The Murder of Johnnye Janelle Henderson

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In late August of 1971 11-year-old Johnnye Henderson should have been entering the sixth grade alongside her peers. One morning, however, her mother returned home from a short trip to the store to find Johnnye had vanished. The Odessa Police Juvenile Division didn’t seem too worried about the disappearance, since there were no signs of foul play and civilians who’d searched the large field behind her home said they hadn’t found her there. But when Major Crimes Detectives came on the case three days later, they found Johnnye’s body, which was in an advanced state of decomposition. Though a cause of death could not be determined, Johnnye Henderson’s death was clearly a homicide.

If you have any information about the 1971 murder of 11-year-old Johnnye Janelle Henderson, please call Odessa Crime Stoppers at (432) 333-8477 or submit a tip at the Odessa Crime Stoppers website: https://www.333tips.org/unsolved-crimes

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Source for this episode: The Odessa American.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
0:05.0	Listener discretion is advised.
0:07.0	Up until at least the early 1970s in Odessa, Texas.
0:14.2	There were two worlds.
0:15.8	The north side of the Texas and Pacific Railroad and its white citizenry, and the south side
0:22.2	of the tracks, where the city's black and Hispanic populations resided.
0:28.1	At their cores, there was little difference between the groups, but the oppressive rules of tradition and Jim Crow hadn't
0:36.1	been chipped away at in Odessa as much as the rest of the United States, which as a whole
0:41.6	anyway still had plenty of work to do as far as civil rights were concerned.
0:48.1	Working folks made up the majority of the West Texas City, and no matter the color of their skin it was their blood, sweat, and tears with
0:57.5	which the oil tycoons and fat cats lined their overflowing pockets. The cultures of these working class groups were different only in so much as things like
1:09.4	style and preference. In Odessa's north, honky-tonks and country western music helped roughnecks loosen up after
1:17.4	a back-breaking day, working the rigs and the agonizing Texas sun, and in the south it was juke joints and blues.
1:26.5	It was in one of the latter where the second of three unfathomable tragedies befell the Henderson family.
1:36.4	Early in the morning of Sunday, July 13, 1969, Jack Johnson Henderson, Arthur Lee Powell, and Doc Pearl Rand were shooting dice at the Elks Club, located at East Pearl Street and South Tom Green Avenue, just south of the railroad tracks.
1:56.5	Although it is almost certain booze was involved, it isn't clear exactly what happened at the Elks that night.
2:04.7	But according to Doc Rand, the only man whose statements were ever made public, he was
2:10.2	winning at craps, and Henderson and Powell were none too happy about the man taking their money.
2:17.6	At some point an argument broke out, which turned physical.
2:22.1	Arthur Powell, Rand, said, pushed him to the floor,
2:25.8	after which Jack Henderson kicked him several times.
2:30.3	Again Rand claims the men did this because he was winning, but Powell and Henderson's actions, if true,
	...

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