From a Life Sentence to a Life Restored: Judy Henderson

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Judy Henderson:
It happened very quickly, and it seemed like I was not even in my body. I was just stepping out looking at this from afar. This was the most violent thing I had ever witnessed in my life. And to see somebody that I was just shocked that he even had this personality. I wasn’t even aware that he had another side to him, that he was affiliated with other types of people until all of this happened.

Gary Schneeberger:
That’s just a sliver of the story that our guest this week, Judy Henderson tells about the unbelievable day that landed her in prison with a life sentence convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. But it was while behind bars that Henderson began to discover the patterns of abuse and trauma that helped her make sense of her past and fueled the future of helping other incarcerated women. Speaking of incarcerated women, Judy Henderson is no longer one of them. Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss the detail of how she won freedom after 36 years.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Judy, it’s so wonderful to have you. I’m trying to think of the right, I don’t want to say, I enjoyed… I found reading your book was incredible experience. It was really heartbreaking, but yet there’s incredible hope. We’ve had a lot of challenging stories on a podcast that people have been through all sorts of crucibles, but my gosh, it almost feels like the Mount Everest, or maybe I should say Mount Sinai of Crucibles, what you’ve gone through and survived which is triumph for the human spirit. And I know you’re a person of faith, triumph of… I’d like to think amidst the challenge and the darkness, maybe God’s goodness or breaking through in you and then using you in so many wonderful ways.
So, it is truly an amazing story. So I want to begin at the beginning, and we often say on Beyond the Crucible, what was life like before the crucible? And while things did get pretty incredibly challenging, it felt like there was never a time in which life was perfect. There was always challenges. So just talk about, before we get to the biggest crucible perhaps, what was life like for you growing up? I understand, I think you grew up a bunch of different places, but mostly Missouri, but what was life like for young Judy growing up? Who were you like? What did you love to do? What was the young Judy like?

Judy Henderson:
Well, growing up, of course, being the oldest of age, you have a lot of responsibilities. So growing up, I didn’t have what I would say, much of a childhood that I can recall. I loved going home or going to my grandparents during the summertime, and I would switch between the two parent or grandparents. Well, it was my vacation away from all the chores, away from all the baths, away from all the ironing clothes. And I got to work out in the field. I got to drive a tractor, which it was fun. The one thing I didn’t like though was that one grandmother, she had an outside bathroom, so I would have to go through the chicken coop to get to the bathroom. And the chickens chasing me, that was not fun. She’d always have to be out there shooing away and everything. But when I would go to my grandparents, it was fun. There’s things in the book about my trips to my grandparents. And when I thought there was certain chocolate that I could eat, but it really wasn’t chocolate. It looked like chocolate.

Warwick Fairfax:
I remember that. Was it laxative, I think?

Judy Henderson:
It was laxative, yes. That was horrible. So yeah, that was not much fun, but I always enjoyed being there. It was so peaceful and quiet. You can imagine with eight children. So, I always enjoyed those times. I was in Brownies at one time that my mother had me in. And so those are great memories too. There’s trips we would take to Big Bear, which is in California Resort, and we had good times there. I have pictures of those. But yeah, life was tough. Being the oldest of eight children, you have a lot of responsibilities. And I loved my mother, so helping her do the chores, do the things with all the kids, it was just something that, I guess, came natural. Because I would watch my mother, she was very picky about how the house looked and how the kids were dressed.
My high school years weren’t so great. We went to a certain church that had very strict dress rules that was not in style with the other girls in the high school that I went to. And I couldn’t date until I was 18 years old. So all the girls would be talking about things that they did, parties they went to, but that was not the lifestyle that I was allowed to live. So that part of my high school years weren’t the greatest. And then what occurred with an assistant pastor was not something that it took me a long time to get over. And I don’t know that I ever got over it until I received therapy during my incarceration.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Just to go back a bit, it seems like your mother obviously liked things just so, but you had felt like a good relationship with her throughout the years. She felt like sort of a rock that was there for you. I’m sure it’s probably not perfect, but she felt like overall that she was a good mother that really cared about you, was with you.

Judy Henderson:
Yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
And your dad, it sounds like he maybe drank too much and it seemed like it often happens when he drank, he became a different person and was violent with your mother and you. So talk about that. I mean, it’s probably a number of people that can relate to that, but they can be the good dad and the bad dad. And when his drinking, it became a different person. Talk about that uncertainty at home that you experienced.

Judy Henderson:
Yes. And you wouldn’t know when his anger would get out of control. Because we did have so many children, I had so many siblings, there was always things going on in the house and noise. My father, it was like, I was the one that he always wanted to pick on, and that was okay. It was okay for me because I felt like I don’t know that I could stand by and watch him do that to my other siblings. I felt very protective of them, but I didn’t understand his anger. I always felt like it was my fault.
And so at the end of each time that I would get a beating from him, I would just write him a little note and put it on his pillow, and tell him I was sorry for what I did to cause him to do that. So, I always felt like things were my fault. If I had done this different or done that different, he wouldn’t have gotten mad or he wouldn’t have started drinking or he wouldn’t have beat my mother. So, I took the responsibility for all of that, and it wasn’t my responsibility to do that. It was hard to go through, but…

Warwick Fairfax:
Really, one of the next events in your life was you started dating this guy, Charlie, who they often seem charming at first. To some guys it’s the thrill of the chase. And once they catch what they’re chasing, for some sadly, the interest is not as much as in the chase, which is exceptionally sad. So talk about Charlie, and from what I’m saying, things changed when you got pregnant. Well, they suddenly got worse. And then you felt forced to marry him, because obviously this a long time ago. So talk about the whole Charlie getting pregnant, marrying that whole episode in your life.

