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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
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only ever dreamed of. A survivor's first hand account of attempted murder in Saint Francisville, Louisiana, a former warden of Angola Prison shoots his wife five times with a pistol, then sits down to watch her die on her plantation home porch. The victim, author Anne Butler, survives to tell this true crime story, detailing the unraveling of her seven year marriage and how it led to her near murder,
interspersed with simple black and white snapshots. This stranger then story of murder, survival and forgiveness offers keen insights into the mind of both victim and criminal.
The book that we.
Are featuring this evening is Weep for the Living with my special guest author and Butler. Welcome to the program, and thank you for a green to this interview.
And Butler, my pleasure, Dane, nice to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Now let's get right to as you do so masterfully in your book. Set get you, set the mood, and take us right into the Butler Greenwood Plantation in Louisiana. You talk about this being eight generations of family in this home. So tell us about the Butler Greenwood Plantation.
This is in Saint Francis Belle, Louisiana, and San francis Ville is not French Louisiana or Cajun Louisiana or Creole Louisiana. It's English Louisiana. And the early settlers here came down from the East Coast right after the Revolutionary War, and they brought with them very English traditions. And culture. My family came in the seventeen seventies and got Spanish land grants, and first they grew indigo as their cash crop, and
then cotton and sugar cane. This plantation has never been sold out of the family, and so it's a little unusual. We operated it as a tour house for twenty three years and then finally have closed it. But we do bet and breakfast on the plantation. So it's a family home.
A lot of history here, and it is typical of the plantation the English plantation country, a lot of Bavoks, formal gardens, beautiful historic home, very beautiful furnishings, and so visitors really enjoy seeing something that has never been sold out of the family or owned by the state or anything like that. It's a real, real piece of living history here.
Absolutely.
You talk about in the book too, that you said in the mid eighteen hundreds, two thirds of known millionaires lived in this area before the devastation of the Civil War.
Absolutely all along the Mississippi River corridor from New Orleans to Natchez. You did have most of the most of the country's millionaires living near huge sugar plantations. A lot of wealth and then after the Civil War, of course that way of life was over, but some of the families, like this one, we're still able to hold onto the land. The lifestyle would never be elegant, but it was still a wonderful life on these old places.
Now you also talk about because of the Civil War, many of the men were killed, so it left an opportunity in a old boys kind of world, for women to take over these plantations.
Afterwards.
Well, you know, during the Civil War and after the Civil War, the men were either dead or gone during the Civil War, and the ones who came home from the war were either so disabled or so demoralized that they were not able to resume the roles that they had played during the war. The women, some very strong women, stepped up and ran the plantations, and they had to continue to do that after the Civil War. So you had some very strong women all across the South, and
particularly in this house. It was usually the women who not only were the strong ones, but outlived the men by many years. So it was a real matriarchy here.
Now, tell us about your writing career and the kinds of books that you have written and had written up to this date.
Well, of course, as a mother. I wrote children's books when my children were small, and then I wrote travel books and very much involved in historic preservation. And as Louisiana has such a vulnerable, fragile environment here and culture, I had written a lot about preserving the culture. So I've written I guess twenty two books, some more substantial
than others. But I also had written two crime books on true stories from Angola Plantations, which is now the Louisiana State Penitentiary very near here, and had been plantations, and they put them all together and started this eighteenthou an Acre Penitentiary there and behind every door there there was a very interesting story and a lesson to learn. And so the crime books that I wrote were extremely interesting. As a crime writer, I had certainly never intended to
be more than an objective observer. But when I became a victim, it really was a golden opportunity for me.
Now tell us about your to describe. I mean it must be hard for you, but to a certain extent, tell us about the kind of character that you have been. You'd said before that you met Murray. You had three previous marriages, So tell us about your marriages, and if you could a little bit about your character.
Well, I went to college in Virginia, and then I worked in Washington, d C. For a couple of years, and I went to the West Coast and worked writing for magazines out there and went to graduate school out there. So it's not as if I have stayed here continually. And really it was very helpful to me to be away, because when you're in a small town, it's easy to succumb to the small town mentality, Whereas when you come back from other areas, you realize that you're not missing
anything anywhere else. You can be satisfied with the small town life and not intimidated by the small town mentality. I started writing books when my children were small. My first husband was from Virginia, and we had a wonderful footloose life right after college and did a lot of traveling and everything. And then when it was time to settle down, it was pretty well me who who assumed they were responsibility of earning a living and taking care
of children. And so that marriage ended in divorce. And then I married two more times and was here was here in Saint Francis, bill from that point on, and my last husband was someone who to whom I was attracted by his intelligengensen, his access to stories that I really wanted to write about. And so that was my fourth marriage, and he had also been married before, and
so we were married for seven years. I would have to say that as a wife, I don't like to be told what to do, and as a person, I don't like to be told of to do, and so I probably am not the ideal servant wife for sure, But I am an independent, independent person. And my fourth husband was someone who had been in corrections as his lifetime career and had to exercise absolute control over the every situation, and that did not translate well into our marriage. I think that was the main issue there.
Well, let's go back here because we've got to talk about your business and your family. You have a daughter named Chase and a son, so tell us about their ages, and let's go back in time in terms of before you met Murray. You alluded to what attracted you to Murray Henderson, but let's talk about what the age difference was and what your particular familiar situation was in terms of your daughter and your son, and then talk about how you met Murray Henderson.
