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ALBION - Police are hoping that the arrest of a Syracuse woman will shed new light on a 15-year-old murder.
Tammy Lynn Johnson, 41, is being held in the Noble County Jail on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder after allegedly plotting to have her husband, Ligonier police officer Rick Johnson, killed. Authorities also are looking at her connection to at least three other crimes, including a homicide investigation in Kosciusko County.
Mrs. Johnson was married to David B. Tomlinson in 1986 when he was found shot to death. Tomlinson's body was recovered from the DeKalb-Allen County line. He suffered two close-range gunshot wounds - one in the chest and one in the face.
Johnson also has connections with another man who was found murdered in 1990. Tim McClellan's body was found in an Aboite Township cornfield and he also was shot. McClellan was apparently a suspect in Tomlinson's murder, which remains unsolved.
Police want anyone with information in Tomlinson's death to report it to the Fort Wayne Post of the Indiana State Police at 432-8661.
Additionally, Johnson is a victim in an intimidation case pending against Christoval Dimas - he is charged with murder in Kosciusko County and accused of killing Crystal Gayle Homister, whose burned remains were found in a Syracuse-area woods. Homister's remains were found in April 2000, about three months after she was last seen.
Prior to Dimas' arrest in the Homister investigation, he allegedly threatened to harm Johnson and her family if she didn't give him a job at the Ligonier store where she was manager. Dimas reportedly told Johnson he was under investigation for murder and it would help his case if he worked for a police officer's wife.
Both the intimidation and murder charges remain pending against Dimas.
In her most recent brush with the law, Johnson is alleged to have tried to hire two men to kill her husband in a staged robbery planned for Sunday at the Dollar General Store in Ligonier. She reportedly told the men, who became confidential informants for police, that she would benefit from her husband's life insurance policy and the amount would be greater if he was killed in the line of duty.
She is being held in the Noble County Jail on $2 million bond.
