A Maryland woman has been sentenced to 50 years in prison after the badly decaying bodies of her young niece and nephew were found in the trunk of her car.
In 2024, Nicole M. Johnson, 36, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree child abuse involving the deaths of the children, who were under 13 years old.
On February 10, 2025, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Nancy Purpura handed down the lengthy sentence for her heinous crimes.
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| Nicole Michelle Johnson |
According to PEOPLE, Nicole Johnson's crime came to light on July 28, 2021, during a routine traffic stop in Baltimore.
Officers pulled Johnson over because her car had an unregistered, uninsured license plate and a fake temporary West Virginia tag.
While they were getting ready to tow the car, the officers told her to take her belongings out.
She then opened the trunk, which was full of boxes, and tried to start unloading.
The officers immediately asked her about the smell, but she claimed it was just dirty clothes that had been packed for a while.
Because of how bad the odor was, they insisted on seeing the dirty clothes.
That’s when Johnson pulled out a maggot-filled plastic bin and a garbage bag from the trunk.
Inside the bags, the officers found the bodies of Johnson’s niece, 7-year-old Joshlyn Johnson and her 5-year-old brother, Larry O’Neil III.
She tried to run after the shocking discovery, but the officers quickly chased her down and arrested her on the spot.
"Tonight, the entire Baltimore County Police Department grieves with the community over the unspeakable deaths of two innocent children," said Baltimore County Police Chief Melissa Hyatt.
"The investigation into this atrocious crime will not stop until those responsible are brought to justice," he added.
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| Larry O’Neil and Joshlyn Johnson |
During questioning, Nicole Johnson confessed to hitting her niece several times, which caused the little girl to fall, hit her head, and die in May 2020.
After joshlyn passed, Nicole kept her body in the trunk of her car and drove around with it for more than a year before it was discovered.
She also claimed that one year after her neice died, her nephew Larry fell asleep in the car and never woke up.
But instead of getting help, she put his body in a plastic box next to his sister’s in the trunk, and kept living like nothing happened, until police found the bodies in July, 2021
The children’s mother, Dachelle Johnson, had left them in her sister’s care back in 2019, thinking it would only be temporary while she handled some personal issues.
According to PEOPLE, Dachelle shared her heartbreak in a now-deleted GoFundMe post, saying:
"It was supposed to just be a family helping family situation. I trusted her... I'll never get to see my kids because of a mistake I made in trusting my sister. I wish I could take it back, but I can't."
"This is my blood sister... The mistake I made in trusting will always fall on me, but I never could imagine this outcome," the grieving mother added.
Autopsies later revealed that both children were severely malnourished—Joshlyn weighed only 18 pounds at death, and Larry weighed just 21 pounds.
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