With my daughter at the time of this book, my daughter was in college and was going to Emory for her senior year. My son was twelve years old and lived in the house with me and Murray. I knew him through the Episcopal Church, and we had had been,
you know, socially acquainted, but not close. And he was considerably older than I was twenty four years but he was very entertaining and very bright, as I said, and I had a great deal of respect for him as a as a progressive corrections administrator, and also very attracted to him because of the access to criminal records and story like that. And so my son lived in the house with us when we married, and my daughter had gone off to Emory in Atlanta.
Now this is we're talking about nineteen ninety correct when you got married.
Ninety seven, Well, nineteen ninety we married. Nineteen ninety seven is when the book takes place.
Right now, tell us about Murray Henderson. And again you talked about him being a real reformer in terms of corrections, and that was part of the attraction you had to him as well. So tell us about before we go into the books that you've written about Angola.
Tell us about Angola.
Well, his career in correction started in Tennessee. Then he went to Iowa as the warden Mayor, went back to Tennessee as the warden of the Tennessee State Attention Tree, and then came to Angola at a time when the prison was was horrible.
UH.
There were huge abuses. It was a very dangerous place for inmates as well as as corrections officers. UH. It's very isolated, and it's it's purposely isolated. It's surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River and then the other side by the Tunica Hills, which are almost impassable, UH, to make it difficult for escapes to take place. It's it's so isolated that it was extremely difficult to attract
competent employees there. There were certainly a number of good, dedicated employees, but there were also a number who had issues with control and violence, and it was just a terrible, terrible place the inmates innate. Guards were given guns to to because there was very little staff there and it just was rife with abuses, and inmates would sleep with sears catalogs taped to their chests to ward off the
knives in the night. They brought in some progressive corrections administrators, and Murray came in at that point as the warden and was very much resented by the entrenched hierarchy at Angola, and so he had issues not only with with the inmates but with the staff and tried very hard to implement some good reforms that were very much needed. Also, the government had to step in uh and oversee a lot of the reforms there.
Now in his tenure. There was also the first correctional officer to be killed was an Angola, wasn't it.
That's correct, And that is a case that is still in the system today. One of the killers, just this week has been ordered released after forty years in isolation.
It's a very interesting case that involved not only Murray, but actually involved me as well because it was one of the cases that I had included in my book Dying to Tell, And when they threw out the indictment and had to reindict him, I was on the grand urse call for the grand jury and kept asking that I be dismissed because I had written about it, but they kept me on the grand jury, which of course was grounds for appel although it was denied and it's still going on. Today.
Now you also include a story of I think it's an author of Peter Maas in the nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty in Tennessee the influence peddling scandals. So tell us a little bit about that and the Marie a true story by Peter maz Well.
Marie Riganni, who was was there at the time when Governor Blanton and a couple of other high officials were sent to prison for for influence peddling, and Murray was the warden of the penitentiary and then became commissioner of correction in Tennessee. Uh, he was never charged with anything, but at that point he left and came to Angola. That was that was what sent him out of Tennessee. I think he left a number of high positions under
a little cloud, shall we say. And Marie I actually spoke with her, and she she did say that she did not think that he was guilty of any criminal activity, but just being one of the good old boys and not trying to make ways, although there were certainly some criminal activity in the in the corrections department.
Now this is very important to the story that he was heading.
A hospital or prison for the criminally insane with and and so he was at the head of this forensic hospital so which would have him meet and establish relationships with psychologists and psychiatrists.
So tell us a little bit about this.
They call it Policiana forensic. And he was the head of the facility where they would send criminals who were having their their sas asked, you know, for criminal trials. And so he knew all of the psychiatrists. He knew all the psychologists. He was very familiar year with how the insanity defense works. And this I think really gave him some good ideas on how to commit the perfect crime.
Now, you talk about that in the course of the research for these two books, and the idea for these two books was basically your idea, and really you did the research and the writing. But it also brought you together on the road in motel rooms, and your romance was sparked. Despite this twenty four to twenty five year difference.
Tell us just a little bit about how and because you were married and he was married as well, so tell us about how this romance developed and what you have to do as a result of this.
Budding romance.
Well, didn't go into it with the idea of having any involvement with him other than professional, and I called him mister Henderson, and his ideas were very different. And he had been trying to get involved with me for a number of years, which I did not even realize. He would invite me to come to his retirement program and have designs to go out for lunch and all this, and I would show up with my husband, you know,
and several instances like that. After a while, you know, you get close to somebody and you have respect for their opinions and their intelligence, and the just developed, you know, just grew into what seemed to be a nice situation. He had been married for a number of years, but somewhat unhappily.
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Details and I was looking for a little more than what I was having in my marriage. All I had a very good husband at the time, and so we both divorced and married in nineteen ninety and were married for seven years. We did two books together starting in nineteen ninety, and had had a had a contentious relationship from the beginning.
So what might have cemented this somewhat is that he had said that he was very impressed with your writing again as well, and so very flattering for you as a writer also, and you said you were enthralled with you know, his marvelous mind when you do meet and with this twenty four year old difference in age, and just coming from a marriage where you have to divorce
your husband and he has divorce his wife. What was the response from your children and your family to Murray Henderson coming into your life.
