How Dreams Survive Nightmares

Remembering my mom 1 year later

One year ago today my mother Rosemary Johnson was brutally murdered in Cape Coral Florida, marking one of the most gruesome acts of domestic violence ever recorded in my hometown. My own little brother was credibly accused by police of strangling and stabbing her to death over 100 times. She drowned in a river of blood, in the house my grandma, her own mother built.

After a major manhunt involving 4 different law enforcement agencies, a police helicopter, and police dogs, he was ultimately arrested and eventually charged with 1st degree murder, among numerous other felonies, and the state has declared intent to pursue the death penalty. He was taken into custody ostensibly heading to an airport in South Florida, where he had purchased a flight to flee the county to South America.

I have many opinions about these issues. Generally, the state's evidence discussed in court so far is very strong. The charges specific to my mom's homicide are reasonable, and the death penalty is reasonable given the extreme nature of the crime. What my little brother has been accused of is in no uncertain terms, absolutely evil.

As I told Gulf Coast News, the crime was shocking, not surprising. As I also said in that interview, I don't blame anyone for thinking that my brother is a monster deserving death if and when he is convicted after due process. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw for anyone from this. I am not opposed to the death penalty in principle for extreme crimes. Lindsay Clancy for example, at least in moral terms, deserves the same or worse.

After the murder I stated publicly that my mom died the death my father deserved. It's a cruel twist of fate how that outcome was inverted between my parents. I stand by these comments again now, calmly and of sound mind, because they are true, accurate, and just.

Many of you have commented recently on my timeline that I come from a "trash family". My brother in Christ, you are preaching to the choir. I come from a family of wife beaters, child beaters, man beaters, animal abusers, drug addicts, drug dealers, stalkers, and one murderer so far. While my family had significant wealth for much of my childhood, this family history - the truth behind the illusion of an all American family - is the textbook definition of trailer trash.

The architect of this crime family was my father, Alfred Johnson. My father was a tyrant, a violent monster who beat women, children, and animals for 40 years in Lee County. He was periodically arrested for domestic violence crimes almost to the day he died, arrested twice just days before his death for more crimes against my mother.

My father built a micro-cult of victims and enablers. My mother was his primary victim and chief enabler. I was the next victim. Then eventually my brother when I left home for college at UCF. He beat my mother bloody with a closed fist, sometimes dragging her around like an animal on the ground by her hair, kicking and screaming for her life. It was madness.

My father never once hit me with a belt or open hand. He beat me, brutally, with a closed fist, exactly like my mother, beginning in the 6th grade. I grew up spitting pieces of my teeth out as a boy. Sometimes he would do this alone with me, sometimes with my mother present screaming and trying to stop him.

This was not for discipline, it was aggravated child abuse, similar to my mother. My father was simply the most violent human being I have ever met, and was a dedicated alcoholic on top of that. He would usually drink 20-30 beers (Icehouse) per day, every day, 7 days a week. Some of you who grew up with me in Cape Coral remember riding in the car with us, my father behind the wheel 10 beers deep, doing 90 in a 45 with small children in the car. That was a regular Tuesday, going to the gas station, to get more beer and candy bars.

My father never once beat my two sisters. They are in fact his most ardent defenders. Neither one has ever shown an ounce of sympathy or empathy for what my brother and I suffered. None, literally zero. They disapproved of him beating our mother of course, and when things got too severe, both individually have called 911 leading to his arrest for beating her. They were not at risk, more or less, of being beaten for calling police.

My mother was in fear for her life on a regular basis. Including if she fled and divorced. She told my wife and I as much in plain English the last time we ever saw her and discussed these issues. He promised to kill her, my grandma, my aunt, and our entire family if she did leave. He made threats like this on an intermittent basis. These threats were sincere and credible and they were only one "tool in the toolbox0" so to speak of coercion and control.

Around 2002 during my first year of highschool at FMHS, my father bribed her $25,000 directly into her own checking account after beating her up badly, and her discussing going to police and courts. She took the money, went on a spending spree for our new home, and my father bragged about this.

Why did he not beat my sisters? I don't actually know and never asked. I knew my father better than any of my siblings - something they resent and despise given what they view as my treason now for exposing all this. Based on that, my view has been that he considered beating little girls as too cruel even for him. He had no reservations about beating his wife, sons, and occasionally animals.

My father was a warped but rigid traditionalist in this way. Beating little girls was essentially beneath him. Why did my mother tolerate this situation? My best educated guess was to keep the family together. She detested divorce, viewed it as deeply sinful in her Catholic faith, and made a deal with the devil so to speak. She suffered greatly for this, as did my brother and I. As I've said before, her life and death were tragedies of equal proportions. She loved my brother and I greatly, she held no malice or evil in her heart. She made catastrophic mistakes, in an impossible situation, and paid for those mistakes in blood 100x over. She did not deserve this fate, my father did.

I have often been viewed as a traitor by my entire family for fighting against all this, exposing it, and trying to stop it. Hated by everyone but my mom. Even after his death she was still defending and excusing his abuse.

