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00:05you get a phone call from the police saying your father was killed in an accident
00:10how could that happen how could that happen you know you could immediately see he was burned
00:17severely from head to toe simplest explanation is probably the correct one
00:25he was a known cigar smoker who was on oxygen but is it the result of a tragic accident
00:33or something more sinister
00:38some scenes make perfect sense but this scene completely confused me
00:44you could immediately see that he had no clothing on the worst burns were on his back which indicated
00:53where the fire had started
00:59when the evidence leads to a seemingly disturbed suspect investigators must determine whether
01:06the crime was unintentional or if it's all an act
01:13you knew that there was something wrong with her mind it certainly appears that she had poor impulse
01:18control we all knew she was going to take his life one day what we were surprised about is the
01:24way
01:24that she did he screamed for me he's like come out back he was on fire screaming my name when
01:32she told
01:32me that i knew i was truly in the presence of evil
01:50june 16th 2022
01:53it's 5 23 a.m in susquehanna township pennsylvania when police receive a strange 911 call
02:02what's your name evelyn
02:05your last name
02:07vigorelli
02:08henderson
02:08tell me exactly what happened
02:10yeah i believe uh carmen q henderson
02:15did not make it
02:18he um
02:19what do you mean did not make it
02:20no you gotta be specific with me i'm not understanding what you're trying to tell me
02:24i think he is deceased
02:28the 911 operator is trying to get some information how do you know that he
02:32has passed away is he still breathing and she's like i i just know
02:44she said to the 911 operator that she had seen him at one o'clock in the morning heard him
02:53yell
02:53and chose at that time not to call 911
02:59she indicated that she found him in the morning when she got up
03:03the dispatcher's typing this information in uh it's going to the responding police officers
03:09the dispatcher felt there was something not quite right with the car
03:15police rush to the address where they are met by evelyn
03:20purple alex wagner was the first on scene
03:22he asked what's going on
03:24and she said
03:25my husband's out back and he's dead
03:29as he's approaching the back door
03:31he could see mr henderson on the ground
03:34on the back patio
03:37he's just completely
03:38burned to death
03:41the officer immediately secures the scene and calls for backup
03:46as i come around the back there's a stone patio
03:49i look down and there is a naked burnt man
03:56i was completely not ready for that
04:00i knew mr henderson from years ago
04:03he was a retired susquehman township police officer
04:06probably back in the late 70s early 80s
04:10some scenes make perfect sense
04:11you look and you can say okay this is likely what happened
04:15but this scene completely confused me
04:17and we're looking at the possibility of an accident
04:20maybe he set himself on fire with the cigar
04:24investigators know that his wife evelyn must have answers
04:27they pull her away from the scene to get more information
04:31the questions running through our minds were related to the different scenarios of how this could have occurred
04:40most of the attention was focusing on trying to determine if this happened accidentally or intentionally
04:54carmen c u henderson was born october 31st 1937 in philadelphia to a doting mother
05:03My grandmother, his mother took care, gave him everything.
05:07He had everything he wanted to have as a child.
05:11He grew up in Germantown.
05:13They moved up to Harrisburg to change the way life was going for them.
05:18His mother worked for the orphanage, which is now the YWCA.
05:23And my dad went to school at William Penn High School.
05:30Carmen met his first wife in high school.
05:34The pair had two daughters together while he served in the military.
05:38He was an airplane mechanic in the Air Force.
05:42When he came out of the service, he worked for Firestone as a mechanic.
05:50Before long, Carmen decided he'd had enough of engine repair and began a new career back in Pennsylvania.
05:58First, he was a state police officer.
06:00Then after that, switched over to being a Susquehanna Township police officer.
06:05He was one of the first minority police officers in this area.
06:09His reputation was, everybody thought he was an incredible man.
06:16During his early career in law enforcement, Carmen and his wife separated, but he remained close to his daughters.
06:24Even though we lived with our mother, I would see my dad every day because I would go to my
06:29grandma's house after school every day.
06:30And my dad was there, and my grandma would cook dinner, and me and my dad would eat dinner every
06:35day.
06:36He took us to the Philadelphia Zoo.