Oh, I think they were all horribed. My daughter never did like him, could barely tolerate him, and got out of the house as soon as she could. My son was only twelve years old, you know, and Murray made an effort with him. They went fishing once or twice, and then of course mari age, you know, his idea of spending quality time was to watch the MacNeil Lear report on TV, you know, and a twelve year old is not going to be that impressed. But Stuart was a sweet little boy, and he you know, he tried
to get along with him. My daughter never did care for him at all.
What was your relationship characterized by in terms of his disposition?
What was his nature like? Especially in the beginning.
He was very very good to me. I never heard him raise his voice. I never saw any violence at all. He had had a drinking problem while he was at Angola, but I never saw him take a drink. He did not drink at all while we were married. We had a very cordial relationship, but underneath to serve was always a struggle for control.
Always was he did he exhibit some jealousy. You talk about your longtime carpenter and partner restorer of your plantation, the Butler Plantation. His name is Burnett, and you were friends with him and his wife. So was he jealous of that relationship that you had with Burnette?
He was jealous of every relationship I had, even with the cleaning staff. He was very demanding that he get all the attention and always be the center of everything. A wonderful writer. Abigail Paget from San Diego would come and stay here and we would all go out to dinner, and she's the one who wrote the introduction to the book,
and she comments on him. She and I would always talk all through dinner, and he would just sit there and wait for the conversation to center around him, you know, and then he would participate.
But he just.
He always needed to be the center of everything. He resented any time that I spent with anyone else, and he resented any decision that I made without talking to him. And of course the business was mine and I didn't feel I needed to consult him on anything, although I would try to include him anything, but he always had to be the center of everything.
This might seem like I'm prying, but I think this is I know this is important to the story. What was You just mentioned that you didn't need him for the business. Now I'll mention that you were forty six, he was seventy. He was basically not retired. But you say he wasn't involved with your business. So tell us exactly what the relationship was often in terms of him moving in, but what was his role in terms of when you talked about expenses, when you talked about your money, his money.
How did that work.
We had no community property at all. The business was on my inherited property, which was not community property. The money that went into it was mine, either inherited or borrowed from the bank. And he had very little role in the property here. He had a little part time job that he did with some health agency, going around visiting doctors and things. We never had a joint bank account, We never had any community anything. All of our accounts were totally separate.
You also retained your name Butler, and you said in the book that he resented that somewhat, didn't he Well.
The writer, you know, I never should have changed my name because I've had so many books published, and so I did keep my last name. And I relate in the book one instance where I was giving a book review and he was introduced as mister Butler, and he got up and said, well, she has very graciously allowed me to keep my own name. But he really did not appreciate that at all.
No.
No, Now, according to witnesses again written in your book, that your relationship was marred by separations. Will say for a few days for several days for different periods of time, for various reasons. Like you say, you didn't really have any major He wasn't a violent person by nature. But tell us how your relationship in that seven years was characterized in terms of these often separations.
Well, we just would feel the need to be a part, and he would leave, and then he would come back. And finally, the last time that he left, I was just delighted that he was gone and did not allow him to come back. But it was off and on for years, hopefully just the irritation of struggle over control.
And where would he go when he went?
Which is interesting? Where would he go when you were involved in these separations?
Well, his ex wife there graciously allowed him to have a room in their house, and so you would go over there, and then he would come back. And why she allowed him to do that, I'll never know. But then why allowed him to come back here, I'll never know either, But the last time I did not.
Now what's very very interesting and again important is Murray Henderson's son and his occupation.
So tell us about Mary Henderson's son.
He was an assistant district attorney at a nearby parish and actually very nice person. He would come here a lot and spend weekends with his second wife, and he had a son a little bit older than my son, and so he would come and spend summers and swim and play with Stuart. So we had a good relationship.
Now, what would you.
In the seven years And you say that this again you mentioned the last separation, which was different. So tell us before you tell us about the last separation and how it was particularly different, markedly different. Tell us about what had led up to this. Say, we'll talk about the last six months for the last year. How had the relationship changed, and what was your reaction and what was his reaction in that say last year of the marriage.
I think for one thing, it was because we did not have a writing project going. And the other thing was that we just really got very tired of trying to live together and to get along together. And it was not something that started off slowly and escalated. It was something that just was zero two one hundred overnight
and started. It was something just really stupid. He would sit on air back porch and somebody would have to walk past him to get to the to the laundry room to do bed and breakfast, laundry and he had he was very tall, and he would stretch out his legs and you'd have to step over his legs to get to the laundry room. And so one of the cleaning ladies came in and he was looking at times he was very very much of a fashion plate, you know, very well dressed all the time and have a million clothes.
And we had to build a whole new closet room to accommodate all of his clothes. And so the one of the cleaning staff came in and he kept trying to show her this tie and a catalog and she sort of cursory look at it and walked on bine. And I came by to get to the laundry room, and he tried to show me the tie, and I said, listen, I need some space here, you know. And that's what set it off. And the next saying you he was hauling out all of his clothes, and that was when it really started.
When did he what did he?
When did he utter the you'll be sorry you ever heard my name?
Was that that at that time?
That was when he was That was that was the day of the of the book starting.
Okay, Okay, So now with this this heated argument and you said you needed some space, that spurned him to start packing up his stuff.
Tell us a little bit more about what this conversation led to in terms of him and your living situation.
Well, he was packing up his clothes. I was helping him pack his clothes. I happened to open a box that I didn't know whether it was mine or his, that was in an arm and there was a pistol in there, which I had never seen before. Now, I just put it back in the box and put it with his pile stuff to go out to the car and down Dallas. The first time I had seen a pistol, but it would not be the last time.
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That's w d ww Casper dot com slash true Murder. Now, when we last last left off, and we were just going to be talking about the day in question, So after the heated conversation that you had, and he packed up his stuff and you saw the little pistol that you didn't think too much of at that time. Tell us about the days leading up to the actual event in question.
Well, I didn't see him during the week, but some friends saw him going out to dinner and celebrating his seventy seventh birthday. And he had gone to the employment place of one of my cleaning ladies and told her that he was so happy, but they said that he was very subdued at the celebration dinner. I didn't really
think anything about it. And then on a Sunday morning, as I got up and went to church and was doing a little tour early that morning, he came driving in and I didn't see, but the people that were here on the tour told me that he had driven in and when he saw there were other cars here, he left, and then after they left, he came driving in again. He had a very carefully planned because my daughter and son had left her at land of the
day before. My son was driving up what was riding up with my daughter to help her unpack for her last semester at Emory, and then he was flying back the Sunday morning of all this is happening, and I was to pick him up at the airport at noon, but normally on Sunday morning we were not open. I didn't do house tours until after lunch, and the cleaning staff came in late, and so he thought that I
would be completely alone in the house. What he didn't know is that because I had this tour, a couple of the cleaning staff had been dropped off, so there were no cars out there. But he didn't know that anybody was here but me, And so when he appeared at the door after I had done the tour, I invited him in rather stupidly, and we sat on the back porch and had a little chad and, you know, very civil and low key. And then the next thing I knew, he was standing over me with a gun,
and so he he was holding it out. You know, he's a very accomplished shooter, had taken FBI shooting classes and was a hunter in his earlier years, and so for me eighteen inches away, he proceeded to shoot me
at least five times. They're never quite sure whether it was five or six, because he had reloaded the gun and very carefully aimed at my right arm, which I'm that's my dominant arm, and all through the torso he shot and severed the intestines, then took out part of the kidney and just barely missed the He missed the spine because I sat up and I said, stop, what are you doing? You know I have children to raise, at which point he blew my right elbow to pieces
and then the right shoulder. And so I was sitting there and I figured, you know, I would just do well to play, because he reloaded the gun. And so I sat there for about an hour, bleeding profusely. And this is how it gets sort of funny, because one of my cleaning staff came to the back door, and I was sitting right in front of the back door on the back porch, and she opened the door. And this is how you get punished for speaking ill of somebody.
Because she's got a wonderful heart, but she doesn't quite make the connection between seeing something and doing something. And I had said a million times that if she went out to one of the cottages and there was a dead body on the floor, she would sleep around it
and not even think anything about it. And so she came in the door and looked at me and went and started laundry and went back out, And later when the state police interviewed her, she said, do you know, she says, I never saw her take a nap before, and I wondered when she had changed from a yellow blouse to a red one. And so that added quite a lot of time to when I had to sit there.
And then another member of the staff came in and saw what was going on, and he was sitting there with his gun, and she said, well, she needs to get to the hospital right away, and he said, oh, no, she's gone. You go back out there. I won't hurt you. So she kind of backed away and went to the phone and outside phone and called, of all things, the third member of the cleaning staff, who was older and more sensible, who lived twenty miles away and was at
home getting ready to go to church. And so she, instead of calling nine one one, jumps in her truck and rushes down. And when she comes in here, she sees that his car is still here, and so she goes over next door to where I have a cousin who's an attorney. And finally, finally, you know, the nine one one gets called and and he's still sitting there watching me believe to death. And I could see out
of the back back glass in porch. I could see two little deputy sheriffs come creeping up the walkway, and one of them opened the door and grabbed me by the legs to try to pull me out. They thought I was dead, and he said when he touched my legs there was just like marble. There was no blood in them at all. And when he did, I opened my eyes, and so they knew that they had to
go in and get him. And he was in the room right behind me and had his pistol in his pocket, but he was trying to pull it out, and he had his finger on the trigger, and these two little deputies had no blood through vests on it all. One of them grabbed him through the grab through the pocket and held the cylinder of the epistol so that he couldn't shoot, and they took him out. So while I was sitting there, I just would say that I never struggled. I never thought. I don't think I could have moved
at all. Of the pain was just excruciating, But I never saw the least bit of blood. I never looked down, I never looked at my injuries. I just sat there and they said that the doctor said that it probably is what saved my life because by being so still and trying not to let him see that I was even breathing, it slowed down my metabolism enough, you know that I didn't bleed completely out, but pretty close to it.