Judy Henderson:
Yes. So he was the first boy I’d ever dated, and he was like a knight and shining armor at the time whenever I first met him, because we had went to… This is after the minister did what he had done. And I went to a dance hall for teenagers and that’s where a few of us got in a car and decided to go out to a country road. And I got out of the car and was walking with one of the guys, and he started taking advantage of me. And then Charlie came up and he was like saved me, by knight in shining armor.
He pulled the guy off of me, and then him and I started dating. And we ended up putting the guy in the car, he did, and we ended up dropping him off. And then Charlie and I started dating. And him being the first guy I’d ever been out with on an actual date, it was like, “Wow, it was exciting.” I finally got to do the things that the girls in high school used to do. I felt like one of them a little bit.
And then I got pregnant. And my father, of course, he was absolutely furious. I thought he was going to have what they called a shotgun wedding, because he said that he’s going to marry me. He wanted to go get his gun and do something about it, and my mom stopped him. So it did end up marrying Charlie, but it didn’t end up I was hoping it was. It didn’t end up like a little white picket fence around a little house with loving children and a loving husband and all the things that a little girl dreams about.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, I’m going to jump in for a second. I just want to make the point for the listeners and viewers here, and you said it at the outset of this show, and you said it a little bit when you were asking the last question of Judy, and these are profoundly sad events and memories. I just want to assure you folks, if you are watching and you are listening, this is not going to be a profoundly sad show forever. I encourage you to continue listening because there are truly some miraculous things that happen. And you can pick up on it in Judy’s voice and in her visage, if you’re watching that she’s not living in those places anymore. And there’s a reason why, and we will get there. So bear with us, we’ll get there.

Warwick Fairfax:
But before we get there, it gets worse.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right, exactly.

Warwick Fairfax:
So hang on there. You might feel it’s pretty tough now. Well, it is going to get tougher. So anyway, from what I understand, once you had a child, Angel, your first child, it seemed like Charlie, drunk, was abusive, maybe had other women. I mean, it went downhill and eventually, understandably, you got divorced. And you would hope at that point, “Okay, maybe it’s going to get better.” But then you meet Greg. So talk about Greg, who he was, why he was attractive, and how he sort of just brought you in-

Judy Henderson:
He did.

Warwick Fairfax:
… sucked you in a sense. Talk about Greg.

Judy Henderson:
Yes, he did. I met Greg through some other friends, and we were getting ready to… This was in April, so I want people to know, and I don’t know if I should bring it up now or wait until later about the timeline of how this all occurred. Because after 12 years of an abusive marriage, then I finally had the courage to divorce Charlie in June. I attempted suicide because he wouldn’t leave me alone. He would tear up my clothes and shoes where it was hard for me to go to work. So I attempted suicide. And out of that suicide, my psychiatrist said, “You need to move out of that town and move where your parents are, your family.”
So I did, and that was in September and October, I was in the psychiatric ward for 30 days. I ended up moving down there and I bought a business and it was a successful business. My children and I moved into our own home, and then I started meeting friends and going out to dinner. And that’s where I met my co-defendant, Greg, that I started dating. He was a businessman. He was a real estate broker. He had been in the ministry at one time, and that should have been a red flag for me, had been in the ministry and he wasn’t now, so hmm. Yeah.
Now I can go back and say, hmm. But I didn’t see that. We were at my aunt’s one time for 4th of July, and she and I were in the pool and she said, “Why is he reading a book on manipulation, Judy?” And I said, “Well, he has multimillion dollar property he said he has to sell. So I’m sure it has something to do with work.” And again, I never saw any red flags, he was taking care of business. But during that time, I was supposed to have been taking medications and I did not because I’ve never liked pills or things such as that. So my mind still wasn’t quite right from all the abuse that I had already been through. My thinking wasn’t right. I later found out there’s different kinds of addiction, not just drugs and alcohol, but my addiction was love. I wanted so badly to be loved that I would be a people pleaser.
I would try to be the caretaker, always trying to help people. I again, with Greg being so polite and nice and charismatic, I never saw a anger side of him. He never raised his voice at me. He was very gentle. And whenever I came home from work one day after picking my son up from the nursery, I walked in and suitcases were sitting in the foyer. And I go, “Who suitcases are these?” And I said it out loud and around the corner, then Greg walked up and he said, “They’re mine.” I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I just felt like it was time for me to move in and take care of you and the children.” He said, “We’re going to be a happy family.” We’re going to do all these wonderful things that he talked about.
And I said, “Well, that’s just not something that I’m accustomed to is having somebody live in my home, a male live in my home.” And he said, “Judy, it’s going to be fine. I’m going to take care of you and the kids. You need me.” And of course, I was at that stage where, “Oh. Okay, yeah, okay.” I was so good at business, I could do that and I could come out on top. But whenever it came to this part of my life, it was like I just lost all control. I lost all my senses.

Warwick Fairfax:
So talk about leading up to when things get worse is Harry Klein and how Greg was just so manipulative, and you kept pushing back. “And no, but Judy, it’s going to be okay, trust me.” And you resisted, but…

Judy Henderson:
I did.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, resisting a master manipulator like Greg is sort of like, I don’t know, resisting lava coming down a volcano in avalanche. I mean-

Judy Henderson:
Correct. Yeah. Exactly.

Warwick Fairfax:
… you’re not going to last too long. It’s like, resistance is futile as they say in some science fiction shows. So talk about the whole Harry Klein episode and the shooting, and just-

Judy Henderson:
Yeah. I try…

Warwick Fairfax:
… how those [inaudible 00:17:57] steps are interesting.

