Ex-con who is friends with woke DA Alvin Bragg and appeared on Joe Rogan last month is arrested for murder after severed head was found in Bronx apartment: Pictured arriving to apartment with blue bin and in multiple disguises

An ex-con who is friends with woke District Attorney Alvin Bragg and appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last month has been charged with murder after a severed head was found in a Bronx apartment.

Justice reform advocate Sheldon Johnson, 48, spoke on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Feb. 1 about his “life-changing” journey after receiving up to 50 years in prison for two violent robberies.

He regaled Rogan’s audience with tales of his rise to the top of one of the prison’s most notorious gangs, before insisting it was all behind him.

‘I’ve been doing it badly for so long that I’m going to try to do something good. “If all else fails, I might do something bad again,” he said at the time.

Just a month after the episode aired, Johnson was charged in connection with a dismembered body found in a garbage can and a head hidden in a freezer of victim Colin Small, 44.

Johnson, who works with at-risk youth at the Queens Defenders in New York, joined Rogan to discuss his advocacy for justice reform.

During the conversation, he admitted to dealing drugs and robbing people who couldn’t pay off their debts – actions for which a judge reportedly labeled him “a menace to society.”

He described how he robbed a debtor and his girlfriend in the 1990s with the help of a gang of accomplices, one of whom pistol-whipped the victim, leaving him with a head wound.

Johnson also admitted “assaulting” a second robbery victim, although he insisted the man suffered no physical harm. Johnson received consecutive 25-year prison sentences for the crimes.

While in jail, the convicted felon said he smoked pot and drank “jail liquor.”

‘I was in a gang, I was at the top of the food chain. I had my own nation under me, I wasn’t just some random gang member,” Johnson told Rogan.

But he claims his stint in solitary confinement, where he was restricted to a diet of bread with cabbage and carrots six days a week, helped him rethink his outlook on life.

“I really looked at myself and reevaluated and thought, ‘what the hell are you doing,’” Johnson explained.

‘I remember thinking, “What are you going to do? Can you live like this for the next 48 years?” I said I couldn’t do it.’

Johnson said the idea was that his wife and son growing up heard stories about his “fame” that spurred him on even further.

“When I got out of solitary confinement, I decided I was going to run away and I didn’t care about the consequences,” Johnson explained.

Johnson added that the gang was happy that he was stepping back because he was causing problems for them due to his strict adherence to “street rules.”

‘I was what you call an authoritarian, I was a rules man. “I like rules, I like structure, I like things being a certain way,” he told Rogan.

‘This begins my journey. I went to school, I got my GED.”

The uplifting story is a far cry from the one police painted after their grisly discovery of Small’s remains this week.

Neighbors reportedly told investigators they heard a victim pleading for his life before two shots came from the apartment, sources told the New York Post.

Before the grisly discovery, Johnson was seen on chilling surveillance footage appearing to disguise himself in a blonde wig and transporting large boxes and garbage bags.

He has now been charged with murder, manslaughter and possession of a weapon.

Police raided the apartment on Tuesday after reports from concerned neighbors about shots heard in the building.

They reportedly told police conducting the welfare check that they then saw a stranger coming and going from the apartment with cleaning supplies.

Fears were also fueled by the alleged plea from the victim, who was heard shouting: ‘Please don’t… I have a family.’

The building’s superintendent told the Post that he told officers he was concerned about the stranger’s presence, especially since they were not the tenant he knew.

He alleged that around 2 a.m. after the shots were heard, the suspect carried a blue bin, seen on surveillance footage, into the apartment but did not see him return it.

“He brought in the garbage can… I said to them, ‘Why is he bringing in the garbage at two in the morning? He’s coming so late with a waste bin,” the supervisor said.

“We tried to see if he took out the trash. He never took out the trash. I told them, ‘Find a bin.’ And sure enough, it was there.’

In a strange development, the building’s super also claimed he saw the suspect leave the scene in the victim’s blue Audi, before returning wearing a blonde wig.

They felt he was trying to disguise himself, saying he “dressed differently, changed his character… that’s not normal, he’s hiding something.”

Johnson was seen being led away from the NYPD’s 44th Precinct by the perpetrator on Thursday, where he shouted, “I’m innocent!” to reporters as he was led away in a white jumpsuit.

The justice reform activist has been open about his criminal past, as well as that of his father and son.

On the Prison Writers website, Johnson writes about “three generations with a father in prison,” explaining his regret at not being there to guide his son.

The then 14-year-old was jailed in 2008 for killing a Columbia graduate student “while trying to impress a group of friends,” Johnson said.

“To express that I was mentally and emotionally devastated is an understatement,” he wrote.

‘I was forced to think about the role I played as the father of my son in the whole fiasco. ‘You should have been there to guide and raise him,’ the voice repeated again and again.’