After 34 years, girlfriend charged in man’s D.C. murder


Exactly 34 years after a man was killed inside his D.C. home, the Metropolitan Police Department announced his girlfriend has been arrested for the murder.

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Norman Rich, 34, was found shot to death inside the bedroom of his D.C. home.

Metropolitan Police Department


Norman Rich, 34, known as “Semo,” was found inside his bedroom in his house on M Street, in the Northeast part of D.C., on Wednesday, March 28, 1990.

He was shot to death, police said. 

Shelia Brown, now 66 years old and living in Annapolis, Maryland, was arrested by members of the Annapolis Police Department and the United States Marshals Service on Wednesday. 

Authorities said Rich’s body was discovered by Brown, the mother of the couple’s three children. She told police at the time that she was about to run some errands, and right before she left two men came to their house looking for him. Brown told police she had recognized one of the men, “Ducky.”

When she returned home she found the front door open and Rich inside the bedroom, dead.

Police then offered a $25,000 reward for information about the case, but weren’t able to find the killer. 

Detectives said their investigation found the alleged murder “was domestic in nature,” but didn’t offer further details on Brown’s arrest after three decades. During a Thursday news conference, D.C. police inspector Kevin Kentish said detectives never stopped looking at the case, WTOP reported. 

Investigators used new technology and tests and began “looking at all the evidence, looking at witness statements and being able to find certain intricacies in the case that would lead to the closure.”

Brown was charged with second degree murder and obstruction of justice, after a D.C. superior court indictment.



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Ohio man convicted of abuse of corpse and evidence tampering 13 years after Kentucky teenager Paige Johnson disappeared


An Ohio man has been convicted of abuse of a corpse and evidence tampering in the case of a Kentucky teenager whose body was found in Ohio a decade after she disappeared.

Jurors in Clermont County deliberated for more than nine hours over two days before convicting 35-year-old Jacob Bumpass last week of both charges he faced in the death of 17-year-old Paige Johnson of Florence, Kentucky. Defense attorneys immediately vowed to appeal the verdict and seek a new trial.

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Paige Johnson (Personal Photo)

Johnson’s remains were found in 2020 by a hiker in East Fork State Park, about 20 miles east of Cincinnati, near the area investigators had searched after the teen disappeared in September 2010. A cause of death was never determined.

Authorities had questioned Bumpass, a friend, at the time and believed he was the last person to have seen her alive. Prosecutors cited DNA evidence and records indicating that the defendant’s phone was pinged by a cell tower just over a mile away from where the body was found and then by one near a bridge leading back to northern Kentucky.

Defense attorney Louis Sirkin posed the idea that Johnson’s body was planted in the East Fork Lake area sometime after her disappearance, saying that if her remains were there all along they would have been spotted by workers at a nearby farm and people who used the area for illegal dumping.

From the time they were found and through the trial, Paige Johnson’s remains were kept under lock and key as evidence, CBS affiliate WKRC reported.

The station asked Paige Johnson’s mother, Donna Johnson, what it will be like now that the family will finally receive Paige’s remains.

“It has been a long wait, and [not having her remains] has been very hard. Like I said, the joy and the happiness, being able to bring her home finally and give her what she deserves after having to wait all this time is a feeling I can’t really describe. But it’s just like, I get to bring my baby home and give her the dignity that she has deserved,” Donna Johnson said.

“I will always want to know what happened. I don’t think he’s ever gonna tell us,” she said. “This sadness will stay with me forever.”

Bumpass is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 7.



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