On Saturday, August 20, 1983, Anna Ryan, a 75-year-old woman, was murdered alongside three other victims in a horrific attack at The Greenware by Merry Ceramic shop located at 1405 East Cass Street in Joliet, Illinois. The other victims included the ceramic shop owner Marilyn Baers Barbara Dunbar and Ryan's own daughter-in-law Pamela Ryan. All four women were brutally stabbed, with a total of 43 stab wounds between them.
Anna Ryan was additionally shot in the neck.
The murders were part of a larger series of killings that terrorized the Joliet area during the summer of 1983. The ceramic shop massacre occurred in broad daylight on a particularly hot day, while there was significant activity in the area due to people buying lottery tickets at a nearby 7-Eleven for a record $6.5 million drawing. The bodies were discovered shortly after noon, and the crime scene was described by investigators as "horrific and brutal."
The case was solved when authorities identified Milton Johnson as the perpetrator. Johnson had been released from Pontiac prison in March 1983 after serving 12 years for a previous rape and torture case. Within weeks of the ceramic shop murders, Illinois State Police questioned Johnson at his parents' house about the family's pickup truck and his whereabouts during the summer's crime wave. Johnson was ultimately arrested in March 1984.
During the trial, Assistant Will County State's Attorney Steven White referred to Johnson as "an animal" before the jury, stating "What you have here is five people in that ceramics shop. Four of those people were butchered by an animal, and that animal is sitting in this courtroom today." Johnson was initially sentenced to death by lethal injection, but his sentence was later commuted to life in prison after Illinois Governor George Ryan abolished the death penalty. The ceramic shop murders were the final act in Johnson's killing spree, which included multiple other murders throughout the summer of 1983. Johnson, who lived in the Forest Park area of Joliet with his mother and stepfather, turned 68 in May 2018 and remains incarcerated.
