Bio

Jerry Paul Henderson was born on December 8, 1946, and experienced a highly unstable childhood marked by abandonment and domestic disruption. At an early age, his mother abandoned him, leaving him to grow up under the care of various extended relatives. This lack of a permanent, stable home environment severely impacted his early education, and he ultimately left the school system after completing only the seventh grade. 

Henderson later relocated to Calhoun, Georgia, where he secured employment as a maintenance mechanic.When Henderson was 18 years old, his mother committed suicide shortly before a planned reunion between the two, an event that legal counsel later argued caused deep-seated psychological trauma. Henderson eventually married Martha Henderson. 

Through this marriage, he became acquainted with his wife’s sister, Judy Haney, and her husband, Jerry Haney, a 33-year-old textile worker residing in Talladega County, Alabama. Prior to the events of 1984, Henderson maintained a routine life as a laborer, with no prior criminal record indicating a predisposition toward lethal violence. However, his life took a drastic turn when his sister-in-law began appealing to him for intervention regarding alleged domestic abuse within her household.

Murder Story

On New Year's Eve in 1983, Jerry Paul Henderson and his wife hosted a holiday party at their residence, which served as a pre-planned cover for an assassination plot. During the gathering, Henderson slipped out of a bedroom window undetected and drove to the Talladega County, Alabama home of his brother-in-law, Jerry Haney. Upon arriving in the early hours of January 1, 1984, Henderson lured Haney onto the front porch of the residence and shot him three times with a shotgun, delivering the final blast point-blank to the victim's face. 

Henderson then returned to the party through the window, successfully establishing an immediate alibi. Investigators later discovered that the homicide was a contract killing orchestrated by Judy Haney, who paid Henderson $3,000 to execute her husband.For more than three years, the high-profile slaying of Jerry Haney—whose brother was a Talladega police lieutenant—remained an unsolved cold case. 

The breakthrough occurred in September 1987 after Henderson and his wife separated. Martha Henderson approached law enforcement and disclosed the full details of the murder-for-hire conspiracy, securing immunity from prosecution in exchange for her cooperation. On September 12, 1987, authorities arrested Jerry Paul Henderson, who subsequently provided a full confession detailing the plot. Both Henderson and Judy Haney were prosecuted, convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to death.

While Henderson's conviction stood, Judy Haney successfully appealed her death sentence and had it reduced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in 1997. Henderson spent 17 years on death row at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. As his legal options diminished, Henderson declined to file a personal request for executive clemency from Alabama Governor Bob Riley. On June 2, 2005, Henderson was executed by lethal injection, offering a final statement of apology to the victim’s family before being pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m.