Henley Trial Focuses on Suitcase

Jannifer Wilkins, a former girlfriend of Ram cornerback Darryl Henley, testified Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana that the football player who is charged with drug trafficking may have told her that he knew the contents of a cocaine-filled suitcase hours before drug enforcement agents opened it.

But Wilkins, of Atlanta, also insisted she could not remember exactly what time of day Henley allegedly made the admission.

The timing is important because Henley, accused of using a former Ram cheerleader, Tracy Ann Donaho, to courier drugs across the country, insists he did not know what the suitcase contained until agents told him.

The testimony came during three hours of pointed questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rayburn.

Prosecutors say Henley, 28, masterminded a cocaine trafficking ring that extended from California to Georgia until federal drug enforcement agents stopped Donaho at an Atlanta airport on July 15, 1993. Agents confiscated the suitcase she was carrying that held 25 pounds of cocaine.

Donaho denied owning the suitcase and was allowed to leave, but she was arrested later that evening, prosecutors say, after she and Henley returned to the airport and Donaho tried to retrieve it.

Henley and four co-defendants on trial in U.S. District Court have all pleaded innocent to the charges.