Teen Gets 15 Years for Killing After Robbery

After nearly three years and a series of unusual twists, the case of a Texas teen-ager who killed a good Samaritan from Panorama City ended Thursday as the assailant was sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison.

“I’m so glad it’s over. What a relief,” said Roy Nelson, 63, father of the slain Ronnie Nelson.

The 26-year-old Nelson was gunned down in the parking lot of a Van Nuys supermarket in January, 1984, as he tried to catch a man who had just robbed a woman at gunpoint.

John Wayne Henderson, now 19, admitted in July that he was the killer and, in an agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht ruled Thursday that Henderson was unsuitable for rehabilitation in the California Youth Authority and sentenced him instead to prison. Henderson will be eligible for parole in about eight years.

In court records, Henderson was quoted as saying that he was only 60% responsible for the killing and that the victim was 40% to blame for getting involved in something that was “none of his business.”

‘Would Have Been Alive’

“If he would have not helped, he still would have been alive,” Henderson is quoted as telling CYA officials. “I wish he wouldn’t have done nothing.”

Tracking down Henderson after the killing and gathering enough evidence to eventually persuade him to plead guilty involved an extensive investigation by Los Angeles police and the district attorney’s office, officials said.

The only evidence left behind at the scene was a green jacket that the killer dropped as he fled. Police traced an emblem on the jacket to a Lake Worth, Tex., high school that Henderson had attended until dropping out in the 10th grade.

After circulating a composite photo of the suspect, police received an anonymous tip leading them to Henderson, who was arrested in Texas four months after the shooting and extradited to California.

But Henderson took the stand during his trial for first-degree murder last December in Van Nuys Superior Court and claimed that a friend who resembles him had worn his jacket that day and had committed the robbery and murder. Six jurors believed his story, and the trial ended in a hung jury.

In preparation for a second trial, the prosecutor commissioned a follow-up investigation that took law-enforcement officials to Texas. While there, they happened upon a former classmate of Henderson who said the teen-ager admitted during a telephone conversation from Los Angeles County Jail that he had committed the crimes.

Faced with that added evidence, Henderson agreed to plead guilty to the reduced charge rather than face a second trial for first-degree murder.

Although Henderson has no previous convictions, court records quote him as saying that he and a friend committed an estimated 100 burglaries before they came to California in January, 1984, to look for work in construction.