2. Three Confessions and the Truth: Part 2

Former Collin County Deputy Sheriff Investigator Larry Denison recalls the details of the written confessions of Angela's three killers and Angela's cousin Amy shares about Angela falling in love with Lee.

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.  

Previously on True Texas Crime. 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,  he ran over something.

He got out to look to see what it was and it  appeared to be a human leg. We developed a couple of circles of friends and started working our way into circles. We determined that John Shores and Rodney Kisner were probably Lee's closest friends. And I turned around and looked at him before I walked out the door and I said, Is there something else you want to tell me?

Rodney said, We were all there. We helped. I said, You helped?  Yeah, I helped kill her. 

I, uh, knew Angela, um, not extremely well, but I was always struck by the fact that when I did talk with her or interact with her, she always had something kind to say, either she liked my smile or something about how the day was and I really appreciated that so much. I was  With my brother at Collin Creek Mall in Plano, and I saw her  that very last week and she was sitting outside on a bench and my brother and I chatted her up for a little while and then  we left and never thinking that that  What was the last time we'd be able to see her?

The thing I remember most about Angie is her hanging out at my house with my older sister. Angie was one of the friends that included me and didn't treat me like an annoying little sister. She had this beautiful smile and she wore really cool makeup. And I remember going to the skating rink and she always lip synced because that's what we did. It was really the only activity we had growing up. 

I just remember her being friendly. Infectious smile, sparkly eyes, trendy. I believe a cheerleader in middle school. 

I remember being at Angie's house a lot that summer. One afternoon, her parents were churning homemade ice cream on the front porch. We all took turns operating the crank on the old ice cream maker and that ice cream was delicious. To this day, every time I enjoy vanilla ice cream, I think of Angie and her family.  

Angela was about 13, I think, when she was in my class. I have never forgotten Angela. I thought she was as cute as she could be. I wish a million times that I had reached out more to her family  because I just want them to know that she has not been forgotten by me. 

This is True Texas Crime, The Significant Life of Angela Stevens, Episode 2. Three Confessions and the Truth, Part Two. 

According to her family, Angela first met Lee around 1981 through her neighbors, Bill and Peggy Chandler, who had two children, John and Stacey Chandler. John was the same age as Lee, and Stacey was two years younger than Angela. As Angela got older, she developed romantic feelings for Lee and shared this with her closest friend, her first cousin, Amy. 

Jackie and Angie's mother and my mother are sisters. Angela and I are 19 days apart, um, so she's December the 8th, I was December the 27th. And, um, I mean, I think our mothers, you know, went through pregnancy together. Our names both start with A. We were, you could not have gotten, I mean, we were close. I mean, couldn't have been closer.

I don't remember really knowing the Chandlers without knowing Lee coming and going or being close. Angie had been talking about Lee and I, you know, was like, oh, okay. Amy may not have thought Lee was cute, but he seemed to impress many of his classmates. Looking back through my yearbooks, Lee was named Mr.

Personality in 1986 during his freshman year, and again during his junior year in 1988,  the same year he would kill Angela. Lee played football, basketball, and basketball. He's in many of the candid photos with funny captions next to them. One photo shows Lee and another junior answering the yearbook committee's question, how do you know when you're in love? 

Lee's answer, when you never have any money. I didn't think he was that cute and I was not that impressed. So I thought, my first thought was he's convenient. He's friends with John. They're right there. They can hang out all the time. Okay. Then she tells me that they've had sex and I'm like, Oh wow. That's so fairly quick.

You think? Well, it was fairly quick, but her feelings for him were quick. They were intense. They were, I remember being on the phone with her. And she was going on about how much she loved him. This really was her first love,  and she loved him. She, he, they talked for all the time, they hung out, and I don't feel, I feel like she was a convenience for him.

I want to clarify, wasn't he going with another person? At times. And then there were times that he wasn't, and he was totally committed to her, and at least this is what he was telling her and she was telling me. It was totally, she was convenient for him. She would have sex with him,  and he would just say he loved her, and that's all she needed. 

According to Angela's family, in the summer of 1988, after having a nice Fourth of July in Princeton, Angela was making plans to spend the coming weekend with her cousin Amy. Amy, whose parents had divorced, was now living in Richardson with her mom and stepdad. Amy remembers the time as Angela being grounded, but she was allowed to visit her cousin, which worked out well since they were best friends. 

Before going to visit her cousin, Angela wanted to sneak in some plans with her friend Stacia. On Wednesday, July 6th, Angela called her friend Stacia several times during the day, and they decided they wanted to do something that night. Angela made plans to sneak out of her house that evening to meet Stacia, John, Rodney, and Lee. 

They were going to the lake to party. According to the testimony of Angela's mom, on the morning of July 7th, Cathy made her morning coffee and went from the kitchen to Angela's bedroom. To her surprise, Cathy opened the door to her daughter's room only to see Angela had placed pillows in her bed to make it look like she was asleep.

This wasn't the first time Angela had snuck out of the house. But her mom wasn't too worried because Angela consistently came back the next morning.  Cathy testified that Angela would always call and say she'd stayed at a girlfriend's house, then come home.  As the day went on, Cathy had not heard from Angela, so she became concerned.

Cathy called many of Angela's friends, including Lee.  But by July 8th, Angela's mom Cathy knew something was very wrong, and Angela was officially reported as a missing person to the Collin County Sheriff's Department.  Deputy Sheriff Investigator Larry Denison testified in court That shortly after being assigned the case, he initially questioned Lee on the phone. 

Larry testified that Lee said he didn't know where Angela was, but that he would get in touch with Larry if he ever saw her. Lee wasn't a suspect in Angela's murder until John and Rodney were questioned all night on July 20th, 1988, and ultimately confessed to helping Lee kill Angela. The interesting point about Lee not being a suspect until July 20th is that Larry testified there was a note found in Angela's bedroom prior to that date. 

There's conflicting testimony regarding if the police found the note or if it was given to them by Angela's mom, Cathy.  But according to testimony from Larry, because the note wasn't dated, the police didn't know for sure if it was referring to the night of July 6th.  

Found in the evidence of the case files, here is a copy of Angela's note. 
Mom, 
John Shores came up to my window at 12. 30, and Lee wants to talk to me, so I'm at the end of the road.  Please don't tell Dad. This is the only chance I have to talk with Lee.  If you find my note, throw it away, please.
 Love you, Angie. 

Lee was finally arrested at his place of work on July 21st 1988, by Deputy Sheriff Investigator Larry Dennison and Sergeant Randy Norton.  We got the arrest warrant for him to, I believe it's a brake repair shop in Plano, which is where he was working.  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.  And he stood up, no argument, really nothing. Searched him, handcuffed him, put him in the car, marked quad car.  Uh, he was in the backseat. Sergeant Norton was in the front seat with me, but we decided we were not going to ask him any questions in the car.

We were gonna let him talk.  So on the way in, he was telling us that we were, we were wrong, we didn't know what we were doing, if we'd talked to John and Rodney, they would straighten all this out. He was with him the entire time and he didn't have anything to do this. So then we explained to him that we had gone and Rodney for murder and that they had both gave statements. And, uh, implicated him for shooting her  and his, his response. Well, I guess you got me then. So he wanted to speak with. I believe his name is Chandler. It was the family that he was living with. I want to tell him what I've done, and then I'll explain it to you.  

As I mentioned earlier, Bill Chandler, or Mr. Chandler as we called him, was a neighbor to the Stevens family, and he knew Angela. Mr. Chandler knew all us kids in Princeton because he owned the skating rink, which was the one and only social spot in town for teens.  Other than hanging out in your car after dark at the post office parking lot. Mr.Chandler also knew Lee because in 1984, he let Lee move in with his family when his parents moved out of town so that Lee could finish school in Princeton.  Lee didn't finish school in Princeton. He murdered Angela the summer before his senior year. 

