by paracletepress | Jun 23, 2026 | Met Her on the Mountain
After too long away, I recently returned to Madison County for the first time since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the area, inundating the county seat of Marshall, on the banks of the French Broad River. (Yes, I should have come up much sooner to volunteer for...
by paracletepress | Jan 29, 2026 | Crime, Met Her on the Mountain
Richard Lewis Johnson, the Madison County, N.C., man who confessed to me twice that he was part of a group of five local men who kidnapped, raped and murdered federal anti-poverty worker Nancy Dean Morgan in 1970, is dead. He died Jan. 24 of what are believed to be...
by paracletepress | Dec 24, 2025 | Met Her on the Mountain
For some time, Richard Johnson’s estranged son, Chris, who appears in several sections in Met Her on the Mountain, has been working on a memoir, How I Survived the Man Who Met Her on the Mountain. The book, a searing account of life with Richard Johnson, is now out...
by paracletepress | Dec 4, 2024 | Met Her on the Mountain
In the interest of due journalistic diligence for this piece for the North Carolina Assembly ( My 50-Year Obsession with an Unsolved Mountain Murder), I visited Richard Johnson earlier this week at the Nash Correctional Institute in eastern North Carolina, a trip not...
by Mark Pinsky | Jul 6, 2022 | Crime, Drifting into Darkness, Met Her on the Mountain
After a brief rest in Durham following our return from Alabama, I headed west to North Carolina to promote my latest book, Drifting Into Darkness, as well as the updated, paperback edition of Met Her on the Mountain. My First Stop: Greensboro The first stop was...
by Mark Pinsky | May 31, 2022 | Crime, Drifting into Darkness, Met Her on the Mountain
After spending half a century reporting on murder, it’s probably not surprising that I don’t read many true crime books for enjoyment and escape. I think it’s because I’ve spent so long covering the dark side so closely, without the reader’s luxury of being able to...
