Why Did Fleece Johnson Go to Prison? What We Know About This Real 'Boondocks' Character

Content Warning: This article contains references to subjects some readers may find disturbing, such as sexual assault.

He's a former prison inmate with the nickname The Booty Warrior. Yet the disturbing story behind why he has that name is anything but laughable.

Fleece Johnson, who garnered infamy on the adult cartoon The Boondocks, was released from prison in 2019.

Noteworthy for a disturbing interview he gave MSNBC about his life in lockup, Fleece has always been a source of intrigue and curiosity. So why did Fleece go to prison in the first place? Here's what we know about his time in prison and why he's more infamous than your average former inmate.

Fleece Johnson is a notorious prisoner who shocked the world with his candid admission to having a penchant for raping fellow prisoners. His cavalier interview with MSNBC even included him suggesting he would have once gladly assaulted the camera crew interviewing him and "dare them to say something."

But he went to prison before developing a taste for the horrifying, so what were his crimes?

There are conflicting reports as to why Fleece was imprisoned in the first place. Several sites suggest that his original crime was a juvenile charge, placing him in prison for the first time sometime between 1975 to 1979.

Other sites suggest that he either committed additional crimes after release or was later charged for previous crimes, and his sentence was extended for several decades, but the exact details are unclear. He was released in 2019. In at least one interview with Anton Daniels, Fleece discussed being brutally treated by guards while he spent decades behind bars.

Yet it wasn't the length of his prison stay that made him famous; it was how he spent his time in prison.

Fleece might never have become famous, except for MSNBC interviewing him in 2008 on an episode of Lockup, their in-depth view into what life is like in prison for long-term inmates.

What Fleece revealed in the interview would shock and horrify and turn him into a cartoon villain.

In an episode of Boondocks, main characters Huey, Riley, and other kids are taken to prison in a "Scared Straight" program to try to dissuade them from committing crimes.

Mentor Tom, who has a fear of being sexually assaulted, pushes through his anxiety to bring the kids to the prison for the program. But things go wrong, and one of the inmates is able to grab him and threatens to assault him.

His phrasing, "I likes you, and I wants you. Now we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The choice is yours," sounds like it came straight out of a comic book villain.

But that phrase actually came straight out of the mouth of Fleece in his 2008 interview with MSNBC.

In the interview, Fleece talked about how "booty," aka a "man's butt," was more important than food, or even "drinking water." He admitted to forcing other inmates to submit to him, referring to himself as a "warrior," which is how he earned the nickname "The Booty Warrior." It's a lighthearted nickname covering a horrifying reality.

Boondocks already starkly examines the reality of systemic racism and the horrors of the American prison system, amongst other heavy topics, but Fleece's interview and subsequent portrayal in the show are a dark reminder of how truth is sometimes worse than fiction.