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Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement.

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Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.

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On December twenty second, nineteen eighty one, around one to one fifteen am, a driver was going down a dark road Mineral Springs Mountain Road near the town of Valdez, North Carolina.

It was a dark, snowy night and there was fresh snow on the ground from the night before.

The driver saw beige dots in two ten parked on the side of the road.

They slowed down to check out what was happening.

They were thinking if another driver was stranded on the side of the road like that, they could be in big trouble.

They saw that the car had run into an embankment and that the driver's door was open.

As they approached the car, they realized that the car was still running.

Next to the car in a ditch was the body of a young woman, nineteen year old Ronda Henson.

She was lying on her back with her arms by her side.

She looked peaceful, like she had been starting to make a snow angel, except for the bullet hole in her chest.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murdered never happens.

I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.

If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can.

Reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram.

At Helen Gonepod.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

The driver of the car called nine to one one and the police rushed to the saint.

From the beginning, the whole town was trying to figure out what happened to Ronda Henson.

This was a very strange set of circumstances.

Ronda had been driving home from her company Christmas party at the American Legion Hall in Hickory, North Carolina.

She headed west on Interstate forty and took the exit for her home, Mineral Springs Mountain Highway through fifty.

Then she turned right and drove up the hill toward home.

As she was climbing that hill, she was shot once through the chest, and the bullet had taken a long and kind of strange trajectory.

It went through the trunk of her dots in two ten and then through the back seat, the front seat, and eventually through Ronda's chest, exiting through the front of her chest, nicking her heart and lump.

The shot was fatal and would have killed Ronda almost instantly.

Police were able to figure out the shot hit while she was driving.

She was going around twenty five miles per hour at the time, and after she was shot, her car rolled into the embankment.

The car had then rolled down the hill, a little bit across the highway and finally.

Lodged in a ditch.

She was only half a mile from home.

Police wondered had her shooting been accidental, did a hunter fire off a stray bullet?

And was she just a victim of a very unlucky circumstance, or was it someone she knew, someone who stalked and killed her.

Investigators said that given her injury, Ronda could not have gotten out of the car on her own, so it's assumed that someone dragged her body out into the snow and placed her on her back with her arms at her side.

But who.

Ronda Henson was born on December thirteenth, nineteen sixty two and grew up in Valdez, so she had lived in that area pretty much her entire life.

She was very close to her family and her parents, Judy and Bobby, and her brother Robbie.

She still lived at home with them.

Ronda had graduated from high school.

Valdez didn't have a high school, so Ronda attended a consolidated school called East Burke High School.

Ronda's mother, Judy, said that in high school, Ronda was very involved in sports, including basketball, track, in tennis, and that everyone loved her daughter.

After graduation, Ronda worked as a clerical worker for a local steel company.

In the weeks before Ronda's death, her parents were noticing that something seemed wrong.

Ronda appeared distracted and uneasy, as though she were carrying a secret she didn't know how to share.

Ronda Henson had a boyfriend named Greg McDowell.

She started dating him during her junior year, and they seemed to get serious pretty fast.

At first.

The local Record newspaper said that they seemed like an ideal match, but Ronda's mom, Judy, told several media outlets, including Unsolved Mysteries, which did an episode about the case, that Greg would write Ronda notes, notes that she said became more and more irate, because she said Greg would get jealous and feel like Ronda wasn't giving him enough attention.

Some of the notes from Greg were normal and sweet, like the one that read happy to your anniversary, thanks for making me so happy, but another reportedly read quote, I apologize for pushing you.

I really lost my temper and I'm sorry for being so st stupid.

Please forgive me end quote.

Judy told the TV show that from her conversations with Ronda.

She believed that Greg was stressing her daughter out.

She said she had noticed in the past that while Ronda was dating Greg, she was not doing as well in school.

Her grades were dropping.

But then after high school, Greg went to college at North Carolina State University.

After that, Ronda's mom said that her daughter's behavior went more or less back to normal.

Then Ronda graduated, she got her first job, the clerical job at the steel company.

Greg's mother, Betty, actually worked at the same steel company as Ronda.

The Christmas party on Friday, December twenty second was a big deal to Ronda.

She was looking forward to it.

She'd only been working at the steel company for three months, so this was her first ever office Christmas party as a working woman.

According to Unsolved Mysteries, Ronda had done a couple of things that raised red flags to Judy in the weeks before her disappearance.

One thing was that Judy said Ronda started showering during the night, telling Judy she felt dirty.

And two Judy remembered that Ronda was asking her mother's strange questions about relationships, including whether it was ever acceptable to date a married man.

