A New Jersey man, who has been in and out of jail at least a dozen times, allegedly killed his girlfriend and stashed her body under his bed, then spent the next month impersonating her online and using her phone to ask people for money, police said.
Rahim Johnson, 43, is facing one count of first-degree murder and a pair of weapons charges in connection with the death of 26-year-old Victoria Lee, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Lee’s father told authorities he last saw her on Jan. 24 at her home in Plainsboro, where Johnson had also been living. He reported his daughter missing days later on Jan. 30.
Lee’s disappearance triggered a desperate search effort across most of Middlesex County, which culminated in the discovery of her body on Tuesday and Johnson’s arrest the following day. He’s accused of stabbing and strangling her to death with an electrical cord on Jan. 24, according to court documents obtained by NJ Advanced Media.
In a subsequent interview with law enforcement, Johnson said he and Lee got into an argument the same night as her death. He claimed Lee at one point slashed him with a knife and that he tried to stop her, per the court documents.
Johnson also explained that he was “out of it” at the time, adding that he only realized Lee was dead when he “came to” a little bit later. In that moment, he said he wasn’t sure whether he had anything to “do with it or not,” so he stashed her body under the bed, hiding it further with coverings and blankets.
In the weeks after, Johnson used the victim’s phone to request money through her Zelle and Cash App accounts, police said. Lee’s bank records, cited by My Central Jersey, also show a series of transactions made in Trenton in the weeks after she went missing. They stopped only after police found her body earlier this week.
Johnson was being held Saturday at the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in North Brunswick.
With criminal history stretching as far back as 2002, Johnson has also been jailed for burglary, assault and resisting arrest. He most recently served time for child endangerment, according NJ 101.5. He was behind bars for more than a year, from April 2023 to October 2024.