Breaking: Fellow Iconic Lakewood Church Member charged with killing Joel Osteen’s great-aunt Few minutes ago….
August 2025, authorities found Lakewood Church Pastor Joel Osteen’s 84-year-old great-aunt Johnnie Daniel brutally murdered in her home in eastern Harris County. Someone had smashed her face, placed a copy of the New Testament and a pencil on her chest and left a claw hammer in a bloody towel next to her.
In a Houston Chronicle article published Tuesday, investigative reporter Neena Satija described how Harris County prosecutors dismissed the murder charge against Wilson in August 2024 after discovering the DNA evidence was “far weaker than they’d originally believed.” Wilson, who served 18 years in the Harris County Jail and state mental hospitals without a trial, pleaded guilty to the mentioned aggravated assault charge and was released on parole last month.
Edric Wilson, then 29, was charged with capital murder three months later. Tommy Thomas, the former Harris County Sheriff, said Wilson was already in custody on a separate aggravated assault charge when DNA evidence allegedly linked him to Daniel’s killing.
The Chronicle reported that forensic analysts originally tested DNA found under Daniel’s fingernails and determined that the chances it could belong to someone other than Wilson was 1 in 73.1 million. But after extensive developments in lab tech equipment and methodology, analysts who re-tested the original DNA in 2023 found the probability of it belonging to someone other than Wilson was 1 in 15,830—which experts believe could indicate an “accidental match.”
The DNA wasn’t re-examined earlier because Wilson’s case was perpetually put on hold after he was found “incompetent to stand trial” in 2009, the Chronicle reported. “Wilson was caught in an endless loop of psychological assessments and waitlists for treatment beds while attorneys argued over his competency to stand trial,” Satija wrote in her article. “As that process played out, there was little incentive to investigate his claims of innocence or to re-examine the DNA test result that led to his murder charge.”
It’s unclear whether authorities will reopen Daniel’s case. Osteen’s 91-year-old mother, Dodie Osteen, is Daniel’s niece. Lakewood Church did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Sean Teare, who was sworn in as the new Harris County District Attorney in January, told the Chronicle that “there were failures at every level of Wilson’s case.”
“It’s a tragic case, and the thing that it spells out is, people can fall through the cracks,” Teare said.
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