Judy told the program quote I said Ronda, There's never a time that it's all right to go with a married man.

The only thing that comes from that is people getting hurt.

End quote.

Ronda's father, Bobby, worked nights at a bakery, and he also reportedly told law enforcement that when he would leave for work in the middle of the night, he saw Ronda's lights on in her room.

He wondered what was keeping his daughter up at night.

One day, Ronda said she had something to tell Bobby, he told the TV show quote, I said, what is it, Ronda?

I said, no matter whether it's good or bad, tell me.

And she said, I'll think about it.

And she never did explain, never did tell me why what it was that she's afraid to tell me?

End quote.

Could Ronda have been dating a married man?

Could that have been the reason why she was staying up nights and behaving in a strange manner and taking distance from her boyfriend, Or maybe Greg's jealousy was starting to take a toll on her.

On the other hand, this could have all been a complete coincidence.

Judy and Bobby have no way of knowing for sure.

The teenage angst that Ronda experience could have been a clue.

Then again, it could have been completely unrelated to her killing.

And it's always hard in hindsight because the temptation can be there to find patterns or link events that aren't necessarily related to the murder.

Everything felt like a clue.

Police interviewed Ronda's friends and colleagues from the Christmas party.

All them said Ronda was acting normally, nothing was amiss.

She seemed to be having a really good time.

Ronda left the party at around twelve thirty am with two of her friends.

Now at this point there was another change in her routine, possibly something that could have been significant.

Ronda was supposed to stay over with a female friend named Sherry Pittman, but instead she dropped her friends off and eventually decided to go home instead.

No one really knows why she made that decision.

So Ronda set out and drove her Dotson down Mineral Springs Road for the ten mile trip home.

Around one o'clock in the morning, Ronda's mother woke up with a strange feeling.

On December twenty second.

Judy told Unsolved Mysteries that at exactly one am, quote, I woke up feeling panicky, scared because I felt like something had happened to Ronda.

I felt like Ronda was dead.

I felt like she had been in an automobile accident.

End quote.

She and her husband were so freaked out they started turning on their police scanner and listening to see if they could hear accident reports.

Bobby, in desperation, called Jill Turner, Ronda's best friend, to see if maybe Ronda was with her.

He had no luck.

They didn't hear anything until police broke the news in person.

Officers came to the family home at two thirty am to announce that Ronda had.

Been found dead.

Police started looking for witnesses who had been out on the highway at that time.

Police talked to one witness who drove under the I forty bridge on the road where Ronda was murdered.

The witness told police that she saw a car, a blue nineteen seventies model Chevrolet, facing in a northerly direction with two white males in the vehicle.

The witness stated that the Chabelle had damage on the front part of the car.

They described the driver as a dark haired man with a medium build.

A second witness said later in the morning they passed a blue GM Chevrolet driving fast with one person at the wheel.

That same witness saw Ronda's car pulled over on the side of the road.

They said that.

They saw a white man standing near the driver's door, leaning into a woman.

They thought that maybe it was a drunk couple, so that witness drove on.

Later under hypnosis, the witness described the man as white with dark brown hair, between five ten and six feet tall.

They also remembered passing another car part further down the road from the scene.

This was a black or blue transam.

So who were the men on the road that night.

To this day, police don't know.

They have never found them.

So the first theory that we have to explore is could this have been a random accident.

Test showed that Ronda had been shot once with a high powered rifle.

Police never found the weapon, but they were able to determine that it was a larger rifle and not, for example, a small handgun.

Ronda was killed with only a single bullet, the one that passed through the trunk of her car, the back of her car seat, and into her heart.

One scenario that I've considered is that someone could have been using high beams to shoot deer or some other kind of game, and then their stray bullet hit the car.

Maybe they saw the car roll off the road and went to see if Ronda was alive.

Then maybe they panicked and left the scene rather than call the police.

Because the bullet came through the rear of the car, it was initially possible to imagine a random shot from someone near the road, or maybe from an overpass.

However, several details at the scene raised serious doubts about the idea of an accident.

The main thing was that Ronda's body was found outside the vehicle, placed neatly on the ground.

Her arms were described as deliberately arranged or placed at her sides, meaning that she did not get into that position by herself, though police couldn't say for sure if she had been positioned that way on purpose, or if potentially someone dragged her out of the car and dropped her there in a more random fashion.

Then there was the open driver's door.

Police say it was opened after the shot was fired, and there were fingerprints that were not Ronda's found on the door handle.

