The mystery of what happened to Mischa Mabeline Kaalohilani Johnson, a pregnant 19-year-old Army spouse who was reported missing by her 28-year-old soldier husband on Aug. 1, has finally been solved.
The Army arrested her husband, Pfc. Dewayne Arthur Johnson, at Schofield Barracks within weeks of him filing the report and charged him with her murder in November. But despite tireless work by investigators, no one could find a body. In a courtroom at Wheeler Army Airfield on Tuesday, Pfc. Dewayne Arthur Johnson confessed to killing her, as part of a plea agreement.
Mischa Johnson was born and raised on Oahu and grew up in Ewa Beach, and the case has been watched closely by the local community. The courtroom was packed as military police redirected dozens of friends, family and supporters to another building at Schofield Barracks where the court proceedings were streamed.
In the courtroom, a row of Mischa Johnson’s family and friends sat in the back as Dewayne Johnson described in gruesome detail how he fatally struck her in the head with a machete on July 12, dismembered her body with a chain saw and disposed of her remains in a dumpster that was bound for an incinerator on base. As he recounted his crimes, occasionally gasps and sobs could be heard from the audience.
He also confessed to impersonating her on social media before reporting her missing and trying to convince Army investigators that she had run away and possibly killed herself, to throw them off his scent.
Under the agreement, he accepts a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and a charge of intentionally killing an unborn child was also reduced to causing the death of an unborn child. But in a military court martial, a plea agreement must be reviewed by a panel or by a single judge.
Johnson requested a single judge forum, presided over by military judge Col. Rebecca Farrell, who questioned him and walked him through each step of the charges. She ultimately accepted the guilty plea Tuesday, and the court martial will continue today with a pre-sentencing preamble. The plea also will go to military appellate court, where it will be reviewed.
Dewayne Johnson has the option of withdrawing his guilty plea any time before a final sentence is announced.
Dewayne Johnson hails from Maryland and enlisted in 2022. He was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks as a cavalry scout in June 2023. He met and married Mischa Johnson on Oahu. At the time he reported her missing, she was six months pregnant with their baby girl.
In his testimony, Dewayne Johnson said that he came home from work on the night of July 12 to their home at the Schofield Barracks and that the two were getting ready for a gathering with her family. He testified that Netflix was on the TV and that as he was scrolling it, a preview of one of the movies featured a “Japanese girl.” He said that angered Mischa Johnson, who suspected Dewayne Johnson of cheating on her with someone “that kind of looked like her.”
He said that the two got into an escalating shouting match. Dewayne Johnson portrayed himself as trying to calm her down and said that she “kept bringing up the past ” and “getting in my face, ” though he also admitted that at no point did he feel threatened or in danger. He said that Mischa Johnson brought up a past miscarriage and told him he had caused it from stress he subjected her to.
The soldier testified that the two ended up in their bedroom, where he says he grabbed a machete. When questioned by Farrell as to why he grabbed the machete he said it was to get Mischa Johnson to “chill out.”
He asserted that he had never hit her in the past and that “she thought I wasn’t going to do nothing with it.” Dewayne Johnson said that when his wife told him that she would see to it that he would “never know my child ” that he “snapped ” and struck her in the left temple with the machete. He testified that she fell to the ground and hit the floor dead.
“I couldn’t believe what I did, ” he said.
He immediately went to work trying to hide what he’d done.
Dewayne Johnson testified that at first he attempted to cut up his wife’s body with the machete but “it was too much of a hassle, it was too hard to do.”
The next day, he bought a chain saw. He described in gruesome detail how he took it home to dismember the dead 19-year-old, sawing off her head, arms and legs and stuffing different pieces into trash bags, which he took to his unit’s dumpster.
“I knew that our dumpster went straight to the incinerator, ” he testified. But he didn’t do it all at once. Rather than take all the bags at once, he said he brought them in small batches between July 13 and 16 to avoid anyone noticing as he hid them among the unit’s garbage as it made its way to be destroyed.
Back at their house, he stocked up on cleaning products to clean up the blood that the murder and bloody dismemberment had left on the house’s floor, walls and bathroom. He said that the process of scrubbing the house lasted from July 12 to July 22.
“Eventually there was going to be a search for her and police would be involved, ” Dewayne Johnson testified. “I did this to deceive the police.”
He also admitted to deleting texts between the two of them so police didn’t see how tumultuous their marriage had been, telling the court that the texts showed his wife was constantly “having issues with me looking at other girls and stuff.”
Dewayne Johnson also immediately began impersonating Mischa Johnson on her phone and social media. He testified that since he and Mischa Johnson were expected on a family gathering the night he killed her, “as soon as she was dead I picked up her phone and texted her family.”
He would continue texting family and friends on her phone, as well as use her social media accounts to keep them seemingly active for several days. He said that “I’d message her friends, keep the conversation going to make it seem like she was still alive.”
Between July 13 and 16, he also began getting ready to stage her disappearance as something other than him having killed her. He testified that “I got rid of things to make it look like she took stuff with her.” He collected some of her favorite clothes items and pawned off some of her bags, and disposed of makeup and other items to get them out of the house.
More than two weeks after killing her, chopping her up and having her body incinerated, he re-uploaded old videos of his wife to his phone to make them appear as new files created in the days after he killed her. He also entered several wrong passwords into her phone to lock it up and make it harder for investigators to access. Then, on Aug. 1, he called 911 and reported Mischa Johnson missing.
The Army quickly put out a notice that she was missing and asked the community for help, offering a $10, 000 reward. Members of Dewayne Johnson’s unit sent out search parties to look for were—which he joined. He testified that he worked hard to portray himself as a distraught and deeply concerned husband desperate to help his fellow soldiers and investigators find his wife, but admitted to the court “none of that was true.”
Still, he said that he knew he was a prime suspect. Many of Mischa Johnson’s relatives and friends were already suspicious of him and though Army investigators didn’t tell him he was a suspect, he was certain they were watching him closely. When asked if he knew the password to his wife’s phone he lied, repeatedly giving them “guesses ” he testified that he knew were wrong.
He also told investigators that Mischa had a history of cutting herself and that she had spoken to him about it, but in court Tuesday he admitted that was “completely untrue.”
“I wanted to lead them on, ” said Dewayne Johnson. “(To ) make them think she hurt herself, killed herself, that I had nothing to do with it.”
Before the end of August, Army investigators, drawn by holes and inconsistencies in his story, detained Dewayne Johnson and told Mischa Johnson’s family they believed she was no longer alive, but still did not have a body to show for it. The family made an emotional plea in late August on the podcast “Always Always Support Local ” to help Army investigators find her remains so they could find closure.
For the charges Dewayne Johnson currently faces—including manslaughter, killing an unborn child, making false statements and obstruction of justice—he faces up to 100 years in prison, forfeiture of his Army payments, a reduction in rank to private and dishonorable discharge. Under the plea agreement, he could face 18 to 23 years in prison.
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