Ex-con and criminal justice reform advocate Sheldon Johnson Jr., inset and background photo, who recently appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” is accused of killing Colin Small. (Screenshots from WNYC/YouTube; inset screenshot from Joe Rogan Experience)
A criminal justice reform advocate and ex-con recently on Joe Rogan’s podcast was arrested after cops found the dismembered body of a 44-year-old man — with the bullet-wounded head and limbs in the freezer of the victim’s New York apartment.
Sheldon Johnson Jr., 48, was arrested on Thursday, shouting out to assembled reporters, “I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” after New York police made the grim discovery of the remains of Colin Small. The murder was uncovered when police responded to Small’s apartment on Summit Avenue in Highbridge on Tuesday at 8:25 p.m. on a wellness check when police said they found a torso in the apartment.
Citing police sources, The New York Post reported a foot was found in a blue bin and a head, arms, legs, and a second foot were discovered in the freezer. Police also encountered Johnson there, the paper reported.
Building superintendent Orlando Medina told New York ABC affiliate WABC that a tenant called him about the violence in apartment 6G.
“She said she heard two gunshots,” Medina said, the station reported. “Someone said, ‘Please don’t kill me. I got family,’ something like that and two more gunshots pretty quickly.”
He said surveillance video showed the suspect entering and leaving Small’s apartment in various disguises, including one in which he’s wearing a blond wig and carrying bags.
His father, Sheldon Johnson Sr., 73, thought his son, who had served 25 years in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility for a robbery conviction in 1997 and worked as a client advocate for Queens Defenders after his release, had turned his life around.
“I’m surprised and shocked,” said his father, who is deaf, through an interpreter, the New York Daily News reported. “I thought he did well in prison. He studied. I was happy he got out of jail. I thought he was reformed.”
“I can’t see my son giving up this good job and doing something like this.”
The Daily News reported a possible drug motive, but details were not disclosed on Friday.
Johnson Jr. spoke about his life on “The Joe Rogan Experience” last month. He spoke about being in a gang dealing drugs and doing time in prison and about his father and grandfather, who were incarcerated.
He told Rogan that he had an epiphany at one point in prison.
“I have to change my life,” he said. “I just can’t do this. I had a wife, I had family still. My son was growing up. He was hearing stories about my so-called notoriety. I just didn’t want to be that dad.”
He faces charges of murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon.
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