HOUSTON – He was called the cop who wouldn’t quit.
And even though Johnny Bonds retired decades ago, there’s one crook sitting in a Texas prison who he won’t let go.
“I’ve retired, but I’ve kind of made it my life’s work to keep him in jail. If anybody ever deserved to die in jail, this guy does,” Bonds said.
He’s talking about Walter Waldhauser Jr., aka Michael Lee Davis, the middle man in a notorious murder-for-hire plot to claim the insurance money for the deaths of four people, including a 14-month-old boy named Kevin Wanstrath.
“It’s one of those things you want to—you wish you hadn’t seen,” Bonds said.
Bonds became a man obsessed, until he helped prove a man named Markham Duff-Smith orchestrated the murders of four relatives with the help of a hitman named Allen Wayne Janecka.
Both of them were sentenced to death and executed after Waldhauser flipped on them and cut a deal for himself.
“He ended up only doing nine years on a 30-year sentence and he was paroled out,” Bonds said. “And I told some friends then, ‘He’ll, we’ll get another shot at him. He’ll do something wrong.”
Sure enough, Bonds later discovered the convicted murderer out on parole had hatched another life insurance scam and ripped off millions from investors.
He’s now back in prison serving five life sentences.
Now, once again, he’s up for parole, and Bonds is lobbying to keep him locked up.
“He’s a predator if there ever was one with no conscience,” Bonds said.
Somebody once wrote a book about Johnny Bonds.
But for the cop who wouldn’t quit, the story won’t end until a killer he caught decades ago dies in prison.