Bloody Details of A Backpage Murder

Aaron Drumheller

Fresh developments on the story we first reported to you in our last post in which we laid out the damning ways in which the rising Backpage body count draws a straight line to the criminal bosses who ran the show and the sycophantic lap Tony Ortega who helped them.

Previously we reported to you about a Virginia man who had been sentenced last week to 40 years in federal prison for robbing and killing people he’d connected with using the ‘escort’ section of Backpage – the very section which Tony Ortega insisted you’d be crazy to believe was anything less than impeccably legitimate.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, prosecutors in Petersburg and Hopewell teamed up to resolve both cases against Aaron Drumheller, who pleaded no contest in Petersburg Circuit Court to robbing and killing a man named Albert Freeman, before pleading guilty in Hopewell Circuit Court to killing 21-year-old Jaequan Johnson.

According to evidence, Freeman went to the 200 block of Spring Street, and security camera footage obtained by police showed him walking up to a porch. Freeman is then seen turning around and suddenly backing up with his hands raised, as two men with guns force him to the ground and rob him.

In the Hopewell case, Johnson, the victim, agreed to give two young women a ride to a local beauty salon, but told them he first had to stop at a location in the 2200 block of Maple Avenue. Upon arrival, they met with several other people who gathered there, including Drumheller.

It was then Drumheller approached and shot Johnson once in the abdomen. As the others at the scene began to flee, Johnson was able to get up and walk a short distance to the 800 block of Arlington Road, where he collapsed in the front yard of a home. A resident there assisted Johnson and called 911.

Johnson was in “extreme distress” when police and paramedics arrived, but when asked who shot him, Johnson uttered the name Aaron Crumb, which authorities believe “was his best attempt to say Aaron Drumheller.”

Authorities believe Johnson, Drumheller and three other men at the shooting scene had gathered for a drug transaction that turned into a robbery, Fierro said.

As the lawyer prosecuting the case said of the events that day:

“The robbery then went sideways, and that’s when the shooting began.”

In a strange sense this is very much the story of Backpage in a nutshell. It all began as an attempt to skirt prostitution laws and laws against trafficking children for sex but it quickly snowballed into something even uglier and more bloody.

Tony Ortega

If Tony Ortega had even a shred of conscience he would admit he was wrong to have been such a vocal advocate for this criminal enterprise.

But of course he will not. For a man to admit he was wrong at the level at which Ortega was wrong takes strength of character, a developed ethical framework, and moral integrity. And Tony Ortega lacks them all.