Judy Henderson:
Well, yeah. And he was in the middle of a divorce too. He had been separated from his wife for quite a while, and he said, “Judy, he said, I need $10,000 to get this divorce. I need this.” And that was the final thing that he said and assured me, no harm would come to Harry Klein that he just needed to talk to him. He needed this money. It was things that had to be done if we wanted a happy life, but it would all turn out okay. And so, I had forgotten about it because he didn’t mention it for a few weeks. And then all of a sudden when I came home one day, he said, “Okay, today’s a day.” And I said, “What do you mean today’s a day? Today’s a day whenever I want you to contact Harry Klein. I want you to take him out to a certain area.” And I said, “But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about this. What do you mean?”

Warwick Fairfax:
It seemed like he wanted you to get together with Harry Klein almost romantically in a sense, which-

Judy Henderson:
Yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
… must have seemed weird to you because, “Okay, but Greg-

Judy Henderson:
It did.

Warwick Fairfax:
… I thought we’re in a relationship, why would you want me to do this with this other guy?” But obviously, he knew that Harry Klein maybe was attracted to you to a degree and it was a device. And so he gets you out in a car somewhere in the country, and somehow ends up shooting him a couple of times. It wasn’t like it was in the heat of the moment.

Judy Henderson:
No.

Warwick Fairfax:
I think you got injured in one of the ricochet bullets or something.

Judy Henderson:
Correct.

Warwick Fairfax:
And so then there’s this cleanup and let’s rush away. And I think you end up in Alaska to escape. As you said, your dress had blood on it. You must’ve been like, “Well, what’s happening? Everything happened so quick.”

Judy Henderson:
It happened very quickly and it seemed like I was not even in my body. I was just stepping out, looking at this from afar. And I couldn’t believe what was [inaudible 00:20:25]. This was the most violent thing I had ever witnessed in my life. And to see somebody that I was just shocked that he even had this personality, I wasn’t even aware that he added another side to him that he was affiliated with other types of people until all of this happened. So it was a total unbelievable like a movie.
But yes, he ended up taking me to Alaska where I did attempt suicide again, because if I was going to die, which I fully believed in my heart that he would kill me, why would he not kill me? I was a witness to all of this. So I attempted suicide again, and I had to be life-flighted to the hospital. They had to stop in between the helicopter [inaudible 00:21:22] because they thought they lost me, and they revived me and I was shipped life-flighted to another hospital in Anchorage. And he was so furious whenever I came to that, he said, “Come on, we’re going right now. We’re leaving.” I mean, the doctors in all the medical reports, they said, and they believed that I was being abused. They said that I was being guided by this gentleman. So I left.
Of course, I left. I was scared to death. The whole time I was scared. Then when we got home, he choked me so bad that he had to go get turtleneck sweaters for me to wear so nobody would see my marks. So I thought, “Well, I’m going to die now. He’s not going to ever let me go.”

Warwick Fairfax:
Somehow the police found you in Alaska and they arrested you both, took you back to Missouri. And then as bad as things were, it feels like they get worse. And you’re thinking, “Okay. Well, I didn’t do anything.” Yes, maybe in hindsight if you were even thinking this way, which you probably would, it’s like, “Well, maybe it wasn’t so smart to invite Harry Klein.” Maybe I was culpable for something, but you think, “I didn’t do murder.” And you really conned into it all. You were obviously a victim in all this. But at the trial, Greg, the master manipulator manipulated that situation in which somehow he is like this innocent little lamb and you are this awful killer.

Judy Henderson:
[inaudible 00:23:13].

Warwick Fairfax:
So talk about how through manipulating lawyers, and he’s saying, “Don’t worry, Judy, I’ve got this.” Oh, he had this all right. He was manipulating it to your downfall. So talk a bit about that whole lawyer stuff leading up to the verdict.

Judy Henderson:
Sure. So we had the same attorney represent both of us, which is a constitutional issue and that cannot happen today because of what occurred in my case, and it made case law. But an attorney cannot represent two defendants on the same case. You can’t defend one and protect another one. And let one go to prison. That is no defense for one of you, and that happened to be mine. And Greg wanted it to be one attorney representing both of us so he could set in on all the meetings, and here our strategy, here what my defense was, what evidence we were going to use. But he always said, “Don’t worry, you didn’t do this, so you’re not going to be found guilty. The jury won’t find you guilty and you will be fine.” So I told my attorney, I said, “Well, I’m going to testify aren’t I?
And he said, “No.” He said, “Unless you want to come up with a lie, an alibi of where you were, and it wasn’t at the scene.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, you can say you were shopping with your mother, and your mother can confirm that by taking the stand.” I said, “I would never, never implicate my parents or my mother in something like this.” That was just insane. I was starting to come to a little bit and think, “This is crazy. This is a crazy situation and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
So I even asked the attorney at one point, he was at my mother’s place of business, and I called and I asked him, “I’m ready to make a plea bargain. Go talk to the prosecutor.” And he left and he came back and he said… And he wasn’t gone very long. And he said, the prosecutor said, “No deal because he’s got somebody else to testify.” And the prosecutor then testified later that my attorney never went to him and asked, “Tell him I wanted to testify.” What Greg, my co-defendant was doing was while he was being in my meetings, he was still speaking to two other criminal attorneys that he ended up hiring after I was convicted. And he fired that attorney, and he ended up having these other two that got him acquitted. And he never did a day of time for that murder ever.

Warwick Fairfax:
And he just sort of manipulated your attorney, paid him off, or who knows. So talk about, then there’s the verdict and you’re still probably thinking at that point, “Surely they can’t find me guilty because I did nothing wrong.” And then what did you hear from the judge? What was about it?