I knew Lee from the skating rink because Lee and some other boys from school, including now deceased lead singer of the band Drowning Pool, Dave Williams, would dress up and lip sync to the most popular hair metal bands of the 80s. I have photos that I took of Lee from these days at the skating rink, because at the time, I was very boy crazy and always on the search for a boyfriend. I considered Lee a good prospect. I thought Lee was very cool and super cute. 

So, we got Mr. Chandler on the phone, and he told Mr. Chandler what he had done. And then he provided us with a written statement. The following is an actor voicing Lee's confession. The legal title for this document is Voluntary Statement.  It was signed and dated July 21st, 1988. 

From sometime in early June 1988, John Shores, Rodney Kiser, and I planned to kill Angela Stevens. We would pick a day to do it, and we changed our minds. July 6th, 1988, everything worked out that we could kill her today. About 4pm, we were at the Chandler residence in Culleoka, where I live. While I kept Bill Chandler busy, John Shores took a 20 gauge single shot breakdown shotgun, put it behind the seat of my truck. Gun belongs to John Chandler. I made contact with Angela, told her to meet me at the end of a road. While John Shores and I waited there, Angela's father stopped there, told us that if we were going to talk to Angela, we need to talk to her at the house. We drove to the house.  Angel came out to talk, and that was when we made plans to pick her up at midnight. 

After we left there, we went to John Shore's house and saw some people we know. Rodney Kiser went to get some Matilda Bay wine coolers. John and I waited in Tickey Creek Park for Rodney to get back. Later, we went to look for him and found him coming into the park. He gave us some Matilda Bay, and we went to the end of Angela's road and waited for her. 

After a while, Angela came to the truck, got in with us. We drove to Stacia Morris' house in Princeton to get her. After we got to Stacia, we went to Tickey Creek Point by Tickey Creek Park.  We were there for a while. Rodney came down there, and John and I told Rodney what we had planned to do with Angela, and he agreed to going out. 

So, uh, John and Rodney took Stacia back home to Princeton, and Angela and I stayed at the lake and had sex. After that, Angela and I started driving toward Princeton, met John and Rodney. We took Rodney's truck to John's house to leave it there. We all got in my truck and we told Angela that we were gonna try to find some marijuana growing in a field, and she wouldn't go home anyway, so she went with us.  I knew of a field close to Altoga that we could take her to kill her at.  I don't know if John and Rodney knew where we were going, but they knew why we were going. I've been at this place twice before looking for devil worshipers. I went the first time with Eddie Edwards. He showed me how to get there and once with John Hanna.

I laid the gun down by the truck. She got scared and went to get in the truck and Rodney got in the truck with her and John and I tried to think of something to do, so John got back in the truck with her and started to argue with her. Rodney got in the back of the truck and was looking  through the, uh, sliding glass window. John started to get sick  and started to argue with her again. Angela started telling me that she would turn me into the cops if I didn't take her home. She said that her mother knew that she was with me and she'd just  started threatening me. I told Rodney that on the count of three I would hit her. I counted to three but  nobody hit her. 

I kind of blacked out for a second then I knew I had hit her. She fell over in the seat. I pulled her up and Rodney started hitting her through the sliding window on her head. John jumped out of the truck. Rodney jumped out of the truck and ran around to the driver's side. He grabbed Angela by the arms and pulled her out of the truck, threw her down in the weeds.  I started running around the truck and John was yelling for me to get the gun, so I got the gun, ran around to the side that Angela was on.  As I went around the truck, I bumped into the truck and saw Angela at the same time.  I tightened up on the gun, gun fired, and  I looked and saw that I had shot Angela while she was sitting on the ground. 