My wicked sisters do that even now, more aggressively than ever. This was the instruction our father gave them, and the example our mother set. It is sick, cruel, and disturbing to witness. They make a mockery of domestic violence victims including men, women, and children. It is vomit inducing at times, annually praising this man as a "great father" and husband with a "heart of gold". Literally, go look at his obituary they wrote.

At our own mother's funeral one of my sisters was screaming at my wife and 2 year old daughter in church, prompting a police response and church staff yelling at her. Later that day I was assaulted and injured by police, half way done reading a eulogy for my mother, authorized in writing by the funeral director in charge to be read at that exact spot and time.

Thankfully that funeral heckler was later arrested, in part due to the events of that day, among other threats and terrorizing actions directed at my entire family by this individual for years.

Which is another reason they hide, have hidden, and will continue to conceal/mitigate/excuse this insane history of family violence to the maximum extent possible. It spread to not only my little brother but my little sister as well. We were all raised in a domestic warzone, but my brother as the last child was truly born into it more than any of us.

As I've said before, what the state is prosecuting now is more of a domestic violence train wreck than a simple but brutal homicide (matricide). My brother may have swung the blade, but my father handed it to him from the grave. My little brother and sister both probably never had much of a chance to escape this cycle of abuse and criminality.

This is what they were taught, this was the example of how to be a man, husband, and father. You beat and abuse your wife for decades. Then your sons, and sometimes pets. You use violence to solve problems and get your way.

What did the State of Florida do for the past 40 years of this slow motion disaster? Not much really. They are supposed to take domestic violence crimes very seriously, the legislature demands it and directs it on behalf of all Floridians. Even when victims are begging them to drop charges, they are not supposed to.

But, they do, and nothing happens. Local cops know this, and it frustrates them greatly. Because their DV mandate is very strict, they have to deal with this crap at 2am, victims bruised and bleeding.

What happens to the criminal? Usually nothing. A slap on the wrist, a few days in jail, everyone goes home. Most of you would be shocked to learn how easy it is to punch a family member in the face or even try to stab them with a knife, and get away with it. Unless someone is dead or has a knife sticking out of their head, the government doesn't care.

The legislature won't crack the whip, the cops hands are tied. If anything local police are among the most frustrated with this, because they along with the victims are who this gets dumped on.

They know when that case gets dropped, that they will be back at the same house, at 3am, arresting the same suspect, for the same crime, every 6-36 months in an endless cycle of violence and stupidity. They will tell you off the record they call these people "frequent flyers". Criminals 5-10 violent crimes deep, going in circles through a broken system.

Until disaster strikes, and the bloody snowball of violence finally hits a wall doing 100 mph.

Some have accused me of "not doing enough" to protect my mother or help my family, suggesting you could have done better.

I doubt it.

I escaped an American nightmare and built a beautiful family. My wife is young and gorgeous, my baby daughter equally beautiful. I don't kick squirrels, don't beat women, and detest all forms of child abuse, even spanking (which I consider distinct from criminal child abuse, but still wrong and deeply misguided).

Most of you would not have survived my childhood. You would be living under a bridge injecting needles into your arm to numb the pain, dead as a doornail, living life in prison as my brother is now facing, or otherwise drowning in violence/drugs/criminality.

I fought like hell to escape all this garbage. It was the fight of my life and it took the strength of 100 men to do it. I weep for my mother and siblings both. Their lives are literally over or otherwise doomed, destined to pass the abuse our father pioneered on to the next generation where possible.

I am the man I am - a man my mother was deeply proud of - because of the choices I made in life, and the support of some friends, mentors, and family. My grandma in particular was a beacon of light growing up, she hated my father to the bone for the way he treated us. Some of my friends fathers were influential growing up, and several teachers, and football coaches. Later in life many of the speakers I worked with in my live events had very strong positive influences on me, pulling me out of this hell hole, or helping me help myself.

Many of you are openly perplexed that I would advocate for traditional family structures and traditional American patriarchy after surviving this nightmare and one of the worst examples imaginable of that in action. You need to grasp that this is a symbol of intellectual integrity, that I actually believe what I say and write, in spite of what I saw, experienced, and suffered. I watched my own mother suffer and die from domestic violence, only to be assaulted mid-eulogy reading standing 3 feet from her dead body, instigated by one of my documented domestic abusers.

No matter how bad things got, I never allowed these events to unfairly tarnish my own dream of building a big family. I learned a lot from my father as a negative example. I learned exactly how not to treat your wife and children, how not to drink yourself to death. I did not even drink alcohol until 27 years old, that's how horrified I was at what I saw.

My family's example - and my father's example above all - is a horrific tale of violence, abuse, murder, drugs, and crime. I used to love my father as a young boy, in spite of the way he treated my mom. He was the biggest strongest man in the world to me.

His abuse was so severe that he actually managed to beat the love out of me. But he did not beat the love of family out of me. I knew what I experienced and survived was deeply wrong and a genuine tragedy, but the basic structure, function, and skeleton were not.

I condemn the actions of my father totally and absolutely. The waterfall of violence he has dumped on his children has ended, at least with me, permanently.

My father is the primary root of my mother's death and this tornado of chaos and violence. He is a disgusting shit stain on my bloodline that brings shame to our ancestors. May he continue to burn in hell for eternity, and my mother smile on me from heaven.

Miss you mom.

/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson