Naman Shrestha
The episode titled ‘Grave Secrets’ of ‘Murder by Numbers’ delves deep into the brutal murder cases of Juanita Wofford and Ruth Henderson in the 1990s. After taking the wrong man into custody for murder, the police realized that a serial killer was wreaking havoc on the most vulnerable citizens of the Arkansas town. Thanks to the in-depth interviews with the loved ones of the victims, the viewers get a detailed account of the entire case that spanned almost a decade.
Juanita Wofford Was Found Covered in Blood in Her Residence
In Greenwood, Arkansas, Elmer R. Wofford and Myrtle M. Dugger Wofford brought a little bundle of joy into the world on January 23, 1935, when they were blessed with a daughter — Juanita Ann Wofford. Amidst the love and support of her parents and three siblings — Hilda Faye Wofford Kennedy, Elmer Ralph Wofford Jr., and Dale Leon Wofford — Juanita grew up to be a loving and faithful soul, involved in her church from early on in her life. Although she had a soft spot for children, she neither got married nor entered motherhood herself. Self-sufficient yet welcoming, she used to live by herself. Having lived 58 years, Juanita still had things to look forward to. Unfortunately, fate had other ideas for her.
On June 23, 1993, when Juanita did not show up to a church event, which was a rarity, a couple of men from the church went over to her residence to check up on her. What they found was far from pleasant — the door was broken into and a foul smell was coming from inside. Soon, the police were informed, and upon their inspection of the house, they discovered the 58-year-old dead in her bed with multiple stab wounds. They also learned that the body had been there for a day or two.
More unsettling revelations included the fact that she had been sexually assaulted after her death and that someone had urinated near her body. Talking about the matter, Jay Rider, Former Captain of the Fort Smith Police Department, told KNWA Fox 24, “From the aspect of what was done with the victims, it was probably one of the most horrific homicides I ever worked. It was a really horrific crime scene. There was blood in every place…Clearly, she had a violent confrontation. You could see defense marks all over her hands and arms. Stab wounds to the head, and torso.”
Ruth Henderson’s Crime Scene Had Various Similarities With Juanita’s
A couple of years down the line, Arkansas saw another gruesome murder of a 74-year-old woman named Ruth Pearl Adams Henderson, daughter of John Philip Adams and Sarah Elizabeth Arnold. Born on Valentine’s Day of 1921, she was raised in the company of her siblings, including Laura Elizabeth Adams Burgess, Julietta Marie “Judy” Adams Davenport, Thell Boatright Adams, Jerome A “Jerry” Adams, Mildred Fern Adams Hall. Unlike Juanita, Ruth was married to Melvin Charles Henderson with a daughter named Patricia Sue “Pat” Henderson Keyes.
However, just like Juanita, 74-year-old Ruth suffered a brutal attack on August 10, 1995, in Van Buren, Arkansas. She was found assaulted and murdered in an equally disturbing manner. Jay Rider said that there were “so many stab wounds you could just stand there and count them.” Upon spotting uncanny similarities between the two vicious murder cases, the police launched an intense investigation and left no stone unturned until they got their hands on the killer/s responsible for these homicides.
The Same Person Was Behind the Killings of Juanita Wofford and Ruth Henderson
The police wasted no time in launching an investigation after discovering Juanita Wofford dead in her residence. During the course of the investigation, they interrogated numerous persons of interest but landed on a local man named Danny Bennett, who eventually confessed to his crimes. They took him into custody and charged him with the murder of Juanita. However, when they found a strikingly similar murder scene of Ruth Henderson, they thought they had the wrong person behind bars for murder.
After releasing Danny Bennett, the detectives resumed their investigation to find the killer who took the lives of two innocent women. However, all roads led to dead ends, and the case saw no movement whatsoever for the following five years. In March 2000, the case cracked wide open when the father of a 16-year-old girl came home to find her daughter being raped and stabbed by one of his family friends, Charles Ray Vines. After taking the attacker into custody and digging deeper into him, the authorities linked him to the murders of Juanita and Ruth by matching his DNA with both cases. With a reputation for being a nice guy, the divorced father of two knew some of his victims.
In order to avoid the death penalty, Charles confessed to the rapes and murders he committed in detail to the police. Consequently, he was found guilty of two counts of capital murder, one count of residential burglary, and one count of rape. Finally, various years after his crimes, he received three life sentences in March 2001 without the possibility of parole. After serving nearly two decades of his sentence, Charles Ray Vines died of natural causes behind bars at the state’s Maximum Security Unit southeast of Pine Bluff in early September 2019.
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