On July 10, 2008, Hank Johnson was found by his girlfriend on the floor of his hotel room. He was severely beaten and covered in his own blood. The beating with baseball bats left three cracks in his skull and a fatally cracked nose. He never regained consciousness. Hank died less than two weeks later.
Police found that two valuable guitars were missing from Johnson’s room. Those guitars were two black electric guitars: one BC Rich and one Metal Man bass guitar. Hank’s mother kept digging and after begging and pleading with “police for nearly two years they finally agreed to bring in medical examiners and exhume her son’s body. In March of 2010, scrapings of possible DNA evidence from Hank Johnson’s fingernails were sent to the Texas Crime Lab. Employees at the crime lab declined to speak with News 3 about Hank’s case.
According to his mother, back in May, the evidence was entered into CODIS, a computer software program that operates local and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders.”
Update: In 2013, Trae Deandre Thompson was indicted for the 2008 murder of Hank Johnson. Thompson’s defense attorneys said their client agreed to a plea. By pleading no contest, Thompson was neither admitting nor denying he killed Johnson. In 2014, he plead no contest to criminally negligent homicide and was sentenced to 15 months in jail. The same jury awarded Johnson’s family $8.6 million in damages.