06:38He took us to Atlantic City, to Jersey because he liked the Atlantic City.
06:43My dad took us everywhere.
06:46Carmen was just as caring with the people in his community.
06:50He had risen through the ranks to be a deputy sheriff in Dauphin County.
06:58He was a good man, he was a fair man, and he was very well liked.
07:03All different colored people I would run into, and they would tell me that my dad helped him a lot
07:08when they were on parole and stuff.
07:10You know, it changed their lives.
07:13He didn't treat them like criminals.
07:16He treated them like people.
07:18And I think that's why everybody liked him so much.
07:22Carmen Henderson was the grandpa of the neighborhood.
07:26He was like Mr. Rogers.
07:28People loved this man.
07:29One person struck by Carmen's charm was Evelyn Zigarelli.
07:36Born on March 4, 1956, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Evelyn also seemed destined for a life of service.
07:46She came from a family with a political background out in southwestern PA.
07:52Throughout high school, Evie was active in a range of activities, including band, sports, and student government.
08:00She carried a strong work ethic from adolescence into adulthood, running for local office in 1983.
08:07She was elected clerk of courts in Beaver County in the mid-80s.
08:12Eventually, she came to the Harrisburg area.
08:15And after she was here, after she met Mr. Henderson, she tried to run for office in Dauphin County.
08:22No-nonsense Evelyn found a lifelong ally and supporter in Carmen.
08:28The pair married in 1991, and Carmen's good reputation bolstered Evelyn's political confidence.
08:57After a slew of lost elections, Evelyn and Carmen decided to pivot their energy into opening a business.
09:06So, you know, I'm just going to give me a limousine.
09:08That's what I'll do. I'll just give me a limousine and start my own profession.
09:13He did most of the work for the cars, so he was able to save a lot of money that
09:18way.
09:20Evelyn ran the day-to-day part of booking the trips and getting clients.
09:27They literally had the monopoly on limousines at one point.
09:31And I can only imagine, you know, how proud he was of a business that he built.
09:37But by 2022, the business had lost much of its revenue due to Carmen's failing health.
09:45Mr. Henderson's health had been declining to some extent.
09:49He was becoming more frail.
09:52He was 84 years old, wasn't able to walk as easily as he used to.
10:00Mr. Carmen was just, you know, getting older.
10:03They were still getting some income in.
10:05But it just slowly faded away.
10:14But now, Carmen has been found burned to death in his own backyard.
10:19And police are desperate for answers.
10:23Evelyn, she now acts kind of surprised, basically saying he caught himself on fire.
10:31He was a cigar smoker.
10:33Evelyn told us that he likes to smoke cigars out back, and he will sometimes light the wrappers on fire.
10:41So, at one point she said, maybe he set himself on fire because he was burning the wrappers.
10:48Her demeanor was described as strange.
10:51You would expect someone to be hysterically crying and upset and inconsolable.
10:54And she was just flat and had just a monotone reaction to everything.
11:00One possibility would be that she's simply in shock from what has occurred and what she witnessed.
11:08I mean, what's a normal reaction to have to your husband being burned alive?
11:11There is no uniform normal reaction.
11:16Evelyn's bizarre response, combined with the circumstances of Carmen's death and the state of the home, bolstered detective's sense of
11:24urgency.
11:25We treat every suspicious death as a homicide until proven otherwise.
11:30So, I knew we were going to have to get a search warrant for the house.
11:33I knew we were going to have to remove her from the house in order to perform the search warrant
11:38to secure the scene, make sure nothing gets tampered with.
11:44I took a closer look inside the house at absolutely deplorable.
11:48It was filthy.
11:50There was rotted food placed, sitting haphazardly.
11:56It was squalor.
12:02Coming up, a search warrant provides strange clues.
12:08People don't burn as bad as Mr. Henderson does without accelerant.
12:15And an interview with Evelyn compounds the mystery.
12:20It happened yesterday.
12:22What happened?
12:23When he caught himself on fire.
12:40Pennsylvania police are investigating the bizarre death of a former officer, 84-year-old Carmen Henderson.
