Matthew Steven Johnson

In 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the verdict, after Johnson failed to persuade the court that he should've had three separate trials for the deaths. He also claimed that he couldn't have had his DNA on them, as he hadn't had sex with a woman since 1982.

After forensic scientist Henry Lee managed to connect the similar deaths using the DNA test results, authorities in the city began hunting for the women's killer. Using semen, blood splatters and cigarette butts found on each of the bodies, they put it in a database for convicted sex offenders and obtained a match for Matthew Steven Johnson. He was arrested on January 13, 2002 and subsequently brought to trial.

At age 17, Johnson had very little contact with his father, but still visited his family on the weekends. He had also grown tired of evaluations and stopped taking his medication, as he claimed it made him feel dizzy. When he reached adulthood in 1980, Johnson grew depressed and began mixing drugs and alcohol to calm himself. At one point, however, he managed to seek help at The Institute of Living in Hartford, earning his high school equivalency diploma before beginning work as a laborer.

At 19 years of age, while he living in a home for troubled youth, Johnson tried to kill a security guard during an attempted robbery inside Asylum Hill's Cathedral of St. Joseph. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for this attack, but only served 4 and was then released. Before that, in May 1980, he robbed and assaulted a pregnant woman. In 1988, Johnson forcefully restrained a woman on the street, and about two years later, he raped and beat another woman. In both instances, he was caught because the women managed to identify him.

Matthew Steven Johnson (born 1963) is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least three women, all of them either prostitutes or drug addicts, from 2000 to 2001. He is also suspected in the deaths of another two women, but hasn't been charged in their deaths. Johnson was convicted of the three murders and given three consecutive life sentences.