Judy Henderson:
Whenever they do jury instructions, they give them all these options of a lesser charge, lesser charge, lesser charge. So I thought, there’s no way they’re going to find me guilty of murder. No way. So whenever they came in and they told me to stand, the judge was going to read the verdict. I just heard my mother screaming because they found me guilty of capital murder, which carried life without parole or the death penalty. So the jury still had to go back out and find me guilty of one of those. I would get one of those sentences. And we did not know which it was.
Of course, my mother was just hysterical. My family was so distraught, and I was froze. I was froze because I could hear her screaming and I thought, “Okay, Judy, you can’t show any emotion. You have to be brave. You have to be protective of your parents and your mother.” And so, I just looked back at her and told her, “Mom, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. I’m good. I’m okay.” So the jury went out and they took me back to my cell. So I thought, “Okay, I could get the death penalty.” And Warwick, if I had received the death penalty, I would’ve been executed when I had served 18 to 20 years. I wouldn’t even be sitting here with you today. But they came back and they gave me life without parole for 50 years.

Warwick Fairfax:
I want to talk a bit about your prison time, but before we do that, I know it’s like about a year later, but it’s talk about salt on the wounds doesn’t feel like it’s sort of, I don’t know, hydrochloric acid on the wound. But in terms of Greg’s trial, so talk about that. He gets acquitted and he pays for four women prisoners to claim that you confess that you did it. And he uses his smooth talking preaching skills on the stand, and he manipulates and cons the jury, and he gets acquitted and is a free man. I mean, when you heard that trial and you wanted to testify, but once the prosecutors heard there were four women prisoners who claimed under oath that you confessed. At that point, they weren’t going to touch you as in have you on the stand. So at the risk of asking an obvious question, what did you feel like when this… I don’t say, man, this person thing, creature of when you say Greg was acquitted. I mean, that must have been one of the lowest points.

Judy Henderson:
It was, it was, because I thought, what am I going to do now? Where is my hope going to come from? How am I going to survive this? How am I going to prove I did not do this?

Warwick Fairfax:
Talk about those early days, weeks, months in prison. Obviously, you were battered, bruised, but you weren’t this hardened criminal type. This wasn’t like, “Here we go again. It’s not my first rodeo.” I mean, it’s for you, it was you. I think to talk about fresh meat, the early times. I mean, talk about those experiences and how it changed you and you almost had to change to survive. You’ve had kids depending on you.

Judy Henderson:
Right. And that’s where my fight, that’s where I got my courage and strength to be able to do what I needed to do because of the love that I have for my children and family. I had no choice. I could not give up. I could not sit there and think that I was not going to come home. I had to fight for this. I mean, Greg, even when he was going to trial, he put a contract out on me in prison. And one of the offenders befriended me and I thought she was a friend.
Then come to find out she carried a shank. She was a crude criminal and she was going to take my life if I did not do something about it. And so, I did. I took her to the bathroom and we did what we needed to do. And I had to let population know, don’t take my kindness for weakness because here is what I can do. Here’s what I am capable of doing. And that was very sad to me that I had to be violent like that, but I had no choice. I had to save my life.

Warwick Fairfax:
One of the things you say in your book about this, Madam Officer’s view you said, “Anger became my fuel, my armor against the crushing weight of grief. I pictured Greg’s face letting the rage simmer and build. In the prison gym, I pushed my body to its limits. Each rep, each lap forging me into something harder, less breakable.” You had to become not like, I guess, they used to tease you about being a princess. You had to become something very different than a princess.

Judy Henderson:
Yes, I did.

Warwick Fairfax:
Some tough woman that you don’t take on Judy Henderson, or you’ll be sorry. But it-

Judy Henderson:
Yes, that’s right. And what it was crazy is we were housed in a… We had male and female there. So there was guys there, so we got to play handball, racquetball. So I became very active. I started lifting weights. Actually I ended up, before I left there, becoming probably about 16 years into my sentence, I became a certified personal trainer and group fitness trainer. So, I did not only start lifting weights when I got there, I did it until I came home. And I taught others how to love themselves and love their bodies and love who they were. And so, it was a total transformation work. It was so uplifting and so inspiring to know that I do not have to stay a victim. I can be a victor, I can make the decision. I can let that anger fuel me to either be better or I can get better. And I be darn, I was going to get better and I was going to fight. I was coming home to my family and my children.

Gary Schneeberger:
This would be a good time, Judy, to mention how you maintained your relationship with Angel, your daughter. Even in the midst of all of that in prison, even in the midst of what you’ve been describing, even before perhaps these revelations of good that you found. I mean, you told me in a conversation we had before we were recording, that you just had this bond that you refused to allow even bars to break with your daughter.

Judy Henderson:
Yes.

Gary Schneeberger:
“She was 13, and I was going to fight and scrape and scream until I got my freedom to let her know if there’s a wrong, you have to fight to make it right.” Talk about that. That brought you strength, right?

Judy Henderson:
Yes.

Gary Schneeberger:
It certainly brought her strength, but it brought you strength too, continuing that bond with your daughter, right?

Judy Henderson:
Yes. My daughter was my life and there was not anything I wasn’t going to do to get back with her except escape. Because I know five lifers that I did time with all escaped and tried to get me to. And I said, “Why would I do that? I could never see my children or my family again if I did that. Never. I’m going out the right way and I’m getting my freedom.” And everybody thought I was crazy. But anyways, that’s beside the point here I’m today so I wasn’t too crazy. So yes, I was determined to keep that bond with my daughter. We talked frequently. My family made sure that she came up to visit me all the time. I had a lot of visits with my family. They took very good care of me while I was incarcerated. And we had heart-to-heart talks, very honest, very transparent about her dating.
She wanted to know, “Mom, how do I fix certain dishes like sweet potatoes, pancakes?” And so I would tell her over the phone, she would break up with a guy and her heart would be breaking. And of course, I’d be standing on the phone crying. Then the sergeant would call me to the office and she’d say, “Judy, are you okay?” I said, “Yes, my daughter, just her heart’s breaking right now. This guy just broke up with her.” I know to them it was very probably crazy, but I wanted to be active in every aspect of her life, no matter what it was.
I wanted her to feel safe to be able to talk to me because that’s something I never had. And so, I mothered her from afar and she ended up becoming… She graduated Summa Cum Laude from UMKC in Kansas City and now she is the executive director, CEO of Mother’s Refuge, which is a home for babies and their mothers. So, we still are rescuing people, and moms and babies. And so she never gave up hope. She gave me hope, she gave me strength, and she gave me a reason, as did my siblings and my parents to fight because I knew I was not going to give up until the truth came out. I refused.

