What Happened to Jean Moore?

[WonderWoman41]

I just saw this segment recently and read the other threads on the subject. There were a few things I noticed on the segment that I don't think have been mentioned, so I'd be interested to hear what everyone thinks.

First, not only was Moore's engagement ring left in the hotel room, but also her purse. It seems to me very unlikely that she would voluntarily have left these behind - especially the purse, b/c even if she took off the ring after an argument, she would still bring her purse -- especially if she was carrying around gambling money or hoping to receive a slot machine payoff. In any case, every woman I've ever known learns to keep her purse with her all the time.

If Moore didn't leave the hotel voluntarily, then right there Henderson was almost certainly involved in her disappearance - either him or some hotel staff person, which is possible but much less likely.

Some posters mentioned that Henderson seemed like a sweet old guy. I agree. But then again I thought that that guy who was out shooting a cat (I think) and killed his little son was genuine and honest too.

Henderson had the best opportunity b/c he had access to the hotel room, plain and simple. Not many other people had, and frankly the other persons with access were probably (cleaning) women, so much less likely to be serial killers or anything like that.

Motive and means are harder questions to answer. But the beginning of the segment indicated that Jean and Al had been in a twenty-year courtship, and that she apparently had risen over the years in the ranks of his business.

Now, a twenty-year courtship strikes me as very unusual. I wonder if this is UM euphemism for "living together" or even "common law spouses." Granted, Calif. doesn't allow common law marriages, but it does recognize common law marriages contracted elsewhere, and if that's the case (tho' unlikely) that would provide all the motives that marriage does. However, here's another scenario: Jean and Al date for two decades b/c they don't - or one of them doesn't - care about the other that much (just dating for a long time is one thing if you don't believe in marriage, but that's clearly not the case here). They become engaged around the time that Jean has gotten pretty high up in the company. Maybe in that new capacity he told her or she found something out about how the business was run and she decided to break the engagement, and maybe tell on him too -- and that's what did it. (Sure, he was no spring chicken, but neither was she - he doesn't have to be strong to overpower her, just stronger, or a gun owner.) Or maybe after 20 years of just dating, he wanted to renege on the engagement and go back to that (commitment issues seem like a possibility here) and that started an argument.

As for means, all he had to do was drive her out somewhere miles and miles away, maybe arguing along the way, and finally shoot her or smother her. Out somewhere totally godforsaken, he wouldn't need to fool with burying the body or anything like that.

I'm not saying Henderson is definitely guilty; none of this, of course, would hold up in court. But the strong, almost unique opportunity, is what caught my attention, and I think motive and means are possible. That fact that his story isn't straight doesn't help either.

[wiseguy182]

Good point about the purse, I hadn't thought about that before. Yes, most women will not go anywhere without their purse, and they would make a point to take it into a casino.

I have leaned towards Henderson's guilt in previous threads, and I still do.

Another reason I lean towards his guilt that I just thought of: IMO, Henderson tries to make us believe that she disappeared in the casino (it's a clever ruse because it's a plasuible scenario) and that's because he's trying to draw attention away from the real scene of the crime: the hotel room. Interestingly, shortly after realizing his wife is supposedly not where she said she was going to be (her favorite slot machine) he decides to go back to the hotel room, because check-out time was drawing near. Things like this would be a trivial matter compared to the possible (unwillful) disappeance of his wife. He tries to get us to believe he was concerned about having his things thrown out of the hotel. What he should have done was extended his room one night, or if the hotel was booked, call the hotel and have them hold his stuff down at the front desk (I work at a hotel and know that they will do this for you.) If the hotel room was the scene of the crime, which I believe it was, there isn't any noticeable signs of a struggle, which for me would indicate Henderson is probably responsible. Due to Henderson's advanced age at this point, I'm not entirely sure he would have won a struggle with Jean. He more likely did her in another way.

