- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Free Press (Feb 5 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684855585
- ISBN-13: 978-0684855585
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.5 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,367,777 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Jennifer Toth tells the ghastly story of Johnnie Jordan, a 14-year-old boy from "Toledo's ghetto" who had worked his way through 19 foster homes before finding himself placed with Charles and Jeannette Johnson, an elderly couple who agreed to take him in. For reasons that remain obscure, Jordan murdered Mrs. Johnson. Toth presents him as an example of "an apparently new phenomenon of young, rage-filled killers taking lives with motiveless passion or no remorse." They've struck all over the country--Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado. What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is exhaustively researched and includes detailed interviews with people who touched Jordan's life--family, psychologists, lawyers--plus Jordan himself, from behind bars. Jordan may be a monster, but Toth identifies plenty of other villains, such as the social-service agencies responsible for him that still refuse to accept any blame for what happened. When society fails vulnerable children such as Jordan, it allows them to become "superpredators," writes Toth. "There is never justification for murder. But there are reasons why children kill and why, if we do not heed their cries of pain and intervene decisively to help them, we will see countless more children who murder," she concludes. This is a troubling book, but one that we ignore at our peril. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
In January 1996, just outside Toledo, 14-year-old Johnnie Jordan killed Jeanette Johnson, his elderly foster mother. The crime horrified the community and confounded those who knew the victim and perpetrator, in part because there was no clear motive; Jordan claimed to like Johnson and her husband and wanted to stay with them. But as journalist Toth (Orphans of the Living) reveals in this powerful and unsettling book, Jordan rarely had any control over his own life. Through interviews with the adolescent, lawyers, police and parole officers, social workers, psychologists and others close to the case, Toth pieces together the dark saga, from its roots to its aftermath. Scenes from Jordan's childhood, which was torn apart by an "extremely chaotic, abusive, and neglectful family," are particularly haunting. Both his parents were drug addicts and his father was a convicted rapist and pedophile. Before arriving at the Johnsons' home, Jordan had been in nearly 20 foster or group homes, and he'd already exhibited violence. Yet as he traveled through the foster care and juvenile corrections systems, he repeatedly fell through the proverbial cracks. Jordan's fate is not a surprise: he confessed to the crime, was tried and convicted in adult court and setenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 30 years. "The greatest tragedy in cases like Johnnie's," Toth reflects, "is that many teachers and caregivers read danger signs... but fail to act until it is too late. There are almost always warnings." Though there is no happy ending, Toth concludes her engaging narrative by suggesting concrete changes in the foster care system, adjustments that could prevent more bloodshed. The thoughtfulness and care she exhibits throughout provide a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. Agent, Keith Korman.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The glory of the winter's setting sun flashed red and pink across northwestern Ohio's frozen horizon as Charles Johnson drove his tired green Chevrolet home from Sears with a space heater he hoped would save him from his wife's icy feet in bed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The glory of the winter's setting sun flashed red and pink across northwestern Ohio's frozen horizon as Charles Johnson drove his tired green Chevrolet home from Sears with a space heater he hoped would save him from his wife's icy feet in bed. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!,
By A Customer
This review is from: What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent (Hardcover)
A top-rate book....a little wordy in places, but the author was being very specific about showing you this young man's upbringing, and familial background. A truly hard and tough look at the failures of an over-burdened foster-care system, not-to-mention two DEEPLY messed up parents.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hunting story,
By A Customer
This review is from: What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent (Hardcover)
This is a story of a child that we, as a society, have failed from day one. As a CASA volunteer my heart bleeds for this child that NOBODY cared about, that NOBODY helped and that NOBODY wishes to remember. We locked him and threw away the key because as a society we could not face him and acknowledge our errors in dealing with children in foster care, we are too scared. What is more scary to me is that his caseworker Tamara is still working and probably ruining other kids' lives. Where is compassion in our world? Certainly not in the welfare system of this country nor in our legal gurus who charged him as adult.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book!,
By A Customer
This review is from: What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent (Hardcover)
This is a really, really good book. Society is so quick to lock up kids who commit awful, heinous crimes, but nobody it seems wants to look inside their heads to find out what makes them tick. Toth tells a terrific, sobering and engrossing story about Johnnie Jordan, who brutally murdered the only person who was ever nice to him -- without explanation. Amazingly, no one in Toledo, Ohio -- not the police, not the judges, not the social workers -- wanted to find out why. Toth did her own investigation and came up with some startling answers.
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