Darlenia Denise Johnson grew up in Congress Heights neighborhood in Washington, D.C. She enjoyed being an active teenager, working at the local recreation center, and being a sister to her five brothers and five sisters.
Darlenia was walking to work on July 8, 1971 after telling her mom she planned to stay the night at a sleepover the Oxon Run Recreation Center was having for kids, but she never showed up, her mom reported her missing on July 9, 1971 when she failed to return home from the sleepover. That’s when Helen, Darlenia’s mom, discovered she never even made it to work.
On July 12, 1971 an employee of the D.C. Department of Highways and Traffic discovered a body along 295. He had car trouble and pulled off the road. When he got out, he saw a body and called D.C. police. It was the second call police got that morning about the same discovery. Dispatchers sent officers, who radioed a “10-8” back, meaning that they had found nothing and were moving on.
A week later, on July 19, one of the callers returned to the site and saw that the body was still there, rotting in the sweltering heat. Angry at the inaction by police, the man told his boss, who drove by, saw it and phoned his friend, Charles Baden, a D.C. police sergeant. Sergeant Baden was off duty that day and recalls, “He told me exactly where it was on the freeway opposite 295, just north of Bolling Air Force Base. I asked him if he called police and he said, ‘Yeah, but nobody came.’ ” Sergeant Baden rode there on his motorcycle and drove along the shoulder until he found the body that had been called in several times.
It was the body of a young African American girl, her face and body so badly decomposed that the medical examiner had to cut off her fingers to identify her. Had authorities just responded the first time such measures would not have had to be taken.
Retired D.C. police detective Romaine Jenkins was infuriated with the lack of care provided to not only this case, but the first victim, Carol Denise Spinks, as well. “The officers didn’t get out and look for the remains, they just drove by.” She was told Carol’s case didn’t take precedence over the war protest happening over the city, when Detective Jenkins went to interview the community of Congress Heights after discovering her body. She felt the same care was provided to the unknown young black girl who was ignored on the side of the road.
Fingerprints came back to identify the body as 16 year old Darlenia Denise Johnson, she was strangled, sexually assaulted, and dumped within 15 feet from where Carol Denise Sparks was located.
I have huge suspicions on the caller who called in and then returned to see that police had not even discovered Darlenia’s body. My suspicions arise since the killer taunted the family members of each girl and the police. My thoughts are they were angry they weren’t in control and able to bring havoc on the community in the time frame they wanted to. My thought in why they weren’t investigated or anything done is they more than likely smooth talked themselves out if they were even questioned. This case involved another young black girl during the Civil Rights movements that had taken place since 1944, giving attention to the most looked down race of people in the United States wasn’t coming anytime soon.
If you have any information regarding to the abduction and murders of Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nenomoshia Yates, Brenda Woodard or Diane Williams please call Metro Police at 202-727-9099 or send an email to unsolved.murder@dc.gov.
Darlenia Denise Johnson walked to work and she didn’t come home.
She Didn’t Come Home 
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