So the deputy came back in once they had removed him from the scene, and as soon as he came in, I said, Randy, you've got to get somebody to go to the airport and pick up Stewart. And he said, oh, I can't believe you're still alive. You know also, and we've got an ambulance come in. So the ambulance came, and it was wonderful that I knew. I knew the
two deputies, I knew the ambulance people. The poor emt who was in the ambulance started a couple of ivs and wrapped his belt around them so they would would would go fast. And when we got in the ambulance, he thought I was not going to make it to the hospital. And they were telling my family to start funeral arrangements and make arrangements for my children, and in the ambulance as we're going one hundred miles an hour to the hospital that's like twenty miles away. I'm telling
this the EMT. This is to make such a wonderful story. And I know how I'm going to write this book, and I head it all outlined completely in my head. Of course, I forgot it all, you know, in six weeks in the hospital under morphine. But I knew at that time as a writer, I was going to make a book out of it and it was going to be good.
Absolutely.
Now what's interesting, too is what was when when you talk about the last conversation that precipitated this incident, this attempted murder. Is that you talked about space, that you said, I need some space. What was the quote that he gave you? And you also talked about Stewart and being very very concerned about who would pick Stuart up at the airport, and so there was talk that the one thing that Murray did do was make a call for
someone to pick up Stuart. So tell us about the actual quote that he does say to you, which is just fantastic about you.
The only thing he said to me as he started shooting, was space? Has this for space? Space? You wanted space? Has this for space? And then after the shooting I asked him to make sure that Stuart would not come into the airport alone, and he did go out and telephone and arrange for someone to pick up Stuart at the airport. Now he was he had promised to pay them twenty five dollars, and when the deputies took him out of the house, he had twenty five dollars loose
in his pocket. And my horror was, you know, if he was going to be there when Stuart arrived and he paid off this person who picked up Stuart, what was he going to do with Stuart. I'd like to think he wouldn't have harmed him, but I don't know.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this is that you are so cognizant of what's going on your surroundings during this ordeal, and you talk about you're hearing something that in your mind because you got your eyes closed and you can't see, is that you think it's him pouring out gasoline to light the entire plantation on fire and you with it. But instead it's a glugging glug glug sound that you hear, What is it that you do here?
Well, you know, I wasn't completely conscious all the time, but I was conscious most of the time and very much aware of what he was doing and what was going on. And behind me in the dining room, I could hear a glood glug glug, and I really thought that he was pouring gasoline on the floor and would burn down the house, because he never really sit here
and never really liked it. However, what he was doing was pouring a sixth of vermouth down his throat so that when they arrested him, he would be legally jump drunk. He had not had any of it when he arrived and when he did the shooting, so it was just
one more defense strategy that he was applying. He had gone and bought the vermouse that morning after he had been target shooting down at the Mississippi River with the pistol, and people saw him there, and then he went to a little inn in town that's run by some of my friends and bought the vermouse there, and he made sure that they knew that he was there and was buying it. If he'd just gone to the grocery store
to buy it. Nobody would have noticed, and so he wouldn't have had the witness to his purchase of of the liquor at that point. So I was all pretty well planned. He thought that he had the perfect crime.
Now he is arrested immediately, and of course he's got connections with law enforcement for all the years he's been involved in corrections. But typically with a case like this, there would be a bail and he would be held without bond usually, So tell us what happens in this case.
Well, as I go to the hospital in critical condition and will be there for six weeks, he goes to jail and is out in twenty four hours. His best friend was the mayor who was best friends with the judge. The sheriff was not his friend and really did not want to let him out, but he had to, and so twenty four hours he's out with his guns, with his car. I'm in the hospital in intensive care for a couple of weeks, and then in the hospital for
quite a while. Went in in augustin came out in the middle of the ball and they were terrified that he would come back to the hospital. So every nurses station had his photographs, and they had me under an assumed name. I couldn't go out anywhere in the hallway during visiting hours, and they would take me down the service elevators to go to therapy, and it was very disorienting. The nurses would come in and know, how are you, missus Jones. I'm thinking I'm not, Missus Jones. I don't think,
you know. But I was taking so much pain medicine and just really sort of out of it for a while. The day that I went in they were able to do some of the stomach surgery, but they had to just pack my arm in ice for about a week before they could deal with that, And so it was you know, I had a lot of morphine over those couple of weeks and really was not that much aware
of what was going on. But it was very scary to know that not only was he out there, but that since he had been ahead of a forensic and angola, that a number of the medical personnel might have worked for him or might be working with him, you know, And so I've got a little paranoid there for a while.
What you do talk about, too, is that the he's charged for a second to be murder, and he has some conditions to not to go into your parish. But despite that, he is contacting big rows, and he's asking questions about who's questions that could be perceived as very much like.
Somebody's monitoring you and stalking you in terms.
Of who's home, who's there, who's not there, and just adding to your paranoia. So tell us about this effort and what happens as a result of his I guess cockiness.
Well, when I was finally released from the hospital, I had a colosphomy. I had to have help because I had an arm and a cast and stitches and staples everywhere. I ended up having eight separate, really major surgeries. So it went on for about two years. But when I was finally released from the hospital, he had a restraining order not to contact me or my children or my staff. And so as they mounted to sense, they would stake out the place and follow the cleaning staff home and
try to send people. You know, when you're open to the public for overnight accommodations, you can't interrogate people as to what their motives are, you know, So they actually would send investigators pretending to be guests who would take photographs, and he would contact some of my staff to find out, you know, ostensibly how I was, but he would be asking did anybody stay with her at night as there a guard on the grounds, you know, very worrisome questions.
