1. Three Confessions and the Truth: Part 1

On July 18, 1988, the body of 16 year-old Angela Stevens was found in a field just outside of Princeton, Texas. Former Collin County Deputy Sheriff Investigator Larry Denison recalls what led him and Sergeant Randy Norton to Angela’s body and how they obtained confessions from two of the three killers. 

Actress Julie Dove, also from Princeton, Texas, shares this very personal story of how Angela's murder changed the lives of Angela’s family and the small town forever.

Transcript

This program contains descriptions of violence, drug use, and sexual themes.  Listener discretion is advised.  I was born in 1970, and I grew up in a small Texas town named Princeton, which according to the 1970, census had a population of 1,105. Princeton didn't have a hospital, so my place of birth is actually McKinney, Texas, a small town that at the time had a population of 15,193.

Princeton is 42 miles northeast of Dallas, so it's always been easy to say, I grew up outside of Dallas.  There were about 50 students that attended kindergarten the same year as me. More than 30 of us graduated Princeton High School together in 1988.  At the time our graduating class was the largest in Princeton history with 85 students, as the town's population had grown to around 2, 300.

The 2024 graduating class of Princeton High School totaled more than 500. Why all these stats? When someone says everyone knows everyone, it might seem hard to believe, but it was not hard to believe in Princeton. Even if you didn't know someone - you knew something about them.  As a kid, I don't remember much crime happening in Princeton.

I think one reason I always loved the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder is I thought of Princeton like Grover's Corners, with most people probably not locking their doors back in the day.  The current estimated population of Princeton is 28,027    and McKinney has over 200,000. So I think it's safe to say now everyone locks their doors.

Imagine how much open space, back roads, and empty fields there were growing up in Princeton when the population was 2,300. And now in that same space, there are more than 28,000 people. There was one empty field off of New Hope Road and County Road 471, just outside of Princeton, that I think about often.

It's the field where the body of 16 year old Angela Stevens was found on July 18, 1988.  Angie, as we called her, was someone I didn't know well, but I knew about her.  She was labeled as loose, probably even called a slut by some.  There is no mystery to who killed Angie. She was murdered by three young men, Lee Henson, Rodney Kaiser, and John Shores.

All from Princeton.  Why they did it is still puzzling to me, even after reading all the trial transcripts. What I remember most about Angie's death was that people seemed really upset for the boys that did it, and how they ruined their lives in one night. I didn't hear much talk about how the life of the Stevens family was changed forever. 

I didn't hear much about Angie and how her life was cut short.  I didn't take the time to get to know much about Angie until more than 30 years after her death. She lived. She was killed.  Princeton moved on. This podcast is the story of her life, told by her friends and family. It's also the story of her death, told by investigators and the people of Princeton. 

This is True Texas Crime, The Significant Life of Angela Stevens.  Episode 1, Three Confessions and the Truth, Part 1.  This episode was recorded on Zoom during a heavy thunderstorm in Texas. There is some audio dropout. In order to preserve the integrity of the interview, we are presenting it as is without additional recording.

Our story begins with an account from Larry Denison, a Deputy Sheriff with the Collin County Police Department. Larry takes us back to July 1988.  It's coming a real bad storm between here and Princeton.  So I live,  my mail in address is Pilot Point, but I live south east of Pilot Point. I'm about 10 miles north of Highway 380. 

But from McKinney to Princeton on Highway 380, it is coming a flood. I'm a retired law enforcement officer. I have  just a little over 44 years experience.  I started law enforcement as a reserve deputy when I was  like 19 years old in Collin County. I volunteered for a couple of years. During that time, I got married.

And I was spending almost all of my free time putting a uniform on and getting in a squad car going out to work.  And my wife at the time told me it was time that I either had to make money doing that or I had to quit doing it. But she wanted me to be at home more often. I found a job with Denton Police Department, and that was in September of  1978. 

I stayed at Denton Police Department for about a year and nine months, and I got a call from the Sheriff's Department in Collin County asking me to come over and apply for an opening, and I did, and I got the job.  So I went to work in July of 1980 back in Collin County.  Stayed there for 10 years. You were a patrolman in Collin County that moved up to investigator?

