Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1991 TAG: 9103270314
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINCHESTER LENGTH: Long
Henderson even tried to prevent her death, he swore in a taped confession played before a jury Tuesday. "But by the time I got to where she was at, there was nothing I could do," he said.
Henderson's account of the events leading up to Whitlock's murder began at Valley Mall in Harrisonburg on the night of Jan. 5, 1990.
He was hanging out with Tommy David Strickler. They had been drinking and taking drugs, and they decided to steal a car, he said on the tape. They combed the parking lot for an unlocked car with the keys still in the ignition but came up empty.
Then a young woman drove up in a blue car. Henderson said he watched while Strickler forced his way into the car, pushed the woman into the back seat and yelled for him to get in and start driving.
They drove into Augusta County, where Strickler told him to pull onto a dirt road off of Virginia 340 outside Waynesboro. There, Strickler suggested they rape the woman, Henderson said in the police interview. He refused.
"I said, `No, I'm not going to do that.' I said we should let her go." But Strickler persisted, he said. They argued and got into a shoving match. Then Strickler gave up and let the woman run free into a cornfield.
She ran about 20 yards before Strickler changed his mind, chased her down and forced her back into the car, Henderson said on the tape. They argued again; he got out, leaving Strickler and the woman in the car alone; and he headed back down the dirt road toward Virginia 340.
Henderson next said in the taped confession that he returned a short time later to try to persuade Strickler once more to let the woman go.
He said by then it appeared that Strickler already had raped her.
They argued again and the woman escaped, he said. This time she got further away.
But Strickler chased her down again and when he reached her, Henderson said, he watched Strickler pick up a large rock and hit the woman over the head.
Henderson said he tried to stop the beating, but before he could reach the woman it was too late.
Scared, he said he next helped Strickler hide the woman's body in the woods.
Henderson's full statement was played for the jury by Keith Rogers, a police detetive from Baker City, Ore., where Henderson was arrested.
On the tape, Rogers repeatedly asked Henderson if he raped or killed the woman. Each time, Henderson said he did not. He only admitted to abducting and robbing her.
"I'm not lying to get myself out of anything," he told Rogers. "I don't even know if I can get out of this."
Henderson, 25, is on trial for capital murder, abduction and robbery. If convicted he could face the death penalty.
However, to get a capital murder conviction, Augusta County Commonwealth Attorney A. Lee Ervin must prove that Henderson jointly participated not only in kidnapping and robbing Leann Whitlock but also in killing her.
In asking Rogers to play Henderson's confession for the jury Tuesday, Ervin appeared to be disproving his argument that Henderson and Strickler jointly killed Whitlock, a 19-year-old James Madison student from Roanoke.
But Ervin explained that the tape was introduced merely to help prove the abduction and robbery charges. He is counting on the testimony of another witness to prove the murder charge.
That witness, Jeffrey Woods, is expected to take the stand today.
Ervin said Woods, a prisoner in the Augusta County Jail in Staunton, will testify that Henderson told him that he killed Whitlock and that he delivered the fatal blows, not Tommy David Strickler.
Strickler already has been convicted of capital murder in the case and is awaiting execution.
Ervin also is counting on the testimony of Kenneth Workman.
Workman testified Tuesday that Henderson came to his apartment in Timberville around 4 a.m. the morning after Whitlock was killed.
He said Henderson was drunk and rambling about how he and Strickler had "killed a nigger," and he showed him bloodstains on his blue jeans to prove it.
Workman was one of many witnesses used Tuesday by Ervin to trace the steps of Whitlock, Henderson and Strickler on the night she was killed.
Called to the stand first was Esther Whitlock, Leann's mother, who identified her daughter's watch and earrings.
Leann's boyfriend, John Dean, testified that he let her borrow his car to run some errands the day she was killed.
Her roommates, Bethany Rogers and Sonya Lamb, testified that they last saw Whitlock as she left their apartment in Harrisonburg to return the car to Valley Mall, where Dean worked.
Virginia Smith, head of security at the mall, described seeing two men who fit the descriptions of Strickler and Henderson. Smith identified Strickler from a photograph, but was unable to identify Henderson in the courtroom Tuesday.
The man she said she saw at the mall was "filthy dirty" and had long hair and a scruffy beard. He was wearing a green army jacket and a black bandana. In court, Henderson has been clean-shaven and dressed in a suit and tie.
Anne Stoltzfus, also at the mall that day, said she had noticed three people, whom she nicknamed "Mountain Man," "Shy Guy" and "Blonde Girl."
Stoltzfus said she first noticed them inside the mall and then outside near the mall entrance when she saw "Mountain Man," whom she identified as Strickler, force his way into Whitlock's car. She said Strickler struck Whitlock several times to stop her from blowing the horn or driving away, and then "Blonde Girl" and "Shy Guy" climbed in the car with them.
Stoltzfus identifed "Shy Guy" as Henderson.
She said she pulled up next to Whitlock and asked her three times if everything was OK. Twice Whitlock said nothing.
"She was just totally expressionless, totally frozen," Stoltzfus said.
But on the third try, she said Whitlock mouthed the word, "Help." She then tried to follow Whitlock as the car drove off, but gave up because she was nearly out of gas.
She never called the police, she said, because she wasn't sure that what she saw had been a kidnapping. She came forward only after learning more about Whitlock's disappearance later from students at JMU.
In cross-examination, Henderson's court appointed attorney, Humes J. Franklin Jr., pressed Stoltzfus about why she failed to talk to police about the incident until 10 days after it happened. "It's very easy to understand, I think. . . . My feelings told me one thing but my mind told me something else," she said. "I listened to my mind."
Either way, Stoltzfus' testimony contradicted that of Henderson in his sworn confession to police in Oregon.
She claimed that Whitlock drove off from the mall, while Henderson said he was driving.
by CNB