Warwick Fairfax:
I guess, they considered you a troublemaker in Missouri because you wouldn’t just give in and they couldn’t break your spirit, which not all, but some prison officials seem to want to do. And you went to Arizona, which is more of a maximum prison with drugs and all sorts of things going. But because they had more money, from what I understand, there were more programs. And so, I think you read Dr. Lenore Walker, the Battered Woman syndrome who you met earlier. There were programs you went through about battered women. And I think another doctor that helped you understand that counseling, there was faith-based things.
I think I saw somewhere Kairos Prison Ministry that there was a Catholic Prison Program. There were a number of programs both faith-based and more just psychological help. Talk about how that helped you understand what you were going through, just your brain being wired to be a victim. You were learning what you had. Again, you were not an alcoholic but you had a different… I don’t know if it’s illness, but something that says, “Oh, I’m getting beaten and it’s my fault somehow.” So talk about how the therapy that you received, which you then helped other women. You set up your own programs, I think PATCH and other things, to talk about both being helped and helping other women in prison. Because that felt like a turning point for you-

Judy Henderson:
It was.

Warwick Fairfax:
… in terms of purpose and healing.

Judy Henderson:
Yes, it was work. Well, first I had to realize how did I get here, what happened? All the things that happened in my life. I had to try to understand those. And so then I started my therapy and everything whenever I got to Arizona. And that’s whenever I started the Women Against Violence Group for battered women so I could help them. And I had good therapy when I was in Arizona. Adults Molested as Children was one great program that really helped me understand that all those things that happened to me, I didn’t cause that. I didn’t say the wrong thing. I didn’t look the wrong way. So all these other women, there’s so many women in there that are battered and abused, and they don’t know how to be parents, they don’t know how to be mothers.
And it broke my heart because I thought they don’t even know how to talk to their children. So, that was something that I wanted to get involved in, was starting getting involved on the ground level of pioneering these programs, parenting classes, the parents, the PATCH program, which the parents and their children where they would have one-on-one visits without security, without officers being around. It would just be them and their mother cooking and playing games, and watching television in a very safe environment. Then I got involved with 4-H Life, which was a federal grant through one of the universities that created this program where you involved a whole family unit, the grandmothers, the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, because this appeared and it was several generational curses all through the family. One goes to prison, then the other one goes to prison, then the others go to prison. So, this had to be broken.
And the only way to do that was to get these families together so they enjoyed the family unit coming together and seeing how much their loved one in prison had grown and wanted a different lifestyle. And so, it was so rewarding. And whenever I did the Women’s Against Violence Program, the governor’s office even came to the program and took from that program back to the governor’s office how powerful it was and how it was really opening and changing the women’s lives. And they started a task force against domestic violence in Arizona.

Warwick Fairfax:
There’s a moment that was maybe one of the most incredible moments in your life in which you had tried to appeal for your release for years and he got close. And then that particular governor of Missouri, you’re back in Missouri in prison at this time and died in a plane crash. It’s like, you must have looked, “Seriously Lord? We were so close.” He died in a plane crash. But then there’s another governor, Governor Eric Greitens, and he seemed to take your appeal seriously. And you had some student lawyer and some other lawyers and people in the legislature had a whole small, maybe big army of people really trying to help you. And one I think got in his intern in his office.
But there was an incredible moment where your daughter drove, I don’t know, a couple of hours to some event that Governor Greitens was out to talk to him personally. We’re at a point, just so that listeners know the scene. What you spoke about earlier, these two of these four women recanted their statements that they signed affidavits according to your lawyer. That was a game changer. So at that point, that’s what began to fuel the hope with these petitions, those two women changing their stories. So talk about how Angel goes to this event, and what happened to that event when your daughter heroically is doing battle for her mom, because that’s an incredible scene.

Judy Henderson:
Yes, she did it. So someone had vandalized the Jewish cemetery, and so Eric Greitens put out a plea for everyone to come and try to help clean the cemetery up. So she decided she was going to drive four and a half hours to where the cemetery was, and she was going to volunteer to do that because she knew he was going to be there. And she was supposed to go to the capitol and speak with legislators on some bills that were coming up. And she told her husband, David, “I just feel led. God is leading me to…” Because they’re great Christians also, and people of faith to go to this Jewish cemetery. “I’m supposed to go.” And he said, “Then you do that, you go. There’s other people that’s going to the capitol, you’re supposed to go there,” and to the cemetery. So she did. And there was hundreds of people, there was all these security guys around that was not going to let anybody get close to the governor or the vice president, he was there also. So you know how tight the security was.
So Angel, she started picking up the trash and doing what needed to be done. And actually, I don’t know what it was, but somebody, she got to park right up close to where all of this was occurring instead of parking miles away and having to walk up there, because there were so many people there. So toward the end, he was thanking everybody for coming and helping. And she was in the back and she said, “Mom, it was like God just parted the waters.” And all these people just started shifting and she got right up there next to him. And he shook her hand and he held her hand and she said, “I just want you to know that I want to tell you about my mother.” And she gave him my name and she told him where I was, and that I had lived that parole for 50 years and I’d been incarcerated and I didn’t do the murder.
And she just felt such a shift in her fight that she had made a connection with him, and they even took a picture. And so she goes back home, she gets a copy of the picture, she puts it in an envelope to thank the governor for talking with her. And then my female attorney, she starts going to the governor’s office. I mean, she’s a pit bull. She was not going to stop visiting that governor’s office and getting other senators and legislators involved. My daughter being one of those women just were resilient. They was going to persevere. They were going to conquer this.

