Park Predators - The Husband

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Harold Henthorn loses his first wife in a tragic car accident on the side of a rural mountain road, then his second wife falls off of a cliff in Rocky Mountain National Park. Authorities in Colorado feel something is terribly wrong, and a closer look at Henthorn’s past reveals disturbing clues as to how his wives met their deadly fates. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/episode-10-the-husband/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and today we're taking you to the Colorado Rockies. Anyone who's ever been to Denver knows from the moment you touch down or look over while driving, you really can't help but be enchanted by the magnificence and beauty of these mountains. According to the National Park Service, Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the country's most visited parks. Millions of tourists love this place, and a lot of the country's most visited parks. Millions of tourists love this place, and a lot of people are married there every year. Me and my husband, for instance, we got hitched there in 2019. In the early and late 2000s, droves of people moved to the outskirts of Denver, and the price of living there skyrocketed. That was the case for Harold and

Tony Henthorne, who were newlyweds, eager to start a family and enjoy their new home in the suburb of Highland Ranch. But that's not exactly where our story begins. No, for this story, we first have to go back to the year 1995. This is Park Predators. On May 6, 1995, a few weeks after their 12th wedding anniversary, Harold and Sandra Henthorne were driving on Highway 67 west of Sedalia, Colorado. They were just a few short miles from their home when they got a flat tire. Now, this was really a big inconvenience because it was particularly a very chilly night, and the spot where the couple had to pull over was dimly lit. As Harold and Sandra make their way onto the shoulder in their Jeep Cherokee SUV, they want to figure out what's caused the tire's damage.

And when they take a look, the tire isn't in dire condition, but it definitely had to be replaced. They're ready to get out of the cold and get this dealt with and get back to their warm house, so the two of them begin unpacking tools, tire jacks, and the spare tire to replace the busted one. They lift the vehicle onto two jacks and begin unbolting and replacing the tire. Sandra, who often goes by the name Sandra Lynn, or just Lynn, makes her way beneath the wheel well of the flat tire to grab something, and that's when the unspeakable happens. The car falls and crushes Sandra underneath of it.

Somehow, in a tragic turn of events, the car had fallen off of the two jacks while she was underneath of it. And as soon as the car fell, a family driving on the same stretch of road pulls over to see what's going on. At first, they saw Harold in their headlights, and he was waving his arms erratically, trying to direct them onto the shoulder. This family quickly realizes that the jeep was on top of a woman's body, so they got out and jumped into action to help her. By the time they got her out from underneath of the wheel well,

it was too late. Sandra was dead. Harold told police when they arrived on scene a few minutes later that Sandra was chasing after a lug nut when she had dropped it and it rolled under the vehicle, and that's when the car fell and crushed her. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is brought in to investigate Sandra's death, but their investigation didn't last long. To them, it was clear what had happened to her. A week after the county coroner ruled Sandra's death as accidental, the sheriff's office labeled it the same, and it was case closed. In the weeks that followed, Harold received between $500,000 and $600,000 in life insurance money, which the insurance company didn't delay in paying out because the nature of the death was ruled as accidental. Also during that time, Sandra's belongings that were inside of the car were turned back over to Harold, and the Jeep was sent to a salvage yard.

No physical evidence of how the accident happened remained. And that was the end of it for a really long time. Now fast forward to September 29, 2012, and Harold Henthorne was still living in the outskirts of Denver, but now he was happily married to his second wife, Toni, with whom he shared a daughter. The couple had been together for 12 years, and Harold was planning a surprise hike with Toni in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was meant to celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary. When Harold and Toni set out for their hike that afternoon, they went up a popular trail on Deer Mountain, And this trail is rocky. It's rugged and full of scenic overlooks.

