Gang Member Called City’s Most Violent Gets Death Sentence

Cleamon “Big Evil” Johnson, described by police detectives and FBI agents as the city’s most violent gang member, was sentenced to death Friday, along with co-defendant Michael “Fat Rat” Allen, for the 1991 murders of two men at a South-Central Los Angeles carwash.

Superior Court Judge Charles E. Horan, who characterized Johnson as “a coldblooded and cunning murderer . . . who was the victim of his own evil,” agreed with a jury that had recommended the death penalty Sept. 30.

Horan rejected defense appeals for a retrial and a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Authorities contend that on Aug. 5, 1991, Johnson ordered Allen to get an Uzi submachine gun and “serve” two men at a carwash at Central Avenue and 88th Street.

Allen, 25, shot to death Donald Ray Loggins and Payton Beroit in broad daylight in front of more than a dozen witnesses, according to authorities. Loggins and Beroit were not gang members, but lived in rival gang turf.

Johnson, 30, who authorities say killed at least a dozen people during his reign as the shot-caller of his gang, the 89 Family Bloods, declared his innocence after he was sentenced. He called police a “lynch mob” and vowed to have his conviction overturned.

Johnson is also the defendant in another murder trial scheduled for February.