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Ben Gray / AJC

Marsinah Johnson, 13, was tortured and shot to death in 1993, her body found along Atlanta railroad tracks. The leader in the killing, Ahmond Dunnigan, was eligible for execution but twice managed to escape the death penalty.

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DAY TWO

A death case derailed

Gang leader Ahmond Dunnigan directed two of the most horrendous murders imaginable, yet managed to avoid the death penalty — twice.

By HEATHER VOGELL and BILL RANKIN

Marsinah Johnson set a goal for September 1993 in her day planner, tracing it in bubbly letters: Celebrate my birthday well.

She never had the chance. Johnson's turbulent life would end on a forlorn stretch of Atlanta railroad tracks four months before she could turn 14.

She died at the command of Ahmond Dunnigan, a baby-faced gang leader who presided over the gruesome torture-murders of Johnson and another teenage girl that year.

Dunnigan called his gang "Doom."

The crimes made a homicide detective cry on the witness stand. They qualified for Georgia's death penalty nine ways.

But a cascade of setbacks in Dunnigan's prosecution helped him escape execution not once, but twice.

If the death penalty was meant for the worst of the worst killers, how did it fail to snare Dunnigan?

The odds were in his favor: Even when confronted with some of Georgia's most notorious killings, DeKalb and Fulton prosecutors were among the least likely to secure a death sentence, a Journal-Constitution investigation found.

DeKalb sent no killer to death row from 1995 through 2004, and Fulton sent just two. The counties were home to a quarter of all death-eligible crimes in the state over the decade.

(ENLARGE)

Ahmond Dunnigan

Ben Gray/AJC

(ENLARGE)

A court document from a box of evidence from the murder case of Ahmond Dunnigan, who avoided the death penalty for leading the torture-murders of two girls.

Stunning crimes

When Johnson didn't come home on the bus one spring afternoon, her mother feared she'd run away again. She had.

Johnson was big for her age and hung around older kids. She wanted desperately to fit in. She went by "Hellraiser," joined a gang and got arrested for breaking into cars and houses.

The night of May 7, Johnson was visiting an apartment near the Decatur square when Dunnigan and his friends arrived.

He was there to punish Johnson. He believed, prosecutors later said, that she'd either tried to leave the gang or turned other members in to police.

Dunnigan and others beat her until she bled and burned her thighs with a red-hot knife and coat hanger.

At one point, he said he'd let her live if she gave him her soul. She agreed. He told her to blow into a peanut-butter jar and replaced the cap. "Now I own you and your soul," he said.

They blindfolded her and drove her to train tracks, forcing her to perform oral sex on the way. She begged to go home to her mother.

Dunnigan handed a gun to fellow gang member Samuel Parham. After Parham shot her, co-defendants said, Dunnigan asked whether she was dead. The two returned to the tracks. Another shot rang out.

A train hit her body, dragging it 300 feet.

Three months later, a suspect led police to a kudzu patch in south Fulton County and the body of another young girl who had done the gang wrong.

Nikki Waller, 15, was a friend of Johnson's and a runaway, too. She had been accused of taking a gang member's clothes.

At least nine people tortured Waller over three days. She was beaten and forced to perform oral sex. Dunnigan made her drink a mixture of salt and bleach, shocked her with a car battery, choked her with an electric cord until it broke, set her on fire and stabbed her.

She begged them to kill her and, in a final act, they drowned her in a cooler filled with water. Dunnigan held her head, four co-defendants said later.

"You're dead," he declared. "Tell God that Doom sent you."

Thirteen participants told police that Dunnigan, a stocky security guard, was their leader. Only he was implicated in both deaths.

That summer, Dunnigan was also arrested for raping a woman in a vacant apartment. He said it was his "hurricane season," when he did whatever he pleased to people. He said he knew a thousand ways to torture someone without killing them.

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By bhqv rndtiam

Nov 18, 2008 4:12 AM | Link to this

qiapedtkx lvtozpq tkwrj oiwxjzpq fgepk lfnsui tpzjqydh

By bhqv rndtiam

Nov 18, 2008 4:12 AM | Link to this

qiapedtkx lvtozpq tkwrj oiwxjzpq fgepk lfnsui tpzjqydh

By bhqv rndtiam

Nov 18, 2008 4:11 AM | Link to this

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By bhqv rndtiam

Nov 18, 2008 4:10 AM | Link to this

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By fee

May 4, 2008 10:22 AM | Link to this

I didn't know anyone from the dooms gang until I visited a friend in prison many years ago. They had a young girl there by the name kareema hanifa she was 14 or 15 at the time of the crime but was of age when she I visited my friend. She had left the juvi system and entered in adult prison. She received 2 life sentencing gor kidnapping the lil girl and murder. That gang ruined many lives. Young lives. She looked like a normal young lady. But my friend was friends with her and she told my friend **** it I got 2 life sentences what else could they do to me. I was like nothing they have already done it. She
died n 3 days you have the rest of your life to slowly die. Die n slowly. This was 15 years ago and its still fresh in our hearts. May God bless all the Devils Rejects

By fee

May 4, 2008 10:22 AM | Link to this

I didn't know anyone from the dooms gang until I visited a friend in prison many years ago. They had a young girl there by the name kareema hanifa she was 14 or 15 at the time of the crime but was of age when she I visited my friend. She had left the juvi system and entered in adult prison. She received 2 life sentencing gor kidnapping the lil girl and murder. That gang ruined many lives. Young lives. She looked like a normal young lady. But my friend was friends with her and she told my friend **** it I got 2 life sentences what else could they do to me. I was like nothing they have already done it. She died n 3 days you have the rest of your life to slowly die. Die n slowly. This was 15 years ago and its still fresh in our hearts. May God bless all the Devils Rejects

By Truth

May 4, 2008 7:24 AM | Link to this

It's amazing 15 years later and we're still talking about this it is truly sad and horrific what happened to these young ladies and I use the term lightly. I knew everyone of the people involved in both cases as well as both the girls they have even slept on my couch when they ran away from home le't stop for a minute and ask ourselves what was so wrong at home. One had a crack head for mother or so she claimed that sold her from time to time for crack, the other mother wanted to be free and gave her to another to raise or so she says, don't get me wrong i don't make light of what happened or nor do i feel that it should have happened i'm just possing questions. I have transcripts from both cases and i pose the question how does 1 person with no weapon at all get a collective of 15 or so people in both cases to do what he says without threatening them, no DNA no form of forensics linked Dunnigan to any wrong doing it was the people who he thought actually liked him. Don't get it twisted for the smart *** that reads this and want to blame crank on my statement you are so wrong i was around then and had and still do have a mind of my own i was a leader not a follower and secure in my skin.

By NO NAME

Apr 21, 2008 7:15 PM | Link to this

The dumb *** bastard should never be set free he needs to roit behind bars better yet torcher him the way he did those poor young girls I say make him drink bleach. The family of the poor young girls are still suffering he needs the CHAIR!!!!!!! Give him the CHAIR!!!!!!!!!!

By Someone that knows

Apr 6, 2008 10:11 PM | Link to this

What about the fact that the dumb broad that married him really thinks he's innocent. Is it me or is she crazy. I sence crack is the blame.

By Quintavius Dunnigan

Feb 5, 2008 6:11 PM | Link to this

I am Quintavius Dunnigan (Ahmond Dunnigan oldest child) i know that it was wrong what my father did but you have to think about how he has changed over the year and how much that has ate him up inside

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