There was no sign of a struggle inside the car, and nothing appeared to have been stolen.

Investigators began to suspect that the shooter was close enough to approach the car after firing, suggesting intent not randomness.

If someone did target Ronda, judging by the bullet path, the shooter would have had to have been an excellent marksman.

But police seemed to dropped the random act of violence theory pretty quickly because of the way Ronda's body was placed.

They quickly moved on to another theory, the possibility that Ronda could have been targeted.

This case is technically still open, so our foyer requests.

Have unfortunately not come back.

But over the years this case has had some prominent media coverage.

The reporter Larry J.

Griffin published a serialized investigation.

He did a ton of research, He interviewed Ronda's family members, and got access to her autopsy report.

He posted parts of it on The Wilkes Record, a local North Carolina newspaper.

Most of it is no longer online, but parts of it are available on the Wayback Machine, and Larry has also posted a lot of the Wilkes Record content on Facebook.

At first, police reportedly believed this had been some sort of an accident, that Rona had been the victim of a random stray bullet, but again, the apparent placement of the body and the fact that nothing was stolen made this less convincing over time, so police began to seriously consider the possibility that Ronda was being stalked by someone she knew.

Investigators began to suspect the killer might have followed or intercepted Ronda, possibly someone familiar.

With her routine and her route home.

Larry Griffin was able to get a copy of Ronda's autopsy report and has posted part of that report online.

According to the autopsy report, Ronda was fully clothed in the outfit she so carefully styled for the party, a sweater over a shirt, skirt, slip, braw underwear, panty, host and choose.

The back of her sweater, shirt and slip were soaked with blood.

Ronda had one small round bruise about the size of a dime on her left side under her breast.

There was another area of bruising and a four to five inch patch toward the middle of the left breast.

So her family wondered did that bruise happen as a result of the shooting or was it something that happened before.

Could she have gotten into an altercation with someone earlier that night.

The patch of bruising could have been a result of the impact when she hit the steering wheel.

There was no mention in the report of whether or not she was wearing a seatbelt.

Tears in Ronda's clothing matched the gunshot wounds, and the autopsy report found quote no other significant external injuries are appreciated end quote.

The bullet had gone through the trunk lid, through the back seat, through the front seat, and then hit Ronda in the chest, which killed her.

Police were able to determine she had been traveling uphill and going about twenty five miles per hour when she was shot.

After being shot, Ronda's car crashed against the embankment.

Judy Henson's former sister in law, Linda Price.

Was an emt.

She wrote some comments and questions for the police.

One of the things she asked was whether the bruise that Ronda had could have been something that happened earlier that night, or whether it definitely happened either as a result of the car accident or the gunshot.

Law enforcement said they couldn't be sure.

It was likely in their opinion that the gunshot caused the bruising, but they couldn't rule out the possibility that Ronda might have gotten into some sort of physical altercation before that final fatal car ride.

Either way, the gunshot was the cause of death.

Now police were exploring the possibility that someone was stalking Ronda.

They were putting together the timeline of event leading up to her shooting.

On December twenty first, Ronda worked at Hickory Steele.

During her lunch hour that day, Ronda reportedly went shopping with a guy named Mark.

Now, Mark was the boyfriend of Ronda's best friend Jill, and the four of them, Jill, Mark, Ronda, and Greg often doubledated or went out as part of a group.

They were all close friends.

Mark wanted help picking out a present for Jill, so Ronda and Mark went together to the nearby mall.

When he dropped her back home that day, Ronda left the gray hoodie she had been wearing in the back of Mark's car.

Ronda was excited about the Christmas party that Hickory Steele was having on Friday night at the American Legion Hut.

Again, this was her first office Christmas party ever.

She had only been there a few months.

Everything was new and exciting.

Ronda's mother, Judy, kept a journal during this time.

She shared a lot of her entries with Larry Griffin, the reporter.

Judy remembered one of the things going on that week was that Ronda wasn't sure whether or not to invite Greg with her to the party.

Judy said Ronda made many comments to her about Greg, saying, quote, Mom, if I invite him and every time I talk to anyone else there, he's going to.

Be upset about it.

End quote.

Judy wrote in her journal, quote, I don't think that Ronda really wanted to deal with his jealousy.

I think she had gotten tired of his demanding to know everything she did, where she went, who she talked to, everything.

End quote.

Judy Henson went shopping with her daughter at the Valley Hills Mall, where Ronda tried on some new outfits and they had lunch.

Ronda didn't end up finding an outfit, but she and her mom had a great time.

Greg continued to be a topic of conversation that day.

