CHATSWORTH, Ga. — According to those involved in the investigation into the murder of Dr. Harry Buchanan Johnston Jr., 73, in northern Murray County in January of 1992, there was no mystery about it.

From the time of Johnston’s death to the apprehension of neighbor J.W. “Boy” Ledford Jr., less than an hour had passed. A day later, there was a confession.

Nine months later, a jury would pronounce Ledford guilty of malice murder, two counts of armed robbery, one count of burglary and one count of kidnapping, and sentence him to death.

“There wasn’t anything hard or suspenseful about this one other than the fact that you have an innocent victim,” said retired Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Jerry Scott, who handled the inquiry into Johnston’s death. “There are a great percentage of murder cases where the victim does something that precipitates their death in one way or another. In this one, you have a guy being home and at his place and did nothing to precipitate his death.

“From what I know, if the kid had needed something or wanted something, Dr. Johnston would have given it to him. He didn’t have to kill him.”

Clemency hearing on Monday

Now, 25 years later, the state of Georgia plans to execute Ledford by lethal injection on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the state correctional facility in Jackson.

On Monday, Ledford’s attorneys — one is from San Francisco and two are from Atlanta, including one from the Federal Defender Program — are scheduled to go before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles at 9 a.m. and request a stay of execution and reduction in sentence to life without possibility of parole.

The application submitted by Ledford’s attorneys for the clemency hearing was recently released by the state and presents Ledford as a repentant murderer — mentioning his “deep and profound remorse for the crime” — who should not be put to death. It asks the board to “exercise mercy.”

But others would say Dr. Johnston received no mercy.

“Those that knew the doctor were devastated that something like this could happen in a close-knit community,” said former Murray County sheriff Harold Ensley. “There was no doubt in our mind as to what had happened. It was just a very, very brutal crime.”

Johnston was a veteran of World War II, serving in the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps in the Pacific Campaign, and leaving the U.S. Naval Reserve with the rank of commander, according to newspaper accounts at the time of his death. He was a general practice physician who had moved his practice from Chatsworth to Cleveland, Tenn., before retiring.

“He was nothing but a good man as far as I ever knew and ever heard from anyone,” Scott said.

Ensley said Johnston was well known.

“He was a doctor in the community for many years,” Ensley said. “He was at the Murray County hospital for a long time, and even when he moved his practice people here still went to see him.”

Johnston was described as “feeble” in court testimony, but he still had a strong presence in the community near Crandall and Tennga.

“My father kind of adopted all of the neighbors, all the people around here, and helped them with their medical problems,” Johnston’s daughter June Buff told The Daily Citizen in 1992. “He was a real good Samaritan and helped with not just medical problems but other problems. He was very well liked.”

Members of Johnston’s family declined to comment for this story and have said they won’t make public comments before or after the execution. One of Ledford’s attorneys, Elizabeth Wells of Atlanta, also declined to comment.

‘Never had a chance’

Twenty years earlier, Johnston had delivered to J.W. Ledford and his wife Mattie their first boy after the couple had had six girls. His parents named him J.W. Ledford Jr., but he was always known as “Boy” because he was the first boy in the family. Mattie Ledford had previously cleaned house for the Johnstons, according to the clemency application.

It wasn’t an ideal family, according to the application. Some of those who knew him said the younger Ledford “never had a chance.”

J.W. Ledford Sr. was known as a drunk who was abusive to his children and his wife, according to the application. Shortly after Boy’s birth, alcohol abuse grew to drugs, with pills and marijuana added to the mix. J.W. Ledford Sr. attempted suicide more than once, and was hit by a train at one point and became even more dependent on pain medication.

The clemency application says there was no parental supervision, and by the age of 7 or 8 family members began giving Boy alcohol, and by the age of 10 “older relatives” started giving him drugs.

He struggled in school with an IQ “that was at a minimum borderline intellectually disabled,” and was socially promoted; he tried to finish the ninth grade twice but dropped out both times.

But he was not considered a troublemaker, according to multiple statements of those who knew him as a youth provided in the application, and many of those people were “shocked” when he was said to be responsible for the murder.

“The story of Boy Ledford’s chaotic tumultuous life with an abusive alcoholic father coupled with his intellectual deficits provides a meaningful explanation for how Boy Ledford ended up committing this crime that resulted in his death sentence,” the application states.

“The background is not an excuse for what Boy Ledford has dome, and it is not offered for that purpose. Instead it is offered to allow the board some insight into how a young man barely 20 years old with no history of violence ended up killing a man who was his neighbor. Much of this information was not presented at Mr. Ledford’s trial …”

Head nearly severed; no defensive wounds

According to a case summary from the state Supreme Court, Ledford went to Johnston’s house on Jan. 31, 1992, and introduced himself to Antoinette Johnston, the doctor’s wife, as Mattie Ledford’s son. Ledford asked to speak to Dr. Johnston. Mrs. Johnston had seen her husband drive away in his truck with a passenger she could not identify. She told Ledford he wasn’t home and Ledford left. He returned around 10 minutes later and asked Mrs. Johnston to have the doctor come over to his house that evening.