12:49His wife, Evelyn Ziggarelli Henderson, thinks he caught himself on fire.
12:54But given the neglected state of their home, detectives wonder about her mental state.
13:01One of the first things that we look at in terms of how well people are doing mentally is how
13:06well do they take care of themselves.
13:09If they're out of touch with reality, or even just severely emotionally distressed, that can be reflected in what surrounds
13:17them.
13:18Sometimes a place filled with clutter and that is not clean and has all sorts of indications of mental illness.
13:26We asked her, when did you see him last?
13:28She said, last night he went out to smoke a cigar around 7 or 8 o'clock and I went
13:33to bed.
13:33And she said that she didn't see him until she woke up this morning and called 911.
13:40Evelyn originally said she saw Carmen around 1 a.m.
13:45Evelyn is confusing details.
13:47And when you're getting different pieces of information like Evelyn is giving here,
13:51police are certainly going to be concerned about whether or not Evelyn is a reliable source of information.
13:57She had indicated that she was bipolar and she had stopped taking her medication.
14:05The characteristic bipolar disorder is cyclical mood swings from periods of elation to periods of depression.
14:13This can affect memory and cause a person to become confused.
14:16And that sometimes doesn't allow that person to perceive what's going on in the world in front of them.
14:23So I said to her, I said, would you mind coming with us?
14:26To the police station to talk?
14:27And she said, absolutely.
14:30As Evelyn is transported to the Susquehanna Township Police Station,
14:35investigators search for other potential witnesses.
14:39Law enforcement canvases the neighborhood.
14:41They want to talk to neighbors and see if anyone saw or heard anything.
14:46No one reported hearing any yelling, any screaming.
14:49This was June, so it could be, you know, that people had air conditioners in their windows.
14:53It could be the time of night it happened.
14:55Maybe everyone was in a deep sleep.
14:58At first glance, the scene itself doesn't provide many answers either.
15:04You could immediately see that he had no clothing on, and he was burned severely from head to toe.
15:15My question is, you know, why is he naked?
15:18When you looked on the ground, there was actually a pile of debris, burned debris, everything charred.
15:27There were shoes, parts of a belt, a cuff of a shirt.
15:32And so the more you kind of looked at the scene, the more it became apparent that he actually was
15:39dressed when he caught fire.
15:42We believed as he was on fire, he more than likely was disrobing.
15:50The severity of the burns raises other questions.
15:55The initial thought is there must have been some sort of accelerant, some kind of liquid, flammable liquid that would
16:03have been poured onto him,
16:04either by himself or somebody else that would have ignited to cause those kind of burns.
16:12People don't burn as bad as Mr. Henderson does without accelerant.
16:17There are no nearby accelerants Carmen could have used when igniting the fire.
16:23We actually brought a dog, an arson dog, to the scene.
16:27The dog ran through the scene and came back as not indicating that they detected any form of accelerant.
16:37But the one thing the dogs don't hit on is alcohol, because it's common to homes.
16:43So just because the dog didn't hit on anything, that doesn't mean that there wasn't an accelerant used.
16:50Now there was ignition source on the table.
16:53We found a lighter.
16:56And also, very strange, we found a paper towel that was rolled up and burnt at one end,
17:04almost as if it was used like some people would use it to start pilot lights or something like that.
17:09So it didn't look, this did not look accidental at all.
17:15Closer inspection of the patio reveals another clue.
17:20There was a blue chair kind of off to the left as you walk out of the house.
17:25And then there was another chair that was a gray chair, like a folding camping chair,
17:31that was turned on its side on the ground over near the wall.
17:36The gray chair was involved in the fire.
17:39It clearly had been burned.
17:40And the back portion that you would lean against, that was completely burned away.
17:44But the arms, the seat of the chair, and the footrest were not burned at all.
17:51But the most important piece of evidence comes from Carmen's body.
17:57I look closely at his face.
18:00A lot of times when someone is alive, when they're burning,
18:04you'll see soot on the nose as they're breathing in the soot.
18:08But what I found was fly larva.
18:14Fly larva is generally about 24 hours after time of death.
18:18So that told me immediately that the story Evelyn told in 911 dispatcher was a complete lie.
