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I'm Surruti. I'm Anna.

And welcome to the first week of Red-Handed Does October slash Halloween.

Welcome. Come on in, the water's dark and creepy.

And maybe filled with toilet snakes.

When you've been in the world of true crime for as long as we have, you reckon that you've seen it all when it comes to wrongings making excuses?

Whether it's you've got the wrong guy or I lost control, you can bet those wily defence lawyers will do whatever it takes to weasel their clients out of facing the music.

But back in 1981, a smartly dressed young man named Arnie Cheyenne Johnson stood in front of a New England courtroom and claimed an

alibi that the American justice system had never heard before. It wasn't me, it was the devil. And just like that, what should have been a

straightforward murder case morphed into a media shitstorm, featuring angry demons, a possessed

11-year-old boy, and even a cameo from America's most notorious Ghostbusters, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Hold on to your rosary beads.

This is one hell of a story.

As in any matter of faith,

this case is about what you choose to believe in.

The tangible facts, it turns out, are pretty straightforward. At around 6.30pm on the 16th of

February 1981, a fight broke out between two men in the small town of Brookfield, Connecticut.

19-year-old Arnie Johnson, who went by his Native American-inspired middle name Cheyenne with friends,

had been hanging out with his 40-year-old landlord, Alan Bono, at the older man's apartment

above the dog kennel business that he ran. Despite the age gap, the pair were firm friends

who'd hit it off since Bono employed Johnson's girlfriend Debbie Glatzel as a groomer a few months earlier.

...