On any given Thursday night Angela McKennett Johnson would stand before a crowd in a Boulder bar and belt out Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battle Field.”
Thursdays is Karaoke night at Dark Horse, a Boulder bar founded in 1975, where Johnson also worked as a waitress.
The bar – packed with movie props and western antiques – is just east of the University of Colorado.
“She had an incredible voice,” said Johnson’s former roommate Corie Phillips. “She wanted to be a stage actress in musicals.”
Phillips said she lived in the same apartment with her friend and other roommates between 2000 and 2002. She knew her by her given name Angela Jennings. Her family was from the east coast but was estranged from her family.
“We were very close. She was such a fun person,” Phillips said.
Courtesy Denver crime stoppersOne time Johnson made an elaborate costume around Halloween and won $150 worth of drinks. The young women had a number of drinking parties at their apartment. Johnson’s favorite movie with The Matrix.
At one point that drove cross country to Phillips family home in Illinois. They had a lot of fun together. They often went to the Dark Horse when Johnson wasn’t working and played pool. Johnson was very good at it.
But things weren’t always rosy. Phillips didn’t have a job and wasn’t paying her share of the rent. Then she got very sick and had to return home for weeks.
While she was away, Johnson threw her belongings on the curb except for two garbage bags filled with some of her things and an Iguana. When she returned to Boulder and picked up what was left of her possessions she never saw Johnson again.
“We had a falling out,” Phillips said.
Johnson was soon married to Christopher Michael Johnson, 40, who was six years older than Johnson at the time.
The couple co-petitioned for separation on July 30, 2004.
Johnson was living alone in an apartment in the Peach Tree Apartment Complex, 6301 W. Hampden Avenue.
On Aug. 3, 2004, one of Angela’s friends went to her apartment and found Angela. She was dead.
Denver Crime StoppersPolice investigate Angela M. Johnson's murder on Aug. 3, 2004
Her death was ruled a homicide, according to a Denver police report. The report gives few details about the murder.
It said she was a “serious billiard player.” Angela Johnson was 27.
Years later Phillips tried to locate her friend. She hadn’t heard that she had been murdered. She said she was stunned.
She pulled up a Colorado Bureau of Investigation website listing the state’s unsolved homicides and missing person’s cases and gasped when she saw her old friend’s picture.
“That’s her,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
Anyone with information about Johnson’s homicide is asked to call the Denver Police Department at 720-913-2000.
Denver Post staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206. “Like” his Facebook page for updates on this and other cold cases: Facebook.com/kmitchellDP or follow him on Twitter.com/kmitchellDP.