You might be wondering how a son could stab his own mother to death. While I don't have all the answers, what I can tell you is that my brother's life has been a genuine tragedy.
I was there in the delivery room the day he was born at Health Park in Fort Myers. His birth was something of a miracle so late in my mother's life, and directly after the miscarriage of a baby girl half way through a recent pregnancy.
A miscarriage she blamed directly on our father for screaming at and fighting with her so much. He did not beat her during her pregnancies from what I recall, at least in my lifetime.
Devin was one of the sweetest kids you could have ever met in his early years. He was kind and gentle, full of joy and laughter.
That spark in his soul was slowly beaten out of him over time by our father, turning to hatred and rage, with no outlet and no escape. This pain turned to self-destruction as the years rolled by. My father began beating me when he was still a baby, around the age of 10. From what I know it was a similar course of events for him.
The degree of abuse, violence, and neglect my brother was exposed to and was the direct victim of at the hands of our father is astounding. As many of you know, I have been blowing the whistle on this for several years in the wake of his death, due to the relentless propaganda that has been told about my father. It is dishonorable and shameful that anyone lies about the true nature and devastation he left on our family, and our local community of Cape Coral.
If convicted, my brother does not deserve your forgiveness. Perhaps he deserves your sympathy, pity, and compassion. What he absolutely deserves though is your understanding, because I swear on my mother's life and death that this young man was beaten, tortured, abused, and neglected to a degree that would make any sane person weep. It was not surprising to me in the slightest when I first heard that he had allegedly stabbed our mother to death in the home our grandmother had built, for this is how he was raised. To commit relentless acts of violence against those you claim to love.
Perhaps you have sympathy for our father as well. As a direct victim of his violence, cruelty, and evil that is orders of magnitude beyond my care. For his crimes against my mother and brother alone he deserves to burn in hell for all eternity. I pray to this day that he is burning in hell where he properly belongs for his sins against our family.
Domestic violence is an extremely vile, sinister, and difficult problem to deal with when victims limit or refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, DCF, and state prosecutors. Our family slipped through the cracks of state law for over 40 years, ultimately exploding in the bloodshed of my mother at the hands of her own youngest son and child. Her baby.
Many of you assumed wrongly that I was unfair to my father upon his death. I hope now you can begin to see the gruesome reality that we had to survive growing up. My brother's soul did not survive this ordeal, he turned to evil and madness. In the end he became our father more than ever upon his death in 2023.
Now he deserves a fair trial, due process, and swift punishment by the laws of this state. I will always love him but will never forgive him for the unforgiveable. Mistakes are forgivable, even huge ones. Evil is not.
I will not oppose the death penalty if the state seeks it.
Our mother's memorial is this Friday from 5pm-7pm in Fort Myers, open to the public.
Please treat your family like gold and never hit those you love.
Domestic violence is a "one and done" issue.
Run.
You can read my mother’s obituary here written by my older sister. It has details to attend her memorial and funeral.
Her memorial fund is here. Thank you greatly to those of you who donated, it helps and is appreciated.
/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson