Remind public of unsolved murder case

[crimeshot1]

Fliers remind public of unsolved murder case

By AIMEE YEE
Once again, fliers with a picture of 5-year-old LaQuinta Mercedes "Sadie" Henderson are posted in Hammond, Louisiana neighborhoods.

Nearly nine years after the local child's rape and murder, the fliers printed by her mother are posted to trees, stop signs, fences, parks and store windows.

With the help of friends, Sheila Henderson has been nailing the fliers everywhere she can. The fliers plead for anyone who has information to call city police.

"Everywhere he looks, I want him to see her face," Henderson said from her Litton Street home on Friday afternoon.

"There's no doubt for me it was him, and if it wasn't all him, he knows who did it. He had something to do with it. From his past, he was no happy man," she said.

Henderson refused to speak anymore about Jerry Hills, the man who spent nine years in the Tangipahoa Parish Jail only to be released without facing trial in the first-degree murder and rape case.

Hills was indicted in 1996, but the grand jury then wasn't presented with evidence that a human African-American head hair found on the victim's body, did not belong to Hills.

When a recent grand jury was presented with that evidence, Hills was released. He walked out of jail on Jan. 22.

Henderson said when she learned that the man she believes raped and killed her daughter had been set free, she fell to her knees. She said she refuses to acknowledge that she shares blood with him.

Hills is the victim's second cousin, Henderson confirmed, but she added, "You couldn't do that to anyone. It's unhuman. I don't believe I share the same blood as him."

"Everyone in this community is scared. For their kids and for themselves," she said. "There are also a lot of angry people around here."

Cold case

Sheila Henderson knows the case is being reworked by Hammond detectives Avery Rohner and Charles Deliberto.

Witnesses, old and new, are being interviewed, Rohner said. The detectives are also gathering up all the evidence in the case to reexamine it and submit it for more updated scientific testing and analysis.

The evidence stretches from the 21st Judicial District Attorney's Office in Amite to the state crime lab in Baton Rouge, and all the way to a Federal Bureau of Investiga-tions lab in Quantico, Va., the detectives said in an interview Friday.

"We're working it every day," Deliberto said.

"But, it's just not going," said Rohner, who hopes advances in technology can conclusively tell who killed the child.

"It's a hard case," Deliberto said.

Rohner, nodding his head in agreement, spoke of dead witnesses, witnesses with faulty memories and witnesses with criminal histories and pending charges.

"We've collected all the evidence from the DA's office," Rohner said. "We went over the case with (Assistant District Attorney) Jeff Johnson. We've gathered that evidence and ours, and we're contacting the state crime lab to see if they have any evidence or samples to send. We want to get all of it in one pile.

"Technology's advanced a lot in the last nine years. We'll see what we've got. We'll do more tests and comparisons."

Fresh pain

Sheila Henderson holds a scrapbook, filled with mementoes from her daughter's five short years of life. Pictures of a smiling kindergartner, dressed for school and waiting with neighborhood kids for the school bus, line the pages, along with Sadie's birth certificate and death certificate.

When Henderson learned Hills was released, she clipped the article from the newspaper but didn't tape it in Sadie's scrapbook with the other clippings that chronicle the nine years of waiting for justice.

She flipped through early news articles concerning her daughter's disappearance, the search for her, and news that her body had been found in a local pond, one of several police dragged for the girl in the days she was missing.

Henderson stopped at a page with two colored pictures Sadie brought home from school from Mrs. Sprague's kindergarten class at Woodland Park Early Learning Center, where she attended school until her death.

A picture from St. Patrick's Day showed a leprechaun scribbled in green, and another was a child's drawing of what appeared to be a colorful turkey.

"This is a contract she signed to be a good student," her mother said. "She was only just learning to print."

Her schoolmates made a dedication to her memory in the graduating class program for the Woodland Park Kindergarten Class of 1996.

"In the five years she was here, she was a normal little girl," Henderson said. "But there was something special about her too, as if she knew she was just here for a little while."

Sadie loved to sing church songs, her mother said, and she loved Mickey Mouse. She also loved to dress up and play at Zemurray Park, where she was often seen by workers.

Sadie loved spending the night with her grandmother, too, Henderson said.

"They had a special relationship, her and her grandmother," Henderson said of her mother.

The grandmother was partially blind at the time Sadie went missing from the front yard of the home where she was spending the night.

"But everybody took a liking to her," Henderson said. "There was just something about that little black, brown-eyed girl. She shined."

Henderson remembers the night five officers came to her door to tell her they'd found her daughter's battered body in Yokum Pond. She remembers the looks on their faces.

"I just fell to my knees and started hollering," she said.

"I feel like her killer just walked out of jail," she added. "...This is a pain you never forget, and when he walked out, I felt it all over me, all over again. Now we're back to fliers again."

Anyone with any information on the murder of 5-year-old Sadie Henderson should call city police at 542-3500.

[CuteyMe]

Hi Sue,

I'm glad I've found this post. I want to put Laquinta on my site. Do you know of any other black kids I can put up? I want to add more!

[crimeshot1]

Actually, I believe I have more listed on the "Unsolved" section of Crimeshots. I'll check when I get a minute. (I'm in the middle of Easter dinner preparations) I'll email some more cases later...I was going to post more on the "Unsolved" forum today, also.