And finally he started calling me, and they had made me get caller ID on the phone, and so it was pretty obvious, and at one point he actually spoke and said, oh, I'm sorry, I have the wrong number, you know. And at that point the defense of the prosecutor for the state decided it was time for him to go to jail. And that that was so interesting because every every legal person in this area accused himself,
you know. The district attorney said that he had had connections looking so he couldn't get involved in the case, and that kind of bumped around and finally ended up in another parish down on the on the was on the coast, and so that was like a two hour drive for the assistant district attorney to come up here
and only Sawing once or twice before the trial. And my heart really sank when I saw him, because he was this tony little fellow, just he had freckles and little blonde hair, and he looked like he had on his father's suit and your very soft open and you know, I just really worried. But it turned out that he had he had trained with Harry Connick in New Orleans for ten years, and he just tore them up in court. But anyway, he decided that we really needed to get
him put in jail. He had not wanted me to go to any of the hearings before that because he did not want the defense to see what kind of a witness I would make, you know, and how I probably would not be too easily intimidated on the stand. And so he decided, you know, this was it and I would just have to go and testify. And so we did go, and there was a judge who had let him out twenty four hours after after the crime, and so I really didn't think we were going to
get anywhere. And they made up tom Cock and bull story about how well he was just to order books. You know, you don't order books from an offer, you order them from the publisher, and you know, just a really stupid thing. And sat up in the chair and he said, he says, you know, whatever you say when you call there, even if you say that you're sorry you have the wrong number. What you're really saying is I'm out here and I'm going to get you again.
He says, you're going to jail, which was a big shock to everybody, including me, and so he did get incarcerated until the trial, which the crime happened in August of ninety seven, and the trial was in the late fall of ninety eight.
In the interim, what is the strategy for he and his defense in terms of defense.
Well, you know, it was just a typical domestic violence defense and you see it in the paper every day. It's really shameful how we have lost their communication skills to the extent that we have to resort to violence. But he would say, you know, when the police come in as domestic violence case, usually the perpetrator is still there, are easily found and probably proud of what he's done, and he's standing there with his gun or his knife or his baseball bat, and so he can't say he
didn't do it. So the defense becomes, he did it, but it's her fault, or he did it but he's crazy, And they tried both of those. In my case, they tried to blame it on me. They tried to blame it on insanity, and neither one of them went over really well. But it was a typical, typical domestic violence defense.
He had a really good lawyer. Of course you pay for that, really good lawyer. He had a good lawyer.
And what it was is he pled insanity, and what the insanity was. He tried to explain through psychiatric expert witnesses that you had said something to the effect of called him a Well, we won't go into it because I know you're sensitive this, but the MF words. So the MF phrase that we all know of which you know you claimed later to never have said to him.
But his lawyers claimed that your utterance of this word was the trigger that taken this normally his whole life uncharacteristically or characteristically non violent, and there was a trigger. So explain a little bit more about what he tried to explain to the jury.
Well, first of all, he had three decent attorneys, extremely well paid. He had a jury consultant who has had the O. J. Simpson, you know, so his defense was was very, very costly, and part of it was that they were claiming that he was having a dissociative disorder, Uh, dissociative disorder is something that it's a legitimate psychiatric defense. You see it in child of these cases or in war atrocities, you know, where your mind just does not uh just blanks it out and you don't remember it
and you you're not even sure that it's ever happened. Well, for one thing, you know, the the state, the court had hired some sanity sanity, It had a had a sanity hearing, and both the psychiatrists and the psychologist examined him for the court non biased and not for the defense or the prosecution. I found him legally saying and able to assist in his defense and knowing right from wrong at the time of the crime. The dissociative disorder, you could walk in front of a car and not
know it, you'd run into a wall. His defense psychiatrists and psychologists both were saying that that's what he was having, and that it was precipitated by my calling him an MS. Well, I never used that word toward him at all. Plus the prosecutor would pretty well blow that out of the water when he would ask these professionals, now, you know, do you have a dissociative response to abuse?
Yes.
Do you have a dissociative response to wartime cars? Yet, do you have a dissociative response to being called a bad name? Well? Maybe not. You know, so that that didn't really go over very well. The prosecutor just really
made them look like fool. The other thing they did in the defense was to make it my fault, and they said that I had spent all his money, which was a lie, and I had my bookkeeper there, the bed and breakfast bookkeeper, who was ready to testify to that fact that it was my money and I was essentially supporting him. Said that I had been running around that was not true. I had people there ready to
testify to that. But the prosecutor decided that all these tangential things were not they were going to really distract a jury from from the main shoot, and so he didn't want to bring those up, and so he didn't. But what happened was, and this is this is typical
of domestic violence. You get victimized once in the in the crime, and then you get victimized in court where they try to make it your fault, and then you get victimized a third time when the media picks it up and reports it, you know, so it's very aggravating to sit through.
Really what it comes down despite I know it seems like revictimization, and it certainly is. And I was involved myself in a trial, so I know how harmful some of these things can be said, especially when you expect, very much like watching a Law and Order episode, where the district attorney will stand up and object to some of these things, whereas in actuality, some of these things are let go because, like you say, it can confuse
the jury. Let the defense lawyer say the lies that he's going to say, the ball flies that he is going to say, because the jury has heard the essential elements, they've heard your testimony and everyone else is so so despite that, what I think he zeroed in very very masterfully was is that if it was a dissociative state, then he wouldn't have said to your cleaning person that listen, no, she doesn't need to go to the hospital.
