Las Vegas mother’s horrific end came after methamphetamine daze

A yearslong struggle with addiction and mental illness ended in June with seizures, drugs and death for one Las Vegas woman, whose body was found in the company of a man she did not know.

The coroner’s office said this week that a combination of methamphetamine intoxication and environmental heat stress killed her. But the horrors continued after death, when witnesses told police the man she was found with appeared to be having sex with her body.

Medics estimated she had been dead a few hours by the time police were called.

The man was still there, in the planter at a strip mall less than a block from University Medical Center, when officers arrived. He was arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center after asking for a lawyer.

She had no ID on her, so the police report referred to her as Jane Doe. “Appeared to be homeless,” the report read.

She wasn’t.

She had a name: Mary Louise Johnson. She was 35. She had three children, ages 17, 14 and 10.

“She was well-loved. She had a family. She went to church. She was a sweet person who trusted everybody,” her mother, Brenda Loue, 55, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday, just outside a courtroom where the man arrested stood briefly before a judge.

Johnson’s story isn’t a pretty one. Loue will be the first to tell you. But Johnson adored her children. Selfies of her and them together, smiling wide, speckle the photo albums in each of their phones.

She had been clean for some time and was in a stable, loving relationship, her mother said. Together, they all lived with Loue.

But Johnson also struggled with mental illness. She had bipolar disorder and had episodes in which she wouldn’t take her medication. At times, the woman they knew became forgetful, nonsensical, helpless, but they did their best to help her.

The allure of drugs was constant.

“She was fighting addiction every day. Every day,” Loue said. “She was clean for months and months and months. The series of the last five months — bad doctors, bad crap.”

Loue explained that her daughter had been experiencing several seizures, sometimes more than once a day, and that she began skipping medication for those in spurts, too.

A few weeks before her death, the family moved out of its large Las Vegas home and into separate, smaller apartments because Johnson planned to uproot and move herself, her boyfriend and her children to Michigan, where more relatives lived. A change of scenery and a chance to start over.

“A very hot day outside and some idiot … that’s all it took,” Loue said of Johnson’s death.

The night before she died, Johnson, in a daze, showed up at the family’s recently emptied home. She was on methamphetamine again and hadn’t taken any of her medication in at least two days.

Neighbors called Loue, who quickly showed up and tried to calm her daughter. She called the paramedics and listed every prescription Johnson was supposed to be on when they arrived.

The medics carted her off in an ambulance bound for University Medical Center about 11:30 p.m. on June 24, the last time any of them saw Johnson alive.

She was discharged by herself about 5:30 a.m., the hospital told Loue. The man later found with Johnson’s body, Joseph Martinez, 57, told police he met her in the hospital’s lobby.

Whether or not Johnson took more methamphetamine that morning, Loue believes her daughter may have been preparing for a seizure before she died. They happened so frequently that Johnson had a routine: Sit down, lie back and relax so she wouldn’t suffer more injury.

Officers found her body, pale and stiff, lying next to Martinez.

“I think this guy had one thing on his mind,” Loue said. “He thought she was an easy target.”

She paused to collect herself.

“It hits you out of nowhere. You just break down,” she continued. “I blame myself for sending her to the hospital that night.”

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.