Mother, law enforcement still looking for answers 34 years after Arlin Henderson disappeared from his Lincoln County home

By Gregory Orear

General Manager/Editor

LINCOLN COUNTY – In many ways, Charles “Arlin” Henderson was an ordinary 11-year-old.

The blond-haired, blue-eyed boy liked swimming, shooting his BB gun, playing with friends and of course, riding his bike.

“He was a funny little kid,” his mom, Debbie Griffith, recalls. “He would talk you out of your shirt and then sell it back to you for a profit.”

And while most children like to dream, Arlin liked to dream …big.

“He wanted to be the President of the United States,” Debbie said. “And he would be a great president. He always took up for the underdog…and he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so he could relate to ordinary people.”

But everything changed in an instant July 25, 1991, Arlin hopped on his new bike and went for a spin in the Fountain ‘N Lakes trailer park near Moscow Mills where he lived with his mom.

He never came home.

The Disappearance

Wearing camouflage pants and a t-shirt, Arlin was 4 feet, 5 inches and weighed about 75 pounds.

He was last seen around 5 p.m. riding his white and yellow bike in the trailer park, which Debbie said he never left alone.

“I called for him, but he didn’t answer, which made me worry immediately,” Debbie said. “So me and one of his friends went looking for him.”

Debbie called the police and while they “officially” couldn’t start a search until he was missing 24 hours, that’s not what happened.

“They started searching right away,” Debbie recalls.

Initially, there was little physical evidence of an abduction or anything related to Arlin’s disappearance. Then three months later, his bike and several other items were found in a beanfield about six miles north of his home on North Ethlyn Road.

Debbie said after months of wondering, she thought she was finally going to learn what happened to her son.

“I thought I’ll have some answers,” she said. “I rushed to where the bike was, but still no answers. If I get answers, it will be from God.”

The First Investigation

After months of numerous unsuccessful searches and interviews, with the discovery of the bicycle, law enforcement finally had something.

According to Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Wade O’Heron, investigators found a fingerprint that wasn’t Arlin’s on the bicycle and a second one from a different individual off some of the items found nearby.

Unfortunately, neither could be identified in searches of numerous databases.

Meanwhile, the community continued to search for Arlin. Supporters established a fund at the Bank of Old Monroe where donations could be made.

Thousands of dollars poured in, along with an unusual note in 1992.  

“One day, the bank received an envelope with a single-sheet, white, lined piece of paper that had one word on it,” O’Heron said. “Catchmeyer. It was all caps and one word.”

An age progression photo of what Arlin would look like at the age of 33.

Thirty plus years later, O’Heron said they are no closer to knowing if that word has any significance at all to the case, or if someone was just playing a joke.

“We don’t know what significance this has, but we’d like to know,” he said. “What we want from the public is to know if this rings any bells. Obviously, we’d like to talk to whomever wrote that.”

A Confession, Charges and a Conviction

Much like on the day they found Arlin’s bike, Debbie thought she had some answers when in 2001, a man confessed to abducting and killing her son.

Joshua Spangler would have been 13 when Arlin disappeared and he told investigators he was dealing drugs at the time for two older boys, George and Charles Gibson.

Spangler claimed a family member owed the Gibsons money and that they paid him $10,000 to kill Arlin as a “warning.”

The Gibsons were arrested and charged with murder and Spangler told law enforcement where he buried Arlin’s body near the Mississippi River.

But a search revealed nothing.

The investigation continued and authorities found several inconsistencies in Spangler’s claims.

The Gibsons were eventually released and Spangler recanted. He pleaded guilty to perjury and received a seven-year prison sentence.

 Another Suspect

After the Spangler-inspired wild goose chase, authorities turned their attention to a recently-arrested serial kidnapper: Michael Devlin.

In 2007, Devlin was arrested for kidnapping two boys who were found alive in his St. Louis apartment. One of the boys had been missing a few days while the other disappeared five years prior.

Authorities suspected Devlin’s involvement in several missing children cases, including Arlin’s and Bianca Piper, who went missing from her Foley home in 2005.

After searching Devlin’s apartment, investigators found photos of a 17-year-old boy who resembled Arlin.

When shown the photos, Debbie said it looked like her son, but she couldn’t be certain.

Devlin denied any involvement in Arlin’s disappearance and is now serving a life sentence at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron.

A Re-Opened Case

Following the election of Rick Harrell as sheriff in 2020, the sheriff’s department re-opened Arlin’s case in 2021.

In came O’Heron as the lead investigator.

“When I first took this case over, I thought it was going to be a sprint,” he said. “I quickly came to the realization this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

After reheating the cold case, using investigative tools unavailable 30 years ago, O’Heron was able to obtain two DNA profiles from items recovered from the beanfield.

And while O’Heron is certain the DNA samples aren’t Arlin’s, he doesn’t know who the sources are.

“Right now, it’s a waiting game trying to identify who those profiles belong to,” he said.

Many who were interviewed in the initial investigations were re-interviewed, and several new people came forward as well.

O’Heron said new searches were conducted using cadaver dogs, but to no avail.

“Anything we can possibly do, no matter how low the percentage is of it revealing anything, we are doing,” he said.

To that end, a few years ago, O’Heron made a public plea for anyone who knew Arlin’s sister, Joy Leonard, or her husband, Bob, to contact the sheriff’s department.

Bob killed Joy in 2000 before turning the gun on himself.

Debbie said Bob had physically abused Joy for years and she was just two weeks away from finalizing a divorce from him.

“She told us once she got divorced, she could tell us something that would rock our worlds,” Debbie remembers. “But she said she didn’t feel safe telling us before she got that divorce.”

O’Heron hopes someone who knew the Leonards could provide him with some information.

“We have some questions we’d like to ask them (Bob and Joy), but unfortunately, we can’t” he said. “That’s why we’d like to talk to anyone who might have known them who might have some information.”

 O’Heron said anyone with information can contact the department anonymously at 636-528-6100.

A “Tired” Woman

Starting with the loss of her first husband in 1990, Debbie has survived one tragedy after another, including Arlin’s disappearance, her daughter’s murder, the death of her second husband and a pair of personal bouts with cancer.

“I’m really tired,” she said. “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of worrying. I’m tired of missing my child. I’m tired of everything.”

She said she feels like she’s lost it all.

“I feel like such a failure,” she said. “Like I’m a bad parent. I didn’t know what I did wrong.”

Debbie said she turns to her faith for strength.

“I’ve asked God to give me some answers. I had to rely on God a lot over the years,” she said.  “I pray for a break in the case. I pray for answers. I pray to know what happened to my son.”

She’s now raising her 15-year-old great grandson and struggles at times after her son’s disappearance.

“I’m trying not to smother the kid but it’s hard to let him be a normal 15-year-old,” she said. “You can’t protect your kids against people who have a mindset they are going to cause harm. People out there, the pedophiles, murderers and rapists, if they want to sow discord, how do you stop it?”

And if there ever is an arrest and a conviction, Debbie has a specific idea of what justice would look like.

“I want revenge,” she said. “If they get caught, I don’t want them to go to prison. I want them to die.”

Whether she gets that vengeance, or even answers to what happened to her son 34 years ago, Debbie is sure of one thing.

“I have a lot of friends waiting for me in heaven,” she said. “I know I’ll get answers there.”

In the meantime, Debbie said she’s able to celebrate holidays now like Christmas and Thanksgiving and even Arlin’s favorite: Halloween.

“We loved Halloween,” she said with a rare smile. “We loved to dress up. We had so much fun.”

As any parent would, Debbie clings to those memories.

“He was so funny,” she said as that smile faded. “I miss him. Every single day.”