Yes. I went to work over there as a patrol officer, uh, probably about two and a half or three years maybe. I was promoted to investigator. When I started out as an investigator, my job was with crimes against property, that's where every new investigator starts out. You work burglaries, habitation, burglary business,  thefts, just anything, any crime that involved property. 

After a while, after learning the ropes, so to speak, and gaining some experience and additional training, there was a position open for crimes against persons, and so I wanted that job. That included the homicides,  all family violence, sexual assaults, and I really felt that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to work high profile cases, and  I was fortunate to work with several people, one being Sergeant Randy Norton.

In this case, he was a great partner. He was very knowledgeable, and he and I worked really well together. And we worked several homicides.  Let's just talk a little bit in general before we get into the specifics of this case. What was the crimes against person rate like in Collin County? I mean, growing up, honestly, the only, like, murder I remember hearing about was the Betty Gore murder, which we've, you know, all heard about over and over again.

So was it kind of a low crime rate for crimes against persons? Well, during this time, for that serious crime, yes. I'm trying to think back on Collin County. I can recall working, I think, six,  six murders. Now, when we talk about crimes against persons, we also, anytime there is a unnatural death. Okay. All right, sometimes even with a natural death, we would get called out.

Okay. So, on a suicide or an accidental death, you get called out on all those. And the one thing that Sergeant Norton just pounded into me was that no matter what you go out, it's a murder and you work at  figuring out, is it a murder? But you don't ever go out and say, oh, this was an act of their own. This was a suicide.

You go out with the attitude of this is a murder and I've got to solve it. And then you let the evidence take you where it's going to go. And when you say six murders in Collin County, like at what time frame?  Well, probably within a six year period. Wow.  I mean, the average, probably.  At least one a year. 

And there was other, there was other, there was another prime suspect person investigator that was also working. And what about Princeton specifically? I, I remember no one being murdered in Princeton. And I know when I say Princeton, I'm including like Culleoka and all those little surrounding areas. I don't remember the exact year.

So there was another homicide out in Culleoka area for a young girl that was, uh, in training at the McKinney Job Corp Center, was picked up, went out to Culleoka, and, uh, found her body out there.  Do you remember if this case was before or after the Angela Stevens case? I think it was after. So the Angela Stevens murder was one of the first murders that you know of in Princeton during this time frame?

Before Angela, there was, uh, there was a young girl, and I say a young girl, she was probably in her early 20s. I think the Wagon Wheel was the, uh, country nightclub over there. Absolutely. She had been over there and hooked up with some guy that lived there in Princeton, went over to his house,  and ultimately she dies there. 

Now, sheriff's department, we didn't work it, the Princeton Police Department worked it.  I don't know if it was ruled an accident, a suicide, or if there was a homicide, but there was a death. And I don't, I don't believe  it was a natural death.  In general, would you say, like, during this time, the violent crime rate for Collin County, Princeton area was  relatively low?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, and when I say I was, I worked Crimes Against Persons, and we worked with, you know, We work the major crimes. We also work the, oh, the husband and wife arguments or fights in any kind of assault, simple assault, and assault family violence. That's what took majority of my time. A few CPS referrals working with  child victims was a few cases, not many.

But, uh, nowadays, especially like in Little Elm, when I was working there, that child, uh, child protective services took up the majority of my caseload. As much as I hate it, I found myself going to the Children's Advocacy Center a couple of times a week. Uh, for doing interviews for children that had been abused one way or the other. 

Oh my goodness. Tell me what your relationship was to Cathy Stevens because I had heard from her daughter, younger daughter, Jackie, that you may have gone to high school with her. You had shared with me a little bit on the phone about your connection. I don't think that I did.  She and my mother worked together at a nursing home in McKinney.

That's where I met her. I would walk over to the nursing home where they worked,  hang out there until my mom got off and then I'd ride home with her instead of me walking all the way across town. But I also knew her dad was named Cecil Bailey. I had met Cecil when I was very young, probably, well, 13 years old.

