Nothing mattered to Janice Sallis-Mustafa after they pulled the naked body of her 16-year-old daughter from the river.
She quit her career as a home nurse. She sold the rancher outside Charlotte, North Carolina, to stay with family. Thirteen years went by; a mother doesn’t get over the anguish, not ever.
The brutal attack on another young woman has now shaken the fragile life that she rebuilt.
The disappearance of Sallis-Mustafa’s daughter, Phylicia Barnes, while visiting Baltimore relatives in 2010 captured attention around the country, and police asked for the public’s help finding the high school honors student. A Baltimore man, Michael Maurice Johnson, stood trial three times, making local and national news for the better part of five years. In the end, he was cleared of the crime.
In a new case that’s disturbingly similar, Johnson was charged last month in the strangulation and rape of a young woman in a Baltimore County apartment.
The woman, age 19, told police that her boyfriend, Johnson, attacked her over six hours, and strangled her with the cord of a fan, officers wrote in charging documents. The Banner does not identify people without their consent who say they have been sexually assaulted.
Blood vessels had popped in her eyes in the telltale sign of petechial hemorrhaging, they wrote. She had so much trouble speaking from her swollen tongue and mouth that she typed answers to detectives on a cellphone.
A judge ordered Johnson, 40, held without bail on charges of rape and attempted murder. His new trial has not yet been scheduled. His public defender did not return a message.
The news of Johnson’s arrest quickly reached the two women who had been closest to Phylicia Barnes: her mother, Sallis-Mustafa, in Texas, and older sister, Shauntel Sallis, in New York.
“Simone,” as they called her, was in high school when she struck up a friendship with her distant half sisters in Baltimore. Later, the trials would reveal that an older half sister gave Simone alcohol and they partied with Johnson. When Simone made a third visit to Baltimore, she never came home.
Her mother and sister want to be heard now because their grief, frustration and anger remain.
The new case against Johnson has not reopened their wounds; those wounds never closed. Rather, the case has dredged up Simone’s unsolved killing, and they don’t want the bawdry spectacle at the end of her life to be the last word. They want it known that Simone was loved and died far from home.
“The world, or whomever knows of Phylicia ‘Simone’ Barnes, they need to know that she has family members who really were affected by this,” said Sallis, her sister. “They need to hear who raised her. They need to know where she came from.”
She came from the sparsely populated suburbs of Monroe, North Carolina. In the modest rancher on 5 acres, she lived with her mom and three siblings.
The second-oldest, Simone went to Union Academy Charter School, took honors classes and joined the drama club. She was always reading, say, “Harry Potter” or “Twilight” books. First she wanted to be an astronomer, then a veterinarian, maybe a pediatrician. She threw herself into new interests. After a class in high school, she decided to be a psychologist.
The search crews spent four months looking for her body.
The case against Johnson centered on circumstantial evidence. He had dated one of Simone’s half sisters, and prosecutors alleged that he became obsessed with the teen, that the two exchanged more than 1,000 text messages.
Prosecutors told the jury that Johnson sexually assaulted Simone, strangled her, hauled her body out in a plastic tub and dumped her in the Susquehanna River. They played for jurors a video that showed Johnson, Simone and her half sister Deena Barnes naked after drinking. In the video, Johnson made a sexual advance toward Simone.
Still, there was no forensic evidence that implicated him. Prosecutors were unable to present evidence that placed Johnson at the river. And questions arose about the credibility of their key witness.
The murder case went back and forth. A jury convicted Johnson of second-degree murder in 2013, but the judge found prosecutors failed to disclose evidence and ordered a new trial. The second case was thrown out in 2015 over another procedural misstep. Prosecutors indicted Johnson again, sending him to a third trial; a judge acquitted him, finding the evidence too thin for a reasonable jury to convict.
Under double jeopardy, he could not be tried again. Johnson was free.
Simone’s mother and sister didn’t budge in their belief that Johnson had killed her. Sallis couldn’t bear to stay in the home she had shared with Simone. The older sister couldn’t bear to stay in North Carolina, even. She settled in New York and set up a little table with Simone’s ashes in an urn, her little sister’s class photo, a candle and fresh flowers.
Years passed. Even the shrine became too much. Sallis packed everything away. Now, she sets out the memorial table for Simone’s birthday, for her missed graduation day, or the other haunting anniversaries.
With a young son to consider, Sallis couldn’t fall to pieces. She stowed her grief and anger someplace deep. That place frightens her still. Now, the allegations against Johnson are pushing her thoughts there. What did Simone endure before her death?
“I fear what my sister went through is what she went through,” Sallis said, although she tries not to dwell. “That’s a bad place to go. I’m scared that I’m going to get stuck there.”
Only in recent years has Sallis-Mustafa decided to rebuild her life. After leaving behind the house in North Carolina, she stayed with family in Georgia, then two years ago moved to Texas. She rents an apartment and reinstated her nursing license to work part time. The depression and anxiety remain, but she’s learned to cope.
She’s learned to live with guilt and anger, too. There’s guilt that she had encouraged Simone to spend time with her father and half sisters in Baltimore. There’s anger at a criminal justice system that held no one accountable for the death of her daughter.
Sallis-Mustafa sees one more chance for justice.
If convicted, Johnson’s attempted-murder charge alone brings a maximum penalty of life in prison.
“I want to see him get double-life without the possibility of parole,” she said.
