Not My Son : Henley’s Family Keeps Its Faith, Still Believes He Is Innocent

You are a parent and you know your child better than anyone else. So you know what everyone else is saying is just not true. More than that, you have dedicated your life to your children. And so you know, it’s just not possible.

But what if you are Dorothy and Tom Henley, mother and father of Darryl Henley, the convicted trafficker of drugs, charged now with involving your youngest son in a drug ring from jail and further accused of looking for a hit man to kill a witness and a federal judge?

“I know he’s telling the truth,” Dorothy says.

“I haven’t asked,” Tom says. “I haven’t had to ask. Darryl’s my son, and I know he’s innocent.”

*

You are a friend and you know this guy better than most, so you know what everyone else is saying just can’t be true, can it? More than that, you have put your own judgment on the line, and if Darryl Henley is as bad as it appears, oh, were you wrong!

“It’s that punch-in-the-gut-type thing,” says Bill Hanley. “It hurts in the sense you supported someone, believed in them, and now it looks like there were certain things you weren’t being told. Or, you were being told things that weren’t accurate.”

THE PARENTS

They have three sons who excelled in high school, then graduated from Stanford, UCLA and Rice. Dorothy and Tom Henley, married now for 31 years, believed in education because, “It was a way out,” says Tom, “and something we did not have.”

Too poor at times to buy a car, they walked to work, saving to send their youngsters to Christian elementary schools. And when it was time for high school, they moved so they could send their boys to a better high school, Damien in La Verne.

Dorothy worked two jobs and returned to school, graduated and began her own tax-consulting business. Tom joined management at a large company, opened a fish market and took pride in his oldest son, Thomas, who was recruited to become a New York investment banker. Darryl played football for the Rams and started at cornerback as one of their most promising athletes. Eric took charge of the fish market for a while, then moved to Texas to begin his management career.

“Five years ago, we were on top of the world,” says Tom. “ . . . It was something special being a Henley.”

But now, “life is just devastating,” Tom says.

Two sons have serious legal problems, Eric having been arrested on suspicion of running drugs for Darryl, and Darryl already in jail--possibly for the rest of his life.

In the last year, Tom was laid off about the same time Dorothy’s job as an adult educator was eliminated. The fish market closed this year because of lack of business. The Henleys lost their home in Upland to foreclosure because they have spent about $100,000 on bail and attorney fees, including $83,000 from their retirement fund. They have recently been living with relatives. Because of Eric’s alleged involvement, their legal woes have been doubled.

“Our strength comes from God,” says Tom. “We believe God is controlling this whole situation. If we don’t believe that, there is no way we could handle this. It’s just too big for us. We’re talking about the U.S. government, which is all power outside of God. God has assured us He is going to take care of this situation. If He doesn’t, the whole family will perish.”

Darryl has been in jail for more than a year and Dorothy has not missed a visiting day yet. From Upland, five times a week, she made her way down I-10 to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, took her number and waited for the opportunity to visit her son. On some days she waited five to six hours, and sometimes was turned away because her number was not called in time.

She was there every day for the trial, although she had to remain outside the courtroom because the government reserved the right to call her as a witness.

“I just sat there with my Bible,” she says. “The most important thing was that [Darryl] knew I was there.”

When further charges were leveled at Darryl recently, he was transferred from Los Angeles to the San Bernardino Detention Center, and for a week was allowed no visitors and no telephone calls. But Dorothy drove there anyway and asked the marshals to tell her son that she had been there.

Only once has she allowed herself to cry. “I have to be strong for him,” she says.

Has she ever doubted her son’s innocence?

“No,” she says.

Has she considered the possibility that some of this might be true?

“No,” she says.

But the evidence appears to be overwhelming.

“I have received a lot of letters and cards from people,” she says. “I kept one card and it is on my desk. It says, ‘Jesus was falsely accused.’ ”

Tom Henley looks for excuses not to visit the jail. It is too painful, he says. “Seeing your son in those jail uniforms just makes you sick.”