After I shot her, she fell over and stopped breathing. I was trying to unload the gun, so John and Rodney could both shoot her, but  I couldn't get the gun unloaded. At about this time, Angela started breathing again, so Rodney took the gun and hit Angela over the head.  John hit her on the head with the gun. Angela stopped breathing again. 

I don't know who broke the stock of the gun, but it got broke over her head. Rodney dragged her body to a clearing in the weeds where a house had burned and left her body in the weeds. 

They put the gun back in the truck and we left. And we got to the intersection where the road goes to Princeton. Somebody threw out a shoe that we thought might be Angela's. We decided to get rid of the gun. So we drove to the long bridge past Culleoka and drove across the bridge, then turned around, we stopped on the bridge.

Rodney through the gun in the lake, went to John's house and stayed there for the rest of the night. After a couple days, someone told us that they saw Angela get into a silver car with some guys.  We took that story and said that was what happened, but we knew it was a lie.  

Within a matter of, I don't know, six, seven hours, we had all three of them.

Not sure why, but you can mirandize people make sure they understand. We even had a card that they, they had to initial. You have the right to remain solid, but your initial, you understand it. And at the bottom, they had to sign it with their date of birth. Um, you give them all that information  and for whatever reason they can't help themselves, they  have to talk. 

And I think some of them think they can talk their way out of things when they just dig a bigger hole for themselves. Angela's cousin Amy wasn't at all surprised by Lee's confession. Her gut told her from the very beginning. Lee knew what happened to Angela. 

A couple of days had passed. I talked to Cathy and Jack, my aunt and uncle,  and  My aunt was really concerned, you know, they thought gosh, did she you know, did she did she possibly run away? She was so mad at us for grounding her and we weren't gonna let her see you this weekend. Well, I didn't even know that at that point, you know, I mean she was really grounded So I didn't think too much about it.

Well, then my aunt calls me back and  she says, call Lee, see if he's seen her. He won't answer. He won't talk to me. I won't answer my calls. So she gave me Lee's number and I called him and I said, Lee. I said, have you seen Angie? And he says, no, I haven't seen her. Last time I saw her, she was at Allsup's,um, gas station getting in a maroon Monte Carlo with two guys I didn't know. 

From the conversation that I had with Lee, whenever I hung up from that phone conversation, I, I remember specifically, I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I had my little, you know, we still had corded phones back then, and, um, I had my phone sitting beside my bed, and I was talking to him on that, and my mom was standing in the room with me whenever I was on the phone with him.

And whenever I hung up that phone call, I remember bursting into tears.  And I said, and this was only like day two that she had been missing,  maybe day three. I mean, it was like. The very beginning of her being missing and I remember hanging up that call and I said,  I don't know what happened or what has happened, but he knows  and my mom kind of got on to me and she said,  you can't accuse somebody.

You know, we don't know what's going on yet. You know, we just, we just know, we don't know where she is right now. And I said, but he does. And she said, you can't say that. And so I called my aunt back and my mom was right there, of course, too. And she said,  You have got to get on the phone with the police. Something's not right. And  my mom told my aunt that, and I know that they had at that point filed a missing persons and the wheels just started turning then after I tried, tried to call Lee back several times after that, he wouldn't answer the phone. He wouldn't take my calls.  And so. I just, I knew, I knew. I didn't know what, but I knew something. 

The biggest revelation in Lee's written confession is that Lee had been working on a plan to kill Angela for at least a month. And court documents show that six of Lee's friends gave written statements to the police between July 20th and July 26th that they had heard Lee say as early as June 15th, 1988, that he wanted to kill Angela. 

One friend wrote that Lee said, if she narcs on me one more time, I'm gonna kill her. Shortly before Angela's murder, Angela, Lee, and another friend had stolen a checkbook from Angela's mom.  Angela told her mom Lee was involved in the check stealing.  In other words, she told on him to her mom. Did Lee literally think Angela was a narcotics informant?

What was she going to narc on him about?  As of the recording of this episode, we've interviewed many people and cannot find one person with any evidence to support the idea Angela or anyone else in Princeton was a narc in 1988. 

