Arne Cheyenne Johnson is the subject of new Netflix documentary The Devil On Trial, which tells the story of the first ever US legal case to use “demonic possession” as a defense.
The documentary, which is released on October 17, recounts a 1981 murder and the subsequent legal case, often referred to as the “Devil Made Me Do It” trial.
Johnson, then 19 years of age, murdered his landlord Alan Bono in Brookfield, Connecticut, pleading not guilty to the murder on the grounds of being possessed by the devil.
The Devil On Trial uses firsthand accounts from the case as well as real recordings of the alleged demonic possession that Johnson used as a defense.
In the trial, Johnson was defended by paranormal investigators, with his lawyer saying he was possessed by the devil when stabbing Bono more than 20 times with a pocket knife. Key testimony was also given by the family of his fiancee Debbie Glatzel, whose 11-year-old brother David had reportedly been demonically possessed himself in the months prior to Johnson’s murder of Bono.
The case has previously been detailed in 1983 NBC documentary The Demon Murder Case and 2021 film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.
A book was also written by paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren, titled The Devil In Connecticut, which David’s brother Carl Glatzel called “a complete lie” and said that “the Warrens concocted a phoney story about demons in an attempt to get rich and famous at our expense”.
Where is Arne Johnson now?
After 15 hours of deliberation, Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter by the jury and sentenced to between 10 and 20 years in prison.
He was then released from jail after just five years behind bars, with chief of parole Hans Fjelman calling him “an exemplary inmate” with “no negative factors” in his mental state.
While he was in prison, Johnson married Debbie Glatzel and the pair went on to have two children together.
Little is known about Johnson’s whereabouts since his release in 1986, but paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren did reveal before her death in 2019 that Johnson was working for a landscaper.
Both Johnson and Glatzel were involved in the making of both The Conjuring 3 and The Devil On Trial, and Glatzel passed away since the release of Conjuring.
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