After another 10 minutes, he returned again with a knife and forced his way into the house and robbed Mrs. Johnston of the money she had in her purse and demanded any guns the couple had. She rounded up a rifle, a shotgun and two pistols before Ledford tied her up on a bed with rope he had in his pocket.

In his confession to law officers the next day, Ledford said he got a ride from Dr. Johnston to the grocery store. During the ride, he said Johnston accused him of stealing from him. When they returned, Johnston told Ledford he wanted to show him something on his property and that was when Ledford hit Johnston and unsnapped a knife pouch from his belt and stabbed Johnston.

“As I was pulling my knife back from sticking him, it went over and cut the … out of him,” Ledford said in his confession.

When Ledford left the house, Mrs. Johnston was able to get up from the bed and see her husband’s white pickup truck being driven away by Ledford. She called the sheriff’s office, which radioed out a lookout for the truck.

According to newspaper reports at the time, Ledford made it to a couple of pawn shops to pawn two of the guns before Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Kerry Page spotted the doctor’s truck. Page was in Murray County on other business when the call came out over the radio and he and a Chatsworth Police Department officer pulled Ledford over and took him into custody. They found two of the guns in the truck.

Scott said there was little doubt that something bad had happened to Dr. Johnston as soon as he arrived where Ledford was arrested.

“He had blood on his clothes, a pretty significant amount, and a couple of nicks and cuts on his fingers,” Scott said. “I was processing him at the scene when we got the call that they had found Dr. Johnston’s body.”

Around the same time Ledford was arrested, Ensley said the body of Johnston was found near an outbuilding on the property, calling it a “very brutal discovery.”

Johnston’s body had been dragged from where Ledford had attacked him with a 10-inch hunting knife that would later be found by investigators.

“There was a substantial amount of blood, and there was a blood trail where he had drug the body under a brush pile,” Scott said. “It was pretty brutal. He literally nearly cut his head off. Severed his neck pretty bad, and he had a couple of stab wounds in the back.”

From the Supreme Court’s summary of the case: “According to the pathologist who performed the autopsy, the victim had suffered either ‘one continuous or two slices to the neck’ which destroyed virtually all the muscle and tissue on the left side of his neck, and nearly severed his head from his body. Additionally, the victim sustained a small knife wound in the back and a number of other knife wounds in the neck. There were no defensive wounds on the victim’s hands. The pathologist testified that it took ‘a significant amount of force’ to inflict the wounds in question. Additionally, he opined that the victim bled to death, but lived approximately eight or nine minutes after the injuries were inflicted, in ‘an extremely painful’ condition.”

It was a death Scott said “ruined a bunch of lives — not just the doctor’s family, but Boy Ledford’s family also.”

Ensley said it was “senseless” and all over drugs.

“At that time, a lot of people knew both of the people involved and knew both families,” Ensley said. “It was a situation that really shocked the neighborhood that they both lived in. I felt for the whole family on both sides. We were very saddened, and I know he (Dr. Johnston) has sure not been forgotten.”

‘The pain of killing the doctor is something he lives with daily’

Ledford’s attorneys say he has maintained a close relationship with his son and other family members, encouraging them to not repeat his mistakes. Some corrections officers wrote in support of him, with one saying he is a “good inmate.”

The application says he has consistently shown remorse.

“The pain of killing the doctor is something he lives with daily,” the application states. “He does not try to hide away from the harm he caused …”

Another argument his attorneys will make Monday is that five of the jurors from the trial now support a sentence of life without parole. In 1992 when the verdicts were handed down, life without parole was not an option, and the application says several jurors would have given different verdicts if it had been. They were afraid Ledford would get out of prison at some point if they did not deliver a death sentence.

The clemency hearing will begin with Ledford’s attorneys presenting their arguments. District Attorney Bert Poston will present the state’s case for execution.

Poston was a recently hired assistant district attorney when the case was tried by then-District Attorney Jack Partain, who recently retired from the bench of Superior Court. And while Poston remembers the case, this will be his first time in court on it because the state attorney general’s office has dealt with all of Ledford’s appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ledford’s request to appeal on April 3.

“I remember it, but I was too new to be really involved,” Poston said. “It has always been there in the background.”

He said he has reviewed the entire case file and met with Scott and Partain to go over the case. Scott will be a witness for the state at Monday’s hearing.

“Our goal is going to be to simply answer any questions and talk about the facts of the case,” Poston said.

In Georgia, the Board of Pardons and Paroles is the only body that can grant clemency and reduce a death sentence to life with the possibility of parole or life without the possibility of parole. The board may reduce the sentence, issue a stay of up to 90 days or deny clemency.

If the sentence is carried out on Tuesday, Ledford has asked for a last meal of filet mignon wrapped in bacon with pepper jack cheese, large french fries, 10 chicken tenders with sauce, a fried pork chop, a blooming onion, a pecan pie with vanilla ice cream, sherbert and Sprite.