Warwick Fairfax:
Talk about that special day when you get called to the warden’s office and you’re thinking, “Okay, what now? What more can they do to me?” You’re not thinking, “Oh, this is going to be fun.” It’s going to be a, “Here we go again.” And yet the governor, Eric Greiten was there himself. And what did he tell you and what happened after that?

Judy Henderson:
So whenever they wanted me to go up to the visiting room, because they said I had a visit. I rebelled and said, “No, my attorney would not come and visit me without letting me know and letting me have my makeup on and my hair done and everything.” She just wouldn’t do that. And they said, “Judy, either you’re going to go or we’re taking you to the hole.” I said, “Okay, it looks like I’m going,” because I’m not going the hole. So I went up there and I was freaking out because I thought it’s got to be bad news because it wasn’t a visiting day. And for my attorney to come, something had to have happened. And of course, because of my past not getting any good news about anything, I was thinking, “Well, this isn’t good.” Plus it was his first year in office. No governor ever does something like this their first year in office, no governor because of their political career that comes first.
So about an hour later I was waiting and waiting and I said, “If my attorney’s here, where are they? Something’s not right.” And so they get a phone call in the back where I was strip searched and ready to go in. And they said, “They’re ready for you.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I walk in and I see the governor’s attorney that had been there to see me about three weeks earlier just asking me random questions, but tell me, “Not make any promises. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s his first term. I don’t know how this is going to go, but I’ll report back to him and tell him about our meeting.” And my attorney was there with him also. And so he came, I saw him first in the visiting room.
I said, “Justin, what are you doing here?” And he said, “Well, there was something else I needed to ask you.” And he said, “Actually, there’s somebody that’s been waiting to meet you for a long time.” And I said, “Why would somebody want to meet me?” He said, “Well, turn around and you’ll see.” And I turned around and there was the governor right behind me. How he got in that visiting room and snuck up behind me, I have no idea because those are steel doors that you hear. That had to have been a God thing. So I just started bawling because I thought, “This has got to be good news. He’s here. He’s here.” So, I just fell to my knees and just sobbing. And he grabbed me by the shoulders gently and he said, “Judy, he said, it’s okay. He said, this is good news.”
He said, “Let me help you get up and we’re going to sit at the table and I’m going to talk to you for a minute.” So he did. And he said, “I want to apologize on behalf of the state of Missouri for what has happened to you and that nobody came to help you, and I’m here to do that today. And I want to read something to you.” And he pulled out papers with a golden seal on it. And he said, “On this day, I’m going to commute your sentence to life…” Or how do you say it? “I’m going to commute your sentence to time served and you will be released today.” I said, “What did you say?” He said, “You are going home today.” I said, “Today? I am leaving today?” And he said, “Yes, you are leaving today. You are going home.” Of course, I started just bawling my eyes out again.
So he said, “Before I leave, I just want you to know that this is something that we had to do and we had to do it now.” And he said, “I know that you always told your family you don’t want any publicity,” which I never did. So for me to do this book, this is a God thing too. Yeah. And so he said, “I want you to know there’s no publicity out there, there’s no media out there because we know you would not have wanted that.” And he said, “And this isn’t about me, and I didn’t want it either.” And he said, “But me and my staff are going to get out of the way. And there’s people here that’s been waiting to see you for a long, long time waiting for this day.”
And so they left and opened the door. And in what my daughter and my son and my entire family and my two attorneys and one of the attorneys that had been with me for 36 years pro bono that believed in me, he was there with his wife. And it was the most glorious day. Even whenever I had to go down to my cell to pack my property, the staff said that they… That was 1600 women in the yard cheering me on and just thrilled and happy and crying and hugging me.
And they said that that morale and that prison was like that for a week that they had never seen. That was like a miracle. All the women thought, “If it can happen for her, it can happen for us.” And it was so ironic because the last person’s hand I shook as an offender when I walked out out of there was the woman that took the contract to kill me. And she said, “Where are you going, Judy?” And I said, “I’m going home, Pam. I’m going home.” And so we did a high five. And I said, “I made it.” She said, “Good.” And so that gives me chills just thinking about it. So God, he had me the whole time, Warwick and Gary, he had me. And now, I want to just give back. And where I work is a good place that I can help so many people for so many different reasons. So, I’m highly blessed and favored. But what he does for one, he’ll do for another. So I always tell the women, “Don’t give up. Don’t give up hope.”

Warwick Fairfax:
So you’ve said some incredible things in your book just as we sort of sum up some of these things a bit. You said, once you heard from the governor, you said, “I sat there stunned into silence right now after 13,149 days, after 315,576 hours, after 18,934,560 minutes, freedom was no longer a distant dream but an immediate reality. You also say, prisons stole irreplaceable years. Yet in this place designed to break spirits. I also discover a deep truth. Even in chains, our choices remain our own.”
Just a couple more. “In the crushing silence of solitary confinement, I chose to fill the void with whispered stories of hope and redemption. As I stepped beyond those gates, I held my head high. I wasn’t just leaving prison, I was carrying with me a hard-won truth. No matter what life throws at us, we always have the power to choose who we become in the darkness. And when we make that choice, we can welcome that light when it comes to us, when it finds us again at last.” So your journey is so incredible. As you look back, what are the lessons? We talk about sometimes hard-won lessons. I mean, this is sort of the Olympic level of hard-won lessons. Nobody wants to learn lessons the way you did. I’m sure you didn’t either. But as you look back, what are some of the lessons you feel you’ve learned within yourself or maybe from God? What are some of the key lessons that you’ve learned throughout your experience?

