Persistence, Luck Get Guilty Plea in Retrial

When John Wayne Henderson’s murder trial ended in a hung jury last December, the judge told the prosecutor that he would never get a conviction, no matter how many times he tried the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Simon R. Hiller recalled recently.

The evidence left too many holes, the judge said, and failed to prove that Henderson was the man who stole a woman’s purse at gunpoint in a supermarket parking lot and then murdered a good Samaritan who chased the assailant.

No fingerprints were recovered from the Van Nuys shooting scene and no weapon was ever found. Several key prosecution witnesses were convicted felons, and jurors said they rejected their testimony as tarnished.

Although three witnesses identified Henderson, a Texas native, as the gunman, the 18-year-old defendant testified that they must have mistaken him for a friend who looks remarkably similar.

Six jurors believed his story; the other six favored a conviction on the first-degree murder charge.

But Hiller remained convinced that he had the right man behind bars in Los Angeles County Jail.

In preparation for a second trial, Hiller commissioned a follow-up investigation. Through a stroke of luck, that investigation uncovered incriminating evidence that helped persuade Henderson to plead guilty July 8 to a reduced charge of second-degree murder.

He faces a possible prison term of 15 years to life when he is sentenced Aug. 20 by Judge James A. Albracht.

Henderson’s admission brought an end to a case that was unusual from start to finish and that illustrated how luck figures prominently in police work.

When investigators went to the murder scene on Jan. 3, 1984, the only evidence was a green jacket with a “Lake Worth Athletics” emblem that the assailant had dropped as he scaled a wall.

Traced Jacket to Texas

After an exhaustive search, police, aided by postal authorities, traced the jacket to a high school in Lake Worth, Tex. A photo of the jacket and a composite drawing of the suspect were circulated through the news media, prompting dozens of telephone tips that led nowhere.

Finally, an anonymous tipster pointed police in the direction of Henderson, who lived in Lake Worth and had attended the school. He was arrested in Texas in April, 1984, four months after the murder, and extradited to California.

At least three people testified during the trial that Henderson had told them he robbed shopper Rosalie Magee, 62, of Van Nuys and shot Ronnie Nelson, 26, of Panorama City, who heard the woman’s screams and tried to apprehend the fleeing suspect.

Witnesses to the robbery and shooting identified Henderson in court as the assailant.

But Henderson claimed that his friend, Michael Romine, now 23, had borrowed his jacket that day and announced, “I’m fixing to make some money.” It was Romine, Henderson said, who committed the robbery and murder.

Search for New Evidence

After the first trial ended in a deadlock and Judge Albracht suggested to Hiller that he would do no better in another trial, the prosecutor launched a search for new evidence in the 2 1/2-year-old case.

In May, Hiller sent Los Angeles Police Detective Bob Horowitz and Joe D’Virgilio, an investigator working for the district attorney, on what he termed a “fishing expedition” to Texas, where Henderson had lived until his arrest. Their mission: to interview anyone who knew Henderson and might have heard him discuss the killing.

According to Horowitz and D’Virgilio, the break in the case came like this:

While searching for a house in Lake Worth, where they had hoped to interview the man Henderson blamed for the murder, the two became lost and happened upon a tiny police station in the suburb of Saginaw, Tex.

Stroke of Luck

After asking directions from police there, the two casually mentioned that they had been unable to locate a young man named Billy Strine, who had left no forwarding address when he moved from Lake Worth some years earlier.

Strine’s name had been given to them by school officials, who identified him as a former friend of Henderson. Horowitz and D’Virgilio did not suspect that Strine knew anything about the California murder, but they wanted to talk to as many acquaintances of Henderson as they could during their three-day trip to Texas.

The officer at the desk, one of only 14 on the Saginaw police force, said he knew Strine. The officer walked out of the police station, down the street 500 yards and retrieved Strine from a market where he worked as a stock boy.

Asked if he knew anything about the case, Strine, 22, responded that Henderson had confessed to the robbery and murder during a telephone call from Los Angeles County Jail a year earlier.

Reluctant to Testify

According to Strine’s tape-recorded statement: “He said that he had tried to take a purse and a guy had started chasing him . . . and he shot him.”

Strine, whose face was deformed by cancer surgery, told the investigators that he was Henderson’s best friend and was reluctant to testify against him. He relented, however, saying that his grandmother, who had died recently, taught him always to tell the truth.

Horowitz and D’Virgilio said they could not believe their good fortune at locating such a credible witness.

“Finding Strine was an absolute stroke of luck,” D’Virgilio said. “He would have made an absolutely 100% believable witness.”

Strine’s statement contributed to Henderson’s decision to plead guilty but was not the sole factor, according to his attorney, Gerald L. Chaleff.

Too Serious a Risk

Retrying any case is difficult, Chaleff said, because the prosecution learns the defense strategy during the first trial and has more time to prepare a rebuttal.

The possibility existed that the next jury, presented with the additional evidence from Strine, might have convicted Henderson of first-degree murder, and that was too serious a risk to take, Chaleff said. First-degree murder carries a penalty of 25 years to life in prison, whereas the penalty for second-degree murder is 15 years to life.

“I’m not conceding that, if we had gone to trial, we would have lost,” Chaleff said. “But John felt that the time had come to end this and get on with his life.”

Testimony during the trial revealed that Henderson came to Los Angeles in late December, 1983, with three friends from Texas--brothers Johnny and Ernest Romine and Michael Romine, their nephew.

Looking for Work

The four were construction workers in Texas but were forced out of work by an unusually harsh winter in the South. They came to the San Fernando Valley to hunt for jobs.

While staying with friends in Van Nuys, they drove on Jan. 3, 1984, to the Ralphs market at Woodman Avenue and Sherman Way to exchange rolls of quarters for bills, Johnny and Ernest Romine testified. Michael Romine, they testified, went into the store, while Henderson, unbeknown to them, robbed a shopper in the parking lot and shot a man on a motorcycle who attempted to catch him.

Airline tickets show that Henderson and Michael Romine flew back to Texas that night.

Henderson claimed on the witness stand that Michael Romine, who did not testify, was the assailant. The Romines asked Henderson to take the rap, Henderson told the court, because he had no criminal record and was only 16 at the time, too young to be eligible for the death penalty. Michael Romine was 20 and had a record.

Lawyer-Client Privilege

“If you believe John Wayne Henderson, that means everybody else was lying,” Detective Horowitz said. “But, apparently, six jurors believed him.”

Defense attorney Chaleff, citing lawyer-client privilege, refused to say whether Henderson lied on the stand or was pleading guilty to second-degree murder only because he felt he was likely to be convicted of the more serious first-degree charge.

Prosecutor Hiller said, however, that he phrased the plea in a way that forced Henderson to admit he was the one who killed Ronnie Nelson.

Roy Nelson of Canoga Park, father of the murder victim, has attended nearly every court hearing in the case for 2 1/2 years. His family has been “torn up” by the tragedy, he said, and the “hell, misery and torment” were prolonged by continual court delays.

Nelson said of Henderson’s guilty plea: “It will never be over, but I feel like the hardest part is over.

“It just feels like a big load off my mind.”