And the embarrassment--it is always there.

“How can you go to work?” he says. “People looked up to me. I was a supervisor and everybody knew Tom Henley was somebody you could go to for counseling or help. I was that father figure for them and now I have to go back to work, to my community, to my church with everyone hearing about all this stuff.

“I was a deacon in my church for 20-some odd years and I had to resign because the scripture says, if you cannot run your own household, how can you be an example for someone else?”

They are bound by their faith, and no, not once, they say, have they turned to each other and wondered about their son’s innocence.

“Darryl is not exempt from doing wrong,” says Tom. “But Darryl is not a dummy. Here’s a young man ready to take off with the Rams--why would he jeopardize himself and the family he loves so much for some stupid stuff? Once I got that cleared out of my mind it was, OK, we’ll go down together fighting because I know he’s innocent.

“I know that. It’s not a dad thing. Dad is about right. Darryl knows that. When the kids were growing up, everybody was smoking marijuana. I would let my sons use the car and then I would check the ashtrays later. I would go into their rooms and check their drawers. I was searching because as a parent I had that doubt, but I haven’t yet found so much as a roach. Three kids, three sons, and not that my kids are perfect, but not one problem.”

But a jury found their son guilty, and now there is so much more to come. What could have gone wrong with a family that appeared to have it all going its way?

“My sons excelled,” Tom says. “I was so hard I didn’t allow any C’s to come into my house. Thomas had one B his entire time in high school, and he could have gone to any college in the country. Thomas was a model kid as far as I’m concerned.

“Darryl was a lazy kid. Everything came to Darryl because he was so gifted and had so much potential. It was just easy for Darryl to excel. Darryl didn’t want to go to the same high school as Thomas because everybody said Darryl was Thomas’ little brother.”

Tom Henley’s world crumbled with the guilty verdict that meant his son would receive a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. He did not expect it, could not believe it and would not accept it. His family rushed to him to provide support, and when there was talk of Darryl winning a new trial because of jury tampering, they kept it from him so as not to build up his hopes until they knew more.

Dorothy remained strong for Tom after the verdict, although in the privacy of her car she struggled with her despair.

“When the verdict came down, I was upset at God,” she says. “I had my tablets with scripture verses that I had taken with me to court every day and I almost tossed them out the window. . . . I felt like God had failed me, but He stopped me. He said God is going to give him the victory, and I believe that.”

The charges and allegations against Darryl Henley--he was indicted on new federal charges last week and pleaded not guilty Monday--paint a picture of a master manipulator capable of persuading a jail guard to not only treat him as a celebrity, but to jeopardize his own freedom. Henley’s attorney has withdrawn from the case, and his girlfriend, his brother and the mother of his 10-month-old child have been arrested for allegedly doing as he wanted.

“This latest stuff is just hogwash,” Tom says. “He had everything. There is just no reason for him to traffic drugs.”

Dorothy carries a three-page letter in her purse which Darryl wrote his first night in jail. It is a letter of appreciation for his parents’ resolve to provide the good life for their children.

Is the son so evil that he could manipulate his parents, take advantage of their good faith and hard work and pile lie upon lie?

“You don’t know how my sons respect me,” Tom says. “I mean, whatever Dad says goes. Dad is the ultimate. Dad is next to God with all three of them. They love Dot, but with Dad--you’re not going to lie to Dad.”

Can’t Dad be the last to know? Might Dad be locked in denial?

“I believe in my sons and I know it’s all going to come out and everything is going to be reversed,” he says. “You hear in court how your son is the No. 7 dope drug lord in the world and that he’s a gangster, and you just know your son and that’s not him.

“I’ve looked at myself: How could any of this have happened? Darryl let a lot of people use him. He trusted so many people and that’s me. I’ve been used and abused by people, and he’s the spitting image of me. That’s the hurting part of it. Why did I allow him to develop those traits from me?