Judy Henderson:
The key lessons for me is that women take on. And not just women, there’s abused men also, that God created us to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be joyous, to enjoy our life and to help others. And I know now he has shown me so many different ways that things could have been different, and I could have had the courage to stand up and do what needed to be done, but Satan is always there to steal, kill, and destroy.
And you have to know and believe in your heart that God created you for a purpose. And we all need to find out what that purpose is. And I was able to find my purpose, and I praise God for that. But you have to remember that there’s always hope. There is always hope. Don’t ever give up, and know that there is people there that genuinely love and care about you no matter what your plight is or what turns you make, that they are there to help you through it. And you just have to trust and believe that they are going to… God’s guiding you, and he’s bringing them into your life for a reason.

Warwick Fairfax:
So, I’m assuming that you can’t survive what you’ve been through without forgiveness. One of the things, believe it or not, we talk about a lot is bitterness and anger. And we do use this phrase is like being in prison or drinking poison. And they typically could care less the people you’re angry at unfortunately, which is galling. And we also say this, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning evil behavior.” But how did you manage, which I’m assuming you must have. How did you manage to forgive all the people? And he had a long list, but Greg is probably at the top of the list. How did you manage to forgive him? Because that must not have been easy.

Judy Henderson:
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy to begin with, but the only person that that anger was hurting was me. It wasn’t hurting them. Nobody else cared that I was angry or that I refused to forgive anybody. That wasn’t hurting anybody but myself. So I decided, there’s two things you can do with anger and bitterness. You can either get bitter or you can get better, and I chose better. And the only way to completely heal that anger is to forgive those that did what they did to you through the years. And so, I was able to do that. And with that forgiveness, getting that junk out of yourself, you are able to have room for joy and for happiness, and for love and helping others. I reached back and helped those that needed the help the most, people like me that was in the same spot I was in.

Gary Schneeberger:
Normally at this point in the show folks, I say, that sounds you heard was the captain turning on the fast and seatbelt signs indicating, it’s our time to descend. I’m not going to say that this time because this has felt a little bit like a marathon. We’ve covered a lot of, as Warwick put it, some sad ground that ends up in a very unsad place. So I’m going to break the tape, if you will, and we finished our race, and what’s left of our race now is to talk to the winner. And Warwick will come back and talk to Judy in a second. But Judy, I’d be remiss at this point in our conversation if I didn’t give you the chance to let people who’ve heard your story today know how they can learn more about you on the internet and other places. How can they find out more about Judy Henderson?

Judy Henderson:
Okay. Well, we do have a website set up that is, you go to judyannhenderson.com and it will take you to several things on my website. I just love the way it’s been laid out, the way it looks. You’ll see pictures of me and my children in younger years. And my mother and I who passed away during my incarceration, and some of my brothers who passed away during my incarceration, and ways to get in touch with me. So, feel free to do so. Buy a book, “When the Light Finds Us: From a Life Sentence to a Life Transformed,” and you’ll get a lot more. There’s so many miracles in that book. And you’re going to see where God was with me every step of the way, where I was. There was not just one contract killing, but two, that we didn’t discuss the first one, and how God already knew what was going to happen before it happened. And he saved me without my mother even knowing that what she did saved me. And so, that’s how they can reach me.

Gary Schneeberger:
Now, with a last name like Schneeberger, a co-host a podcast with a guy whose first name is Warwick with a W in the middle, I would not be doing what I should be doing. How do you spell that URL for your website? Because there are different ways to spell Judy and Ann. So how would you spell that so they can find you?

Judy Henderson:
Okay, so listen very carefully. Capital J, everything else is small letters. I don’t know if that makes a difference because I still don’t know all about technology, but it’s capital J-U-D-Y-A-N-N-H-E-N-D-E-R-S-O-N.com. C-O-M.

Gary Schneeberger:
Fantastic. C-O-M. Bravo. Well, played. Thank you for that.

Judy Henderson:
Thank you.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, as always, the last question or questions is or are all yours?

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Judy, thank you so much for being here. I mean, this is tough terrain that we’re discussing, but it is a story of hope when it would seem like there’s no reason for hope, is triumph for this human spirit. I think from our perspective, triumph of God can enter in even in the darkest places where it would seem like the light can’t shine in, so to speak. As you say, “When the light finds us.” We ask this question often, believe it or not on this podcast. So it would be this. There may be somebody listening and watching right now, and maybe they feel like they’re at the bottom of the pit. Maybe it’s even another woman who’s in prison. Maybe she’s a lifer, maybe somebody’s abused or could be some other, maybe somebody’s lost a loved one. They might think that this is their darkest day. Nobody cares about them. God cannot love somebody like them. What would a would’ve hoped to somebody who today might feel like to them like their worst day?

Judy Henderson:
Okay, so what I would say to them is God’s promises are always yes and amen. And what he does for one, he will do for another. He’s not a respecter persons. So all that he’s taken me through and I’m here today with numerous people trying to kill me, and all the abuse that I’ve suffered, that he has the plan. He didn’t create you for you to suffer, for you to go through pain and agony. You may not think you have the courage and the strength, but when you were born, he gave you everything at that moment that you would need to get through any trial, any tribulation, whatever you’re facing, and don’t ever try to pray for more strength because then he’s just going to give you more trials to build you.
So I learned that the hard way. I kept praying for more strength. Why would I do that? He already gave me everything I needed whenever he created me. So, use what he gave you and know that he has something very special for you or you wouldn’t have gone through what you have. You have a message. Without a mess, there’s no message. Without a test, there’s no testimony. So, you stand up and you believe in yourself, and you believe that there is a God Almighty that can take you out of the pits of hell and give you a blessed, loving, fun life.

Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last words have been spoken on a subject. And Judy Henderson not only just spoke it, but actually is sort of tempting me to enter messaging jail because she said, “If there’s no mess, there’s no message.” That’s beautiful.

Judy Henderson:
Thank you.

Gary Schneeberger:
So, I will appropriate that and I will give you credit, Judy, just so you know. But that is fantastic. But Warwick, we’ve just finished a fascinating, heartbreaking but also heart uplifting in the end conversation with Judy Henderson. A whole bunch to talk about, but let’s narrow it down. What are the takeaways that listeners and viewers should be zeroing in on? What are some of the one or two of the big learning points from her very hard to hear at the time story?

Warwick Fairfax:
Gary, when I was reading Judy Henderson’s book, When the Light Finds Us: From a Life Sentence to a Life Transformed, this is one of the hardest books I’ve ever had to read. It was certainly until it gets better. Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, it gets worse. She was abused by her father, by a minister at her church, taken advantage of by her first husband, and then conned and tricked by a relationship we have with a man called Greg that ended up being almost framed for murder and serving 36 years in prison. Having two young kids, it just a crushingly sad story. But amidst devastation and the pain and the agony and just abject injustice, unfairness, abuse of just proportions, it’s hard to really fathom. There is hope. The triumph of the human spirit, the triumph of faith, the triumph of God breaking in, just there was a number of moments where it might’ve been a Catholic ministry.
Christian ministries come in. There were times when counselors came in and slowly, she just saw that God hadn’t abandoned her. She saw that what she went through wasn’t her fault. Your brain gets rewired through abuse, and it means that she was prime target for somebody like Greg to take advantage of her and ended up being convicted of a murder she didn’t commit. So what’s amazing is just the joy in her spirit, the love she has for her kids. She was able to parent her kids even in prison. She has a daughter that’s a head of a ministry, and grandkids, great grandkids, that curse of generational abuse has been broken. So amidst the abject sadness of a life that was so unfair of what happened to her being wrongfully convicted of a crime she didn’t commit, there’s hope. She was a survivor. She was a fighter.
She literally had to fight to survive in prison. And we didn’t get into all the details, but throughout a lot of her time in prison, she was focused on helping other people. She would do paralegal work because she had… As you do, I guess, when you’re in prison, she learned a lot about the law. She would help other prisoners, because typically you can’t pay for high-priced legal help in prison. She would help them with their cases, in some cases successfully. She set up almost a beauty parlor in prison to help other women just feel better about themselves. She helped set up programs for battered women to help them. As she was getting counseled, she set up programs to help other women get counseling. She set up PATCH where they would set up a trailer outside prison that made it look like a living room where the women didn’t have handcuffs on and could be with their kids and their families in a more normal environment.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
She said, rather than getting bitter, you get better. She spent a lot of her prison life caring for other women, caring for other people, advocating for them, which she still does. So, she was not defeated by her crucibles. She used her crucibles as a jumping-off point, as a leverage point to help other women and be advocates for them. And she just stay close to her family, not get bitter, forgive. I mean, it’s hard to imagine a human being could become the person that she became. Many people would’ve been defeated and would be incredibly bitter, and she’s not. It’s just hard to fathom, other than, as I said before, the triumph of the human spirit and really the triumph of faith and of God entering into her life. She is a person of very strong faith, and that just comes through throughout our discussion.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. The thing I think people should look for is… And I’ve said this before about guests on the show, we see it a lot. They’ve gone through these terrible crucible experiences. Say they’re at an 11, right? 11 of crucible experiences on a 1 to 10 scale, and yet the joy that comes through in their voice, in their face, in their laughter is at a 15. That to me, that was the story of this conversation we just had with Judy. You heard her talk about the things that she went through. A couple of times, she got choked up in talking about them, but in the fills between the stories, she is all joy. And that to me is the greatest sign that whatever you’re dealing with folks, whatever crucible that you have, there’s joy on the other end of it if you just press in. Fair statement work?

Warwick Fairfax:
So well said. I think what it shows is that it’s hard to imagine anybody having a worse crucible than Judy Henderson. Maybe as bad, I don’t know. But to me, it feels like Olympic level of crucibles to be wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. To be abused throughout her life, including by a church minister, to serve 36 years in prison. That seems Olympic level of crucible. But she found a way to not be defeated by, to forgive, to use her crucible to help others. And you’re right, she has this joy. I mean, she has so much joy that people want her to succeed so to speak. When she shares as she left that prison, hundreds, if not a thousand women are cheering for her, that’s not normal. Maybe one or two buddies will cheer for you, but I said that’s unusual. And there was this joy in that prison for a week after, that doesn’t happen.
That shows you the mark that she made on those other women in prison, that shows you the kind of person, the joy and spirit she had. So she’s truly an inspirational person, and I’m glad that just the life that she’s living now is filled with joy and purpose and meaning. So, it’s just an incredible story. It is a story of hope despite just the tragedy that a lot of a life has been in some ways.

Gary Schneeberger:
Really, folks, until the next time that we’re together, we’d ask you to do a couple of things. One, if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, if you’ve taken away some message from the mess that Judy described. We’d ask you if you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, to give us a rating for the show. If you’re watching us on YouTube, give us a rating there, and also leave a comment. What did you like about this episode? What questions might you have about other things that we could have asked Judy? Let us know, please, at our YouTube page, Beyond the Crucible.
And until that next time we’re together, please remember this, we know your crucibles are difficult. Folks, you just listened to extraordinarily difficult crucibles that Judy has been through. You’ve heard Warwick talk about his crucibles that he’s been through before, but here they both sit on the other side of those crucibles because they learned lessons from their crucibles. They applied those lessons, and those lessons have helped carry them to the same place you can go if you learn the lessons of your crucibles and apply them to your journey forward. And that place is a life of significance.
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