PANAMA CITY — A man who admitted the shooting deaths of a local nightclub owner and a Santa Rosa County couple came at the hands of his pill addiction appeared in court Monday.
Derrick Ray Thompson, 42, was arrested in July at a hunting lodge in Troy, Ala., where law enforcement tracked him after discovering three murder scenes across two Panhandle counties. SWAT teams stunned him with flash-bang grenades and captured him.
Thompson was in court Monday for a routine pre-trial hearing to update the status of the case. He was wanted in the slaying of former Bay County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) investigator and controversial nightclub owner Allen Johnson, 67, after an early morning robbery and shooting at Johnson’s home near Lynn Haven. In official transcripts recently released following Thompson’s capture July 22, he admits the shooting was motivated by a prescription pill addiction.
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“He (had) just woke up. I shot him twice in the head, stole his money and bought some pills,” Thompson told investigators during a taped confession. “I didn’t say nothing. He had his back to me at the sink and I just shot him.”
Thompson said he and Johnson were friends, hunted together, and Johnson had loaned him $200 days before the shooting in Santa Rosa County that left a couple dead. Johnson said he wouldn’t loan him any more money but invited Thompson to come by and discuss it anyway, Thompson said.
“I was hurting bad, and I killed my friend,” he said during the taped confession.
In total, Thompson ended up taking several guns and about $600 in cash from the home, he said. Investigators would later find a check for $500 at the scene, written to Thompson.
Thompson also was a person of interest in the Santa Rosa County deaths of 60-year-old Steven Zackowski and 59-year-old Debra Zackowski, both of Milton. Thompson had done electrical work for the couple in exchange for oxycodone, he said, but they had not been paying him.
“We got into an argument and he went to reach under the recliner,” Thompson said. “… Next thing I know, we ended up in a pushing match, and I ended up shooting him and ended up shooting her and stealing his pills.”
Thompson said he shot Steven Zackowski once in the back of the head and then forced his wife to lead him to a safe where the pills were kept. Authorities found Debra Zackowski in a closet shot to death.
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Thompson told investigators he’d rarely taken Ibuprofen until he suffered a back injury that led to an addiction to oxycodone. During the interview, he told investigators that people who illegally sell the medication “prey on people like me,” he said.
“This oxycodone thing is a bad problem, and I have seen and experienced it firsthand,” Thompson said. “I hate to see other people go through what I have been through.”
Thompson is scheduled to return to court July 20 for another pre-trial hearing.