Man tried three times in Phylicia Barnes killing charged with rape in Baltimore County
Michael Maurice Johnson, previously accused of killing a 16-year-old girl in 2010, is now facing charges of rape in Baltimore County.
Baltimore County Police arrested Johnson, 40, of York, Pennsylvania, on charges of first and second-degree rape and first and second-degree assault.
Johnson appeared for a Tuesday hearing in Baltimore County District Court remotely from the detention center, standing on a blue square in front of a camera to face Judge Marsha L. Russell, who ordered for him to remain held without bail.
The public defender representing Johnson, Alisa Fornwald, said her client denied the allegations.
Phylicia Barnes, an honors student from Monroe, North Carolina, was visiting her older sister, Johnson’s ex-girlfriend, when she disappeared in 2010. After a monthslong search for Barnes’ body ended with the discovery of her body in the Susquehanna River in April 2011, police arrested Johnson in 2012 and a Baltimore jury convicted him of murder a year later.
That 2013 verdict was overturned, and a different judge threw out a 2015 attempt to retry him, saying prosecutors hadn’t proved their case. Following a third trial, Baltimore Judge Circuit Judge Charles J. Peters acquitted Johnson in 2018, finding the state’s circumstantial evidence against him was insufficient and that prosecutors had failed to establish a motive. No physical evidence was introduced in the case.
A key piece of evidence was testimony from a neighbor who saw Johnson dragging a storage bin that prosecutors said contained Barnes’ body. His lawyers countered that Johnson had been moving his belongings out of the apartment of Deena Barnes, Phylicia’s older half-sister, as the two broke up.
Prosecutors argued that 1,200 text messages Johnson sent to Barnes over a period of six months showed that he was obsessed with her. They said Johnson, then 26, strangled or suffocated Barnes on Dec. 28, 2010, a day he had called out of work. Johnson texted Deena “Lil sis is up and active” on the day her younger sister went missing.
After Barnes body was found, Johnson mused to family members that investigators might find DNA under her fingernails, according to recordings obtained from a Maryland State Police wiretap. He said the two had wrestled before she disappeared. Johnson also talked about fleeing the country.
The alleged victim who said Johnson raped and assaulted her in Rosedale days ago told police she began dating him in June 2023. She considered him a “sugar daddy,” according to charging documents, and at one point lived with Johnson in Pennsylvania for three months before her foster care reported her missing.
She told police that Johnson became angry after hearing her talk about a boy on the phone and assaulted her over the course of several hours, strangling her until she passed out and raping her. Johnson used his hands and a fan cord to strangle her, she told police.
“She felt she was going to die if the strangulation did not stop,” police wrote in charging documents.
During her interview with detectives, the woman typed out responses on her phone because her mouth and tongue were “severely swollen,” police wrote in charging documents. The blood vessels in her eyes also were “popped,” police said.
Johnson told officers that the two had smoked marijuana and taken mushrooms togethe. He said the woman hit his face and right arm in an argument that started after she saw him texting a woman. Police noticed scratch marks on Johnson’s forearms and a “knot on his head,” injuries which officers said were “consistent with [the victim] attempting to defend herself from the strangulation.”
Johnson also was arrested Jan. 20 on charges of strangulation, driving under the influence and possessing marijuana for personal use in Pennsylvania. The strangulation charge was “withdrawn,” according to York County District Court records.
His next court date is scheduled for July 26.
Baltimore Sun reporters Alex Mann and Dan Belson contributed to this article.
