Thursday, March 24, 2005 | 11:25 a.m.
Twenty-five years ago Patrick McKenna, branded by Metro Police and others as the most dangerous man in Nevada's prison system, was sentenced to death for killing a cellmate shortly after being found guilty of raping two women.
That he is still alive following a retrial, a second conviction and two more juries sentencing him to death has long haunted G.L. "Gina" Johnson, who was an 18-year-old, 5-foot-4, 250-pound prostitute when McKenna raped her and a fellow prostitute in a pay-by-the-week Las Vegas apartment in 1978.
McKenna, now 58, has, over the years, tried to escape several times. One attempt in 1979 led to the takeover of a local jail that ended in a shootout that left two prisoners dead.
Every time Johnson got wind of those escape attempts she cringed in fear that one day McKenna would get away, hunt her down and kill her for reporting him to police and testifying against him at trial.
In recent years, Johnson, who was known as Gina Ryan at the time of the attacks, decided to stop running away and now wants to fulfill a promise she made moments before McKenna stopped his attack.
And what she says she wants to say to McKenna might shock many, including the death row inmate who is in the process of having appeals heard in the state court system -- appeals that perhaps will, for a fourth time, go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I don't want to talk to him face-to-face, but I made a promise to Jesus Christ (the day of the attacks) that I would tell Patrick that Jesus told me he loves him," Johnson said in a telephone interview from her home in Ohio.
"I understand many people will call me a crackpot for saying that, but I also know that the vision I had that day was real and that I must let Patrick know what Jesus told me to say to him."
Johnson wrote a book about her life that was self-published last November, titled "Is Heaven Big Enough for Both of Us?" In it, Johnson describes the rape and beating and how the incident affected her during the past 27 years.
"As I finished the last prayer that I thought I would ever pray, I looked up. There stood Jesus in the middle of the light," Johnson writes of the day she was attacked, noting she was forced to smoke half a marijuana joint and eat the other half during a break in the attack, which lasted for 10 hours.
"The room was filled with gentleness and great peace. 'I am here with you always. Don't be afraid,' Jesus assured. 'I need you to tell people that I am real and that I'm alive. I need you to tell Patrick that I am real too, and that I love him.' "
After promising the image of Christ she would give that message to McKenna, Johnson, who at the time was naked and bound neck-to-neck with Cherry by dual nooses at the ends of five feet of rope, did not.
She further writes: "I looked over at Patrick. He had stopped cutting Cherry's neck and was staring at me. It was as if time was standing still. ... I wondered if he had seen Jesus, but I didn't get the chance to ask. ...
"He dropped her and grabbed his shotgun, wrapping his jacket around it. He then headed for the door, but suddenly stopped and grabbed me by the hair, forcing my bloody face toward his.
" 'If you tell anyone, I'll come back and kill you. ... Don't tell anyone. Promise me now.' 'I promise,' I whispered. ... He let me go and walked out."
Johnson did not keep that promise either. Believing McKenna would rape and perhaps kill other women, she went to the police. McKenna was arrested hanging around the complex near McCarran International Airport where the women lived.
Although McKenna had other convictions for violent crimes since he was a teenager, it was the arrest for those rapes that started a chain of events that put McKenna in a 23-hour-a-day lockdown in a small cell at Ely's maximum security state prison, awaiting a date to be set with the executioner.
"The irony is that by ratting him out, I thought I was saving lives, yet in jail and prison three people died because of Patrick's actions," Johnson said. "I also have had to live with that all of these years.
"Maybe the reason Patrick is still alive is because he needs to know that Jesus loves him, so that they (the state) can go forward with his execution. In recent years I have come to forgive him. And I have come to appreciate him for changing my life by proving to me that God is real."
UNLV Associate Professor of Psychology Chris Heavey, the chair of the school's psychology department, said Johnson's search for closure following her traumatic incident is not uncommon.
"One of the strengths of the human design is the drive toward understanding as we ask questions about our world and our universe," he said.
"Researchers have found that most traumatic events are not likely to be repressed. They are burned into our memory because the release of stress hormones has the effect of searing the memory into our psyche."
And, Heavey said, studies have shown that turning to a superior being has a positive outcome on the lives of many who survive traumatic situations.
"Psychologically speaking, we seek a framework in which we can understand our own existence, and religion provides an explanatory framework from which we can draw comfort," he said. " Religious views are, from a psychological viewpoint, healthy.
"People who are religious tend to be healthier, happier and more forgiving. They tend to live longer and have happier marriages. Clearly anger is not as healthy -- it is a killer. Chronically angry people are more likely to die from heart attacks and have problems with marriage and social relations."
Still, McKenna's attorney Patricia Erickson, who has extensive experience in capital murder cases and death sentence appeals and currently is representing eight men on Nevada's death row, said it is rare for a victim to be as forgiving as Johnson.
"It is pretty unusual to find victims or family members of victims who are willing to forgive because people want revenge -- an eye for an eye," Erickson said.
"But our legal system is not designed for revenge. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that the death penalty is for only the worst of murders. Patrick McKenna is not a monster."
Erickson said her job is not to delay justice, but rather ensure it.
"Remember, the first conviction and first two death sentences (in McKenna's case) were thrown out (which restarted the appeals process)," she said.
"Even though some people think it takes too long to put people to death, they should put themselves in the shoes of the person (being tried). You would want to make sure that your trial and sentencing were constitutional and fair."
Johnson said she wrote her book primarily to demonstrate that with strong faith any obstacle can be overcome.
"I wanted to show people you can survive and go on with your life and be happy -- that there is life after abuse," Johnson said, noting that she and McKenna, according to testimony in his case, grew up in abusive homes.
After the attacks, Cherry, who had allowed an apparently homeless McKenna to stay with her out of pity for him, moved to Florida, Johnson said, noting she has not had contact with her and never even knew her friend's real last name.
Johnson in the early 1980s worked as a blackjack dealer at downtown casinos, including the California Club and Binion's Horsehoe. She moved out of state and says she later worked in the motion picture industry as a production assistant and film extra. She also says she has booked rock 'n' roll shows.
Johnson jokes that her strategy to hide in the open apparently was effective.
But despite her epiphany on the day she was attacked, Johnson chronicles in her book how she went through years of suffering from bouts of depression, drank heavily and felt little or no self worth. On the positive side, she says, she lost much of her excessive weight.
Johnson says it was not until she began writing her book and began counseling fellow rape victims over the Internet a few years ago that she was able to forgive McKenna -- something he has never publicly sought from her.
"I am happy with my life now," Johnson said.
Asked if she believes Nevada ever will execute McKenna, Johnson said, "I don't think they'll get around to it. But I'm not the one who will judge him."
And, based on the title of her book, Johnson says she isn't assuming McKenna's soul automatically will be dispatched to the underworld. She says she believes she possibly could one day run into him in heaven.
Johnson recently turned 45. She is married and is a mother of three."
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