Orlando Johnson, whose mother was murdered when he was just a year old, has kept her memory alive as he climbed the basketball ladder to the NBA.
His social media posts have paid tribute to Vicki Johnson, whose cold case killing confounded her family and community since 1991.
Now that his mother’s murder has been solved after 32 years, Johnson’s family is “grateful” for the answer to the devastating mystery, Seaside (California) Police Chief Nick Borges told Fox News Digital.
The 6-foot-5-inch player — now 34, the same age as his mother when she was killed — is in his 11th season of professional basketball.
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Johnson was drafted out of UC Santa Barbara by the Sacramento Kings in 2012, traded to the Indiana Pacers and spent stints in Milwaukee, Phoenix and New Orleans in his four-season-long NBA career. Internationally, he has played for teams in China, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, Bosnia and the Philippines.
Johnson currently plays for Uruguay’s Club Atlético Aguada, commonly known simply as “Aguada.”
But the seasoned player came from harrowing beginnings. Six years after his mother’s death, a space heater in Johnson’s childhood home ignited Christmas decorations, claiming the lives of his great-grandmother, aunt and two cousins while he visited his half brother, according to the Monterey County Weekly.
Seven members of the close-knit family died between 1989 and 1995, including Johnson’s grandmother and primary caregiver, who died of a heart attack.
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Johnson shared photos of his mother and grandmother to Instagram on Mother’s Day of 2019. On his late mother’s birthday in 2020, he posted photos that police would later distribute to news outlets to announce that her killer had been identified.
Another photo of a 1-year-old Johnson grinning on his mother’s lap was juxtaposed by a more recent picture posed at her grave site.
“Looking forward to having one of our heart to hearts and bringing you some flowers when I’m back,” Johnson wrote. “Your boys love and miss you, your family is always thinking about you and missing you.”
Chief Borges, just 10 when Vicki Johnson was killed and who was raised about a mile away from where her body was found, said he was honored to personally notify the player and his family that her killer had been identified.
“They were very grateful,” Borges told Fox News Digital. “I could tell by speaking to them that this was very difficult to relive and they are processing the magnitude of this.”
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“Orlando… is a local hero [that] came from a very difficult situation and became a star athlete,” he said. “Their [family’s] story is so tragic and challenging… [but] roses do grow from concrete!”
Johnson and his family could not immediately be reached for this story.
Borges said that Seaside was a “tough town” with “a handful of some very serious psychopaths” that had seen 10 murders in 1991 — but regardless, despite the fact that Vicki Johnson struggled with crack addiction, “her murder was shocking.”
“The majority of other murders [were] gang-related shootings,” he said. “To have a woman severely attacked and set on fire took things to a whole new level.”
The mother of three fought hard against her attacker. Investigators scraped samples of her killer’s skin from under her fingernails.
In 2021, those samples would be tested against the Combined DNA Index System, a database established in 1998 that now contains the DNA profiles of nearly 16 million offenders, according to FBI figures.
Frank Lewis McClure, who had a laundry list of other violent offenses, was identified as a match this week. But police could not charge him with a crime, as he died of natural causes in his Seaside home in 2021 at the age of 77.
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“I think the fact that he remained in Seaside all those years demonstrates his level of confidence and arrogance that the case would never be solved,” Borges said. “I am outraged that McClure felt comfortable enough to not only stay in Seaside, but continue to commit crime.”
According to data shared with Fox News Digital by the Seaside Police Department, McClure had been arrested for possessing drug paraphernalia, resisting police, assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence in 1990 alone; the number of resulting convictions was not immediately unclear.
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In 1991, he was arrested twice, once for domestic violence and again for assault with a deadly weapon.
“Assault and domestic violence cases [are] serious, but all [of McClure’s] cases were personal — there was never a connection between him and Ms. Johnson,” Borges said.
McClure violated his felony probation in 1994 and spent a four-year stint in prison, per Borges. He would be arrested two more times for domestic violence, once in 1999 and again in 2011, before his death in 2021.
Despite his violent record, Borges said, McClure and his family were well-known and well-liked — “those who knew him never would’ve suspected he would commit such a violent and disgusting act.”
“I know the detectives and police officers in those days tried to develop as much information as possible, but the code of silence that was prevalent in this small town far outweighed justice to murder victims,” he said.
Now that police have identified McClure as Vicki Johnson’s killer, Borges said there are 32 unsolved murders in Seaside.
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Despite the loss of his mother and surrounding family, Johnson was driven to success on the court by his surviving half brothers. One brother, Jamell Damon, helped raise him after their grandmother’s death, and another brother, Robbie, took on the role of a coach, per the Monterey County Weekly.
“A lot of the events in Orlando’s life go beyond disappointment,” Robbie told the publication. “It gives him patience. He’s never been handed anything. He had to work for all of it. Nothing came easy. He had to fight for all of it.”
Johnson’s primary motivation, he told the outlet, is his embattled family — particularly his grandmother.
“She took on the challenge of raising my aunties, uncles, brothers, cousins, and never let none of the trials and tribulations get in the way of providing for us,” Johnson told the outlet. “Watching her hustle — watching her work — makes me push to be as good as her. If I can do that, I’ll be pretty happy with my life.”