He felt like that, he supposedly, uh, he was supposed to be a big time dealer. I don't believe that he was, I don't think, but nobody knew him in relation to selling drugs. Just, he wasn't known for that,  but in his mind,  she had snitched him down. I couldn't find anybody that she had snitched to.  So, but in his mind, she'd snitched and in his mind, she was going to snitch again. So he had to do something to get rid of in his mind.

What do you think about the defense that was used by Lee's attorney, that he was a good kid gone bad on drugs?  

I'm not even sure that I know how to answer that.  I don't I don't think Lee was a good kid. I think he was. He was a kid that needed some help  and he was on drugs. Had he just had done some drugs and pulled out a gun and shot her without all the, um, thought that he had put into it.

You know, I don't know that the drug can cause you to put that much thought, but he, you know, he planned this thing out. He planned it out far enough that he, um, he took her out and they went, had a little party and went swimming and then convinced her they're going to go up here and steal some marijuana.

You know, he planned all that. He had a plan to get her there to do what he was going to do. If you think about, history, if you think about David Koresh, in Waco Think about  Charles Manson, you know, these guys were, were not super great guys. They had the ability to lead people down a path. And I think that's exactly what Lee had.

John and Rodney were probably better young men than Lee. There was two of them. They could have taken him, and they chose not to. So, I don't, I don't agree with they were just good young men, um, and, and made a mistake. They, they made a multitude of mistakes, probably their entire life. We just don't know it. 

John opened his written confession with the following. Back in June 1988, I was with Lee Henson. Paul Kinser and Bill Childress.  We were on our way to McKinney to pawn Lee's guitar and amp at the new pawn shop in McKinney. I pawned the guitar and amp for $ 120, I think, and the pawn ticket is in my name. On the way to McKinney from Princeton, Lee Henson started talking about killing Angela Stevens. He said that she narced on him and that she was going down. He just kept saying, she's going down. From that day until July 6, 1988, he asked me several times when we could do it. He told me that it had to be soon. And that he wanted her dead by the end of June. 

The final words in Rodney's written confession? 
I did not have any idea that Lee was going to kill Angela that night. 

John, Rodney, and Lee all confessed to killing Angela and later tried to get those confessions suppressed at trial.  In future episodes, we will cover more aspects of the trial and the premeditated plan to murder Angela.  But we will never know which one of these men was telling the truth. 

For today, these are the truths we actually know. Angela is gone, and her parents, Jack and Cathy, both in their 30s when she was murdered,  didn't know how to go on living. Her sisters, Jackie and Kimberly Ann, were devastated. The truth is, Angela made people feel special. She was a person teachers and classmates adored. 

She was a friend, cousin, daughter, and a sister. The truth is, Angela never had the opportunity to live her life, to go to prom, to get married and walk down the aisle with her dad, to have children, to meet her nieces and her nephews, her life was cut short.  The truth is,  Angela was murdered by someone she loved, someone she thought loved her back. 

Coming up on True Texas Crime.  

We'd talk and we'd write notes and, whoever, you know, back then you wrote on your notebook who you liked or wrote letters back and forth and you signed it with the person's name you like. I mean, Angie wrote, Angie loves Lee. And then she wrote like, Angela Henson. When you sign your name, you know, with your person you want to marry and use their last name.

What happened to her could have happened to any of us. And it's probably why we relate to that. And it hits us so hard. I hate not trying to pull her out of  the relationship with him. I mean, I don't know that anybody could have at that point. 

I just remember everybody just being so broken. You know, and really at a loss for words. We just didn't know which way to go. I mean, it was just,  all I remember really is just my parents crying, crying and crying. 

True Texas Crime: The Significant Life of Angela Stevens is a North End Burgers production recorded, hosted, and written by me, Julie Dove.

Kari Southern Hargrave is the executive producer. 
Voice of Lee Henson by Michael Reiser. 
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.