In the late hours of a November night in 1997, the quiet town of Jasper, Alabama, became the backdrop for a grim discovery. On November 30, 31-year-old Randy McCullar was found deceased, his body lying beside his car in a church parking lot. An investigation into his death would unravel a complex web of deceit, bigamy, and a desperate plot to silence a witness.
At the center of this tangled story was Shonda Johnson, Randy McCullar's wife.
Their domestic life was far from ordinary, as Johnson was simultaneously married to two other men, William McIntyre and Timothy Richards. This precarious situation began to crumble when McCullar discovered his wife's multiple marriages and initiated bigamy charges against her. He was also seeking custody of their young son, a move that authorities believe pushed Johnson to take drastic measures.
Fearing the legal repercussions and the potential loss of her child, Shonda Johnson conspired with one of her other husbands, Timothy Richards, to murder McCullar. On the night of November 29, the pair followed McCullar from a local lounge. They waited for him, and when he pulled into a church parking lot to deal with a slashed tire, they confronted him. Following a brief exchange of words, Johnson handed Richards a hunting rifle and urged him to shoot McCullar, which he did, fatally wounding him in the back of the head. Afterward, they disposed of the murder weapon by throwing it off a bridge into a river.
The investigation quickly led to Johnson and Richards. In a bid to avoid the death penalty, Timothy Richards cooperated with law enforcement and testified against his wife. He pleaded guilty to murder and in February 2000, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Shonda Johnson was convicted of capital murder in October 1999 and subsequently sentenced to death. The motive for the murder was determined to be Johnson's desire to prevent McCullar from testifying against her in the bigamy case. As of the latest reports, Shonda Johnson remains on death row, while Timothy Richards is serving his life sentence.