18:25Because there's no way, with a short amount of time,
18:28could flies have landed on the body and left their eggs behind.
18:33They definitely think that something sinister has happened to him.
18:38This is probably one of the worst ways that somebody could die.
18:43So did she not remember because of her mental illness?
18:47Or is it deception?
18:50Either way, it appears impossible that Carmen lit himself on fire.
19:09Over three hours after Evelyn Henderson called 911,
19:14investigators are now seriously questioning her account of her husband's death.
19:21When they sit down with her at the police station,
19:24they ask her to go over the details of that evening again.
19:28Her demeanor is relatively the same as it is on the scene.
19:32You know, she doesn't get upset.
19:34She is not crying.
19:36She doesn't seem like she's grieving.
19:38It did not seem like she was in any sort of shock from the incident at that point.
19:44That seemed like it may have been the case on the scene.
19:48But now we're hours later.
19:51She's removed from the scene.
19:54And she's clearly understanding the questions.
20:11I'm trying to get her into a story that's consistent that she's staying with.
20:17On the scene, her version was that the last time she saw Mr. Henderson was at 7 o'clock at
20:25night.
20:25And then she went to bed and didn't see him again until the morning.
20:30Then when she was talking to Sergeant Wilson, the time changed to 11 o'clock at night.
20:37I said, Evelyn, it didn't happen.
20:40There's fly larva in his mouth and nose.
20:44I said, that takes at least 24 hours to develop.
20:47What happened yesterday?
20:49What?
20:50Yesterday.
20:51What happened yesterday?
20:52When he caught himself on fire.
20:53Okay, so now walk us through that because now we're talking about a whole different timeline now.
20:59When someone is not giving proper sequencing, it could be due to deception,
21:03but it could also be due to a number of other factors, including trauma.
21:10Unable to put Evelyn in a consistent timeline, they change tactics.
21:16When they asked her, did you go outside to the back patio?
21:19You know, she indicates, yes, I went outside.
21:23Well, when I come to the door, it was already on fire.
21:29But I was not up there when it went first out.
21:33And that was about what time?
21:36I don't know.
21:36I guess it was 4 or 5 o'clock.
21:38I come back in to call 911, and I do.
21:45He screamed for me.
21:46He was like, come out back.
21:48He was on fire.
21:52So what did he scream?
21:55What was he screaming?
21:56My name?
21:58Evie.
21:59Evie.
22:02He fell down.
22:03He stopped talking.
22:05And she just went about her day until at approximately 5.30 in the morning.
22:10Evelyn Henderson bowed 911.
22:14Investigators are stunned to realize that at least four hours would have passed before Evelyn finally called police.
22:23When she told me that, I knew I was truly in the presence of evil.
22:27Some people make mistakes.
22:28Some people do bad things.
22:30But she, at that moment, struck me as truly an evil person.
22:34I mean, how long do you think you looked at him before you called 911?
22:3815 minutes.
22:40So you looked at him for 15 minutes?
22:4110 minutes.
22:44No, no, no, no.
22:46It was less than that.
22:47Okay.
22:47How long do you think it was?
22:48Five minutes.
22:50She knows she should have called.
22:53She saw him go down.
22:54But she just didn't.
22:56She had no good answer for why she waited to call 911.
23:00And, of course, it's hard to come up with in your mind when you're trying to think, why would anyone
23:05wait?
23:09Could she have been having a mental health issue?
23:12Possible.
23:13Absolutely.
23:13Could it be possible?
23:14But how she was telling the story, it just felt to me that it almost felt like it was more
23:20of a controlled act as opposed to a person with a mental illness.
23:24I felt she was involved, but we didn't even have anything concrete at that point.
23:31The interview continues for several more hours as police try to determine whether Evelyn had a reason to murder Carmen.
23:42She talks about their relationship as being kind of up and down, that it was good for a long time,
23:52but in recent memory that they had been arguing.
23:58That's what we're arguing about.
24:00Money.
24:01What we're arguing about money for.
24:03She goes, he doesn't know where all the money went, and he was blaming me for losing the business.
