Person of Interest In Open Homicide Case Pleads Guilty to THC Charge

ABILENE, TX – Ricky Don Henderson, 57, of Levelland pled guilty to possession of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC; he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Henderson made local headlines because even though he was sentenced to prison for a drug charge, he is a person of interest in the murder of a young woman and the disappearance of his wife.

According to KTXS, in April of 2018, Jeannie Quinn was reported missing in Levelland and two days later she was found dead in a field with a wire around her neck in Abilene. The medical examiner called the position she was found in a “staged hanging” and her cause of death was ruled to be asphyxiation. In May of that same year, the Abilene Police Department said they were looking for Henderson in connection to "an ongoing investigation."

In a previous report, authorities said that Henderson was the last person who had contact with Jeannie before she went missing. Henderson told authorities that Jeannie took off on her own. No one has been charged in Jeannie’s murder and authorities say it is still under investigation.

Henderson’s wife, Stephanie Henderson disappeared in 1993 and has never been found. Stephanie was last seen on November 28, 1993. According to authorities, she had a fight with her husband that day. "She calls her grandmother in San Angelo and tells her she wants to leave," said Hockley County Sherriff David Kinney in 2005.

Stephanie’s grandmother, who has since passed, alleged that when she drove up to Levelland to pick her up, Henderson told her Stephanie had left with some friends from Hobbs, New Mexico. According to a story published in 2005, Stephanie had left her purse and her only pair of shoes behind. A few weeks later the grandmother received a typed letter from Stephanie stating she was in Hobbs, but it was postmarked in Lubbock. This led her to file a missing person report.

Ten years later the Hockley Sheriff’s Department tested a strand of hair from one of Stephanie’s relatives and found that it did not match the saliva in the envelope the letter was sent. The DNA test revealed the person who had licked the envelope shut was male.

Police investigated the disappearance and even questioned the alleged friends from Hobbs who told police they had not picked her up. Stephanie’s disappearance remains a cold case nearly 26 years later.