LEA COUNTY, N.M. (KRQE) – A Hobbs mother has pleaded guilty to murdering her 11-year-old son. Bruce Johnson Junior died last summer, just hours after telling Lea County deputies at the hospital that his mother Mary Johnson was the one who stabbed him.
The boy’s father told investigators he and his son moved from Oklahoma to Hobbs to get away from Mary, who was abusive.
According to court documents, Bruce Junior had said he hated his mother and kept a bat under his bed to protect himself from her.
Bruce Junior’s sister claimed, last year, their mother was off her medications, talking about delusions of being god, and wanting to help her children “ascend.”
Before the couple’s divorce went through, Mary Johnson moved to Hobbs to spend time with her son, and that’s when she reportedly stabbed him with a steak knife, then stabbed herself, but survived.
Hospital staff said she told them, “If I can’t have him, no one can.”
Mary Johnson was originally charged with first-degree murder, but court documents show she pleaded down to second-degree.
She has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