24:10Evelyn admits she mismanaged the finances of the couple's limousine company, overspending on luxuries.
24:19The spending on her part, not being able to manage money, is what kind of put them under.
24:27She said that she knew that they're going to lose the house.
24:30They were $40,000 in debt on a second mortgage.
24:33They stopped making payments on it.
24:36She was worried about losing the home, or not having a place to stay.
24:41She admitted at some point that there was a $10,000 life insurance on him.
24:50Evelyn said over and over again that she did not do this, that he lit himself on fire.
24:57She kept saying that repeatedly.
24:59I said, look, Evelyn, I said, nothing's making sense.
25:03I said, you know what?
25:05I said, I think it's going to point back to you, Evelyn.
25:09Coming up, Carmen's loved ones share disturbing stories about Evelyn.
25:16That crazy BRG series, she effing did it.
25:22But can investigators prove she committed murder?
25:26He was actually breathing in more flames than any sort of smoke.
25:32It's excruciatingly painful being burned.
25:50After a seven-hour interrogation, detectives are convinced Evelyn Henderson is the one responsible for her husband's gruesome death.
26:02At that point, based on her changing stories, not having an accurate timeline of events, and all of the evidence
26:10on scene, the decision was made to charge.
26:13The charges the district attorney told us to go with was aggravated arson, which is arson committed during the course
26:20of a felony.
26:21The felony would be the homicide.
26:22Evelyn is transported to Pennsylvania's Dauphin County Jail, while authorities continue to build a case against her.
26:32They believe personal testimonials and forensic evidence will help earn a conviction.
26:40We certainly had probable cause at that moment to believe that she had committed this crime and the charges we
26:48had charged her with.
26:49But there were things that still needed to be done.
26:53To learn more about the relationship between Evelyn and Carmen, investigators reach out to family and friends later that same
27:01day.
27:02We get a phone call from the police saying, your father was killed in an accident.
27:07They were saying that he was set on fire and said, how can that be?
27:33According to Carmen's loved ones, the problems in the marriage had nothing to do with his treatment of Evelyn.
27:42My dad gave her everything, everything you think of, trips, cars, clothes, jewelry.
27:51He did everything that she wanted to do, but she didn't seem appreciative of his efforts.
27:58They said everyone was rude to them, was mean to them, treated Mr. Henderson like garbage.
28:04She didn't want us in the house because of the things that she was probably doing to my father, and
28:08he wouldn't tell us.
28:09In order for my dad to stay happy, we just didn't go around because it seemed to upset her if
28:14we would come over there to see him.
28:19They say Evelyn's behavior seemed to grow worse over time.
28:24She really just didn't have any type of people skills, so she would be little people, she would be nasty
28:31to people.
28:34People that worked for the limousine company said she was mean and degrading and never had a kind word to
28:43say about anyone.
28:45Evelyn, she presented herself that she was better than them, and everyone was below her.
28:49She had this air that she was like royalty.
28:53Evelyn was known to have some outbursts of anger and even yelling at strangers sometimes.
28:59And we know that people who've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder often engage in that very same behavior.
29:09Once Carmen's age forced him to retire, it left Evelyn completely in charge of the business and Carmen's failing health.
29:19He couldn't do all the work that he could do on the cars, and Evelyn seemed to have more episodes,
29:27and when she was having episodes, she was also losing business.
29:32She was such a mean, horrible, evil person.
29:35A lot of people boycotting my dad's business.
29:39They used to tell my dad all the time, you need to leave her, because they saw something, too, in
29:44her that he didn't see.
29:46He never, ever complained about how she would scream and holler, how she would cuss or anything.
29:55He loved that.
29:57So I just didn't understand what happened.
30:01Why would you kill somebody that loved you so much?
30:06We suspected, just from everything that we knew, that she may have grown tired of having to care for him.
30:15Since he was elderly and was not able to do everything for himself as time went on,
30:22that was something that put a larger burden on her.
30:26I truly believe that she was waiting for him to die, and he wouldn't die.
30:32And in her evil heart, she decided that's how she was going to get more money out of him for
30:37the last time.
30:41However, police still need direct evidence she killed Carmen.
