Bill Osinski – författare

Murder and miscarriage of justice in a rural community The townsfolk of Logan, Ohio, a mined-out area of the Appalachian foothills, cheered as an innocent man was convicted and sent to death row. The occasion was the conviction of Dale N. Johnston. His trial ended nothing; the tragedies had just begun. What really happened on that bitter cold day in January 1984 was the total collapse of the local criminal justice system. It began with a lovers’ quarrel. On October 4, 1982, Johnston’s stepdaughter Annette Cooper Johnston—an 18-year-old beauty contestant, horsewoman, and aspiring computer programmer—fought and quickly made up with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Todd Schultz. They were last seen walking together on the C&O Railroad tracks, crossing a trestle bridge over the Hocking River. Ten days later their mutilated torsos were found floating in the river. The next day their heads and limbs were found buried in a cornfield between the river and the tracks. Dale Johnston was the sole suspect from the beginning. It took a year, but investigators and prosecutors built a case against him, alleging he had kidnapped the victims near downtown Logan and killed them in the presence of his wife and his other stepdaughter at their mobile home ten miles outside of town. He was accused of butchering the corpses and carting them back to Logan for burial and disposal. The state’s case was built on rumours of an incestuous relationship between Johnston and Annette and was bolstered by a hypnotised “eyewitness” and a disputed footprint expert. Most of what was presented at the three-week trial was based on fabrications, melodramatic fiction, and forensic fairy tales. As a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, author Bill Osinski covered the trial and was shocked by the guilty verdict. After five years on death row, Johnston was released on appeal. Prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges, but Johnston and the rest of his family remained under a cloud of presumed guilt for nearly two more decades. In 2008 two other men were indicted for the murders of Todd and Annette. True crime buffs, historians, legal professionals, and readers who enjoy an extraordinary story will find Guilty by Popular Demand a compelling addition to true crime literature.

Not so long ago, newspapers were trusted by their readers. In return, newspapers trusted their readers wanted high-quality journalism. Thorough, factual coverage was standard; and insightful, vivid prose was the bonus. The best daily newspapers were important parts of their communities and of their readers' lives. In Deadline Poets Society , Bill Osinski celebrates that bygone era. For nearly four decades and for eleven different newspapers, Bill sought to provide a special stylistic touch that would offer readers a whimsical, dramatic, insightful, wry, or heartwarming trip to a place they might never go, a chance to meet people they would never otherwise meet. Along the way, he met people like the suburban super-mom who devoted herself to improving the lives of residents of leprosy colonies, a mother who lost three sons in a coal-mine explosion, a man who was blatantly railroaded to death row, a college freshman who strutted around campus though he had no legs, a young girl who was repeatedly abused by the middle-aged man who claimed to be her god, a man who built himself a covered bridge in his front yard, and a Vietnamese war orphan seeking the American military personnel who had saved her life 35 years ago. Bill and his family moved 17 times during his newspaper years, and he had more editors than he can remember. But his first loyalties were always to the people like the ones in the fifty or so stories in this collection. They freely shared their stories with him and trusted him to tell those stories truly and well.