A Lansing-area man has been missing nearly three months, his family wants answers

DELTA TWP. — Nearly three months after Richard Johnson’s disappearance, his family has more questions than answers, and they say some of the fault for that lies with how authorities have handled the case.

Johnson was last seen about 11 p.m. on May 7 when visiting a friend’s apartment. The friend told police the 63-year-old who has Huntington’s disease left their apartment in the area of 203 Gatewood Drive at Plumtree Apartments to return to his own residence at Delta Square Apartments, about a 12-minute walk away, his son Justin Johnson said in May. He hasn't been seen since.

“Over the last few months, we've had absolutely no leads,” Johnson's daughter Jessica Johnson said. “We've had no sightings. There's been absolutely nothing, which has been the hardest thing.”

In the days following his disappearance, Johnson's children searched in the area of their parents' apartment and then enlisted community members to search a wider area. No sign of their father was found.

“And from day one,” Jessica Johnson said, “our case we feel was mishandled (by police).”

Jessica Johnson said she believes the Eaton County Sheriff’s Office delayed publicizing her father's case and that set the search up for failure. The delay, she said, made it tougher to find Johnson or obtain concrete leads on what may have happened to him.

“Everybody should have been alerted way quicker than what they were,” she said. “I understand there’s so much going on in our city, but that’s our parent.”

Eaton County Sheriff's Capt. Rob Block said in late July that the department has been “doing kind of the same thing that we’ve been doing” on the case, including reaching out to people who may have information on Richard Johnson's whereabouts or actions surrounding the time of his disappearance. Block said the investigation was ongoing.

The sheriff’s office drew public criticism following after its first public acknowledgement of the case on May 15 — eight days after Richard Johnson’s disappearance, and seven days after his wife Kim reported him missing. Multiple users left comments on the department's Facebook post with Johnson's information, expressing anger with the department for not informing the public sooner.

The office’s Facebook post received nearly 900 shares, but the page with 24,000 followers has not posted about Johnson since.

In May, Justin Johnson took issue with the length of time between his father's disappearance and the sheriff's release being posted online.

"I don't understand why they drag their feet on releasing a missing persons report to the public," he said at the time. "If they would've just did that in the first day, the community would have had a head start looking for him."

When asked about the timing of the public notification, Block said the department’s actions fell within its standard procedures.

“We’ve been in constant contact with the family. They understand why it took eight days,” he said.

Block added that the reason for that delay was not something the department was able to talk about publicly.

But Jessica Johnson said she wasn’t sure to what Block was referring.

“There's no reason that we know of (for a delay),” she said, adding that the family believes police too quickly wrote off Richard Johnson’s disappearance as an intentional abandonment or ruled out foul play too soon.

“I feel like they judged the area and just assumed he was just some man that wanted to get away from his wife,” she said.

She also claimed one of the officers assigned to her father’s case made several jokes about his disappearance, including a comment about how husbands may want to get away from their wives for some period of time.

Another officer asked a question about Huntington’s disease — an incurable disorder that causes nerve cells in the brain to progressively break down — that Johnson’s family found insensitive, she said.

Family members, she said, were outraged by the comments because Johnson would have no obvious reason to act in such a way. He has been in a happy relationship with his wife since they were teenagers and had been married for decades before his disappearance.

“My dad wouldn't do that, even in his sick mind,” Jessica Johnson said.

Block did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the family's allegations Thursday. A message was also left with the office’s Delta Township office.

Searches organized by the Johnsons since May 9 have covered nearby urban areas and wooded spaces, Jessica Johnson said.

They family has contacted nearby businesses and owners of area security cameras, none of which have shown Richard Johnson after the time he was last seen at his associate's apartment.

Jessica Johnson and Justin Johnson are also seeking the FBI's involvement. They said they plan to contact the Detroit field office in the coming days.

They are also raising money for a private investigator through a GoFundMe account, which can be found here.

Jessica Johnson said that at this point, the most important thing to her family is closure.

“My hopes would be we would actually have some type of closure and actually find our father — whatever that may be, my dad does not deserve to be out there alone, whether he's being hurt, or somebody has hurt him, or he is out there lost and confused — we don't know what to think,” she said.

Throughout the past three months, Jessica Johnson said, she and her family have received immense support by the community, both in person and on social media. Fliers with Johnson’s photo continue to appear in Facebook groups and public postings as people remain on the lookout for him.

“The support from the community has been everything, because I feel like the only reason my dad's face is still going is because of the community,” she said. “We don't know what else to do. And we really just want to find our dad. I'm dying inside — my dad was my whole heart.”

Jessica Johnson also expressed worry for her mother Kim, saying that the situation isn't fair to her.

Richard Johnson was last seen wearing a camouflage jacket, gray or white shirt, gray pants and a baseball hat. Anyone with information can call the Eaton County Sheriff's Office at 517-543-3512 or 517-323-8480. Jessica and Justin Johnson can also be contacted via their Facebook accounts.

Contact Sheldon Krause at skrause@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @sheldonjkrause.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Delta Township resident Richard Johnson still missing after three months