Man Who Killed Landlord Had Novel Defense: The Devil Made Him Do It

Often referred to as the "Devil Made Me Do It" case, the crime committed by Arne Cheyenne Johnson in 1981 is recounted in a Netflix documentary premiering today

The violent murder of a man more than four decades ago shocked the small community of Brookfield, Conn. It was the first homicide in the town’s 193-year existence.

Alan Bono, a 40-year-old landlord and dog groomer at the Brookfield Pet Motel, died after he was repeatedly stabbed in the chest with a five-inch pocket knife in February 1981. His killer? Arne Cheyenne Johnson, a 19-year-old tree surgeon who had been renting out an adjacent apartment with his fiancée, Debbie Glatzel.

Johnson was arrested on a first-degree manslaughter charge but he pleaded not guilty. His defense was astonishing: He claimed that he murdered his landlord while possessed by the devil.

The brutal killing drew the attention of self-professed demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, known for their probe into the infamous rumored haunting of a house in Amityville, Long Island, several years prior, which gained media attention when Robert DeFeo murdered six of his family members.

Johnson was eventually convicted of the murder, but served only five years of a 10 to 20-year sentence.

Often referred to as the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, the violent crime is now at the center of a new Netflix true crime documentary premiering today, Oct. 17. The Devil on Trial recounts the troubling events leading up to Bono’s murder, the trial, and the aftermath, using firsthand accounts of the people closest to the case, including Johnson. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

The Netflix documentary follows other movies and books based on the murder, like The Conjuring: The Devil Told Me To Do It, a horror film that premiered in 2021, and a book titled The Devil in Connecticut, written by Gerald Brittle and published in 1983. In 2006, the paranormal drama anthology television series known as A Haunting retold the story in an episode titled “Where Demons Dwell.”

Related: 'The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It' Trailer Explores a Terrifying New Demonic Case

The Netflix documentary strives to shed new light on the past events: Many of the people involved each share their perspectives, sparking a new conversation about what happens when assumptions about reality are in conflict with strongly held beliefs.

Rumors of paranormal activity in the community began in July 1980 when David Glatzel, the younger brother of Debbie who was then 11, woke up sobbing and related how he’d been visited by an awful beast — "a man with big black eyes, a thin face with animal features and jagged teeth, pointed ears, horns and hoofs,” PEOPLE previously reported.

Related: In a Connecticut Murder Trial, Will (Demonic) Possession Prove Nine-Tenths of the Law?

When David’s visions persisted, sister Debbie, 27, asked Johnson to move into the Glatzel home.

The alarmed parents summoned a priest from St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to bless their house—with no apparent results. By now, David claimed the beast was appearing in the daytime as well, in the form, he said, of “an old man with a white beard, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans.” Attempted exorcisms had also yielded no results.

Desperate for answers, the Glatzels called on Ed and Lorraine Warren.

In an interview with PEOPLE in 1981, Lorraine described her first encounter with David Glatzel, saying in part that “the child was complaining that invisible hands were choking him — and there were red marks on him. He said that he had the feeling of being hit.”

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David also gained 60 lbs. in the next few months. He growled, hissed and spoke in strange voices, and would suddenly begin reciting passages from the Bible or from Milton’s Paradise Lost, PEOPLE previously reported. Every night a family member had to remain awake to monitor David, who would jerk into 30-minute frenzies of rapid sit-ups.

By now the Warrens were visiting regularly. “David made numerous references to murder and stabbings,” Lorraine told PEOPLE in 1981.

One day, however, during an attempted exorcism, Johnson began to taunt whatever was thought to reside within David, goading it to enter his own body instead, according to witnesses. Subsequently, Johnson's behavior changed.

“[Johnson] would go into a trance,” Debbie previously told PEOPLE. “He would growl and say he saw the beast. Later he would have no memory of it. It was just like David.”

The events that followed were even more disturbing.

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