Woman found dead near New York Avenue NE led troubled life, thwarted those who helped

“Thank you for being non-judgmental, and for showing me unconditional love,” Clanton wrote. “All the efforts you put in will never be in vain.”

She absconded from the program after a month.

A letter from Misty Clanton

Clanton wrote this letter to Philip Johnson to thank him for his assistance.

• Clanton’s letter to Christine Swift

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Clanton expressed similar sentiments in letters to Johnson. She had been lazy, she admitted after he sent $20 to her in jail. She begged him to “forgive my selfishness” and vowed, “I’m changing day by day.”

“I was so grateful that you still love me in spite of all the things I’ve done, or have failed to do,” Clanton wrote. “I don’t deserve you because you’ve given so much more than I have given to you. . . . Do you care about me really? Or is it all gone?”

Misty Clanton came to the District in 1998 from Front Royal. A brother who lives there declined to discuss her, and though an in-law said there had been a memorial service, no record of a funeral could be found. Telephone numbers for other believed family members in Virginia and Tennessee, where she was born, were disconnected or out-of-service.

What could be learned about Clanton came from court files, probation reports and interviews with people she confided in while living and working along H Street and up through Trinidad to New York Avenue.

Accounts portray Clanton’s upbringing as chaotic and abusive, with arrests in the District, Virginia and Florida. Her first arrest in the District, under the name Misty Clanton — she was booked under many variants of her names, including Mysty and Melissa, Clandon and Chanton — came in September 2000, for solicitation. She went to jail for 90 days.

Her criminal portfolio quickly filled. West Virginia Avenue NE was such a frequent stomping ground that a judge once forbid her from returning there. She would typically go to jail for a few weeks or months, get out, then get in trouble for failing to follow the rules — such as getting drug treatment or staying in halfway houses — set for her release.

“The fact she was rearrested for the same charge within a month of being placed on probation leads this officer to believe that she is not taking probation seriously,” a probation officer wrote in one report.

Her arrests have a pattern — charged with soliciting an undercover officer for sex or drugs or both. She frequented West Virginia Avenue NE, often near a gas station at Mount Olivet Road. In a beauty salon inside a nearby strip mall, some people said she stood out because she sold herself in nondescript street clothes rather than racy attire.

The 69-year-old Johnson said he first spotted Clanton in 2001, crying as she sat on a curb near his home a few blocks from Union Station. The freelance financial consultant had moved to the area a few months before, quickly joining other neighbors who formed a neighborhood watch, meeting with police and trying to push dope dealers and prostitutes out of their redeveloping community.

He recalls police setting up floodlights, and he met and talked with many of the streetwalkers. One was Clanton.

“I could see she was kind of strung out on drugs,” he said. “She told me she was hungry. I fed her.” Over time, Johnson let her use his address for mail, most of it from court officials looking for her, but he said he never let her stay with him.