Judy said Ronda was worried about the fact that Greg was coming home that day from college.

She said Greg might have called she was worried she wouldn't be home to take his call and that he might get annoyed.

They got home from shopping and Ronda's brother, Robbie, said Greg had been calling all day.

Robbie told Ronda she needed to call Greg back.

Greg picked Ronda up that night they went to a small Christmas party near Mineral Springs Mountain.

Ronda and Greg left for the party, but they were away for less than an hour when Greg dropped her back home.

Judy said she asked her daughter about why she came home so quickly, and that Ronda said something about Greg being annoyed with her about the shopping trip.

On December thirteenth, the week before Ronda was killed, she had lunch with Greg and his family.

Charles McDowell, Greg's father was the senior pastor at a nearby church, and Betty worked at the same steel company as Ronda.

Ronda's birthday was December eleventh, so this was kind of a holiday lunch slash birthday celebration for Ronda.

Greg gave her another necklace for her birthday.

On Monday, December twenty first, nineteen eighty one, when Ronda came home from work, she had a potted plant with her as a gift from her boss at the steel company, Don Colson.

On Tuesday, December twenty second, the last day of Ronda's life, there were some irregularities in her routine.

First of all, it was snowing that morning, so normally Ronda drove her nineteen eighty one dots in two ten to work, but on that morning, because of the snow, she caught a ride with her coworker at Hickory Steele, a salesman named Wayne Chapman.

But Wayne didn't pick her up at home.

She walked to Exit one twelve to meet up with him, which was about half a mile from her house, and Ronda had no jacket.

Apparently Greg had one of her jackets, and she had left her gray hoodie in Mark's car during the shopping trip, so on that day she wore a green and gold Green Bay Packer jacket.

A neighbor saw Ron walk past his house wearing that jacket.

While she was walking to the meet up point, she ran into a guy who lived nearby named Brian Lowman.

She later told her mom that he asked her out, but that she told him she already had a boyfriend.

Right after that, she ran into another man named Bill Gladden.

Bill was riding by with his wife and their dog, a poodle inside the car.

They gave Ronda a lift up the road to the exit on inter State BOARDY, where she met Wayne, her coworker.

She later told her mother she made a split second decision to accept the ride because this wasn't just a single man.

He had a woman in a poodle inside the car, and that made her feel more secure.

She went to work at Hickory Steele and it seemed like just an average day at work.

Ronda called her mom, Judy, which was typical for them.

That's when Ronda told her about Brian asking her out that morning and her saying no.

She mentioned that Greg was taking her at lunch to go shoe shopping.

At noon, Ronda went on her lunch break with one of her coworkers who saw Greg parked in a blue Chevy.

They went out and she came back after lunch.

The rest of the day, from what we know, continued as normal, and then Wayne Chapman dropped Ronda off at five thirty PM.

By now Ronda was in full party prep mode.

According to phone records, She called Greg and that call lasted about three minutes.

Twelve minutes later, Ronda.

Took another call from Greg, and this phone call also lasted around three minutes.

Police asked Judy if she heard the contents of these brief phone conversations, but Judy said she really didn't.

Judy told law enforcement that Ronda took the calls in her bedroom so that she would have some privacy.

Judy did say that while Ronda was getting ready, she made a comment.

About Greg trying to pull a guilt trip on her, but she said she was determined to have a good time at the party.

Ronda finished getting ready and walked out of the door at around six thirty pm.

Her plan was to pick up her friend and coworker, Sherry, the same person who she was planning on spending the night with.

Ronda drove out in her Dotson into the night.

Her family never saw her alive again.

As we said, witnesses told police she.

Had a good time at the party.

She was in a great mood when she set off home at around twelve thirty am.

According to Larry Griffin reports, Ronda arrived back at Sherry's house around midnight.

She asked to use the phone to.

Call Greg After that phone call, she decided to drive back home and then along that route she was fatally shot.

Police did talk to two witnesses who said they had seen Ronda and her car on Mineral Springs Road with an unidentified man.

So police had a strange set of circumstances.

The single shot fired, the wild bullet trajectory, but then the fact that the car door was open and Ronda's body was pulled out.

But police did not have a ton of physical evidence.

They did find fingerprints on Ronda's driver's side door, fingerprints that are unidentified.

They believe these fingerprints may have come from the killer.

Unfortunately, they may never be identified because the Burke County Sheriff's Department has admitted there were some major mistakes made with some of the evidence in this case.

They lost crucial evidence, including the trunk lid of Ronda Henson's nineteen eighty one dots in two ten and the fingerprints.

