Funeral home owner gets two years, $10,000 fine

A Tarrant County jury Thursday sentenced former funeral home owner Dondre Johnson to two years in state jail and a $10,000 fine.

Jurors had taken less than a hour Wednesday to convict Johnson, 41, of two counts of felony theft, $1,500 to $20,000. Identical sentences that will run concurrently on each theft count were assessed by the jury.

Johnson of Arlington will likely have to serve most of his state jail sentence, as sentence reductions are rarely granted to those sentenced to state jail, a court official said. It took about 90 minutes for the jury to reach a decision on the length of his sentence. Johnson had also been eligible for probation.

“We continue to pray for the families and for my family,” said Johnson’s identical twin brother, Derrick Johnson. “I want to apologize to the families on behalf of my brother, who chose not to testify on his own behalf. This is not the end of the twins. There will be glory after this.”

Johnson and his wife, Rachel Hardy-Johnson, 35, are accused of accepting payments to cremate and bury several bodies but failing to deliver those services. During trial, family members testified that Johnson gave them the wrong ashes after promising to cremate their loved ones.

After a search of the Johnson Family Mortuary in July last year, authorities recovered the decaying bodies of the relatives of the family members who testified, weeks after they had received boxes of ashes that Johnson identified as the remains.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson is in federal prison on unrelated food stamps charges.

Family members of Felicia Braxton, daughter of Aundrea Jones, stood outside the courtroom and pleaded with people who might have received ashes from the Johnsons to be on the lookout for her mother’s ashes which have yet to be located.

“So we can move on as well,” Braxton said.

Aundrea Jones died in February when she was 71. The number associated with her mother’s remains is 4065, Braxton said.

“On Friday, February 8, when you came to our house and retrieved our mother, we asked you to take good care of her and you promised that you would,” Braxton said from the witness stand as she delivered a victim’s impact statement to Johnson. “You tore our family apart, but day by day we have tried to keep it together.”

“You hurt us so bad but I want you to know that we forgive you,” Braxton said from the witness stand. “We just want to know where our mother’s remains are.”

Crematorium workers testified during the trial that cremations typically cost around $200 for adults but bereaved relatives testified that Johnson Family Mortuary representatives charged them between $1,000 and $1,500.

One crematorium employee testified on Thursday that after opening the body bag of a deceased woman from Johnson Family Mortuary, they found an infant’s casket concealed between her legs.

Christopher Ramsey, employed by Texas Mortician Services, testified that the woman’s body had been stored in their cooler for about eight months. The baby was “pretty much decomposed,” Ramsey said.

Sid Mody, Tarrant County prosecutor, mentioned the incident in his closing arguments on Thursday, characterizing the behavior as greed-driven. Witnesses earlier had testified that cremating small children typically cost $65-$85. Mody urged the jury to sentence Johnson to two years in state jail.

Alexander Kim, Johnson’s defense attorney, who said this was a tragic case for everyone involved, argued for probation for his client. Probation would be the best way to ensure that he will never be involved with the movement of bodies or another funeral, Kim said.

Johnson’s 18-year-old daughter testified Thursday that her father had six children, three of whom were living with him in his home.

“As many lives as Dondre has damaged, he’s got four minor children,” Kim said. “If you sentence him to state jail, that’s it. But if you sentence him to probation you have given him the opportunity to make things right. He will be under supervision of this judge to make sure he’s doing things right. If you sentence him to state jail, he does his time and then he is released.”

During his closing arguments in the guilt phase of the theft trial, Mody told the jury that the state was lucky to be able to bring the case against Johnson before a jury.

Had Jim Labenz, who had recently acquired the building that housed the Johnson Family Mortuary, not come around to collect rent and smelled the foul odor of decaying bodies, authorities may have never been alerted to the situation, Mody said.

Johnson, who was arrested on a Dallas County warrant at a pre-trial hearing earlier this month, also faces a charge of failure to pay child support and is awaiting trial on seven misdemeanor charges of abuse of a corpse.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson, began serving a 21-month federal prison sentence for food stamp benefit fraud in August. She was also also ordered to pay $76,494 in restitution in that case, which is unrelated to charges stemming from her operation of the Johnson Family Mortuary.

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 11:14 AM with the headline "Funeral home owner gets two years, $10,000 fine."