Time Magazine 1979

Monday, Jan. 15, 1979

It Was Pennsylvania Gothic

Robbery, murder, lust and revenge in a bucolic setting

West of Philadelphia, Chester County is a rural paradise of well-tended farms, fox hunters galloping to hounds, and Amish families traveling by carriage to hamlets dating from colonial times. It is horse country—Thoroughbreds, trotters and steeplechasers—a quiet haven for the landed gentry. But in the back country along the Maryland and Delaware borders, Chester County is also home to a band of outlaws that has preyed for years on affluent neighbors.

The gang's members have pulled off hundreds of robberies, stealing cash from store safes, jewelry, antiques and cars from country estates, and tractors from farmers. Federal and state investigators say they can directly tie the gang to more than $1 million in stolen loot but believe the total take is much higher.

The leader of the gang is politely spoken but hard-eyed Bruce Johnston, 39, and his top lieutenants are his brothers David, 30, and Norman, 28. The three have all served time in jail and in 1976 were convicted of stealing tractors and trucks in Lancaster County. But generally the Johnstons and their dozen or so confederates have escaped convictions, despite dozens of arrests, several indictments and trials. One reason is sloppy police work: most cases against them collapsed because of technical errors or tainted evidence. Another is the closemouthed ways of the people in southern Chester County, who mistrust outsiders, especially police. Says Chester County District Attorney William Lamb: "When they have a problem, they prefer to settle it themselves."

Neighbors call Bruce, David and Norman the "bad Johnston brothers" to differentiate them from three other brothers known as the "good Johnstons." Says a Chadds Ford garage owner of the bad Johnstons: "We all know them—good-lookin' boys, but they always had them $100 bills and them fancy cars even though they never was too healthy for work." Says a family friend: "Bruce is a moral man who doesn't hold with drinking and swearing. His word is his bond. But he won't be doublecrossed."

Early last month a Johnston confederate, Leslie Dale, led the police to the body of an informer, Gary Wayne Crouch, in a shallow grave in dense woods near West Chester. A few weeks later, in the woods near Chadds Ford—a locale made famous by Artist Andrew Wyeth—state police unearthed the bodies of three gang associates: Wayne Sampson, 20, Duane Lincoln, 17, and James Johnston, 18. The three had disappeared in August, along with Sampson's brother James, 24.

James Johnston was Bruce's son, and he vanished soon after rumors began circulating that he, like his brother Bruce Jr., 20, known to the family as "Little Bruce," had turned on his father. The boys had been raised by Grandmother Harriet Steffy and Great-Aunt Sarah Martin. "They didn't start hanging around with their father until a couple of years ago," recalled the grandmother. "I prayed for them, but I guess they just liked having money in their pockets."

Friends say the father soon had second thoughts about Little Bruce's aptitude for the family business and urged him "to look for a 9-to-5 job." The son ignored the advice and ended up last summer in the Chester County prison farm for stealing $2 worth of gas from a farmer. Released on bail, he was promptly sent back to the farm for stealing a pickup truck. Little Bruce was despondent because he had been planning to marry his girlfriend, pretty Robin Miller, 15, who lived on a farm in nearby Oxford. But he resolved to follow the family maxim: "Do your time or don't commit the crime."

In July, Robin visited Little Bruce at the prison farm, along with Bruce Sr. and James Sampson. Afterward, Robin went to a motel with the two men and drank most of a bottle of whisky. She later tearfully told Little Bruce that she did not clearly remember what had happened but she had passed out and awakened in the morning stripped of her clothes. Angry, Little Bruce decided to get even. On Aug. 9, he told a federal grand jury in Philadelphia about the theft ring allegedly headed by his father.

Bruce Sr., whose intelligence system was at least as good as that of the police, got word of Little Bruce's defection and of reports that James might also testify against him. On Aug. 15, James phoned Great-Aunt Sarah to say that his father had told him not to appear before the grand jury. "I'll be gone for a couple of days," he said. That was the last heard from James until his body was found.

Little Bruce, meanwhile, had been released from prison when he threatened to stop providing evidence against his father if authorities kept him from Robin. Bruce Sr. made three trips to Harriet Steffy's house looking for Bruce and Robin. "He told me that he didn't want to hurt them," Mrs. Steffy recounted. "He said he would give $12,000 to Little Bruce if he told the police he had been on dope when he testified and that it wasn't true that his daddy led that gang. But I told him that I didn' think Little Bruce was going to change his mind because he knew that his daddy had doings with Robin."

At 12:30 a.m., Aug. 30, gunmen ambushed Little Bruce and Robin as they sat in a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit in front of her mother's farmhouse. Robin was killed by two shots in the face. Little Bruce was hit by eight bullets in the head and body but somehow survived.

Two weeks later, a helicopter flew in low over a cornfield near Oxford and landed on the courthouse mall. A squad shotgun-toting U.S. marshals and state troopers hustled Bruce Johnston Jr. to the courthouse, where he testified at a preliminary hearing against his father and Leslie Dale. Afterward, the federal marshals took Little Bruce to a secret hideaway for safekeeping.

Bruce Johnston Sr. was arrested in December by police near Reading, Pa., on a charge of stealing an $8 tape cartridge from a store. He is now being held at a federal jail in Philadelphia on federal and state counts of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and theft. Brother David, who turned himself in to authorities, is being held in the Lehigh County jail on state robbery charges. Brother Norman is wanted by the Federal Government for obstruction of justice and by the state for robbery. He is in hiding.

Last week, in a phone interview with TIME, Norman insisted that he and his brothers had stopped stealing a year ago. Said he: "We got out of the business then." Moreover, he said, "the cops know we were miles away the night Robin was killed, and besides, it was James Sampson in that motel room in bed with Robin. She said it was Bruce, too, because the cops promised her they'd let Little Bruce go if he helped them get his father."

Whatever the truth, James Sampson apparently will not be able to shed any light on the Johnstons. Informants have told police that he lies in a grave somewhere in northern Chester County.