What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent

Jennifer Toth tells the ghastly story of Johnnie Jordan, a 14-year-old boy from "Toledo's ghetto" who had worked his way through 19 foster homes before finding himself placed with Charles and Jeannette Johnson, an elderly couple who agreed to take him in. For reasons that remain obscure, Jordan murdered Mrs. Johnson. Toth presents him as an example of "an apparently new phenomenon of young, rage-filled killers taking lives with motiveless passion or no remorse." They've struck all over the country--Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado. What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is exhaustively researched and includes detailed interviews with people who touched Jordan's life--family, psychologists, lawyers--plus Jordan himself, from behind bars. Jordan may be a monster, but Toth identifies plenty of other villains, such as the social-service agencies responsible for him that still refuse to accept any blame for what happened. When society fails vulnerable children such as Jordan, it allows them to become "superpredators," writes Toth. "There is never justification for murder. But there are reasons why children kill and why, if we do not heed their cries of pain and intervene decisively to help them, we will see countless more children who murder," she concludes. This is a troubling book, but one that we ignore at our peril. --John Miller