Fort Worth funeral home owner found guilty of theft

A Tarrant County jury took less than an hour on Wednesday to find an Arlington man guilty of theft for not delivering the funeral home services that he promised.

Dondre Johnson, 41, helped his wife, Rachel Hardy-Johnson, run the Johnson Family Mortuary until July 15, 2014, when police and officials with the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office were alerted that something was amiss at the funeral home.

A investigation resulted in the removal of eight bodies, in various stages of decomposition, from the funeral home.

Johnson was convicted on two counts of felony theft of $1,500 to $20,000 and faces a maximum of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

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

The trial’s punishment phase began Wednesday afternoon. But less than an hour after the jury returned, Johnson’s attorney, Alexander Kim, reported a family medical emergency, which required his attention, and the jury was sent home and instructed to return Thursday.

Johnson, who was arrested on a Dallas County warrant at a pre-trial hearing earlier in September, also faces a charge of failure to pay child support.

During closing arguments, Kim told the jury that the state did not prove its case and that his client had no power to change the course of events. Kim said Johnson’s wife had control of all the money needed to fulfill the promises that were made to families.

“You hold each employee accountable for the activity of its owner, it’s not fair,” Kim said. “Rachel ran the show. She’s the one who signs the lease. She’s the one who pays the bills. It stops with her. It’s a family run business. But she’s the boss.

“I run the show but she takes care of the money. And that’s what he told the detective. I just work here,” Kim said of his client’s role.

Tarrant County prosecutor Sid Mody said that Johnson was guilty of multiple counts of theft and that he lied to numerous victims by giving them the wrong sets of ashes.

“Who is putting that bucket under those bodies collecting human fluids?” Mody asked. “Is it Rachel Johnson? No, It’s Dondre Johnson.”

“Mr. Johnson was playing a Ponzi scheme with human flesh,” Mody said.

As long as the body’s were being buried the services were being rendered, Mody said. But when the bodies were being cremated, relatives had to take Johnson’s word that the bodies had been cremated and the correct ashes were being delivered, Mody said.

“The way you get caught in a Ponzi scheme is that someone asks for their money back,” Mody said. “He [Johnson] got caught when Mr. [Jim] Labenz came to the funeral home and smelled those bodies.”

In testimony on Tuesday, a former employee of the Johnson Family Mortuary said Hardy-Johnson never shared ownership duties with anyone, including Dondre Johnson and that no one stood up to her. She did the payroll, decided when people came to work, and issued reprimands when mistakes were made, said Michael Jefferson, who worked at the mortuary in 2013.

“She’d yell at me,” Jefferson said.

Kim presented evidence that Hardy-Johnson was paying for mortuary and personal expenses from the bank account she used for her tax preparation business, Mighty Dollar Tax Services. Kim also presented documents from insurers and the Internal Revenue Service that named Hardy-Johnson as the sole owner of Johnson Family Mortuary.

And then Kim asked Fort Worth police Detective Matthew Barron whether he believed a theft had occurred in this case.

“What’s the difference between not performing a job and it being a civil issue and not performing a job and it being a criminal issue?” Kim asked.

Barron answered that people were deceived and led to believe that they were getting services.

“They felt like they had paid for something to happen with their loved ones and they were sitting in a garage rotting away,” Barron said.

Johnson also faces seven misdemeanor charges of abuse of a corpse. The punishment phase of Johnson’s theft trial is expected to continue Thursday in state District Judge Elizabeth Beach’s court, with Harry E. White, Tarrant County prosecutor, presenting the state’s evidence.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Fort Worth funeral home owner found guilty of theft."