Who Killed Claude Wendell Johnson?

Who Killed Claude Wendell Johnson?

More than four decades have passed, but Tammie Johnson still doesn't have answers — and she's not giving up.

In this deeply personal episode, we sit down with Tammie Johnson, the daughter of Claude Wendell Johnson, a man who was found dead in 1981 under circumstances that have haunted his family ever since. Claude was discovered with blunt force trauma to the head, his death leaving more questions than answers — and a daughter left to grieve without justice.

Claude Wendell Johnson was no stranger to a rough crowd. He was rowdy, lived life loudly, and didn't always play by the rules. But being hard-edged was never a death sentence — and Tammie refuses to let her father's life be reduced to a footnote, or his death brushed aside because of who he was.

In this interview, Tammie shares what she knows about the night her father died, the wall of silence she's faced in her search for answers, and why she believes someone out there knows what really happened. Her story is a reminder that every life matters — no matter how complicated — and that a child's love for a parent doesn't have an expiration date.

If you have any information about the death of Claude Wendell Johnson in 1981, please reach out.

Justice doesn't have a statute of limitations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, I think I did it right. Okay. Okay. So tell me about your father and what happened.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Um it was on a Sunday night, I want to say before Labor Day that year, that my brother called me and they had found him dead on the side of the road. He look appeared to have either been in the ditch or put put into the ditch and was crawling out following each other in the their vehicles. She had picked up a vehicle somewhere for repair at a friend's house and he was following her and she almost ran over his body. So she stopped. They got stopped. And of course, this was in the eighties. You didn't have the cell phones then. They got somewhere and called 911 or called they called somebody. I'm not sure who they called.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, and you said your you said your dad wasn't good with the cops there either.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

He had been uh he was he would he was always getting a they when they would stop it, he would fight. He would go to a bar on Friday or Saturday night and get in fights and if he didn't get in a fight at the bar, he got in a fight on the way home with the cops usually. But um we were the my parents had divorced and we weren't I was living in Pennsylvania, I had married and moved and um we didn't see him very often even though we all lived nearby and uh he um he was back on a a bend, a a drinking binge, you know, he would sober up for a while and then go back to drinking.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah. And um So he was found dead on the side of the road and was there any autopsy or anything like that, Dun?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yes, the autopsy said that he had died from a I believe it was a massive head injury and his lungs were broken loose from inside his chest cavity.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Oh my gosh. Um now how has this affected you?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Just not knowing. There there were several people they questioned and several people that probably you know might have really had a good reason to do it, except that's not what you do. I mean, you know. Um he had beat his girlfriend up really bad the night before or maybe Friday night, and he had been kicked out and her son had threatened him. And the son had been uh he had some kind of martial arts ability, very, you know, big, strong young man in his twenties, and he had an alibi, so yeah which was possibly people lying, but 'cause his the the mother, surely the girlfriend, was sitting at the casket with black eyes and bruises and and this was it took like seven or eight days for him to get the body back after the autopsy for his funeral. And you said the cops were still beat to pieces.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, and you said the cops didn't really investigate at all?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Well, they did question a few people. Uh they questioned his brother because they were bad for fighting. They both drank. They questioned um the man's house. Dad had had uh something had happened about some money with a a man named Tom sitting on the mountain, and Daddy had been there playing cards with some other people. And so they said maybe Tom did it, you know, or had those boys do it when they he left there. He called his sister from there needing a ride, and she wasn't feeling well, and she said, Wendell, you're just gonna have I they it was a few miles from where he was found to her house, and it was probably a mile and a half from where he had called from the man's house. So but he actually wasn't going in the right dire he wasn't found in the direction of her house. She told him he would have to walk.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And and nobody deserves to be killed because like we've all done bad things and nobody deserves that. I I don't care if he if he did do some bad things, but you know, there's a lingering question for you that you know, you don't know what happened to your dad and everything, and that's gotta be tough, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Well the the hardest part on me as far as how it's affected me is that I had hoped that, you know, he would sober up one day and straighten his life up and bec be the grandfather that he wasn't, you know, a very good father. And so that's always, you know, it's been forty four, forty-three years, forty-four years almost, I think. And uh and you know, I've got he's it's just like would he have been a better, you know, grandfather and maybe straightened his life up, 'cause he he certainly had opportunities to do that.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah, and this was in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yes. They it wasn't in the city limits. It it's in what they now call Walden, but it's in Hamilton County, but it's it's a mountain that um they have a township and then they have but it was this I don't know if the Signal Mountain officers were the ones there first or the Hamilton County. I'd say Signal Mountain was because we actually had a family friend that worked for them and he tried to talk to me some before he died about who killed him, that the investigation wasn't done right because they thought that his brother Clinton did it, and they didn't want to get involved and and you know the the friend worked for the jail. And um I don't know if he was a cop cop or a uh you know officer or somebody. Yeah, I don't know what his job was, but he's passed away since then. And his daughter and I have talked a little about it, but she says, Tammy, I don't remember what our dad used to say about it, it's just they always thought Clinton did it, which was his brother, and they had had an argument. Uh I don't know how long before that. Again, I was living in Pennsylvania, and um there'd been some words over a woman, which they were always fighting over women. Daddy would date 'em and break up with them and Clinton would marry 'em. And he was married to one of Daddy's ex-girlfriends, and I guess Daddy had helped her take a dog off that had the mange. Which is wrong too, but they took it off like 'cause Clinton was in Florida and he was upset that they she had come and got him to do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

So Yeah. Well, uh we're gonna post this. I'm gonna get more information from you, and we're gonna post this on the website, and hopefully that it leads to some tips or something. Maybe maybe like a uh a daughter or a son of whoever was involved can come forward or something like that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Okay. So as far as I know, what I was told, and my aunt she tried to get unsolved mysteries to take over, and she tried to do a lot of things when she was alive, but she's been dead a long time too, because she was diagnosed with cancer, I don't know how long after that. So and his mother died not too long after, and the uncle that might have been involved ended up with um lung cancer, CLPD disease, very sick his last year's, and you know it was always in my head that he might have done it, but then then it wasn't because there was there was really some other people that we you know had more reason. And uh like like Bill, the son. And I um I went to see him while he was sick that a couple of times he would just cry when I'd come and see him and just just horrible and couldn't talk very good. But it's like he wanted to tell me something, but he didn't. And um his sons has actually told my brother that he confessed to it before he died, but they're not very they're all into drugs and alcohol and I don't know that they're a reliable source.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah, and and the thing is is like people who do these type of things, they don't just they don't they they usually tell somebody somehow, but you know, um but that's the reason we put it out there is because you know, somebody has been told something, they may not remember it, you know, it may not have been a big deal to them, and then somebody knows something in most of these cases, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

But anyways, I'll let you go. I'll call you here in just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

All right.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Okay, thank you.