‘I blew half his ... face off:’ In undercover drug deal man confesses to KC killing

On March 9, a woman called police to a southeast Kansas City apartment complex to report a shooting.

When police arrived they found 30-year-old Ricky Boswell dead. The woman told officers that she had to shoot Boswell when he tried to rape her.

It was a lie.

But it wouldn’t be long until police learned the truth about Boswell’s killing, according to sworn affidavits filed in federal court.

According to the allegations in those affidavits:

Four days after the homicide, an undercover Kansas City police detective met with 24-year-old Orval L. Johnson to buy cocaine.

It was the fourth time the officer met with Johnson to buy drugs, but this time, Johnson seemed out of breath, and the detective noticed a gun protruding from Johnson’s pocket.

The detective asked what was going on.

“They tried to rob me out there the other day,” Johnson allegedly replied.

He went on to say it happened at his apartment a few days earlier.

“I had to kill the bastard, blew half his .... face off,” he allegedly said. “He tried to rob me and kill me and my (girlfriend).”

Johnson then told the detective that he had his girlfriend “play the rape thing.”

They wiped the gun down to erase his DNA, then Johnson left and she called police.

On March 14, the day after his alleged confession to the detective he thought was a drug customer, Johnson was arrested. He was carrying a .357-caliber handgun.

An FBI agent and a Kansas City homicide detective were called in to question Johnson, who agreed to talk.

Johnson told them that he made five to 10 deliveries of cocaine every day and had been doing that since November 2016. He said he was always armed when he made drug deliveries.

He told them that on March 9, the customer showed up to buy cocaine, but he had a gun and tried to rob Johnson.

They began struggling and Johnson said he yelled for his girlfriend to bring a gun.

She got the gun and allegedly shot Boswell, who then tried to attack her.

Johnson said he then grabbed the gun and shot and killed Boswell.

After Johnson gave that statement, police re-interviewed his girlfriend, who acknowledged that she had lied about the attempted rape.

She told investigators that she had been sleeping when she woke up and saw Johnson and Boswell struggling over a gun. Johnson told her to get “their gun.” She did and shot him once.

Boswell then began to attack her, she said. Johnson grabbed the gun and shot Boswell several times.

She told the investigators that it was her idea to concoct the rape story.

Johnson, 24, was subsequently charged in an eight-count federal grand jury indictment with distribution and possession with intent to distribute drugs, possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime and being a drug user in possession of a firearm.

No charges have been filed in connection to Boswell’s killing.

Boswell himself had faced a murder charge in the 2012 killing of a man at a Kansas City motel.

But he ended up pleading guilty to lesser charge of attempted robbery and was sentenced to seven years in prison, according to Jackson County court records.

He was released from prison on Dec. 24, 2016, according to Missouri Department of Corrections records. Less than three months later, he was dead.

This story was originally published November 21, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "‘I blew half his ... face off:’ In undercover drug deal man confesses to KC killing."