His modus operandi is shocking: years before he strangled his victims, Henry Louis Wallace befriended them. By and large, they were his coworkers at Bojangles and Taco Bell. But under interrogation, he’d admit an even darker motive. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Henry Louis Wallace and what are his crimes?
After his arrest, authorities had a question for serial killer Henry Lewis Wallace. Why'd he do it? Sitting in his orange jumpsuit, Henry answered calmly. He said, quote, I honestly believe that there is another Henry, one that I cannot control. There's the good Henry and then the bad Henry.
He went on to tell researchers Ann Burgess and Robert Ressler that his good side is a chameleon who adapts to anything, any environment, any situation, and lures women in for his dark side. But Good Henry did more than simply lure women in. He spent years befriending very specific women, knowing they were the exact type Bad Henry might attack someday.
Bad Henry committed heinous crimes, while Good Henry ensured he was always the last person his victims would suspect. But don't get it wrong. There was only one Henry. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. Every Monday, we bring you the true crime stories that stand out. I'm Janice Morgan. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you.
Chapter 2: What was the duality of Henry Louis Wallace's personality?
So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Today we're covering Henry Louis Wallace. Wallace took 11 victims in the 1990s, mostly in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's nicknamed the Taco Bell Strangler because he murdered several of his Taco Bell coworkers. But his confessions revealed much more specific targets.
This episode includes discussions of violence, sexual assault, violence against children, and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us.
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Chapter 3: How did Henry Louis Wallace befriend his victims?
In late 1991, Henry Louis Wallace needed a fresh start. So he left his hometown and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. At 26, he settled in easily and made a lot of new friends. Henry's charisma and easygoing nature led people to trust him immediately. For example, when Michelle Stinson was pulled over with a stalled car, Henry stopped to help her. From then on, they were friends.
When his sister's friend Valencia Jumper started living alone after a bad roommate situation, Henry stayed at her place to help her feel safe. They became friends too. His charismatic attitude also helped him get hired at a local Bojangles restaurant. Henry's co-workers were drawn to him. He was known as someone they could rely on if they needed a favor or someone to talk to.
He eventually became friends with his fellow employees, including sisters Kathy and Caroline Love. Outside of work, Henry became a regular fixture at cookouts with his friends and neighbors, and even DJed at parties. When Henry moved on to a new job at Taco Bell, he maintained these friendships. In fact, he hired another Bojangles employee, Shauna Hawk, to join him at Taco Bell.
He even made a good impression on Shauna's mom when she stopped by. He also befriended his Taco Bell co-workers, like Leslie Little. Henry and Leslie quickly bonded over rap music and pizza, and the next time they hung out, Leslie invited her sister, Vanessa Little Mack. Henry was instantly attracted to Vanessa, and often asked Leslie about her sister during their shifts at Taco Bell.
He learned Vanessa was a 25-year-old single mom, and she worked at Carolina's medical center as a patient escort. Henry eventually took Vanessa on a date, but she preferred to remain friends. That didn't seem to bother Henry. He started dating a woman from Bojangles, Sadie McKnight. Even though he spent plenty of work hours socializing, higher-ups trusted Henry. They made him an assistant manager.
Henry's new circle only knew one side of him, good Henry. But in under a year, they became bad Henry's targets. Around June 1992, Henry borrowed his girlfriend Sadie's apartment key and made a copy. Then, he waited until he knew no one would be home and let himself in. As Henry was using the bathroom, the apartment door opened.
It was Sadie's roommate and Henry's old friend from Bojangles, 20-year-old Caroline Love. Henry announced his presence and told her he'd leave when he was done in the bathroom. But instead of leaving, Henry found Caroline sitting on the couch and kissed her on the cheek. Caroline wasn't happy. She told Henry she wouldn't tell his girlfriend, Sadie, if he promised not to do it again.
Instead of agreeing, Henry put her in a chokehold. Caroline tried to fight him off, but Henry choked her till she was unconscious, sexually assaulted her, and strangled her to death. Acting quickly, Henry wrapped Caroline's body in a bed sheet, then into a large orange trash bag, and put the body in the back seat of his car. On the way out, he stole her laundry quarters.
When Caroline didn't show up at work for the next two days, people worried. Her boss got in touch with her sister Kathy, another Bojangles worker, who in turn called a friend to try to find out what was going on. That friend was Henry Wallace. Henry put Kathy in touch with Sadie, who was clueless, but he didn't stop there.
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Chapter 4: What was the impact of Caroline Love's disappearance?
Once Vanessa was dead, Henry checked on her baby daughter as if he hadn't just brutally murdered the child's mother. Then he took the ATM card to go get cash. But as he fed the card into different machines, he realized that Vanessa had lied to him about her PIN number. Without it, he couldn't withdraw any money.
Henry left the ATM, but not before security cameras captured his attempts to use the machine. He'd just been caught on camera trying to use his victim's ATM card. However, the camera wasn't high resolution, so it was hard to identify him beyond his general appearance, a large, dark-skinned man wearing a dangling cross earring. The slip-up wouldn't lead anyone to Henry, at least not yet.
