Anaheim man sentenced to life in 1985 murder
DNA technology helped convict Lynn Dean Johnson, 52, in the long unsolved rape and killing of a 19-year-old restaurant hostess.
A former sheet-metal worker from Anaheim received a sentence of life in prison this morning for the 1985 rape and murder of an Anaheim woman, the Orange County district attorney's office said.
An Orange County jury convicted 52-year-old Lynn Dean Johnson in June of murder with special circumstances in the death of Bridgett Lamon, 19, a restaurant hostess. Prosecutors said Johnson raped her, beat her to death with a hammer and dumped her body in a trash bin in eastern Anaheim.
The case remained unsolved, prosecutors said, until improved DNA technology pointed investigators toward Johnson.
Prosecutors said that in July 1988, Johnson was charged with exposing himself to a 17-year-old girl in Tustin and a month later kidnapped and sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl. He was in prison in connection with that case and was about to be released when, in 2004, a DNA database linked him to the Lamon killing.
christopher.goffard@latimes.com
