Inmate admits to killing Reno man

By Anjeanette Damon
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
May 13th, 1999

YERINGTON - High on drugs and starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep, Charles DelaVega said he smashed in the head of a man attacking him with a knife.

And for the four years since he and the victim's wife buried the body beneath a Stead home and concocted a story to explain the man's disappearance, DelaVega said the killing has haunted him.

DelaVega, 40, recounted Wednesday the story he said he told no one until detectives visited him last week at the Lyon County Jail.

Washoe County sheriff's investigators last week unearthed the body, buried three feet deep under the house and covered in lime. They say DelaVega and Nell Johnston, 36, a prisoner at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in Las Vegas, are suspects but have not charged them with a crime. The coroner has withheld the victim's name.

"I've tried to forget it, but it's been something that's been haunting me," DelaVega said in the weight room of the small Lyon County Jail, his hands cuffed behind him. "I've never taken a life before. It is very hard to deal with. I'm glad it is now out in the open."

DelaVega said he met Johnston and her husband, Joe, while searching for drugs. He said Joe Johnston cooked and dealt methamphetamine. He developed a relationship with the couple and soon moved into their home to help them fix it up.

The three became strung out on drugs and had been awake for two or three days when Joe Johnston began accusing his wife and DelaVega of having an affair. DelaVega said the husband threatened both of them if he ever found out the two had been together.

"I found out that Joe was abusing Nell pretty bad," DelaVega said. "He had broken her nose and her ribs from previous times he had beat on her."

The group went to a Mexican restaurant but soon left after drinking several pitchers of margaritas, and Joe Johnston again made threats. DelaVega said they returned to the home and the Johnstons went into a room.

DelaVega said he started to become concerned about Nell when Joe Johnston charged out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He started yelling and DelaVega said he told him he would leave the next morning.

"Then he yelled at the top of his lungs something like he would get me out now," he said. DelaVega said Johnston came at him with a knife and the two began to fight.

"It's still kind of blurry in my mind and, mind you, I've been trying to forget it," he said, speaking quickly about the scuffle.

DelaVega said he grabbed what he thinks was a table leg and began to hit Johnston on the head until he loosened his grip on DelaVega.

"I grabbed whatever I could to smash him over the head."

Johnston went limp and DelaVega thought he was unconscious until he checked his pulse. After finding no heartbeat, DelaVega said he went into the kitchen to wash his hands and wrap a cut he had received on his wrist.

"That is when it started to set in," he said. "I went back and checked his pulse again, but it didn't come back, of course."

DelaVega said he went into the bedroom to tell Nell Johnston what he had done to her husband.

"I kind of hugged her and I told her I killed Joe," he said. "She became hysterical at first."

DelaVega calmed her, and the two began talking about what to do. The house was full of dope and needles, DelaVega said. Because she was on probation from a prior felony, Nell Johnston was afraid she would be sent to prison if authorities found the drugs and she would never see her children again, he said.

"That is when she made the statement that if Joe disappeared probably not too many people would notice," he said.

He wrapped the body in a blanket and dumped it into the crawl space, he said. He then went to sleep for a couple hours and the next day bought a bag of lime. "I read in a book somewhere that if you put a lot of lime on a body it would eat it up," he said. DelaVega then buried the body.

The pair decided to tell anybody who asked that Joe Johnston had walked from the Mexican restaurant and they hadn't seen him since, DelaVega said. They told Johnston's parents and his drug customers the story, he said.

About a year later, Nell Johnston told the same story to a Reno detective investigating the missing person report filed by Joe' Johnston's parents, he said. "Shoot, I should have called the authorities right away," DelaVega said.

DelaVega and Nell Johnston were married Aug. 14, 1996. They lived in Imlay for several years and DelaVega worked in mining and construction jobs. DelaVega said he quit drugs about a year ago after he became disgusted with the lifestyle.

He said they hadn't talked about the killing for nearly three years.

"I think Nell broke down and told," he said. "She was the only other one who knew where the body was."

They had just moved back to Yerington when Nell Johnston was arrested as an ex-felon in possession of firearms, DelaVega said.

Several months later, he was arrested for failure to pay child support. He was serving time for the offense when detectives came to interview him about the killing.

"I don't know how much trouble I'm going to be in over this," he said. "I want to tell my wife I love her and I wish we didn't have this big thing between us. There might not be a chance for a future together, but I still love her."

The couple have not been able to write letters or speak on the phone since detectives approached them about the murder.

He said he doesn't believe he should be put away in prison and hopes to rebuild a life using the skills he has learned during the past four years. He wants to tell his story to teen-agers and warn them of the dangers of drugs.

DelaVega said he sometimes thought about telling people about the killing.

"I had fleeting thoughts of at least letting his parents know what had happened to him," he said. "I just wanted it to go away. Obviously it didn't."

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