30:46I believe in Occam's razor, right, which the most simplest explanation is probably the correct one.
30:58Carmen was a known cigar smoker.
31:01He was an elderly gentleman with some physical limitations who was on oxygen.
31:06I'm just not convinced that she did it.
31:09Some people have said that she suffered from some type or types of mental illness.
31:15But I don't necessarily think that that translates to somebody becoming a murderer.
31:23The autopsy still needed to be conducted here, and then the fire investigators had to complete their investigation as well.
31:29After somebody is charged and or arrested, that's really only the beginning of the investigation.
31:51Five days after Carmen Henderson's burned body was found on his porch,
31:57a forensic pathologist performs an autopsy.
32:01The toxicology results for Carmen Henderson were not exactly what you would expect to see in a case if someone
32:11dies from a fire.
32:13Oftentimes, the thing that kills them is inhaling all of the smoke.
32:18His blood results did not bear that out.
32:22Dr. Rost was able to figure that he was alive when he was burned.
32:27The one sure indicator of that was that there was some soot that was ultimately found in his throat area.
32:39This was a fire that caught quickly, burned hot, and so there wouldn't have been a lot of smoke initially.
32:48And so he was actually breathing in more flames than any sort of smoke.
32:55Another huge thing that was found was that a majority of the worst burns were on his back,
33:02which indicated that that would have been where the fire had started.
33:06That triggered additional conversations talking about, could it have still been accidental?
33:13How could this happen where the fire essentially starts behind him if it's accidental?
33:20Looking at how cigars burn and how they can set clothing on fire,
33:26it just became more and more rock solid that there's no way he could have set himself on fire.
33:33Everything in the autopsy was consistent with this being a homicide.
33:39Based on the evidence, investigators believe Carmen was sitting in his deck chair when the fire began.
33:47The seat of the chair had almost no fire damage to it,
33:53but the upper part of the chair was completely burned away.
33:56That was something that was consistent with him being lit on fire from behind.
34:04Police obviously want to go and talk to Evelyn and confront her with this information
34:08because it does not align up with any of the stories that she has given to this point.
34:13The interview is done the same day as the autopsy.
34:18We drive to the Dauphin County Prison, asked to have her brought to an interview room.
34:23I said, Evan, look, you're the only person that was there.
34:26And I said, you and I both know you set him on fire.
34:31It was the longest pause of my life.
34:35And she goes, I did it.
34:40She indicated that Carmen was sitting outside on the back patio in the chair.
34:46He had his back towards the house.
34:49And she snuck up behind him and lit the back of the chair on fire.
34:53And that his clothes became engulfed in flames.
34:57And that he had called out, Evie, Evie, help me.
35:02As he burned and as she watched him burn.
35:08Those are chilling details, you know.
35:11Setting somebody on fire, that's not like shooting somebody from a distance.
35:16It's a very personal thing.
35:19And it's excruciatingly painful being burned.
35:24She really didn't give a reason why she had done this.
35:29But her giving the confession and then talking through the details of how she did it
35:38in a way that was totally consistent with what we knew from the physical evidence,
35:43it's validation of what you concluded happened.
35:50With Evelyn's confession, prosecutors believe they have an open and shut murder case.
35:56But at the first pretrial hearing, she once again changes her story.
36:05By the time the preliminary hearing rolled around, she was denying that she did the crime.
36:13She basically recanted her confession.
36:16So the case wasn't over yet at that point and the investigation wasn't over.
36:22If Evelyn's confession is determined to be inadmissible,
36:26prosecutors must have evidence to prove she set Carmen's chair on fire
36:31and that it burned quickly enough to kill him before he could escape the flames.
36:37The biggest thing we had left to do was to conduct an experiment that showed
36:43this chair could be lit on fire without the use of accelerants.
36:47The decision was made to take portions of the chair that we had in evidence
36:52and actually test them, do live testing on them to see if they were flammable
36:56and how fast they would be engulfed in flames.
36:59I naturally assume that if you're making a product that people use while camping,
37:03it's going to be at least flame resistant.
37:05Well, we found out later that camping chairs burn like solid rocket fuel.
