Man acquitted in fiancée’s 1998 death accuses cold-case detective of lying in court

After a detective re-opened the 1998 cold-case murder of Andrea Cincotta in Virginia, she accused Cincotta’s former fiancée of hiring someone to kill her, a new federal lawsuit says.

Cincotta was 52 when her body was found inside the apartment she shared with James Christopher Johnson on Aug. 21, 1998 in Arlington, according to police.

In November 2021, Johnson and another man, Bobby Joe Leonard, were arrested and charged in connection with Cincotta’s death, the Arlington County Police Department announced in a news release that month.

About a year ago, Johnson was acquitted in the case after a four-week jury trial began in September 2022, according to the lawsuit filed Oct. 19 on his behalf against the Arlington Police Department detective.

Within one hour of deliberations, jurors returned a not-guilty verdict, the complaint says.

Johnson is now accusing detective Rosa Ortiz of causing Leonard to say Johnson hired him to kill his fiancée, the complaint says. Leonard confessed in 2018 to killing Cincotta by strangling her to death as part of the murder-for-hire plot.

Leonard was ultimately sentenced to life in prison in November 2022 for killing Cincotta after Johnson’s acquittal, the Washington Post reported.

At sentencing, Leonard described himself as a “very evil, sadistic person,” according to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Johnson further accuses Ortiz of lying before the grand jury in 2021 to incriminate him in the cold case and initiate his prosecution.

He is suing her for malicious prosecution and seeks $15 million in damages, the complaint shows.

McClatchy News contacted the Arlington Police Department for comment on Oct. 23 and didn’t receive an immediate response. Information regarding Ortiz’s legal representation wasn’t available as of Oct. 23.

Cincotta’s son, Kevin Cincotta, used to believe Johnson was innocent in his mother’s death until his views changed in 2018, the Washington Post reported.

In response to Johnson’s lawsuit, Kevin Cincotta told the newspaper that “there’s lots of information in the public domain that suggests it was right and proper for the grand jury to indict both Bobby Leonard and Chris Johnson in my mother’s murder.

“I applaud the grand jury for getting it right, and I applaud Detective Ortiz for promptly executing the arrest warrants that flowed as a result of those indictments.”

Cincotta’s death and the investigation

Johnson and Andrea Cincotta became engaged in July 1991, according to the lawsuit.

By August 1998, the month Cincotta was killed, the couple was “building their dream house together in the Chesapeake Bay on a property owned by” Johnson, the complaint says.

According to the complaint, Johnson last saw Cincotta the morning of Aug. 21, 1998 before he went to work.

Upon Johnson’s return home, Cincotta appeared to be missing from their apartment and her car was gone, the complaint says.

Johnson went to sleep that evening and after 1 a.m., he awoke and discovered Cincotta’s body inside the closet of their bedroom, according to the complaint, which says he then called 911 around 1:24 a.m.

Arlington County police officers interrogated Johnson for the next three days — spanning 28 hours in total — and “attempted to build a case that (he) had murdered Ms. Cincotta,” the complaint says.

Johnson accuses officers of lying to him during the interrogation and pressuring him into describing a “‘vision’ he had where he might have hit” Cincotta, resulting in her hitting her head, and that he “‘must have’ put Ms. Cincotta in the closet and shut the door” afterward, according to the complaint.

Two experts hired by the police department to evaluate Johnson’s “vision” concluded in 1998 and in 2022 that this “was a coerced-internalized false confession,” the complaint says.

According to the complaint, the “vision” was inconsistent with Cincotta’s cause of death: strangulation.

Her other injuries included an abrasion on her forehead, contusions on her body, pressure marks on her chest and more, the complaint notes.

The ‘computer guy’

During the initial investigation, Johnson and Kevin Cincotta told police about a “‘computer guy” — Leonard — who was “a stranger Ms. Cincotta had recently invited into the home” to give him a computer, the complaint says.

However, the case ultimately went cold and neither Johnson or Leonard were charged at the time, according to the complaint.

In an unrelated case, a judge sentenced Leonard in 2000 to life in prison in connection with the abduction, rape, and attempted murder of a 13-year-old girl in Virginia, according to a summary of the criminal case online.

The cold-case investigation and prosecution of Johnson

Cincotta’s cold case was revisited in 2013 by Ortiz, the complaint says.

According to the complaint, in 2018, Ortiz directed Kevin Cincotta to wear a recording device and meet with Johnson at a restaurant, where he would try to get him to “admit” he killed his mother, according to the complaint.

Ortiz is accused of meeting with Leonard in prison that year when he confessed to killing Cincotta and said he was offered $5,000 to do so from a man he didn’t identify, the complaint says.

During the meeting, Ortiz is accused of telling Leonard that defendants in a separate case were able to “avoid capital charges in a ‘murder for hire’ situation’” — resulting in Leonard coming up with a “fantastically implausible” story “about being hired to kill” Cincotta, the complaint says.

Ahead of Johnson’s trial, Ortiz is accused of presenting “false and misleading testimony” in an attempt to incriminate Johnson before a grand jury in October 2021, resulting in Johnson’s indictment, according to the complaint.

After Johnson’s acquittal, the jury foreman, Chen Ling, told the Washington Post the jury was unable to “get beyond a reasonable doubt,” as the prosecution mainly relied on Leonard’s testimony.

“There were too many other possibilities,” Ling said, according to the newspaper.

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