Johnny 0: The Cop Who Knew Too Much?

In a small town like Stephen-ville, Texas, located about sixty-five miles west of Fort Worth, it doesn’t take long for news to get around. That’s the way it was on a chilly February afternoon in 1983 when the Stephenville Empire Tribune carried a banner headline story about “one of the biggest drug operations ever uncovered” in the tiny town’s 132-year history. A day earlier, the Erath County grand jury had returned a slate of twenty-six indictments against nine suspects who were jailed on charges including burglary and selling and possessing cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines, and LSD. The arrests ended a four-month undercover operation into the activities of a $100,000-a-month drug trafficking ring.

Since nearly everyone in Stephenville was talking about the big drug bust, it didn’t take them long to find out what the newspaper never told them: the undercover agent who put the suspected drug dealers behind bars was a local businessman named Johnny Warren Osborne. Most Stephenville residents had already heard of Osborne, even before he agreed to go undercover in November 1982 to help Stephenville Police Chief Douglas Conner make drug buys and find out who was responsible for a rash of what became known as the “Friday night burglaries.” Some knew Osborne through his small trucking business; others knew him as a referee at area high school and college basketball games and a sponsor and coach of little league teams. And nearly everybody knew Osborne as a man who married into money when he wed Sherri Foster, whose father, Bobby Foster, had struck it rich in the Odessa oil fields and become Stephen-ville’s wealthiest, most powerful citizen.

Osborne’s undercover work made him a town hero almost overnight. The grand jury gave him a standing ovation, city council members lauded him, and folks were buzzing at local cafes about the gutsy businessman who descended into the criminal underworld in the name of justice. Conner thought so highly of Osbome’s undercover work that he officially hired him in March 1983 as a Stephenville patrol officer, only a week or so after the grand jury indictments were returned. The following May, Police Chief Conner sent Osborne to police officer certification school, where one school staff member remembers him as “an excellent student, the equivalent of an A student” and president of his academy class.

The law enforcement career of Osborne, however, proved to be short-lived. Less than six months after he became a patrol officer, four of the men arrested in connection with the undercover operation alleged that Osborne suggested they burglarize a trucking company and that he told them where the money was hidden. Osborne denied the allegations, but he was placed on administrative leave with pay on August 27, 1983. (Osborne took a polygraph in 1985 commissioned by his attorney, Marc Richman of Dallas. Richman says he “passed with flying colors.”)

Osborne also claims Conner asked him to resign on two separate occasions. The following September 2, acting on his attorney’s advice, Osborne declined to accept the last paycheck he received from the city.

And even though the allegations against Osborne have yet to be proven, the narcotics charges against the original suspects that resulted from Osborne’s undercover work were dismissed, apparently because his credibility would be questioned in a courtroom.

Since then, Osborne has mounted a legal offensive against the city. He says he was never given the opportunity to clear himself of the allegations and that he’s applied for at least twenty-five law enforcement jobs since 1983, but has been repeatedly turned down because of bad recommendations by Conner. Osborne has now filed a $2.25 million slander and libel federal lawsuit against the City of Stephen-ville, the heftiest legal action ever brought against the small town. Osborne and the city are due to slug it out this November in a federal court in Fort Worth, says Richman.

Osborne says he still doesn’t understand the unusual chain or events, although he admits to making a few mistakes during the undercover operation. “Maybe I was the police department’s scapegoat,” he says. “Maybe it was because of jealousy among my fellow officers because I drove a bigger car and lived in a bigger house.”

Or maybe Osborne knew too much. He says while he was working undercover he gave Conner a tape-recorded discussion with a drug dealer who told Osborne that he was selling drugs to a prominent Stephen-ville banker and defense attorney. Osborne says he never heard another word about the allegations. “I feel like they wanted it all quieted down and hushed up, for me to go away and forget about it,” says Osborne.

Conner won’t comment on the lawsuit. But in a sworn deposition he gave last December, he says he neither fired Osborne nor asked for his resignation. Conner does admit he has not recommended Osborne for any law enforcement jobs.

One of the points disputed in the lawsuit is whether Osborne was acting as an informant or a police officer during the four-month undercover operation during which he purchased drugs and stolen guns for the Stephenville police, Texas Rangers, Texas Department of Public Safety, and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Since the beginning, Osborne has contended that he was never a paid police informant, but instead acted with legal authority, even though he was a noncertified police officer. Conner and his assistant, Lt. Kenneth Maltby, a former Dallas Police Department intelligence officer, admit it was unusual, but that Osborne was issued a Stephenville police investigator’s badge as protection “in case he got in a bind.” Osbome claims he was administered a police officer’s oath, issued a police identification card, and was routinely referred to as “Officer Osborne” in police reports. On at least one occasion, he arrested a suspect, he claims.

Conner and Maltby both deny that Osborne was a police officer before the undercover investigation was completed. Osborne says he thinks they have taken that position to avoid accepting any liability for Os-borne’s actions while he worked undercover.

Although it’s been more than two years since the Osborne controversy, the town’s citizens remain divided on whether the man they call Johnny O was the devil’s disciple or a good guy who was done wrong.

Osborne, thirty-eight, is asking more than $2 million from the city in his lawsuit, but maintains he’d forget the whole thing if his name were cleared and if he were given the opportunity to be a police officer again.

“All I want is to be a cop again.” he says. “I’m very disappointed. I came into this thing as a layman wanting to help. I did my job. I didn’t have anything to gain. 1 don’t understand how you can be applauded one day and the next day be called the biggest crook in town.”