Indiana Man Says He "Blacked Out" and Murdered Wife After Learning of Betrayal
When Melissa Henderson was mysteriously found dead in her bed in her Lawrenceburg, Indiana home by her husband, Bill, and his friend on June 17, 2005, her family immediately believed she’d died of natural causes. Her own mother died at age 22 of a rare blood disorder.
“So, we told Detective Bridges, ‘Well, her mom died at a very early age because of some weird tragic thing — could that have been what it was?” Kim Jacobs, Melissa’s stepcousin, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
Melissa was found face down and laying diagonal in her bed. The coroner put her time of death between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on June 17. She had a broken fingernail on one hand. Her back door was unlocked, and there were no signs of struggle in the home.
“We went into the bedroom to have [Bill Henderson] reenact how he found her … but it was just weird,” said WKRC Cincinnati reporter Deborah Dixon on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “It was like a performance. And when I was interviewing him, I’m thinking, ‘This man was not mourning.’ He was ice cold. It was just an instinct or a feeling that he was lying and covering something.”
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Although the coroner at first ruled her cause of death “undetermined,” what happened to the 34-year-old was much more sinister and was evident by her funeral.
“It was an open casket, and you could see the hand marks,” Pattie Sunderhaus, Melissa’s aunt, said on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “The bruising on her neck. You couldn’t deny it then. That was it. Something in my gut told me right then that there’s more to this. Something’s wrong.”
Melissa and Bill Henderson's marriage deteriorates before her murder
Melissa and Bill met through a mutual friend after high school.
"There was a spark, and she fell in love with him hard,” Jacobs said.
The two married in 1991 and had two daughters together: Victoria and Katie.
But not long after Melissa began working at a local casino, she fell back in love with a fellow employee and her high school sweetheart: James McCracken.
“Melissa was infatuated with James back then,” Jacobs said. “He was the bad boy. Wearing the leather coat kind of guy. Her stepmom was like, ‘Stay away from him, he’s bad news. I forbid you to see him.’”
Melissa stayed away, and eventually married Bill Henderson.
“It really broke her heart because she really truly believed that James was her one true love,” Sunderhaus said.
McCracken admitted to detectives he and Melissa were having an affair when she died. And the affair wasn’t a secret: Bill Henderson knew about it as well, according to his friend Darin Laird, who discovered Melissa’s body with him.
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“He was saying, you know, ‘I think she’s messing around on me.’ He was upset, but he was like, ‘I just want to find out the truth,’” Laird told police during an interview.
Laird added that just days before Melissa was strangled, he and Bill followed her, and saw her leave a bar with McCracken — even watching them at a park with binoculars.
“So there was no question that Bill Henderson knew about the affair before Melissa’s death,” Bridges said.
The Henderson children also told police they were aware that their parents weren’t happy.
“They had witnessed arguing and Bill and Melissa to have been talking about getting a divorce,” said Dearborn Co. prosecutor Aaron Negangard on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins. “Victoria Henderson even knew of James McCracken. I mean, she was 12 but she had a pretty good idea what was going on. Melissa was starting to find happiness in this new relationship with an old high school sweetheart and Melissa was ready to move on.”
When McCracken’s alibi checked out, police focused their attention on Bill Henderson.
Police find holes in Bill Henderson's alibi during Melissa's murder
Bill Henderson told detectives he’d been out working on a side job the day his wife was killed. He said he and his friend Darin Laird pulled up to the house about 9:30 p.m., and found Melissa dead in the bedroom.
“During the interview, I didn’t know exactly what to think of Bill,” Bridges said. “His affect was pretty blank. It was void. There was no really inflection. No emotion.”
Bill Henderson claimed he’d left his Lawrenceburg, Indiana home about 9:30 a.m. to drive about two hours to Berea, Kentucky, for his side job. He said he’d started to feel bad while driving and had pulled into a campsite to rest. But when he passed out, an ambulance was called to the campsite, and he was taken to the hospital, where the hospital told detectives he suffered an anxiety attack. He had the hospital bracelet as so-called proof that he couldn’t have been the one who killed his wife.
“He’s not even in the state at the time of death, so it’s a pretty good alibi,” Bridges said.
But when detectives checked out the surveillance video from a convenience store near the Henderson house, they saw Bill’s car around 9:30 a.m., just as he claimed — but within minutes, he drove his car back towards his home.
“That footage proved that his alibi was false,” Negangard said. “The truth was he could have killed her before he left for Kentucky, and now we have motive and opportunity to connect it to him. It all starts to come together.”
DNA results showed that it was Bill Henderson’s DNA under Melissa’s broken fingernail, indicating they’d struggled before she died.
“I think there was a confrontation that morning. She told him it was over. She was filing for divorce, and he lost it,” Vance said.
Bridges added, “He had time to think about this affair. And get angry. And come back.”
Detectives believe Bill stumbled into his hospital alibi by chance.
“I think he just drove to get out of there. Like he just killed his wife. And he doesn’t know what to do. And at some point he has an anxiety attack,” Bridges said.
Bill Henderson confesses to killing his wife, Melissa
On July 30, 2007, Bill Henderson was found guilty of murdering his wife, Melissa. He spoke at his sentencing and admitted what happened.
"Bill says, ‘I did it. I didn’t mean to. It was in the heat of passion. I blacked out. I don’t know what happened. And I did it,’” Jacobs said.
He was sentenced to 65 years in prison.
“It was just unbelievable. There was no remorse. No emotion. No nothing,” Sunderhaus said. “Only thing he was sorry for was that he got caught.”
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