Nearly three weeks later, Henry targeted Betty Baucom. Betty was another friend from Bojangles, so when Henry asked to come inside her apartment and use her phone, Betty let him in. Henry and Betty chatted for a while. It's possible they talked about her engagement or her future plans, since at the time Betty was considering moving to Sanford, North Carolina to be closer to her fiancé.
Everything seemed normal until Henry suddenly put Betty in a chokehold and said he was robbing her. He wanted her valuables and the code to the safe at Bojangles. When Betty gave Henry the code, he released her. According to Henry, Betty asked, "'Why did you do that to me?' He responded that he was sick and that he'd hurt a lot of people.
In a temporary moment of peace, Henry embraced Betty in a hug. She told him she forgave him. For a moment, it seemed like Henry might reconsider. But it didn't last. Henry attacked Betty again, sexually assaulting her and strangling her to death. After, he walked across Betty's apartment complex.
He had other friends who lived there, specifically Lamar Woods and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Brandy Henderson. Brandy and Lamar used to invite Henry over to play cards, listen to music, and drink beer. Henry knew Lamar had to work that night, so when he stopped by, he told Brandy he was dropping something off for him. Naturally, Brandy let her friend in.
He attacked and killed her, just like he had Betty. But Brandy wasn't home alone. Her 10-month-old son was also in the apartment, and he was crying. According to Henry's confessions, he wanted to quiet the child, so he used a bathroom towel to choke the baby. Once the baby stopped crying, Henry stole Brandy and Lamar's valuables, then left the complex with Betty Bauckham's car.
He sold the stolen goods and used the money to buy drugs. The next day, Betty and Brandy's bodies were found in their apartment complex. So was Brandy's baby son. He'd survived Henry's attack. Police interviewed Brandy's loved ones and learned that her cousin had been on the phone with her shortly before she died.
He said that while they were on the phone, she let a friend into her apartment, but the cousin didn't know who it was. So they went to Brandy's boyfriend, Lamar, and asked for a list of their close friends who Brandy would immediately invite inside. Lamar gave a list of names, and officers ran it through a criminal database to see if any had a record. One name popped up. Henry Lewis Wallace.
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Chapter 5: How did Henry cover up his crimes?
Each victim had reminded him of one of two people, Henry's ex-wife and his mother. Henry explained that he'd had a difficult childhood. His dad left before he was born. He claimed his mom abused him. One of his first sexual experiences was watching multiple older classmates sexually assault a girl.
When he joined the Navy as an adult, he began using drugs and enacted his violent fantasies on sex workers. Yet, amid all this, Henry dated his high school sweetheart, married her, and had a baby. In his early 20s, Henry started acting out his violent desires on his wife. Henry told the police, quote, She told me that when we had sex, it reminded her of when she was raped.
She later ended the marriage. Henry continued enacting sexual violence on sex workers, but now he described it as, I even visualized it being my wife. He later said he would have killed his ex-wife eventually if he hadn't moved states. Soon after, in 1990, Henry met 18-year-old Tashonda Bethea. She went to his former high school and lived in his neighborhood. She reminded him of his mother.
For a while, Henry and Tashonda had what he called a nonverbal agreement that they were seeing each other. He drove her places and brought her lunch at school. One day, Henry was driving his car when he spotted Tashonda walking alone. He picked her up, drove her into the woods, and sexually assaulted her at gunpoint. Then he strangled Tashonda.
When she regained consciousness, Henry slit her wrists and throat. Then he threw her body into a pond. Henry stood at the edge of the pond and watched Tashonda's body sink into the water to make sure she was dead. Describing the murder, Henry denied his own agency, saying, "'I knew that it was going to happen, but I couldn't prevent it from happening.'"
Two weeks after Tashonda went missing, a young boy went fishing in that pond and discovered her body. The authorities questioned people who knew her, including Henry Lewis Wallace, but there was no evidence to link Henry to Tashonda's murder. This first killing in 1990 established the pattern of his future murders against young black women who reminded him of his ex and his mother.
He didn't just befriend them for easy access, he seemingly sought out certain traits. Even the victim Henry couldn't name fit this bill. Henry confessed that in May 1992, one month before he killed Caroline Love, he picked up a sex worker. Instead of paying her, he beat her to death with a rock. Later, authorities linked Henry's confession to the unsolved homicide of Sharon Nance.
Sharon was 33, black, and a mother to a young son. This suggests Henry would have been a killer even if he'd never made a single friend. He might have found the same victims randomly. He told the men in the interrogation room, I know that I'm sick. I know that I have a problem. Hearing Henry's bombshell confession, investigators had a major lingering question. Where was Caroline Love?
For years, she'd been classified as missing. Henry confessed to dumping Caroline's body in the woods the night he killed her. Later, he returned to the grave site to remove the orange trash bag because he feared it would attract attention. He also said he moved her remains from their original location and into a ravine to further cover up the crime.
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Chapter 7: What patterns emerged in Henry's criminal behavior?
We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're tuning in on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. For more information on Henry Lewis Wallace, among the many sources we used, we found contemporary reporting by the Charlotte Observer and ABC 2020 extremely helpful to our research.
Stay safe out there. This episode was written and researched by Matt Gilligan, edited by Maggie Admire, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Janice Morgan.