Toni and Harold are taking all of these beautiful sights in, and they get near the ledge of a cliff. Toni picks up her camera and starts taking photos because she wants to share the view with her daughter. That's when all of the sudden she tumbles over the ledge, plunging face-first 130 feet to the rocky terrain below. Toni's body slams with a horrific thud, and she began bleeding out immediately. According to her autopsy results, that tremendous fall is what caused her death, but the coroner noted that even though it looked

accidental, homicide was not out of the question. According to police reports, Harold told authorities that it took him 15 minutes to scramble down the cliff and get to his wife's body on the mountainside. He said that she was still breathing when he got to her, but by the time emergency responders arrived an hour and a half later, Tony was dead and Harold was the only witness to her fall. Investigators questioned Harold right then and there, very suspicious of him. They asked to search the couple's SUV, which was parked at the trailhead, and when they went inside, they found a park map tucked into the glove box. On the map was an X marked at the same exact spot where Tony had fallen. Harold couldn't explain

that piece of evidence to the park rangers who were questioning him. Because Tony fell within the boundary of the National Park, the National Park Service and the FBI took over the case from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. Right after her death, Tony's family was made aware by these agencies that they were questioning Harold. Relatives did some digging on their own, and they uncovered that Tony had three life insurance policies taken out on her. Harold was listed as the main beneficiary to the combined policies that totaled $4.5 to $4.7 million. According to court records, a claim for one of those policies was sent in for collection just two days after Tony's death. In the couple's bank accounts were hundreds of

thousands of dollars that Harold was set to inherit. The family provided all of this information to investigators, and then they waited. In addition to their financial history and records, authorities took a close look at the couple's marriage. Who were Harold and Tony Henthorne? They learned that Tony was an eye surgeon and Harold worked raising funds for large charity organizations like churches and hospitals. Together, the couple was making a very good living with Tony's eye practice thriving in the suburbs of Denver. Before marrying Harold, Tony had owned her own practice in Jackson, Mississippi, where

she was from. She grew up there in a very affluent, wealthy family and was considered a debutante by most standards. She met Harold online in 1999 through a Christian singles dating website, and Toni was very dedicated to her Christian faith. She'd already been through one divorce in her life, which left her very hurt and lonely, and she was determined to make her next committed relationship work. And Harold was that next committed relationship. It took less than a year of dating before the two got married in 2000. And right away, they wanted to start a family.

After just a few short years together, Tony gave birth to their daughter, Haley. Tony's family says almost as soon as Tony and Harold met, they noticed that he strongly encouraged her to be more independent and move away from her friends and family in Mississippi. He wanted them to buy a home in Denver. Over time, Tony's brother Todd and her dad Bob both felt that Harold was becoming too controlling of Tony and their daughter, and as they got to know him more, they saw little signs of deceit and inappropriate behavior that really caused them to worry. They felt that he was dishonest when it came to the couple's financial situation and

the businesses he supposedly owned and would make money from. For years, Harold had claimed that he was a very in-demand fundraiser for churches and hospitals, and he even promised Toni that once they got married and moved to Denver, she would never have to work again. But over the years, and Harold's behavior growing more and more controlling of Tony, the family noticed that even things like the phone calls between Tony and them were entirely monitored by Harold. A lot of times, Tony wouldn't even talk at all in the conversations. It was like Harold would be the one to talk about their life and jobs, and Tony was just in the background. As their relationship grew, slowly but surely, Harold also began controlling the schedule of the couple's daughter.

He was said to have planned out her days meticulously, and even after she wasn't a baby anymore, he still kept a baby monitor camera inside her room. Tony's family also became concerned that Harold might be having an affair on Tony because she often spoke about how he would go on long business trips and he wouldn't reveal where he was going or how long he'd be away. According to Caleb Hannon's book The Accidents, Tony's mother Yvonne got a chance to speak with Tony alone before her death and this was a very rare occasion that she visited Mississippi without Harold. Yvonne remembered that on that trip, Tony had mentioned a few months prior her and Harold and their daughter had been visiting Yvonne and Bob's mountain cabin near

Denver. She said while they were there, the couple had started working outside at night to clear the debris around the cabin. It had been Harold's idea to have both he and Tony work together and leave Haley inside. Tony told her mother that while working and standing below a raised porch with her back turned, she suddenly felt a large weight hit her in the neck and upper back. After that impact, she just collapsed. Tony said that on the way to the emergency room in the back of the ambulance, she could barely move. She was in extreme pain and had numbness in her arms and legs. After the accident, Harold told Toni that a piece of lumber had rolled off of the porch and hit her as she was standing below. Toni told her mother that if she hadn't moved just a split second before she was struck, she could have been killed. This entire story disturbed Yvonne, so much so that she told Tony

