A 52-year-old inmate already serving a 50-year prison sentence for kidnapping and rape pleaded guilty Monday to three cold-case murders.
Christopher Jeffre Johnson was sentenced to life without parole for the killings of Sean and Donny Goetcheus and Melissa Ward. He pleaded guilty to three counts of first- degree murder.
Investigators had spent years trying to solve the 1997 slayings of the Goetcheus brothers and the 2004 disappearance and death of Ward.
Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole accepted Johnson's plea and sentenced him to three separate life sentences, each without the possibility of parole.
"A lot of hard work and effort went into [this case] for many, many years, and it is good to see that it's come to a conclusion," Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston said.
Police said 33-year-old Melissa Michelle "Missy" Ward was last seen alive on the evening of Oct. 29, 2004, getting into a pickup truck outside a Bi-Lo grocery store on East 23rd Street. Two months later, her body was discovered on Cash Canyon Road in Lookout Valley, according to a statement from the DA's office.
Johnson was arrested in 2011 and charged with kidnapping and raping two teenage girls. When detectives interviewed him, he admitted killing Ward, saying they had engaged in sex and drug use before he strangled her. He accompanied detectives to the crime scene and pointed out where he said he left Ward's body and clothing seven years before, information only the killer would have known, detectives said.
Johnson was convicted on the rape and kidnapping charges and began serving his sentence in 2014.
The DA's office indicted Johnson for Ward's murder the following year. But when they interviewed him about that case, they also asked him about the Goetcheus slayings. The brothers were found dead inside their Brainerd home on Jan. 9, 1997. Both had been shot multiple times at close range, according to the DA's office.
In conversations with investigators, Johnson admitted killing the brothers and provided details that only the person responsible would have known, detectives said.
Johnson said he went to the brothers' home to obtain a videotape that he said showed illegal activity by a local businessman. But he got into an argument with Sean Goetcheus and shot him, and then realized Donny Goetcheus was also in the house and killed him as well, since he was a witness to his brother's death.
According to the DA's office, Johnson said he wanted to plead guilty to spare his family and his victims' families the pain of enduring a lengthy trial.
Contact staff writer Steve Johnson at 423-757-6673, sjohnson@timesfreepress.com, on Twitter @stevejohnsonTFP, and on Facebook, www.facebook.com/noogahealth.