MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis and Shelby County CrimeStoppers announced a $30,000 reward in a nearly half-century-old cold case murder of a Memphis teenager.
CrimeStoppers said Memphis Police Department investigators are now looking into the possibility that 19-year-old Gloria P. Johnson was the victim of a serial killer.
Firefighters putting out a brush fire near Y&MV Road and Weaver Street in southwest Memphis on October 16, 1974, found Johnson’s body. Police said she had been reported missing 10 days earlier.
Investigators said she was stabbed in the face and the chest, and they believe that happened in another location and her body was dumped in the field near YMV and Fields Roads and Hickey Street, an area still nearly abandoned as it was in 1974. They said the killer used an accelerant to start the fire.
Investigators said the bodies of three other young women were found in the same general areas from late 1974 to early 1975, each woman killed somewhere else and their bodies were dumped.
- Julia Ann Perry-Gilliland, 25, was found December 4, 1974. The medical examiner couldn’t determine how she died.
- Unis Maria Houston, 26, was found in a field near the dead end of Honduras Street January 5, 1975. She died of a gunshot wound.
- Ludionia Collins’ body was lying in a drainage ditch at Calvin and Weaver March 14, 1975. She had been stabbed in the heart.
None of the cases has ever been ever solved.
CrimeStoppers said the Johnson family has put up a reward of $28,000, which is in addition to the $2,000 available in murder cases from CrimeStoppers. It is the biggest award currently available.
Detectives believe people who knew Gloria Johnson, and perhaps the others, are still alive today and may have vital information. They ask anyone with information to call CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH, or the Cold Case Bureau at 901-636-3300.
Read more about the Gloria Johnson case and other cold case homicides, assaults and rapes at http://www.memphiscoldcases.org/.
