Biography
Richard Johnstone, born about 1944 and raised on a farm near Brooklyn, Iowa, was a graduate music student when the United States Army drafted him in 1970. Four weeks into basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he left the Army and traveled to Sweden. Johnstone worked as a rehearsal pianist at the Stockholm ballet. The Army formally released him in 1977 under the Carter administration’s program for deserters, giving him a general discharge and the ability to visit the United States. The reviewed sources do not report any arrest, booking or confinement.