DETROIT – A 40-year-old Ford assembly plant worker yesterday was found guilty of a 2001 armed robbery of an armored truck at Dearborn FCU, which left a guard shot to death.
Earl Johnson was convicted of three counts in connection with the $204,000 robbery, but will not face the death penalty–as will three of his accomplices–because he did not fire either of the two shotgun blasts that killed Norman “Anthony” Stephens, a 30-year-old father of six. Johnson is expected to be sentenced to life in prison.
Witnesses testified at the week-long trial that Johnson helped plan the Dec. 14, 2001, robbery, conducted surveillance of the credit union, now known as DFCU Financial, and recruited other robbers who participated. Johnson carried a handgun and grabbed bags of cash from the armored truck but did not fire the shots that killed the guard, the court was told.
The money was split among the seven accomplices and has not been recovered. Johnson, a former line worker at Ford Motor Co., testified on the stand that he was not involved in the robbery. The participants were a loose-knit group, with three of them auto workers who knew the Ford credit union would be getting a big shipment of currency to cash its members’ Christmas bonuses.
The crime remained unsolved for three years, until a prisoner at the Ryan Correctional Facility reportedly began bragging about his and others' roles in the robbery and was secretly tape-recorded by another inmate.
Three of the five other men charged in the case face possible death sentences if convicted.
