Family of man found dead questions cause of death

Ronald Moore will be the first to tell you: his brother Tanzell Johnson was not the type to take his own life.

“Can’t nobody tell you that he was ever depressed,” Moore said.

Johnson was a cafe manager at Columbia College and Moore said he was well known there.

“If you walk through Columbia College, meet some of the professors and the athletes, they all know Tanzell,” he said. “They will all tell you: he’s upbeat, outgoing.”

Johnson was found dead of a gunshot wound at Welcome Inn last Wednesday, his family said. Columbia police were dispatched there for an attempted suicide.

Police told family members, who flew in from Iowa, that Johnson had taken his own life that day but Moore said that Mionday an investigator with the Boone County Medical Examiner’s Office said Johnson’s injuries were more consistent with a homicide.

ABC17 News called the office Tuesday and another investigator said that Dr. Deiter Duff, the doctor who performed the autopsy, had not yet made an official determination for Johnson’s death.

The Johnson family also told ABC17 News that Johnson and Leon Wilder were good friends who hung out at the Welcome Inn frequently. ABC17 News confirmed that the two were Facebook friends.

Wilder’s body was found last Thursday, the day after Johnson’s death, on the Boone/Audrain county line near the Centralia Battlefield. Two suspects are in custody for Wilder’s death.

Police said Wilder was abducted from Welcome Inn on Thursday morning.

Johnson’s family said it wants to get some answers to find out if Johnson was murdered and if his killing was connected to Wilder’s death.

“Every murder here they leak out information, at least there’s a dead body, something,” Moore said. “I mean, there’s nothing. There’s nothing.”