She's already gone.
And he wouldn't have been able to reload the gun. He wouldn't have been able to turn his car around, he wouldn't have been able to do all you know, her plan a haad you know, to do the target shooting and the buying of the liquor. You know, it's just just really terrible. But I'm just wanting to say that I'm so fortunate that my scars are more physical than mental. And I think writing the book was what
really helped me the most. Not only was it good physical therapy doing the typing and trying to get my hand functional again, but it was tremendously therapeutic mentally. I knew that I would be able to get my story out there. I hoped that it would have some social relevance and would reach people, and it does. It's still selling eighteen years later, and I get letters and phone calls all the time from people saying, you know, you
have helped me to understand. You've been so honest in your writing, and you're not telling just your story, You're telling our stories. So it gives the voice to what had essentially been a silent crime before. The women who were victimized were either too afraid the scout, or they were too inarticulate to speak out, or they had no medium to give them a place to speak out. So I really feel good about giving a voice to all
of those people. And then, you know, I would just have to say, if you're going to shoot somebody, don't shoot a writer, because you're going to get the last words.
You know.
It's incredible too that we really didn't have enough time to go to really touch on some of the more heartfelt elements of this, where your friends and your family and supporters, that well wishers from people you'd never met before. All this support from the people that you knew as your friends and new friends that arose out of this tragedy.
The therapist, everybody was involved, and we don't even mention how stressful this was to have, you know, the specter of maybe Murray coming and finishing the job, but also of the incredible burden of trying to run this business, sustain this business while you're injured, trying to rehab from these incredible injuries, and also the financial burden of this. So again, this is we've talked about in the introduction.
This is a tale of survival, and for a true crime book, it is very you know, it's a happy ending, if there is such a thing in true crime books.
Yes, it is. And it's a real tribute to a small town because there were times when I was sixteen thousand dollars overdrawn, and in a big city they'd have been hauling off the furniture. And the banker's here just said, keep writing the checks. We know you'll catch up. So the whole town pretty well turned out and supported me and helped in my recovery.
We also, I want to ask what Murray Henderson received in Core at the trial in terms of the sentence, and then to talk about again, we just mentioned about survival, but the forgiveness. So unbelievably, you spoke with Murray Henderson after this whole ordeal, after the sentencing, So tell us what he did receive, and tell us a little bit about how on earth you could have spoke to him, and what.
Did you say.
Well, he got a sentence of fifty years, which was amazing because it was the same judge, and he was sent to one of the penitentiaries in North Louigiana, which was about as far as they could get him from here. And so he spent his time playing the stock market and reading books and started writing me and calling me.
And I did go to see him one time when I was trying to get divorced from him and he was trying to claim part of my business here and would not settle the community, of which there was none. And I really wanted to see what he had to say to me, which was just a bunch of bull I also wanted to see the evidence that I had not seen in court. I was sequestered at the time that they were presenting the real physical evidence, and so I wanted to see the clothes and the gun and everything.
And everybody kept telling me, no, no, you don't want to see that, and I did because the way that I cope with things is to deal with them and move on. And so I went to the courthouse here and they were all in a cardboard box, and all these bloody clothes and everything. I wanted to see what he was looking at, you know, when he was shooting me. And by looking at the clothes, I got a pretty good idea, you know, of how they were all covered
in blood and soaked with blood cloths and everything. And I had a conversation with the EMT who had been in the in the ambulance with me, and he said, he said, don't look at this as a crime of passion. He said, this is a crime of hate, you know. And I really came to the understanding that he was a very mean person underneath all that control. It was very tightly controlled, but he had a real mean streak and that I bore the brunt of that. But what else do I need to say here?
What was this official? What was this official? Sorry?
What was this official reasoning? Did he ever say, listen, this is why I did this? Tell us he.
Had no reason, He could not tell He took no responsibility for it. He didn't feel sorry for anything other than the impact on his life. He felt very sorry for himself. He never felt sorry for me or anybody that was going through the trauma with me. And people would ask me, what about forgiveness? Have you forgiven him?
Do you don't you see that you have to forgive him? Well, yes and no. And what I did was not necessarily loving forgiveness, but more in not allowing him to have any control over my emotions anymore and just totally erased him from my life. And you know, if I had remained bitter or angry or hating, he would have still been in control. And so I was not willing to allow that and just moved on.
Yeah, it's interesting that when you talk about not taking responsibility right to the end, he claims to not remember, but of course he wouldn't have done anything because he loved you so much. But again not taking responsibility whatsoever.
Now, he did try to get out of prison, and he applied for a pardon and went before the pardon board, and again it was all just a big setup deal. He had so many connections in the corrections of administration. And I really was not going to even attend the pardon hearing, but the head of the pardon board called me and said, you really need to be there. You've got to go. My children wanted to go. I did
not want them to. I did not want them exploited during the trial, and I did not allow them to have anything much to say other than my daughter right at the end of the trial did talk about how she had not seen any deterioration in him and know that she just didn't like him. But when we went to the pardon board hearing, I asked to be the only one who would speak, and asked to speak last.
