State Fair killings
This is a repost of a Cold Case OKC story about the deaths of Cheryl Genzer and Lisa Pennington. Today, May 20, is Genzer’s birthday.
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WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FAIR?
Twenty years ago, two sisters vanished. Their bodies were found about a month later The unsolved case is among Oklahoma’s most notorious. It became known as the State Fair Murders.
By Ken Raymond
Staff Writer
The plan was simple. While their brother drove his girlfriend home before her 11 p.m. curfew, Cheryl Genzer and Lisa Pennington would stay at the Oklahoma State Fair. They’d meet their brother back at the space needle when he finished his errand.It shouldn’t have been a big deal. The sisters, ages 25 and 16 respectively, weren’t alone. They were hanging out with Lane Henley, 31, whom Genzer knew through a friend, and Henley’s friend Doug Lawson, 21, who was working at the fair. He’d been letting them ride the monorail for free.
But when their brother returned, Genzer and Lisa were nowhere to be found.
Not that night. Not any night. At least, not alive.
It was Sept. 23, 1987, and one of Oklahoma’s most notorious crimes had just been committed.
Uncharacteristic behavior
The sisters weren’t reported missing right away.
They vanished midweek, and while the family was worried, they didn’t call the police until Sunday. Their mother, Charlette Pennington, was worried but said she kept hoping they’d return.
Still, the whole thing was out of character for the sisters. Lisa always called if she was going to be late, and Genzer would have been in touch. In fact, Genzer had stopped by her parents’ house the morning before she disappeared. She chatted with her mom over coffee.
Genzer, a tall blonde, recently had separated from her husband and was staying with a friend. She told her mom about an interview she’d had for a job as a house painter.
“That’s what her dad did,” Charlette Pennington said. “That was his job. She kind of took over on that.” When she got up to leave, Genzer didn’t know she’d be going to the fair that night. She just happened to run into the others at a convenience store and agreed to tag along.
Now, she told her mom she’d see her later. Charlette Pennington told her to be careful.
A few hours later, Lisa hit her mother up for money.
Her brother had invited her to join him at the fair. Charlette Pennington handed over a $10 bill. She hoped Lisa would have a good time. She deserved it.
When she was 11, Lisa underwent surgery to correct her scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She spent a miserable year in a body cast and emerged with a long scar down her back.
Since then, she’d grown into a quiet, pretty girl who was every bit a teenager. She loved music and had covered her bedroom walls in posters of Motley Crue, a popular metal band. Like Genzer, Lisa — who had recently dyed her hair black — wouldn’t leave the house unless she looked perfect, even if all she was doing was taking the garbage to the curb.
“It didn’t matter if they were going anywhere or not,” Charlette Pennington said. “It was just part of their routine. They’d get up, shower and do their makeup. Every day.”
That was the thing that worried their mother the most. Lisa’s makeup was still at home. So were her clothes. No way would her little princess run off in the clothes she was wearing.
She washed Lisa’s clothes and left them hanging on a line outside. If her daughter was free, Charlette Pennington knew, she’d come and get them.
She never did.
Kidnapped or on the run?
Before they went to police, the family approached Lane Henley. He’d been one of the last to see the sisters, if not the last.
They’d been to his house that night, he said, but they were perfectly OK when they left.
“Lane gave three different stories,” Charlette Pennington said. “He said they left walking. Another was that they called someone to come pick them up. Another was that they left walking to go use a phone, which nobody could figure out because he had a phone.”
A few days later, the disappearances became a police matter.
Charlette Pennington and her husband, Rocky, are critical of the investigation. At first, they said, officers wouldn’t even consider the possibility that something bad had happened.
“Police kept telling us they were runaways,” Charlette Pennington said. “I told them they weren’t. They had no reason to run away.”
About a month after the sisters vanished, The Oklahoman reported that “police initially thought the two had left town with a friend who had reportedly gone to Mexico, so no foul play was suspected.”
By the time the story ran, police knew the truth.
Lisa and Genzer were dead.
Oct. 20, 1987, a salesman test-driving an off-road vehicle with a customer found the sisters’ bodies in a shallow grave in a field near the 600 block of NW 132. The lower half of each body had been exposed, apparently by animals.