outright that she didn't think it was an accident and that perhaps she should stay away from Harold for a little while. Tony didn't say anything, but just told her mom not to worry. With all of this information in mind, authorities suspected Harold was probably involved in Tony's fall from the start, but they needed to find the evidence to prove it. And as they dug into his past, they realized Harold Henthorne had been hiding a very dark secret. It's now 2013. Tony is dead and her husband Harold is looking really shady. A detective with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office receives word from the United States Department of the Interior. This message

tells him that he needs to re-examine his department's conclusions and findings in the death of Sandra Lynn Henthorne, not Tony Henthorne. And this is weird because Tony is the one everyone believes Harold could have murdered. This notice to the sheriff's office to look into Sandra's case came out of the blue with no real explanation. It just said that recent circumstances prompted the government agency to tell the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to take another look. They needed to look closely at the 1995 car accident they tucked away for almost 15 years. According to Caleb Hannon's reporting, Dave Weaver was the Douglas County Sheriff's detective responsible for reinvestigating the incident.

He pulled out what documentation they still had on the case and dusted off what scraps of interviews and witness statements he could find. As he pours over this paperwork page by page, he finds glaring issues and discrepancies about the entire thing. For example, Weaver noted that Harold Henthorne had given investigators on the scene in 1995 multiple contradicting statements. His recollections about the circumstances around the Jeep falling and crushing his wife Sandra were not lining up. Jeep falling and crushing his wife, Sandra, were not lining up. Detective Weaver noticed that Harold changed his story several times when it came to the details of which direction on the road he and his wife were even driving. Like to some investigators, Harold would say they were going

east, but to other officers, he would say they were going west. Harold also changed his story on whether he and his wife were coming from dinner or heading to dinner. Harold gave different police officers different statements as to when he and Sandra left their house on May 6th. To some officers, he said they left earlier in the day, closer to, say, 1 o'clock. Other times, he would say they didn't leave until 7 o'clock that night. And when it came to his memory of how the Jeep's tire got flat and when he and Sandra noticed it was flat, Harold told one officer that the tire was completely flat. To another officer, he said it was just low on air and looked squished, but was still intact. On top of all of this,

Harold had also provided two different versions of how Sandra's body was removed from beneath the fallen SUV. And this is really weird. One of his stories is that he dragged her body out by himself in an attempt to save her. The other version is that a group of strangers had heroically helped retrieve his wife and remove her body from underneath the Jeep. And that's not even the last of it. Harold never even had a consistent story of how the SUV had fallen off of both jacks. He claimed when he threw the flat tire into the back trunk, he'd done so with enough force to accidentally cause the car to fall. But in another statement, he claimed that the flat tire had

bounced when he tossed it in, and that movement caused the car to fall. He also said that at one point, him removing the spare tire from the back of the SUV jolted the car enough to move it and make it fall on Sandra. Now, those are all three very different things. And those inconsistencies is what made Weaver really be concerned. He learned that not long after the accident, Harold had doubled Sandra's life insurance policy. But when questioned by detectives in 1995,

Harold told them that he only stood to inherit $300,000 in insurance money, and investigators reportedly just took his word for it and didn't look into it any further. If they had actually looked into it further and talked with the insurance company, they would have learned that Harold actually stood to inherit several hundred thousand dollars in life insurance money. A detective working the case in 1995 would later admit that the department was a very small force at the time, and this detective said that he was the lead investigator on Sandra's case, but he had only been on the job for less than six months. He explained that he had no real mentor or training in the field to

investigate a homicide, but Detective Weaver in 2013 is planning to change that. He ends up tracking down a few witnesses from the night Sandra died, and he wanted to speak with them to better understand what really happened. Weaver interviews a woman whose family had been driving home on the same road the Henthorns took on May 6th. This witness was returning with her family after a day of outdoor recreation, and they saw Harold wave them down on the side of the road. When they pulled over, they jumped out to help Sandra, and the family removed her body from underneath the Jeep.