He hung out at a little convenience store in McKinney. And I'd go up there to that, uh, convenience store. He liked to mess with me and talk about my bicycle or something, you know. But he'd buy me a Coke and candy bar occasionally.  And, uh, he, he laid carpet. He, he has done a lot of work, well, some work for me.

So I was familiar with him. I was familiar with Stevens family, so to speak.  Tell me what you remember and go through the timeline of what you know. I might interject with a couple of questions or I might wait until we're done, but I'm just going to kind of open up the floor for you to. Tell as you best remember.  The timeline - this was in 1988. How I got involved with Angela Stevens case was as the crimes against persons investigator,  uh, one of the jobs was working runaways and  case, uh, initially come in that Angela was a missing person/runaway. 

So back at that time, it was my perception that we didn't put a great deal. of time into looking for runaways. We went through the motions and did what we needed to do.  I was, I put a lot of time in it because I did know her mother somewhat, knew her grandfather and I was familiar with the family. So I felt like it was important to do what I could.

She left a letter in her room that she was going to go out and be with the Lee and that she would be back in the morning.  And she didn't come back,  but we started searching, uh, looking for her, I met with her mom and dad and they gave me a list of all the people that she was close to that might be able to help.

So I made contact with Lee Henson told him that I knew that she was with him. He told me that she wasn't with him, he hadn't seen her, he didn't know anything about her. I didn't believe that. Continued working on it and talking to other witnesses and everything. I don't know, a week or nine days later, we get a call, a patrol had responded to a call that a farmer mowing his hay field had found a body.

Sergeant Norton and I go out there. We get there and the patrol sergeant came over and told us that what had happened was as the farmers mowing his pasture,  uh, he ran over something. He got out to look, see what it was and it appeared to be a human leg. This wasn't just any farmer that found the leg. It was Rice University retired football coach Nick Lanza.

He worked part time at the Diamond M Ranch in Altoga.  Altoga is six miles north of Princeton, just off of Long Neck and New Hope Roads. At first, Coach Lanza didn't realize it was a human leg. He testified at the trial of Lee Henson that on the afternoon of July 18th, he was cutting hay when about a third of the way through the field, he had run over what he thought was a cow's bone. 

And about two or three rounds later, he passed over what looked like to him at the time, a cow's leg.  Coach Lanza called his friend Al working in another field on the ranch.  Al, his grandson, and Coach Lanza all took a closer look at the leg.  It was a human leg with red painted toenails.  This appeared to be a young girl's leg. 

We started, uh, searching around the hayfield and we found more bones. Meantime, we called for Collin County Medical Examiner to come out. It was extremely hot. I remember that being one of the hottest days of the year,  probably 110 112 degree range. Medical examiner got there. The team recovered as much of the skeleton as they could find. 

Angela's bones were scattered throughout the field. Coach Lanza testified that he believed the coyotes had brought the pieces into this area of the field because of the distance between the pieces. The skin on the arm had leathered  and you could see where there was pellet like BB pellets.  We believe Angela was raising her arm to shield herself from the shot fired by the boy she loved, Lee Henson.

And so he told us then whoever she was had been shot with a shotgun, initial assessment. So I told him about Angela Stevens, our missing person, and asked if there was, if that was a possibility that the deceased that we found could possibly be Angela. And he said that there was absolutely no way, that whoever this was had been out in the field for well over two weeks, probably closer to a month, the body to, um, deteriorate and the, the, the arm leather such as, as that was. 

So I knew that, uh, it was going to be in the McKinney paper that we'd found  that we'd found a, uh, body and it was a female, about the right age to be Angela, according to the medical examiner, but he was a hundred percent positive  it was not. So I knew that we were going to have to, uh, go talk to her parents because they were going to see it in the newspaper or see it on the news or  I wanted them to be confident  that we did not have Angela.  So, uh, Sergeant Norton and I met them and explained what we had and we were working on homicide now and that it was not Angela. The next day we had gone through our files looking for looking at all missing person cases that we had  nothing matched.  Uh, we were getting ready to send out a nationwide broad broadcast. 

