Jurors convict man in slaying of 6-year-old girl

CLAYTON, Mo. -- St. Louis County jurors Monday convicted a drifter of a murder count carrying a possible death sentence in the 2002 bludgeoning of a 6-year-old girl, turning back defense requests that he be found guilty of a lesser murder count.

Jurors later Monday were to hear testimony in the penalty phase of the trial for Johnny Johnson, who admitted he crushed Cassandra "Casey" Williamson's head with bricks and rocks after she resisted his attempts to rape her.

The July 2002 killing happened at the ruins of an old glass factory in the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park after Johnson carried the girl piggyback from a home where both had spent the night, Johnson as an invited guest.

Prosecutors had pressed for a conviction of first-degree murder. Defense attorneys argued that while Johnson admitted having killed the girl, the crime was second-degree murder -- not a capital offense -- because their client's untreated mental illness made him incapable of acting with "cool reflection," something prosecutors had to prove for a first-degree murder conviction.

Casey, her two siblings and her mother were living with her grandfather in Valley Park across the street from where Casey's father -- Ernie Williamson, then estranged from the girl's mother -- rented the attic of a home.

Johnson -- a drifter who spent some of his childhood in that suburb -- spent the night of July 25, 2002, at the home as a guest while Casey, her siblings and parents had a sleepover upstairs. The Williamsons considered Johnson harmless.

The next day, Casey was killed.

In closing statements Monday, prosecutor Bob McCulloch told jurors that Johnson had planned to sexually assault Casey. He killed her so she would not identify him, McCulloch said. Johnson later had the wherewithal to wash the girl's blood from his legs in the nearby Meramec River.

Bevy Beimdiek, one of Johnson's attorneys, countered that "it boils down to this -- Was the act an intentional act? None of us can explain what schizophrenia is. He can't turn off those voices like you turn off a radio or turn off a television."