I'm referring to this.....
About four months after the murders, police in theDarlington County town of Latta arrested Lonnie George Henry for drunk driving.Under the seat of his car they found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with theserial number filed off.
Police sent the gun to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division'sforensic lab for tests and later concluded that Henry's revolver had killed themystery couple. Bullets taken from the bodies matched with the weapon.
When officers asked Henry point blank if he was the killer, his polygraphsaid he was telling the truth. No, he hadn't pulled the trigger. But severalother lie detector tests implied he was lying about something, at least, maybecovering up for somebody. Investigators wondered if someone had stolen his gunand whether a relative or friend of Henry's had killed the couple in Sumter.
But case files say Henry did lie about how he'd obtained the gun, firsttelling officers that he'd bought it from a truck driver. Days after thepurchase, Henry told investigators, he discovered the serial number had beenfiled off. By then, it was too late to return the item for a refund.
SLED recovered the serial number and investigators tracked the gun from itsmanufacturer to Henry's brother, who said he gave it to Henry as a Christmaspresent four or five years earlier.
The gun had been bought, stolen and resold several times before falling intothe hands of Henry's brother. But he said the serial number was still there onChristmas Eve.
When confronted with the new information, Henry confessed to filing theserial numbers off himself.
It remains unclear why Henry lied if he was innocent. And it also remainsunclear if he really was. Case files say Henry was a recovering alcoholic andhad also gotten in trouble with the law for a slew of minor offenses.
At the time, his son had recently drowned in the Pee Dee River. He'd alsoaccidentally killed one of his co-workers, by backing a dump truck over him.
Investigative psychologists even wondered if he'd killed the Sumter coupleand simply couldn't remember doing it.
In December of 1976, a truck driver named GeorgeLonnie Henry from Wadesboro, NC was stopped in SC for driving under theinfluence. He had in his possession a stolen gun with a scratched-off serialnumber that was ultimately determined through ballistics to be the murderweapon. Subsequent interviews andpolygraphs yielded mixed results as to whether or not he was the oneresponsible for their murders. According to George Henry's statement he was afew hours away at the bed-side of his ailing wife at a NC hospital. The chainof custody of the gun remains a mystery as well. George Henry claims that hisbrother, Jim Henry had given it to him as a gift. Since several months hadelapsed since the murders, it is difficult to verify George Henry's alibi or toverify who actually had possession of the gun at the time of the murders. Thegun was originally stolen by a group of thieves in the Raleigh-Durham area,before the Henry's came into possession of the gun. Could it be possible that another person orpersons had possession of the gun at the time of the murders and that GeorgeHenry had no involvement?
Reading a lot about this case and the investigation, theories etc.
What happened to the follow up....?