They had been shot to death.
Star witness fails to shine
Charlette Pennington was watching television the day the bodies were found. A few seconds of footage aired, and a news anchor said something about two corpses.
Instantly, she knew it was her daughters.
“I felt weak all over when I saw that,” Charlette Pennington said. “I couldn’t feel. My mind just went blank. I didn’t know what to do next. What should I do? Should I go out there? Should I call the police? I was there all alone. … I just sat down in a chair and started bawling, because there wasn’t anything else I could do.”
To an extent, she still feels that helpless.
About three years after the killings, Lane Henley was charged with murder. It was a moment of vindication for the family, who had believed all along he was responsible.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for three years,” Rocky Pennington said when he learned about the charges. “We’ve all been praying for this.”
Henley’s friend, Doug Lawson — the same guy who’d been giving the sisters free rides on the monorail — was the state’s star witness, even though he’d provided Henley with an alibi 2 ½ years earlier. In exchange for his testimony, he’d been offered immunity from prosecution on three felony drug charges.
In an affidavit filed with Henley’s arrest warrant, police detailed Lawson’s story:
He and Henley, along with the sisters, left the fair and went to another friend’s house, where they snorted cocaine and smoked marijuana.
After a while, they left that house and went to Henley’s place, where they “consumed more drugs” and drank beer. He and Genzer left for about 45 minutes to go buy more beer, and when they returned, Henley said he’d raped Lisa.
Genzer found out and confronted Henley. “Lawson stated that he saw and heard Henley and Cheryl get into another argument … and that he saw Henley strike Cheryl in the face with a .357 Magnum pistol, knocking her unconscious.”
Genzer revived in Henley’s car, and he struck her with a pistol. She got out and tried to run back into the house, but Henley hit her in the face with a shovel. (Police seized a shovel, hoe and dirt rake from Henley’s home during a search in 1987.)
In the affidavit, a detective noted that he saw blood inside Henley’s car on the passenger side front door. A “radio underneath the dash had been broken as if a struggle occurred inside the vehicle.”
They had a suspect. They had charges. They had evidence.
Then the bottom fell out.
The case disintegrates
In 1992, Lawson said his testimony was a lie.
“He said he made it up,” prosecutor Gary Ackley later testified. “It destroyed the prosecution. Lawson was the only link to Henley and the murder of the girls.”
Without him, the case fell apart. The charges were dropped on March 26, 1992, and Henley was a free man.
Lawson was arrested moments after he recanted and later pleaded guilty to perjury. He received a 10-year prison sentence, with five years suspended.
Oklahoma City police consider the case open but inactive.
“We still consider Henley the main suspect,” said Inspector Kyle Eastridge.
Soon after, Henley moved to Roswell, N.M. In 2000, his girlfriend went missing. Molly Keahey, 35, was later found in a shallow grave by the Pecos River, about 15 miles outside of town. She had been shot in the head.
Roswell police officer Travis Holley helped with a search of Henley’s residence while working for the Chavis County sheriff’s office. He said Henley was a suspect in Keahey’s death, but investigators could not build a case against him.
Henley’s last known address was in Alamogordo, N.M. He does not have a listed telephone number and could not be reached for comment.
Charlette and Rocky Pennington are getting older. It’s been 20 years since their daughters vanished, and now the couple are in poor health.
Charlette, 63, had a heart attack in October 1994 and underwent a triple bypass.
She hates the fair. Can’t even stand to hear its theme song on TV or radio ads.
Rocky, 65, needs a liver transplant. His hearing is fading. He won’t have to hear the fair’s jingle much longer.
They think someone in Henley’s old neighborhood has information that could close the case. Over the years, they’ve passed on tips to police, posted flyers and tried to convince someone to post a reward.
Their daughters’ case has been featured on “America’s Most Wanted.”
They’ve been tireless, but now they’re finally feeling the fatigue.
“All of this we live with is just pulling us down,” Charlette Pennington said.
“We know that someone knows something.”
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Keep this case alive. It only takes one piece of information to put the whole puzzle together.