pharmaceutical lawyer. During Honken's capital murder trial, his mitigation expert, Lisa Rickert, wrote to his lawyers that not only had she struggled to find any possible mitigation, what she discovered only further cast Honken in a negative light. Honken had physically and verbally abused his sister, Alyssa. He once held a pillow over Alyssa's face after she told one of his girlfriends that he had other girlfriends. Alyssa was unable to breathe and was scared that her brother would kill her, but he stopped, apologized, and started crying when he realized what he had done. On another occasion, Honken tried to drown Alyssa in a hotel pool. She could not breathe and swallowed water. Dustin eventually released his sister. In 1984, Honken plotted a bank robbery in which the person he would convince to commit the robbery for him would then be killed and thrown into a pond. In 1986, Honken schemed to kill one of his accomplices after stealing a car. Between 1986 and 1989, Honken was involved in a conversation which mentioned the possibility of killing his brother's business partner to collect a million dollar life insurance policy. In 1990, Honken raped and threatened his girlfriend. He later threatened to lock her in the basement and wondered how long it would take for her to be found, and how deep someone would need to be buried for them not to be plowed up by farm machinery. The defense did not have Rickert take the stand out of the fear that she might conclude Honken was a sociopath or had narcissistic personality disorder. Angela Johnson Johnson was born in Forest City, Iowa. Honken and Johnson were in a relationship at the time of the murders, and Johnson, who had a child from a previous marriage, was pregnant by Honken. Johnson was raised by extremely religious grandparents who would hold her down, wave Bibles over her head, and speak in tongues in an attempt to exorcise demons from her. Johnson's mother was an abusive and neglectful alcoholic. During Johnson's trial, it was revealed that she had been molested as a child. Drug dealing In the early 1990s, Honken started selling marijuana and cocaine. After finishing a year of community college chemistry classes with an A-minus, Honken, decided to become both a drug manufacturer and a dealer using what he had learned. He also decided to switch to meth. Honken enlisted