That's when they discovered she was unconscious. After this, this woman and her family try and revive and resuscitate Sandra, but what's really concerning to them is that Harold is yelling at them and isn't willingly doing CPR on his own wife. The other thing that this woman thought was so weird is that Harold refused to give up the coat he was wearing. Literally, his wife is laying on the ground only wearing a t-shirt and he's like, no, I need this, it's chilly. The woman, this actual stranger, ended up using her own coat to cover Sandra. This witness tells Weaver that she ended up

forgetting her jacket at the scene once police arrived, but the next day she called authorities to ask where she could pick it up. And it's at that point that the officer on duty tells her that Sandra has died. This woman tells Weaver she was so creeped out and disturbed by Harold's behavior on scene next to his dying wife that she remembered how it made her feel nearly two decades later.

The next group of people Weaver wants to interview are the first responders who met the Goods-Samaritan family on scene. That led him to a first responding firefighter who fortunately in 2013 still worked for Douglas County. who fortunately in 2013 still worked for Douglas County. This firefighter's memory from 1995 and Harold's behavior was just as vivid as the woman who tried to save Sandra. They tell Weaver that everything about the scene was really bizarre, like everything, including the way the car had fallen off the jacks, and especially Harold's behavior. This firefighter described the way Harold was acting as being unlike anything they'd ever seen before from a person whose loved one

had just been crushed to death in front of their eyes. After collecting this information, Weaver didn't just stop probing. He looked at the small details of the case and found what he believed was potential forensic evidence. He read in a scene report that at the time of the accident, a shoe print or partial footprint was located on the Jeep's wheel well, right above

where the flat tire had been removed and where Sandra had been on the ground. According to that report, the investigators at the time wrote down the brand of shoes Harold was wearing that night, which were Sperry top siders, a type of boating shoe. These investigators took pictures of the tread on Harold's shoes, but apparently never checked the print pulled from the car against his shoes. This seemed to Weaver like a huge oversight. Why even pull the print if you never intend to compare it to anything? And this makes Weaver think at this point, like we're all thinking, that perhaps Harold had kicked the car and that's what caused it to fall off the jacks and crush Sandra. To Weaver, Harold was looking less and less like a grieving widower and more as a cold-blooded murderer. He just needed to prove it.

Detective Weaver felt that in order to prove his theory that Harold had in fact murdered Sandra, he needed to recreate the scene from 1995. So he found a Jeep Cherokee the same year and model as the one that fell on Sandra, and he began to go through various sequences of events to get the Jeep to fall. These sequences included all of the story versions Harold had provided to the different police officers. sequences included all of the story versions Harold had provided to the different police officers. Weaver started his experiments by lifting and stabilizing the jeep on the same type of jacks the Henthorns had used. He did this in the same spot on the same side of the road where the death had occurred in 95. He then went through several trials to try and get the car to fall. Weaver went

around the back of the vehicle and tossed a flat tire into it, and that didn't work. The vehicle didn't budge. He continued using more and more force and eventually just slammed his body weight onto the tailgate, but nothing moved. He even went as far as removing one of the jacks, hopefully to cause the car to only be supported by one jack, and then he ran through all of the scenarios again, but still the car didn't fall. No amount of pressure or force that Weaver applied to the back of the Jeep or in the trunk area would cause it to collapse off of the jacks. So he tried one final scenario. He took his foot, placed it in the exact spot where officers in 95 had found that partial shoe print, and then he kicked the Jeep. With that one good shove,

wouldn't you know it, the car immediately came crashing down. After these experiments, he wrote up a lengthy report of what he'd uncovered, and he provided it to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. They kept it in a file and did nothing. No criminal charges were ever filed against Harold for Sandra's death. But by this time in 2013, Harold wasn't off the hook for Tony's death. While Weaver was doing his experiments, all of this time prosecutors had been building a case against Harold for Tony's death. When they finally presented their case to a grand jury in November 2014, the state not only accused Harold of pushing Tony off the overlook,

but they also raised serious questions about whether he murdered his first wife, Sandra, even though they weren't charging him with that death. In just a matter of weeks, a federal grand jury indicted Harold for the first-degree murder of Tony. The female judge presiding over his first appearance denied him bond because the prosecution had argued that Harold was an incredible flight risk. He had just inherited $1.5 million, most of which came from his late wife's assets. This judge agreed and sided with the prosecution because she believed that he could have easily fled the country if he wanted to.

