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The True Crime Reporter® Podcast features stories and interviews from the respective careers of investigative reporter Robert Riggs and former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston.
Listeners have asked how both of them got involved in investigating criminal cases.
In response, the podcast featured an episode with Riggs on July 4, 2022, explaining how he first got involved in digging for information during the Watergate scandal case while working for Congressman Wright Patman.
In this episode, we cover the highlights of Bill Johnston’s distinguished law career.
Bill devoted his career as a federal prosecutor to, in effect, protect the sheep from the wolves.
He helped launch the manhunt for notorious serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff, who tortured and murdered countless young women. His role in bringing McDuff to justice and prosecuting the Texas Parole Board Chairman official who released McDuff under a cloud of corruption is featured in the Fox Nation documentary Freed To Kill.
Johnston became the cohost of the True Crime Reporter® podcast with Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Riggs in 2021.
Johnston had a guilty verdict returned in every federal prosecution in hundreds of jury trials that he undertook during his 14-year career with the U.S. Department of Justice. A noteworthy criminal case includes the Branch Davidian cult members who murdered four ATF agents during a raid on their heavily armed compound outside Waco.
The Texas Rangers, rather than FBI agents, were Johnston’s go-to investigators for complex murder cases. He managed a team of Rangers to investigate the crime scene at the Davidian compound after the end of the controversial inferno.
Johnston successfully prosecuted a mail bomber, which was the first case tried under the U.S. Violence Against Women Act. Other firsts include the first jury trial in the United States in which mitochondrial DNA (hair without root) was used in evidence against a violent “car-jacking” defendant who caused the death of an elderly man in Texas. He received a mandatory life sentence without parole.
