On the warm summer evening of July 5, 1980, in Nashville, Tennessee, 12-year-old Robert “Bobby” Bell III was helping his father at the family’s convenience store, Bob Bell's Market on 12th Avenue South. It was nearly closing time when a man who lived in the neighborhood and had shopped at the store before, Cecil C. Johnson Jr., walked in armed with a gun. The moments that followed would shatter the Bell family and leave a permanent scar on the community.
Bobby, a young Male, was the only child of the market's owner, and his life was cut tragically short in an act of senseless violence.
Johnson, then 23 years old, herded Bobby, his father Bob Bell Sr., and an acquaintance, Louis Smith, behind the counter at gunpoint. When a mother and her two children entered the store, Johnson forced his captives to act naturally until they left. Once the store was empty of customers again, Johnson ordered Bobby to fill a bag with money from the cash register. After getting about $200, Johnson began shooting. His first victim was Bobby. As Louis Smith tried to shield the boy, he was shot twice. Johnson then aimed at Bob Bell Sr.’s head, but the father’s raised hand deflected the bullet, which struck his wrist, saving his life but leaving him to witness the murder of his son.
As Johnson fled the market, his rampage continued. He shot and killed two more men who were sitting in a Supreme Taxi parked outside: the driver, 41-year-old James Moore, and his passenger, 35-year-old Charles House. House had entered the market moments before the shooting and had been threatened by Johnson to leave. A retired homicide detective, Jim Sledge, later remarked on the killer's cold-blooded intent: “He had six shots and he accounted for them all. He didn't want to leave any witnesses.” The triple murder was part of a violent weekend in Nashville that saw a total of six killings.
The investigation moved quickly, thanks in large part to crucial information provided by Bob Bell Sr. Johnson, a kitchen worker at Vanderbilt Hospital, was identified as the suspect. In a painful turn of events, Johnson's own father turned him in to the police two days after the murders. Johnson was arrested on July 6, 1980. During the trial six months later, Bob Bell Sr. and Louis Smith both identified Johnson as the man who had robbed them and killed Bobby. A friend of Johnson's also testified that he had dropped Johnson off at the store and that Johnson later said he "did not mean to shoot that boy."
On January 20, 1981, Cecil C. Johnson Jr. was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder, and armed robbery. The jury recommended a death sentence, and the judge also imposed four consecutive life sentences. Johnson became the first person sentenced to death under Tennessee's newly reinstated capital punishment laws. His violent streak did not end with his incarceration. In 1985, while on death row, Johnson beat fellow inmate and convicted killer Laron Williams to death in a dispute over a prison telephone. For this, Johnson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
For nearly three decades, Johnson remained on death row, filing numerous appeals that were all ultimately denied. The profound loss haunted Bob Bell Sr. for the rest of his life. Detective Sledge, who spoke with him just months before the execution, said, “It was very vicious in the fact that a 12-year-old boy was killed, and Bob Sr. watched his only child executed in front of him. He had no grandchildren and he's still very bitter.”
On December 2, 2009, Cecil C. Johnson Jr., aged 53, was executed by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Bob Bell Sr. attended the execution as a witness, seeking a final, somber measure of justice for his son, Bobby. The victims' families declined to make a public statement. Johnson refused a last meal and, before he died, mouthed "I love you" to his own family members who were present. His execution closed the final chapter on a crime that had taken three lives and inflicted a lifetime of pain on a father who had to watch his only child die.