Give a description of what we had and the age and the height and everything based on what the medical examiner had told us. But before the nationwide broadcast, Larry wanted to be sure it wasn't Angela. The way Larry remembers it, Angela's parents didn't recall her having any dental records, but they did remember she had an X-ray taken of her back at Collin Memorial Hospital.

According to the coroner's report, Angela did have dental records with Dr. Herron in McKinney, Texas. Dr. Herron was also my dentist. The records from Dr. Herron and the back X-ray confirmed the worst.  So I called the medical examiner and told him I wanted to verify it was not her and that she had a back X-ray over there. 

And he had told me that he had put the body back together  and  had taken an X-ray and that he would meet me at the hospital. So we go over to the hospital  and the hospital pulls out the X-ray of Angela's back and puts it on there.  There's a machine with a lighted screen that you look at an X-ray on  and the medical examiner put his unknown up and you can just see the spine come down and made a curve.

They were exact. I mean, I'm not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but  it was  completely. evident that it was the same person. Sadly, Larry knew this was Angela's body, and that meant Larry had to go back to Jack and Cathy Stevens to let them know that Angela was no longer a missing person and now a homicide victim.

Larry gathered more information on Angela's circle of friends. But they centered on Lee because of the note. That's who she said she was going to be with. So, we started doing some, uh, studying on him and Angela's friends, and we developed a couple of circles of friends and started working our way into circles. 

We determined that John Shores and Rodney Kiser were probably Lee's closest friends.  So we worked our way all the way into them. We gained all the information that we could get. We were getting some good intelligence. We wasn't getting to see anything to solve the case. We went to Rodney's house first.

We were told that he was at work in McKinney and wouldn't be home until the next morning. He worked all night shift somewhere in McKinney. So then we went to John's house and we were told that John and Rodney had gone to Fort Worth together for the night. That John was just real upset because Angela was a really good friend and he was really upset about her death. 

But we explained to Rodney's mother that we really needed to talk to him. Larry stressed to Rodney's mom that he and Sergeant Norton would travel to Fort Worth or wherever they needed to go because they really needed to get some more information from Rodney and John. Rodney's mother said she would have them come home.

Larry also shared that before he and Sergeant Norton went back to talk to Rodney's mom, that Sergeant Norton had put a small tape recorder in his pocket. This recording would later prove to be helpful in court. So he and I knew that we were taping - nobody else did.  Uh, and one of the questions that John's mother asked was, are they suspects in this homicide?

And the answer was no, they were not. Um, and they wasn't for a while after that. So we left and we were, the plan was we were going back to John's house at midnight. Probably around 10:30 or 11, Sergeant Norton and I went to the sheriff's office, and we were completing our paperwork, getting caught up on things and trying to figure out what our next steps were going to be, we decided to call John's mother and see if she could bring John and Rodney to the sheriff's office in McKinney so we could visit with them there. Right around midnight, they get there. We knew that Rodney was a little withdrawn and he didn't like pressure.  So we decided that we were going to interview John first and let Rodney sit out in the lobby and kind of build the pressure on him. 

So when they got there, we went out and got John. We brought him back to Sergeant Norton's office and we're back there interviewing him. And I don't know if it's Sergeant Norton or me, one of us asked him,  did he know about Lee killing Angela?  And he said yes. So we shot her and he said yes. And I said, how do you know that? 

Well, Lee told me.  Well, when did Lee tell you?  He said, I don't remember when Lee told me. I said, does Rodney know? He said, yeah. I said, did you tell Rodney the same day that Lee told you? And he said, yes.  So, I got up and left the interview. I went out to the lobby, had Rodney come back to a different interview room.

I was just asking general questions about when he found out that Lee was one that had shot Angela and he answered all my questions. I was through talking to him really for right now and I got up starting to go out and there was just, I don't know what it was, there was something about the way he was acting that I just, I felt like there was more, something else to say. 

And I turned around and looked at him before I walked out the door. And I said, is there something else you wanna tell me? Rodney said, we were all there. We helped. I said, you helped?  Yeah, we, I helped kill her. I advised him of his rights right then. I went to the next interview room and told Sergeant Norton to stop and advise John his rights. 

