On September 26, 2012, police were called to Los Angeles’s Los Feliz neighbourhood about a woman screaming. When they got there, they saw something horrible. Inside the 3605 Lowry Road home, they found Johnny Lewis de*ad in the driveway and a woman badly beaten in a bedroom. The bathroom also had a badly beaten cat.
Soon, it was clear that Lewis, who was 28 years old and had been in TV shows like Sons of Anarchy, Criminal Minds, and The O.C., had ki*lled the woman and her cat, beaten up her neighbours, and then jumped off the roof to his de*ath. Why, though?
Not long after that, his shocking and tragic fall began to happen. The once-promising young actor had a lot of bad luck in the past few years, which set off a terrible chain of events that ended in his tragic de*ath.
The Rise Of Johnny Lewis In Hollywood
Jonathan Kendrick “Johnny” Lewis was born in Los Angeles on October 29, 1983. He began acting when he was very young. Los Angeles Magazine says that Lewis’s mother began taking him to auditions when he was six years old.
Lewis quickly won over casting agents, who put him in commercials and then TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle and Drake & Josh. Mr. Lewis has blonde hair and blue eyes. Lewis also got parts on TV shows like The O.C. and Criminal Minds as he grew up.
Many people who knew Lewis thought he was different from most young actors, even though he was successful. Lewis liked poems more than parties, even though he lived in “frat row” in Hollywood and dated a young pop star named Katy Perry.
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That’s what made Johnny unique, according to actor Jonathan Tucker, who was his friend. “Do not use drugs. Don’t drink. “Only poetry and thought.”
But Johnny Lewis’s last good year would be 2009. After two seasons on Sons of Anarchy, he quit because he thought the stories were getting too violent and wanted to work on a book. At the same time, he found out that his girlfriend Diane Marshall-Green was pregnant.
Things quickly began to go badly for Johnny Lewis. The years that followed would start his fatal, downward spiral.
His Tragic Downward Spiral
John Lewis took a lot of hits over the next three years. After the birth of his daughter Culla May in 2010, his relationship with Diane Marshall-Green got worse. Lewis soon found himself in a nasty custody battle over his baby daughter that he lost in the end.
The following year, in October, Lewis crashed his bike. Doctors didn’t see any signs of a concussion, but Lewis’s family thinks that his behaviour changed after the crash. He said no to MRIs and would sometimes speak with a strange British accent.
John Lewis also got violent for the first time in January 2012. He broke into the unit next door while he was staying at his parents’ condo unit. When two men came in and told him to leave, Lewis got into a fight with them and hit both of them with an empty Perrier bottle.
Lewis was sent to the Twin Towers jail. He was charged with trespassing, burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon. He hit his head on the concrete there, though, when he tried to jump from two stories up. After that, Lewis was sent to a mental hospital against his will, where he stayed for 72 hours.
Things got worse very quickly. Along with trying to ki*ll himself, Lewis became very sensitive to light and even tampered with his parents’ fuse box. He also punched a man outside of a yoghurt shop, walked into the ocean while fully dressed and tried to break into a woman’s flat over the next two months.
Lewis’s probation officer wrote that they were “very concerned for the well-being of not only the community but that of the defendant” after the attempted break-in. he will always be a danger to any community he lives in.
People who knew Lewis well agreed that something had altered. Tucker told Los Angeles Magazine, “Lewis was a whole different person.” “He had a look that I’ve only seen on angry war veterans.” He couldn’t remember everything. He went back and forth between basic, clear speech and incoherence.
Still, things seemed to get better over the summer. Johnny Lewis spent some time at the Ridgeview Ranch, which helped people who were addicted to drugs or had psychosis. Medications were also given to him to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Lewis wrote in his journal in July 2012, “Felt more whole today…more complete. Like parts of myself had been stolen in my sleep and spread out all over the world, and now they’ve begun to return.”
Even though Johnny Lewis was given a year in prison that fall, he only spent six weeks there because it was too crowded. After that, his father wanted to bring peace and stability into his son’s life, so he set up for him to stay at the Writers’ Villa, a place in L.A. with many rooms for up-and-coming artists where Lewis had stayed briefly in 2009.
Lewis and his 81-year-old wife Cathy Davis both died during their short stay there, which was very sad.
Johnny Lewis’s De*ath At The Writers’ Villa
John Lewis got angry at his new home on September 26, 2012, just five days after getting out of jail. What made him angry isn’t clear—his friends thought that Cathy Davis might have scolded him after he tried to turn off the fuse box—but what happened next is heartbreakingly clear.
After introducing himself to Dan Blackburn, a confused neighbour, Johnny Lewis went into Cathy Davis’s bedroom and beat and strangled her to de*ath. He then chased her cat into the bathroom and k*illed it too.
Lewis had “fractured [Davis’s] entire skull and obliterated the left side of her face, leaving her brain exposed,” according to the coroner. Brain matter could be seen on the floor around her.
After the attack, Lewis went back to Blackburn’s yard and attacked a house painter. When Blackburn tried to stop him, Lewis punched him, and he then chased the painter, Blackburn, and his wife into their house. After the fact, Blackburn told the Los Angeles Times that Lewis didn’t seem to feel pain and that hitting him was like “hitting him with a fly swatter.”
After that, Lewis went back to the Writers Villa and either jumped or fell 15 feet from the roof. 911 called to say a woman was screaming. When police arrived, they found Davis, her cat, and Lewis all de*ad.
“As far as we’re concerned, it’s a terrible tragedy, and we’re looking into it,” LAPD spokesman Andrew Smith told People after the fact.
But there wasn’t much to look into. The police had no other suspects except for Johnny Lewis.
Aftermath
What happened after Johnny Lewis’ de*ath was chaos, shock, and horror. At first, a lot of news outlets thought Lewis might have been high. According to the Los Angeles Times, police even thought he might have taken a man-made drug called C2-I, which means “smiles.” But Lewis’ autopsy showed that he did not have any drugs in his body.
Even though it was hard to figure out what made Johnny Lewis do what he did, many people who knew him well said they weren’t completely shocked by what happened.
He was very talented but had lost his way, so it was a sad ending for him. Kurt Sutter, who created Sons of Anarchy, wrote on his website, “I wish I could say that what happened last night shocked me, but it did not.” “I feel terrible that a good life had to be put in his way of destruction.”
Another thing that Lewis’s lawyer, Jonathan Mandel, said to CBS News was that Lewis “had a lot of problems, a lot of mental problems.” I suggested that he get help, but he turned it down.
Mandel also told E! News that his client had “psychosis” and that it “clearly did cloud his judgement.”
Some people blamed Lewis’ parents, who are both Scientologists, a religion that doesn’t support psychiatric care. But Lewis’s dad said that he told his son to get help. Mandel agreed with that.
“I think his parents did a great job,” the lawyer told CBS News. The way they tried to help him was really strong. They did everything they could to help him, but I guess it wasn’t enough.
In fact, no one could in the end.