“My oldest son, Thomas, is completely different. Darryl was ripe . . . he was running with the wrong people and it snowballed.”

Dorothy and Tom Henley, who continue to stress family, are now fighting to keep it together. As the evidence piles up against Darryl, the support group around them dwindles. Local community leaders, who had solicited Jesse Jackson’s help with plans for a public demonstration to support Darryl, have dropped those plans because of the recent allegations.

“They are tearing everybody else away from us and isolating us,” Tom says. “But not the family. We were with Darryl when he was playing with the Rams and everything was going good and we were bragging on him. Wouldn’t I be a poor dad to drop him when there’s trouble? He made me the proudest dad in the world, and even if they give him 100 years, I will support him 100% because I know who he is and what he’s all about.”

THE FRIEND

Bill Hanley, a successful lawyer in Orange County, met Darryl Henley at a charity golf tournament six or seven years ago. Henley asked Hanley to do some business for him, and they became friends.

“I’d see him after games, knew his parents, his brothers and relatives,” Hanley says. “I lived in Brea and he lived in Brea. We would have breakfast together at times and dinner on occasion. He’d call me a lot for advice and many times I helped without charging him. He had my home number and I had his. I had his pager number and his car phone and he had mine.

“I would have said this is the kind of person all athletes should be like. He came from a good upbringing, very religious people, and Darryl was always talking about how his dad was hounding him to get a master’s degree.”

When Hanley learned of Henley’s legal problems he was shocked, but rock-solid behind Henley.

“As a friend, I thought it unfortunate that he was caught in a position where he shouldn’t have been with people that he shouldn’t have been around, but I didn’t think he was involved,” Hanley says. “That’s how dozens and dozens of people who knew Darryl felt.

“When he was convicted, I visited him in jail once or twice a week to be supportive. You have to know his parents, but they are just wonderful people and they were so devastated. I wanted to help, and then when the jury-tampering stuff came up, it was a true window of optimism, based on what everyone was being told, because it didn’t involve Darryl.”

For a while it appeared that Henley might have grounds for a new trial because of a juror’s being bribed, but then Henley was charged with devising the bribery plan.

“It’s just like your own child sitting here and saying, ‘Daddy, I wasn’t involved,’ and then you find out they were and they flat-out lied to you,” Hanley says. “It’s like a violation of confidence.

“You start analyzing your own judgment of people. I guess people can have two or three sides to them. I know I’m a little bit more cynical and not as trusting of people. I have sat there and wondered if there was anything along the way that might have given me a clue that there was something wrong, and I haven’t found it yet.”

Hanley, as successful as anyone in his profession could want to be, was still drawn to Henley, the professional athlete. When he went to breakfast with Henley, he admits, he liked the idea of the waitress recognizing the professional athlete who accompanied him. He liked meeting him after a Ram game and being singled out by the football player.

“I admit it, I was suckered in,” he says. “I was enamored by the football player. It’s our hero worship, and sometimes we tend to confuse athletic achievement with character. . . .

“Now, by reading the newspaper, I see where this guard allegedly became enamored by Darryl Henley and Darryl had the run of the ninth floor. That’s Darryl Henley. People like him. . . .”

Given the opportunity to question him, what would Hanley want to ask now?

“I’d ask him why,” Hanley says. “I could go down right now and see him, but I’ve chosen not to have any further discussions with him.”

*

Dorothy and Tom Henley, who learned of the most recent allegations against their son while watching TV, called Bill Hanley for support, but they heard in his voice what they are now hearing from so many others.

“Everybody’s faith falls short,” Dorothy says. “It’s not going to be the same as ours.”

Tom is ready for the day when all is well again.

“I’ve gone back to school full-time to get my degree and, when Darryl gets out of this situation, I got 39 acres in Texas and the family is going there,” he says. “Listen, we’re not superwoman or superman, but it’s a family, and without family you can’t survive. We’re going to make it. We’re going to pull out of this.”