37:11Detectives conclude the chair was incinerated within a matter of seconds.
37:19Obviously, he's an elderly male.
37:21We know that he has mobility issues, trouble getting around.
37:26By the time he is able to react, his clothing is now on fire.
37:33He gets up, is frantically moving around, which knocks the chair over,
37:40gets his clothes off the best he can to try to get away from the flames.
37:45But by then, it's too late.
37:48He didn't fall asleep in his favorite chair and die.
37:51He was murdered and he was burnt to death.
37:55100%, that's what the evidence proves.
37:56The only remaining question is whether a jury will believe the evidence or Evelyn.
38:05Evelyn Henderson's attorneys contended that Evelyn had been offered bipolar medication
38:10and had made a false confession to setting the fire.
38:28On March 12th, 2024, nearly two years after Carmen Henderson burned to death,
38:35his wife, Evelyn Zigarelli Henderson, goes on trial for his murder.
38:41My opening statement, I started it out essentially with what Carmen's last words likely would have been,
38:46which was, Evie, Evie, help me.
38:48And I just kind of cried that out to the jury five or six times
38:52to really get them to understand the impact of how awful of a death this was.
39:00The crux of the defense at trial was essentially to say
39:05that Evelyn Henderson gave a false confession,
39:09that the only reason she said she did it
39:12was because she had given up, as the defense put it.
39:17In many of these homicide cases, there is an element of mental health.
39:21The defense in this case certainly brought up that she was bipolar,
39:26which really the only evidence of that was she had indicated
39:30that she had stopped taking her medication.
39:33The claims of her being bipolar came from her and her alone.
39:37There was never any extrinsic evidence provided to us about that.
39:42The defense argues that the fire was simply an accident.
39:47Evelyn Henderson's attorneys also argued that Carmen Henderson
39:51set the fire himself during their closing arguments.
39:58Going into deliberations,
40:00we just hope that the jury followed the evidence.
40:03The jury's verdict in this case was very interesting.
40:06They convicted her of second-degree murder,
40:08which is felony murder in Pennsylvania.
40:11That verdict kind of indicates that the jury
40:13didn't think that she meant to kill Carmen Henderson,
40:16but believed that she set the fire.
40:21The day that she was convicted,
40:23there was something that I had in my mind,
40:27a surprise for her.
40:29Sheriff Chimene leaned over to me.
40:31He goes, you know those handcuffs that she's wearing?
40:33I said, yeah, those are Carmen's.
40:36I asked Evelyn, how did those handcuffs fit?
40:41I said, these were your husband's handcuffs.
40:44Her reaction, her eyes kind of opened up,
40:48and it kind of hit her.
40:52At Evelyn's sentencing hearing,
40:54Carmen's friends and family are given the opportunity
40:57to tell her how her actions affected them.
41:01I told her that if Mr. Carmen had survived the incident,
41:06he would come in and bandage this and all
41:08and be trying to convince the jury that she didn't mean it,
41:12he would forgive her.
41:13And I told her, that's the man you took from everyone.
41:17When I did the impact about how could you treat
41:20someone like that, that was so kind to you
41:22and loved you and gave you everything,
41:24that's what she broke.
41:26That was the first time she ever looked up
41:28and you could see in her eyes that she did it
41:30and that maybe she regretted it.
41:36Evelyn is sentenced to life in prison
41:38without the possibility of parole.
41:42It was relief that we had gotten some justice for Carmen
41:45and for his family and that they would be able
41:47to put this portion behind them.
41:49It's a very small portion of the grief
41:53that they'll have to go through for the rest of their lives.
41:55I don't know why my dad didn't see it.
41:57How could love overshadow something that evil?
42:06I want everybody to know that he was happy,
42:09always willing to help everybody,
42:13sociable, and best swimmer ever.
42:16Everyone that you meet has something good to say about that.
42:19And that was just, that kept us going,
42:22that we loved him and a lot of other people loved him.
42:26I wish everybody got a chance to be around him
42:29and I wish he was hearing that.
42:31So,
42:35I wish they got a chance to worship.
42:35Bye.
42:40Bye.
42:43You
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