I feel confident including the information she uncovered about Ronda and Karan's case.
And it's all leaving me to wonder how these murders could possibly still be unsolved. Let me walk you through some red flags. So Don Maselli reports that it wasn't until blood tests for paternity came back after Coran was born that they learned his father was Andre Messam and not the person Rhonda had been dating during school.
When she got the paternity results, Rhonda told Blanche not to tell anyone because Andre didn't want anyone to know. He was in a relationship and living with another woman at the time, and not even Andre's family knew that Coran was his son yet. Red flag number one. Red flag number two. Blanche says Rhonda told her that she and Andre had mutually decided to tell his family about Coran on Andre's birthday.
To Blanche's recollection, his birthdate was September 15th. If you're keeping track, that would have been three days after the murders.
And then red flag number three is that Blanche also said Rhonda was supposedly planning to meet up with Andre on September 11th to collect babysitting money from him, but they ended up postponing it until the next day, which would be the day Rhonda and her baby boy were shot to death in their own vehicle.
So, if what Blanche says is true, Rhonda was supposed to see Andre on the day she was murdered. Add all of that to the story Kenneth Brickhouse told about selling Andre the gun and allegedly being asked by Andre and his brother not to say anything about it in his grand jury testimony. If what Kenneth says is true, literally all the red flags are waving right here.
When you lay it all out on the table, it's impossible to ignore the suspicion that surrounds Andre Messam in this case. But to be abundantly clear, he has never been charged with any crimes in connection to Ronda and Karan's murders. No one has.
So what the heck are police missing here? If those stories told by Blanche and by Kenneth are unverifiable, and if the case is not strong enough for a state's attorney to bring charges against anyone at any point in the last almost 30 years, then what about the physical evidence and possible DNA left behind by the killer or killers? They said they had it tested, didn't they?
Well, in that interview for the Justice Journal, Lieutenant John Forlivio said the testing on physical evidence that was done in 2001 came back inconclusive. He said that there was no link to any suspects for the murders. No match at all. A detail that just absolutely floors me.
Lieutenant Forlivio said himself that police believe the killer was in the car with Rhonda and her baby. But you mean to tell me there was nothing, not a single speck of DNA on the door handle or headrest or anything that could give them an obvious direction to follow? No hits and codice? Nothing? I feel like my voice has gone up two octaves talking about this.
But what the case needs now, honestly, what it has needed since day one of the investigation, is someone to speak up and share what they know.
As of 2012, Sergeant Anthony Lupinacci had the case for Stanford Police, and he told Kara O'Connor for the hour that he began his work on the investigation years earlier and basically started from scratch. He worked the unsolved case in his free time, on top of his daily workload, and at the time was trying to put together a team to focus on the case.
It needed some old-fashioned police work, he said, re-interviewing people, reassessing the evidence, and returning to the scene with fresh eyes to see if anything new came up. It's unclear whether he actually got that team together to analyze the case, but he was at least able to re-interview some of the same witnesses that the original investigators spoke to. And Sergeant Lupinacci said he came up with an additional suspect.
He did not elaborate on who that was or what led him to that additional suspect, but he was confident that the case was solvable and that time could be sort of an asset. Time does funny things to relationships that were once unwavering. It wears away at loyalties. People's opinions of the suspect may change. Friends might have a falling out. Witnesses previously unwilling to talk could now look at the case differently because they had families of their own.
In 2012, Sergeant Lupinacci repeated what Lagan and Forlivio and the other investigators had said years before. Rhonda knew her killer, and someone knows exactly who the killer is.
Rhonda and Karan's case remains open with Stanford Police. I reached out to Stanford PD for information about the investigation and what's happening right now since the most recent reporting I can locate about the case was back in 2014 when their cases were included in the third edition of a Connecticut cold case playing cards deck. I wanted to ask the current investigator about a million questions, but he couldn't talk to me. He wanted to,
but higher-ups prevented him from doing so. A week after their senseless and violent murders, Rhonda was laid to rest with Karan in her arms. The mother and son were buried together following a memorial service overflowing with family, friends, and community members, some even standing out in the rain when the church reached full capacity. All of them were there to mourn the loss of two young lives,
Koran's father, Andre Messam, he was there at the service too. Dr. Robert Perry said to the crowd, quote, Someone knows. I invite you to give yourself up. Surrender. You need help. End quote. But even to this day, nearly three decades later, the person responsible for their murders has not come forward, and no conclusive evidence has pointed to the suspect either.
Rhonda's life held tremendous promise. I wonder what it would look like now, had the events of September 12th, 1996 never happened. I read that she worked on the student newspaper in high school, and her studies in mass communications had only just begun when she was killed. She'd be in her late 40s today, and maybe she would have pursued a career in journalism.
She no doubt would have enjoyed watching her little boy grow up, seeing him take his first steps, hearing his giggle, snuggling him close as he drifted off to sleep. Rhonda's father's wife, Joanne, told the Daily Advocate in 1998 that she nicknamed Curran "Sunshine." When she babysat him, he cooed up at her as she held him. He was a remarkably happy baby. Blanche said the same thing about her grandson.
He smiled easily and laughed a lot for such a young child. She said, quote, End quote. Quran would be coming up on his 28th birthday. Instead, his murder has been unsolved almost as long.
If you have information about the homicides of Rhonda and Coran Johnson, please contact the Connecticut Cold Case Tip Line toll-free at 1-866-623-8058. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast.
This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No!
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