The ones that were taken from the car driver's side door were also reportedly accidental destroyed.

This was obviously devastating for Ronda Henson's family.

Ronda's parents also started asking questions about the gray hoodie, the one that was in the back of Mark's car.

We know that the hoodie was in Mark's car on December eighteenth, nineteen eighty one, the day of the shopping trip, but then on the morning of December twenty third, nineteen eighty one, when investigators were doing an inventory on her vehicle, investigators found that same gray hoodie on the sun deck of her car.

Her parents say they didn't believe it was in her car when she left home on the evening of December twenty second, nineteen eighty one, to head out to the Christmas party, so they wondered how did that sweatshirt get there from Mark's nineteen seventy seven Buick Regal to Ronda's car.

There was something else found in Ronda's car, something that her parents claim wasn't in the car when she left for the party, a stuffed animal she and Greg had bought while on vacation together at Myrtle Beach.

Police never really addressed or answered any questions about how these items made it into Ronda's car, and her family have not been able to get answers about chain of custody, of evidence, or many other things from the police.

Judy Henson has stated the family has asked to see Ronda's clothes, but she said the police said no.

Eventually, state authorities became involved in the case, but Judy said they haven't had much luck in communication with them either.

Judy Henson told Larry Newell the reporter, that they have been told by an SBI investigator that the case should, in her words, be quote put back in the drawer where it.

Belongs end quote.

Even though they.

Lost Ronda's trunk, which is obviously a catastrophe, police did get some early clues.

Police told Judy.

And Bobby they were able to determine that the bullet was fired from somewhere behind the car and on a slight elevation, something like an overpass or a hill or bank.

That, combined with the neat placement of Ronda's body, leads many to think the shooter was close enough to walk up to the car afterward, rather than some distant random hunter.

Police have interviewed all of Ronda's friends, including Greg and Mark, over the years.

There have been reports that Greg took two polygraphs, that the first was inconclusive and the second, taking years later, he passed.

Of course, polygraph tests are not admissible in court for a reason, and the refusal to take them, or even failing them, is not indicative of guilt.

It's just an investigative tool.

Neither Greg Mark, nor anyone else connected to them has ever been arrested or charged in any way with Ronda's shooting.

Police did talk to Greg's family.

Judy has stated law enforcement interviewed Greg's mother, Betty, and that she allegedly told them she and Greg had had questions about Larry, Greg's father, but law enforcement apparently concluded Betty's statements could have come as a result of her very acrimonious breakup with Greg's father and allegations of infidelity.

There is no suggestion that anyone in Greg's family were involved in Ronda's shooting in any way.

Police are still appealing to the public for any information on Ronda's case.

The reward for any information on Ronda's case started at five thousand dollars set by the town of Valdiz, but then the Burke County Sheriff, in cooperation with other law enforcement and governmental agencies, has announced a combined reward of up to ninety four thousand, seven hundred dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for Ronda's death.

Judy Henson told Fox News in twenty fifteen that she and her husband have differing opinions about what could have happened to their daughter.

Her husband believed that it was.

Quote just a random shot by some people in the area playing around with a rifle end quote, but Judy said she continues to believe that her daughter was targeted.

I read a comment somewhere talking about the case.

It said, basically, if the shooting was deliberate, it was the luckiest shot in the world, and if it wasn't deliberate, it was the unluckiest.

And I agree with that sentiment.

And investigators are still divided on which scenario fits here.

They still don't know if Ronda's shooting was accidental or murder.

I have considered another possibility that it could have been somewhere in the middle.

Maybe the two guys the witness saw that night were driving around and fired off a shot, either in road rage or as a joke, and.

Their shot killed Ronda.

Or maybe it was someone firing shots from the highway.

If someone did hit her by accident, they may have gone down to check on her, and then when they realized she was dead, panicked, and fled the scene.

If Ronda Henson had lived today, she would be in her sixties.

Judy said that while she.

Still hopes and prays that someone would come forward with information that could help lead to answers about what really happened to Ronda, she clings to that final memory of her daughter dressed up to go out to that party.

She was so excited about dressed in the sweater and skirt that her mom helped her pick out and buy.

Judy said, quote, she looked the most beautiful I had ever seen her on that night.

When we saw her again, it was in a funeral home.

End quote.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.

It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etiis Perez.

Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review.

Noah Camera mixed and scored this episode.

Our theme song is by Ben Sale.

Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley.

Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plush channel on Apple Podcasts.

If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram.

At Helen gonpot.

If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five that's six seven eight seven four four six' one four or.

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