LANSING, Mich. — A man from Casper, Wyoming has pled guilty to two counts of third degree criminal sexual assaults he committed against two Kalamazoo County women in 2013. He is 30-year-old Michael Vincenzo Johnson.
According to the Michigan Department of Attorney General, Johnson committed the assaults when he was a student at Western Michigan University. The first assault occurred in a WMU dormitory room on January 19, 2013, when Johnson was a 20-year-old upper-classman. The victim was an 18-year-old freshman, who was physically helpless and in a state of extreme intoxication at the time.
The second assault occurred on February 15 or 16, 2013, at a private home in Augusta, Michigan. The victim was a 16-year-old high school student that Johnson forced himself on. She reported the sexual assault to the Augusta Police Department in 2013. Both the victim and Johnson were interviewed by police. The victim’s sexual assault kit was tested in 2013, and the victim underwent a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner exam. However, no police report was ever generated.
The Western Michigan University Police Department referred the case to the Kalamazoo Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) project in 2017. Kalamazoo SAKI reopened the case in June 2020. During their investigation, they discovered the second victim.
The Kalamazoo SAKI investigators learned that Johnson moved to Wyoming in January 2016 to become a sportswriter for a local newspaper. Johnson, who was 23 years old at the time, almost immediately began pursuing sexual relationships with female high school students and athletes.
In April 2016, he was arrested in Wyoming on charges of accosting minors for immoral purposes, manufacturing child pornography, and providing marijuana to minors. He was later convicted and served time in a Wyoming prison.
Once Johnson was paroled, he was arrested on the SAKI charges and extradited to Kalamazoo in May 2022. Both of the assault victims watched the defendant’s guilty plea via Zoom.
One victim told the SAKI investigators, “You helped me in the process of re-opening a wound and allowing it to heal the right way.”
“I gave up completely on anything being done,” the other victim told investigators. “I truly appreciate the work and effort you all have put in for me.”
“These convictions are evidence of the excellent work continuing to be done to investigate untested sexual assault kits and hold accountable the people who committed the assaults,” said Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting. He went on to say, “Even though it is a decade after the assault, the victims are continuing to suffer the trauma of their attack. The guilty should be suffering as well.”
“It took a lot of courage for the survivors of these assaults to come forward and help the Kalamazoo SAKI team identify this offender,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. “He had already moved to another state to continue his pattern of assaulting young women and girls. I’m grateful for the hard work of the Kalamazoo SAKI investigators and participating law enforcement agencies in Michigan and Wyoming for their help in taking a sexual predator off the streets.”
Johnson is scheduled to be sentenced on March 20 at 8:30 a.m. by Judge Kenneth Barnard.
