On April 30, 1988, the life of 46-year-old John L. Woods was brought to a violent end in his Decatur, Illinois, apartment. He was found brutally stabbed to death, with two of the numerous wounds piercing his heart and lungs. The scene was initially made to look like a burglary, a deliberate deception to mislead investigators. In a chilling twist, the police received an anonymous phone call reporting the "bloody murder," a call later determined to have been made by the killer himself, Melvin Johnson. Johnson, who was known to be Woods's partner, quickly became a person of interest. He lacked a credible alibi, was found to have stolen items from the apartment, and even possessed a knife that was consistent with the murder weapon. Despite these strong suspicions, authorities at the time felt they lacked sufficient evidence to secure a conviction, and Johnson was not arrested for the crime.
As the initial investigation unfolded, police explored other avenues in their search for answers. They sought the public's help in identifying two other individuals seen with Woods shortly before his death. One was described as a young white male who was in Woods's company at a local Hardee's restaurant, and the other was a young black male seen jogging with him near a YMCA. However, these leads never materialized into anything substantial, and both individuals remained unidentified. With no arrests and all leads exhausted, the case surrounding the murder of John Woods grew cold. For years, there were no new developments, and the question of who was responsible for his death remained unanswered, leaving a lingering sense of unresolved justice within the community.
The shocking truth would not be revealed for more than two decades, and it would come from beyond the grave. Melvin Johnson, who had a lengthy criminal history including sexual abuse and burglary, died in a Texas prison in October 2003 from stomach cancer and AIDS while serving time on unrelated charges. Following his death, his DNA was collected and entered into the national CODIS database. In September 2009, technology provided the breakthrough that the initial investigation could not. Johnson's DNA was definitively matched to evidence collected from the scene of John Woods's murder. This posthumous identification finally confirmed that Woods was killed by his own partner, the man who had financially and emotionally supported him through previous prison sentences. The DNA evidence also connected Johnson to a string of other horrific crimes in Decatur, including the 1984 Halloween murders of two young cousins and the 1985 murder of a young woman, officially classifying him as a serial killer and closing the long-unsolved case of John Woods's death.