So we advised them of their rights. We sat down separately and talked to him and took a statements from them. Larry said John and Rodney kept asking if they were under arrest. And the fact was no, they were not yet under arrest. The fact was that had they said we want a lawyer, we would have stopped talking to 'em. We would've gotten lawyers. They said we wanna leave we'd let them walk out the building because they wasn't gonna go that far. They were kids. They were from Princeton. They didn't have any means to escape. Sergeant Norton and I had discussed it and we both felt better that if we got a warrant for their arrest before we arrested him, even though they confessed to this. John and Rodney kept talking and began to explain the details of the night Angela was murdered. 

And so they told us the story of what had happened was that Angela had snuck out of her house and got with Lee. John had picked up some other girl from Princeton, and Rodney was just kind of alone. They went to, uh, Tickey Creek Park, hung out over there swimming.  Messed around over there for a while. Then John took the girl that he was with, took her back home to Princeton.

And then the four of them met back up and the  scam was they told Angela, they were going to a field in Altoga to gather marijuana. So she loads up with 'em and they go up there, they get out of the car. Uh, she's looking around for marijuana and she looks up. Um, Lee is pulling a gun, pulling a shotgun out of the car.

Lee pushes Angela to the ground and shoots her with a shotgun and he told Rodney and John they had to shoot her too. This was an old junkie single shell shotgun. You load a shell, shoot it and then you have to load a new shell to take another shot. And that shell had jammed in, they couldn't get the shell out.

So he couldn't reload it so they could shoot her. So John and Rodney instead each hit Angela with the shotgun. One hit was so powerful, it broke the stock of the shotgun. They move Angela's body into some weeds, get back in the car, and head back towards Princeton when they notice some of Angela's personal belongings were in the car.

As they drive down Long Neck Road, they scatter Angela's items along the roadside.  Then they went on through Princeton and went back out to,  uh, Culleoka to the little bridge on 982 that crosses the lake.  And they got out and threw the shotgun into the lake, and then they went their separate ways from there.

We asked them if they could show us  where this was at. Rodney and John still not under arrest, both agreed to get in a police car with Larry and Sergeant Norton and take them to the site of the murder in Altoga, the location of Angela's personal items on Long Neck Road in Princeton, and the Creek in Culleoka where they dumped the gun. 

So then we go back to the office and it's getting to be seven o'clock so we called one of the assistant district attorneys that we worked with. Larry and Sergeant Norton called the district attorney's office and ran the story by an assistant DA and he said go ahead and take them into custody and arrest them.

So we made the arrest. Got the judge to issue the warrants and got all the paperwork settled that the jail was gonna to need to hold them.  Based on their information that they provided us, and the fact that we knew of, uh,  Lee's involvement - we then prepared the arrest warrant for Lee. 

On the next episode of True Texas Crime.  I walked into the garage area. He was working on a car and he looked at me and I told him who I was, asked him, are you Lee? He said, yes. I said, do you know why I'm here? He said, yeah, I guess you're here to talk to me about that runaway.  And I said, no, I'm here to arrest you for murder. 

If you think about history, if you think about David Koresh, in Waco.  Think about, uh, Charles Manson. These guys were, were not super great guys, but they had the ability to lead people down a path. And I think that's exactly what Lee had. I don't know if it's because they were scared of him, or what. 

True Texas Crime, The Significant Life of Angela Stevens is a North End Burgers production. Recorded, hosted, and written by me, Julie Dove. Kari Southard Hargrave is the executive producer. Studio recording by Mike DeLay, Real Voice LA. Sound design and mixing by Real Voice LA. Additional recording by JBM Studios.

Opening music, The Colonel, courtesy of Zachariah Hickman. Closing music, Night in the Prairie, courtesy of Derek and Brandon Feichter. Special thanks to Jackie Stevens Tower, Amy Harper Fritz. Deanna McDonald and Jennifer Rich. 

The views expressed by this podcast host and participants are solely that of the person speaking and do not necessarily reflect the views of any employer, company, institution, or other associated parties.