Facing execution, the polygamist wife who married FIVE men by the age of 28... and now husband number 5 is on the run after killing number 3
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At age 28, Shonda Nicole Johnson found herself divorced twice and remarried to three men -- at the same time.
But five husbands became one too many for the Alabama woman after husband number three found out about her polygamist life. Randy McCullar filed for divorce and turned her into police.
She didn't take his rejection well, authorities say. After he testified in front of a grand jury, she convinced her fifth husband, Timothy Richards, to murder him.
Now, Johnson is on death row and Richards, convicted of murder, is on the run after escaping from a minimum security prison Sunday.
Polygamist murders: Timothy Richards (left) is on the run after escaping a minimum security prison. He testified against his wife, Shonda Nicole Johnson (right) had five husbands, three of them at the same time.
The search for Richards, who was eligible for parole next year, has revealed the story of Johnson's bizarre, and violent, love life.
According to authorities, Johnson targeted Mr McCullar in 1997 to silence his testimony about her polygamist ways. Initially, she asked an ex-boyfriend to kill him -- a man she had lived with in between meeting husbands number four and five.
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ShareIt's unknown what charms Johnson had to attract her many lovers. She had bleached blond hair and crooked teeth. She almost never worked and seemed to run out on her husbands as soon almost as soon she married them.
She was a high school dropout who had four children from four different men.
But in rural Walker County, Alabama, she was a small-town siren.
After two short marriages and divorces, she married McCullar in 1995.
'They were just as happy as they could be, couldn't keep their hands off each other,' Rev Jerry Haley, who performed the ceremony, told the Associated Press.
Maximum security? At least one local official has criticized Richards' placement at the minimum-security State Cattle Ranch, rather than a high-security prison
When they separated, it took only three months for Johnson to find a new man, Bill McIntyre, and married him, too -- despite still being wedded to McCullar.
A year later, when McCullar was hospitalized with AIDS, she left him and moved in with a boyfriend. She was pregnant with his child within three months.
When McCullar filled bigamy charges against her, she asked her new flame to kill him. He wouldn't, so she found a man who would -- Timothy Richards.
The plotted the murder for months, authorities say. In 1997, they slashed his tires after stalking McCullar at a bar. When he stopped at a church to change the flat, Johnson handed Richards a hunting rifle and told him to shoot.
'I don't think Tim would have ever spent a day in jail if he hadn't met Shonda'
Walker County sheriff's detective Joey Vick, on Timothy Richards' murder conviction
Richards pleaded guilty in 2000 to murdering Randy McCullar, one of his wife's two other husbands, as he changed a tire in the parking lot of a church in the small city of Jasper.
Richards avoided the death penalty by testifying against his wife, providing investigators information about the plot.
'I don't think Tim would have ever spent a day in jail if he hadn't met Shonda,' Walker County sheriff's detective Joey Vick told the AP.
Thanks, in part, to Richards cooperation, Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death. She is one of just four women awaiting execution in Alabama.
Under the terms of his plea agreement Richards received a life sentence in prison, but would have been eligible for parole in May 2013 -- just 13 months away.
It's unknown why Timothy Richards slipped out of State Cattle Ranch, a prison in Greensboro, early Sunday. He was found missing from his bunk during an inmate headcount taken at 1.30am.
At least one local official, who fears for the safety of his staff and the victim's family, says a minimum-security prison is no place for a convicted murderer to be held.
US Marshals and local police have fanned out across central Alabama where Richards, 42, disappeared but have been unable to find any trace of him yet.
Prison officials tracked Richards' scent with dogs, though the trail eventually ran out, according to Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett.
Corbett would not comment on how Richards escaped.
Thanks, in part, to Richards cooperation, Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death. She is one of just four women awaiting execution in Alabama.
In Richards' home town, Sheriff Mark Tirey told the Jasper Daily Mountain Eagle newspaper that his deputies were on 'high alert' searching for the convict.
'We’ve been checking local addresses that would be familiar to him -- the homes of family members and places he’s been associated with in the past,' he said.
Richards was being housed at the State Cattle Ranch, which is a farm run by the Department of Corrections and once raised cows to feed to inmates across the state. However, state no longer operates a farm at the facility.
Walker County District Attorney Bill Adair, who prosecuted Richards, said he is worried for his staff and the family of Richards' victim, told the Daily Mountain Eagle.
Richards is a large man, standing six-foot-four and weighing 230 pounds.
He blasted stat budget cuts that landed Richards on a minimum-security prison, rather than a high-security lockup.
'The cattle ranch shouldn’t be a place where the state puts murderers,' he told the newspaper.
Corbett, the prisons spokesman, said Richards was transferred to the farm, which is a minimum-security facility, in July 2010 because he was nearing a possible release date.
Before his escape, Richards had a clean record in prison with no disciplinary problems, Corbett said.
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