She also agreed with prosecutors that the death of Sandra Lynn, his first wife, was glaringly similar to Tony's death. The judge wanted to give authorities time to reopen and re-examine Dave Weaver's investigation into Sandra's case, alongside moving forward with prosecuting Harold for Tony's murder. After Harold's arrest, Tony's family members spoke with reporters, and they said that Harold had always claimed his first wife died in a car accident, and he didn't want to talk about her. They just thought he was being private and maybe still grieving losing Sandra in such a horrific way. They noticed that Harold was beyond just touchy, though, about this subject. He would often insist that if people had pictures of Sandra in their houses that they take them down.

It came across like he didn't want to remember her at all. A month after Harold was arrested for Tony's murder, the Douglas County Coroner's Office changed Sandra's manner of death from accidental to undetermined. A few months after that, in 2015, federal prosecutors and defense attorneys were filing motions about what could and couldn't be introduced in court for Tony's murder. And a Colorado judge decided that she would allow circumstances and evidence surrounding the suspicious death of Sandra as evidence in Tony's case.

While preparing for trial, prosecutors uncovered audits that showed Harold's tax returns didn't show that he made a steady stream of income from any kind of regular job. These audits also revealed that there were several large deposits of money made over a period of months into his brother's bank accounts. Those deposits all occurred either right before Tony's death or in the weeks leading up to it. That gave prosecutors suspicion that Harold was stowing away money preparing for the crime, essentially premeditating Tony would die. Prosecutors also showed evidence at trial that indicated Harold had scouted out the trail near Deer Mountain at least nine times before going there with Tony. Other testimony at trial revealed that friends of Harold's prior to him marrying

Tony had discussed Harold's dating life with him, and these friends testified that Harold would talk about who he should marry based on that woman's wealth. The Associated Press reported that Harold studied the financial statuses of three women in Mississippi around the time that he met Tony. He then went and asked his friends which of the three women he should wed, and ultimately, he decided on Toni. During the trial, prosecutors walked the jurors through findings from 20 search warrants investigators had pulled for the case. And it's those warrants that looked at Harold's phone records, computer records, financial records, and his vehicles. The prosecution argued that Harold planned that hike with Tony in detail, and that's why they'd found that map with the X drawn on it, marking the very spot where she would die.

Park rangers and dispatchers who took the stand testified that Harold had conflicting stories of when and how Tony fell. For example, phone records showed that Harold didn't actually call 911 until 45 minutes after Tony fell. He also stated to first responders that right at the precise time Tony fell, he had been looking down, reading a text message on his phone that had come from their babysitter. However, neither his or the babysitter's phone records reflected that. By September, the trial arguments were over, and a federal jury began deliberating Harold's guilt or innocence. His attorneys had argued that Tony's death was just a tragic accident, but the prosecution argued that the evidence showed Harold had motive, money to gain, and the jurors could not ignore the fact that Tony's accidental death was extremely similar to his first wife Sandra's death in 1995.

Extremely similar to his first wife Sandra's death in 1995. In the end, the jury sided with the prosecution, and they convicted Harold of first-degree murder for killing Tony. They sentenced him to life in prison. But even after all of that had happened, and despite all of the evidence that had been presented against him, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office announced it was not going to actively pursue criminal charges against Harold for Sandra's death. The sheriff stated that until Harold's federal appeals process was finally over

for his conviction in Tony's death, the 1995 case would remain in a static state. But as of 2018, a Colorado appeals court affirmed Harold's murder conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal as well. But murder charges against him for Sandra's case are still in the process and haven't happened. Harold and Tony's daughter, Haley, is now a teenager and in the custody of family members. But I think the craziest thing that sticks with me about this case is not only the fact that Sandra died in the horrific way she did, but that it got written off so quickly as just an accident. I mean, if Harold had been investigated in 1995 thoroughly,

he would have never had the opportunity to prey on another woman like Toni and not only ruin her life, but take her life. I also just can't get over that ex drawn on the map he took with them to their hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. Like, just the boldness of that, and the eerie thought that he could have been taking trips out there numerous times, planning what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. It makes me wonder if he did the same thing in Sandra's case in 95, testing their tires, picking a spot on the country road they would stop at, everything. But those are questions that only

Harold Henthorne can answer. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original podcast. This series was executive produced by Ashley Flowers. Research and writing by Delia D'Ambra, with writing assistance by Ashley Flowers. Sound design by David Flowers, with production assistance from Alyssa Gastola. You can find all of our source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?