And so they presented his wanting to get out, and he had several witnesses on how wonderfull he was and what a marvelous career he had had, and what a nice old man he was, and that the sheriff did not not object to his coming back to the Saint francis Ville out and I just happened to have seen
the chief deputy from from this area. Had we had gone to a pardon hearing out of the parish somewhere else, and I just happened to see the chief deputy from this parish standing there, and I asked him what he was doing here, and he said, well, the sheriff sent sent me to make sure that they understood that what he wants is what you want. And so I was able to get him to get up and say say
what the sheriff actually said. Rather than supporting his release, he did not want him release, and they denied his pardon, and then he died in jail. Oh, I actually got in a nursing home or hospital, and so that was the end of that, and he served maybe five years altogether.
Right, What was it like? Hearing about his passing?
A radio station called me and asked if I would like to make a come in, and I said I certainly would not. You need to get a comment from his family that WO might be positive. And I have nothing to say about it. I felt sorry that he had died, but then I, you know, felt much greatly relieved and my children would finally be able to sleep
through tonight. My little daughter, her bedroom was right above mine and the second floor, and I would hear her feet hit the floor every night when a car backfired or somebody shot at a mailbox or something. My little son, who was twelve years old at the time, had had real issues, anger issues. He really would have would have liked to shooting and would come down and get into bed with me at night to protect me, you know,
And it just was really sad. I was in the hospital for two years, years during which time he went from a child to a teenager. And I feel like I really missed the important years of his transition there and was not there to help him. But they both are good now, and she's married and lived in Mississippi and would never live here again. Just totally ruins it for her. My son is married and his two little children and lives right here on the place with me.
And how is the business presently today.
Oh it's great. For a while, it was pretty hard to get it started again, because you know, who wants to go spend the night in some place where there's been a very violent attempt at murder. We had to have security on the ground at night. And so we've got some very loyal customers who have been staying with us for twenty five years now, and they love the peace and that we offer, and so the Bed and Breakfast does very well.
It's an amazing.
Continue to write. I continue to write and have done some wonderful books. I feel like I have been given eighteen years as a real blessing that I almost did not have, and have seen my children grow up and my son have children and make lives for themselves. And I have also written some pretty good books in that ensuing time that I wouldn't have had a chance to write at all. So I really feel very fortunate.
Yes, tell us about the titles that you have, the nonfiction true crime titles will say that you have written, and also the fictional books of the other books that you have written as well, nonfiction or part of me fiction titles.
Mostly I write nonfiction, and I'll tell you that Weep for the Living. The title came from a little cemetery right up the road from my house where Jefferson Davis's first wife actually buried. It's the Locust Growth Cemetery and there's a little baby book that was buried there. She was buried in the eighteen thirties at just one year old, and her epitaph says stranger there these lines be read weep for the living, not the dead, you know, And that's such an apt quotation and good for this book.
Weep for the Living is a Pelican Publishing book. It has solved extremely well the whole time since I wrote it, and I have five six other Pelican books, mostly on
regional preservation and history I write about. My two crime books were published by the University of Lafayette Press at louis University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, and one is called Angola, Louisiana State Penitentiary, and the other is called Dying to Tell, which is mostly death penalty cases, very very interesting stories from Angola because, as I said before, or behind every door there there's a very very interesting story as well as a lesson that if we don't learn,
keeps repeating itself. So they're very interesting true crime books. And I've had some other little humor books and children's books and travel books and swamp tour books and books on Louisiana history mostly.
Now.
Tell us for those people that we might want to contact you about the Bed and Breakfast and the plantation and also to maybe find out about your books. Do you have a website or do you are you interested in Facebook?
Friends?
Tell us how people might contact you and where if you have a website, where.
They might go more information.
Okay, it's doubww dot Butler Greenwood come a very comprehensive website on the history of the place and the Bed and Breakfast. There's also a list of all my books on there. They can be ordered through the publisher of Pelican Publishing in New Orleans or ul Press in Lafayette, Louisiana, or on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any the
bookseller site. And then I also have a Facebook presence, actually I have three different sites, Anne Butler and Anne Butler Author and Butler Greenwood Plantation B and B and so welcome anybody to get in touch with me and to to get a copy of the book if they're interested. I think I think that it's a book that has some social relevance and hopefully it helps people. I have
done a lot of speaking on domestic violence. I've spoken to sheriffs in training and to first responder training and victims rights organizations, as well as such opposite places as the New York State Supreme Court and then anger management in prisons, anger management graduating classes, where you've got five hundred faces looking at you have seen worse and done worse, and heard worse, and you're not going to impress them
by getting up there and crying. But I can get up there and compare how many times we've been shot, and that kind of get their attention, and so maybe they listened to me a little bit more than some pathetic victim who is really a victim. I don't see myself as a victim. I see myself as a survivor, and hopefully a lot of other women do too.
Yeah, it's an incredible journey that you have to to get this man convicted. It looks like for a time that he made skate from justice based on his connections and his reputation, and certainly it didn't look good for you with your recovery and looming bills. And so it's a fascinating story about how the tables were turned and
finally justice was served. And also how you survived all this with the help of family and friends and just people around the world that have been well wishers since you've gone through this ordeal and written this fine book, Weep for the Living. So I want to thank you very much and Butler for coming on and talking about Weep for the Living.
I want to thank you very much, and you have a great evening.
Thanks Dan, it's been nice to talk to you.
Thank you, good night, good night.