Henderson: I Took Drugs With Bethea

Former All-Pro linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson says he free-based cocaine with the late Larry Bethea when they were teammates for the Dallas Cowboys in 1982.

Bethea, a former Dallas defensive lineman, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot early Thursday morning in Newport News, Va. He was 30.

Bethea was on probation for stealing $64,000 from his mother last summer and had been identified as the gunman in two armed robberies of convenience stores only hours before he died.

“That sounds like me, the way I should have wound up,” Henderson told Dallas Times Herald columnist Frank Luksa in a telephone interview. “What’s so frustrating in my own sobriety is I see the madness.”

Henderson, a recovering drug addict, said he considered robbery and suicide when he was on drugs.

Henderson, 34, has remarried and settled on the West Coast. He said he has avoided drugs and alcohol for the past 42 months.