Take Me: The Real Devil Made Me Do It Murder Case

Flip Wilson got huge laughs on NBC with the line “the devil made me do it.” In 1981, a lawyer in Connecticut tried to bring that same line into a murder case, with Ed and Lorraine Warren from The Conjuring right behind him. His client was a 19-year-old who had once dared a demon to take him. Let’s go up to Brookfield.

The Devil Made Me Do It: Flip Wilson, the Glatzels, and the Warrens in Brookfield, Connecticut

Flip Wilson had a character named Geraldine on his NBC variety show in the early ’70s. Flip played her in a wig and a dress, and her big line was “the devil made me do it.” People said it to get a laugh.

Up in Brookfield, Connecticut, the Glatzel family spent the summer of 1980 dealing with their little boy, David, who was having these episodes that alarmed his family so much that some of the Glatzels decided something had gotten inside him. Ed and Lorraine Warren got involved. You know Ed and Lorraine even if the names don’t ring a bell, because they’re the couple The Conjuring movies are built around, and back then they made a living giving lectures on the paranormal. They agreed with the relatives who said it was a demon.

David’s brother Carl has said for years that Ed and Lorraine took a kid’s problems and turned them into a supernatural story they could sell.

David’s big sister Debbie had a fiancé named Arne Cheyenne Johnson. Arne was 19 and worked for a tree surgeon. He and Debbie had been together a long time, and he took part in some of the religious rites the family calls exorcisms. During one of them, the way the family tells it, Arne challenged whatever was in David to leave the boy alone and come into him. His lawyer says the words Arne used were “Take me.”

Alan Bono and the Brookfield Dog Kennel

Brookfield was turning into a town you’d move to and commute toward New York from, and it grew by about a third during the ’70s. Debbie groomed dogs at a kennel there, and the man who ran it was Alan Bono. Alan was 40. He was pretty new in town.

Alan also rented Debbie and Arne the apartment on the kennel property. Debbie’s paycheck and the couple’s rent both ran through Alan, and on top of that, he and Arne were friends.

Debbie said later that she and Alan had been in a relationship at one point and that it was over. Carl has talked about rumors of an affair. When you go looking for Alan himself, what’s out there is thin. Nobody I could find has published where he grew up or why he picked Brookfield, and no obituary turns up anywhere in the coverage of this case, even with all the movies and TV made about it since.

The Mug and Munch and the February 1981 Stabbing

Arne said he felt sick on the morning of February 16, 1981, so he called out of work. He and Debbie picked up his younger sisters, including Janice, who was 13. A 9-year-old girl named Mary was with them too. At some point that day the whole group ended up with Alan at a place with the great name of the Mug and Munch, and Arne and Alan drank pretty much the entire time they were there.

After that they all went back to the kennel. What started the fight depends on who you ask. One account says Alan made an obscene remark. Debbie’s version is that Alan was drunk and grabbed Mary and wouldn’t let go of her, and Arne stepped in.

Arne stabbed Alan with his own folding knife around 6:30 that evening. The blade was about 5 inches long. An EMT testified to 4 wounds. Alan was alive when help got there. He died from those wounds.

Debbie was calling for help when an officer arrived, and she told him Alan had been stabbed. The EMT told the jury later that Debbie was hysterical and said Arne didn’t mean to do it.

Arne was gone by then, and there are 2 stories about where you’d have found him. An officer testified that he found him that same night at a bar called Hackney’s. Arne remembers sitting on a bench somewhere, totally worn out. Police found the knife at the kennel. Later news stories called it Brookfield’s first murder in 193 years.

How the Devil Made Me Do It Case Got Its Name

Arne got charged with murder within a few days, and his lawyer, Martin Minnella, went to the press with the possession story, with Ed and Lorraine backing it up. This was the start of what turned into the Satanic Panic. A book called Michelle Remembers had been a bestseller the year before, and TV news and talk shows were running more and more stuff about the occult. A demon murder case out of Connecticut fit right into that. The story went international.

Pick up a newspaper in early 1981 and you’d see Geraldine’s line sitting on top of a homicide story, because the papers started calling it the Devil Made Me Do It case, and that’s still what everybody calls it.

Martin told Fox News in 2023 that all Arne ever told him was that he blacked out and couldn’t remember anything. Martin said the possession part came from the priests and from Ed and Lorraine. He also told a Connecticut paper in 2021 that he still stands by the possession claim.

The police chief called it an ordinary homicide that came out of anger and an argument. He got frustrated watching worldwide attention land on Brookfield because of a demon, when his officers had a knife and witnesses you could put on a stand.

The New York Times was pointing out by March that Ed and Lorraine lectured on the paranormal for a living and might make money off this. That same month, a grand jury of 18 people indicted Arne for murder.

Inside the Arne Cheyenne Johnson Trial in Danbury

The trial started in Danbury that October. On the first day, during jury selection, the judge threw out the possession defense. He said whether demons exist was a religious question and he was staying out of it. His ruling was that nobody could prove possession to a jury of regular people like you and me in any reliable or scientific way, and that testimony about it would probably confuse jurors.

Martin asked the judge to step off the case. The judge said no. Martin kept trying to bring the devil back in, outside the jury’s hearing, and the judge kept shutting it down. With the demon gone, Martin went with self-defense.

The state’s attorney told the jury this was about drinking and a jealous young man. Then the barmaid from the Mug and Munch took the stand and said Arne and Alan had been drinking heavily for about 3 hours. A toxicologist testified that Alan’s blood alcohol at the hospital came back at 0.33. Arne’s sample got taken more than 4 hours after Alan died. It read 0.03, and the expert said Arne was probably higher when it happened.

Now you’ve got Janice, the 13-year-old, telling the jury she saw her brother kick and punch Debbie that same day. The head of the state crime lab testified, and that was Dr. Henry Lee, the same forensic scientist you might know from the O.J. Simpson trial, and he said blood and hair on Arne’s knife were similar to Alan’s types. That’s how they did it before DNA. Ed and Lorraine never took the stand.

The jury deliberated over 3 days. They came back on November 24 and convicted Arne of first-degree manslaughter. A few weeks later, the judge gave Arne 10 to 20 years and told him he’d shown little remorse. Martin said he’d appeal and bring the devil back into it, and later legal write-ups say the appeal never got filed.

The Demon Murder Case, The Conjuring, and Where Arne Johnson Is Now

Arne got his high school diploma while he was locked up, and in January 1984 he married Debbie inside the prison. He made parole in January 1986, about a month early. He’d served almost 5 years, and the state’s chief of parole called him an exemplary inmate. Friends told the AP the plan was for him to live with Debbie’s parents in Brookfield and work for a landscaper.

While Arne was inside, a book called The Devil in Connecticut came out in 1983. That same year NBC aired a TV movie called The Demon Murder Case, and you’ve got a young Kevin Bacon playing the Arne character and Andy Griffith, Sheriff Andy from Mayberry, playing the demonologist based on Ed Warren. Carl and David sued over the book and said its possession story was false. David has also said publicly that he believed he was possessed. Then in 2021, Warner Bros. put out The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which you may have seen. That’s Geraldine’s line from a variety show, now the title of a big Hollywood horror movie. Both movies gave Alan a different name. In the 1983 one he’s Phillip Russo. The 2021 movie calls him Bruno.

Debbie died in 2021, and she and Arne were still married. Arne’s in his 60s now and mostly stays out of sight. He sat down for the 2023 Netflix documentary The Devil on Trial, and the guy who once told a demon “Take me” talked about how much his faith means to him and said he isn’t possessed anymore. He also still says he blacked out and doesn’t remember stabbing Alan.