WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Winston-Salem police have arrested a second suspect in a 33-year-old case.
- A new suspect has been arrested in a 1985 murder.
- The first suspect's case will be reviewed by a panel of judges.
Darren Johnson, 53, is the second person accused of murdering Blanche Bryson back in 1985.
Police say they received new information that lead to Johnson's arrest. He's awaiting extradition in Columbia, South Carolina.
Earlier this month, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission held a hearing for two convictions for Merritt Williams Drayton, the first suspect arrested in Bryson’s murder back in 1985. He pled guilty to killing Arthur Wilson in Winston-Salem in 1983 and was convicted of the murder of Bryson in 1985.
The commission concluded that there was “sufficient evidence” for a review the case in which Williams was convicted of Bryson’s death. Cheri Beasley, chief justice of the NC Supreme Court, is set to appoint a panel of judges to hear the case in Forsyth County. Williams did not get a review for the case in which he pled guilty to the murder of Arthur Wilson.
According to newspaper archives from the Winston-Salem Chronicle, Bryson, the woman Williams was convicted of killing back in 1985, was the mother of Jeffrey Bryson, the attorney who represented the Daryl Hunt defense committee. Daryl Hunt, who many said became “the face of wrongful convictions throughout the state,” was initially charged in Arthur Wilson’s murder but was later acquitted.