[crystaldawn]

Well I had said in the past that Al Henderson didn't seem the likely suspect in her disappearance but I really can't think of what in the world happened to her so I guess I'm saying there is a small possibility he is responsible. My problem is I don't think he would have been physically capable of killing Jean with his hands (i.e. strangling, blow to the head, etc.) Of course there is always a gun but someone, somewhere would have heard it probably. Another issue is I don't think he would have been strong enough to dispose of her body, especially so that no one could find it. As far as I know she is still missing so I doubt if he did do something to her he didn't just throw her body out somewhere or she would have been found by now. For her to be buried somewhere would have taken a lot of effort so than you talk about if he is involved did he have an accomplice. I do agree it was strange that she left her engagement ring and purse in the hotel which does make one think that maybe she didn't leave the hotel room under her own power. I still don't understand a motive for him to do it though.

Btw when they said they had a courtship that spanned 20 years I thought it meant that they had once dated years ago , then married and divorced (or were widowed) and got back together. Just my thought though.

[mozartpc27]

Hmmm. IF Al Henderson murdered his wife... and there really isn't any actual evidence that he did, just his suspisciously totally-unconfirmed-by-the-facts story, I doubt the scene of the crime was the hotel room. He would have had to kill her there, which means either strangling her or smothering her, or, shooting her, stabbing her, etc. I think you can throw out any method that would have drawn blood, because the police clearly and quickly suspected that Henderson might have been involved in the disappearance. Even if he cleaned up after himself pretty well, the police would have had the whole hotel room searched thoroughly, one would think, especially since this wouldn't require a warrant after Henderson checked out (although it's possible that they didn't do this... if so, they're idiots). Admittedly, this would have been after the hotel maids had had a run at the room, but between them and the police, I would think some trace of blood would have been found, no matter how great a job Henderson did cleaning up. If he killed her in the hotel room, I think it would almost have to have been by something that wouldn't draw blood --- smothering, strangulation, etc. Smothering is not as difficult as crystaldawn seems to think it is --- remember the case about the old man that police theorized somethered his wife, then buried her in the yard? They found some blood stains on the pillow case because he had never evidently bothered to wash the damn thing, or at least get rid of it! He seemed about as old as Al, maybe older, and he accomplished the feat.

I dunno... the more I think about it, the more it becomes plausible that he did kill her in the hotel. Hell, he could have poisoned her for all we know. Awsi Dooger has some very good posts about the actual reliability of security tape coming from casinos, especially casinos in Laughlin, so it could still be that he is telling the truth completely and it's the casino that screwed up. Absent any other evidence, it's hard to say, though, if I were a betting man, I'd have to bet he did do it. I'm just not sure how.

[crystaldawn]

Originally Posted by mozartpc27

Smothering is not as difficult as crystaldawn seems to think it is --- remember the case about the old man that police theorized somethered his wife, then buried her in the yard? They found some blood stains on the pillow case because he had never evidently bothered to wash the damn thing, or at least get rid of it! He seemed about as old as Al, maybe older, and he accomplished the feat.

Actually that was Joe Owens and he didn't strangle her, he shot her thus the blood found on the pillow case. Her head was also wrapped when they found her body.

[mozartpc27]

Originally Posted by crystaldawn

Actually that was Joe Owens and he didn't strangle her, he shot her thus the blood found on the pillow case. Her head was also wrapped when they found her body.

Oops. Wasn't there one where someone smothered an old lady with a pillow, probably breaking her nose in the effort, resulting in a small blood stain on the pillow?

[Awsi Dooger]

One thing I'm not sure I mentioned about this case: the area near Laughlin is very rugged and secluded on the Nevada side. I'm not sure it would be absolutely necessary to bury the body carefully and have it not be found. I actually remember thinking about this when I traveled to Laughlin regularly in the mid to late '80s, that it would be a perfect place to dump someone. Those were the drives with wild rabbits charging toward the lights of my car and splatting. Maybe I had blood on my mind, as well as my car.

Anyway, the road to Laughlin from Las Vegas turns off near from Boulder City and goes through tiny Searchlight (birthplace and home of Harry Reid), then an even smaller place called Cal-Nev-Ari. It's flat for maybe 50 miles and then you make a left turn toward Laughlin. The final 18 miles or so leading to Laughlin are through mountains with a twisting road and many changes of elevation. If you found a place there to drive off the road slightly you could easily dump someone, or make a shallow grave, secluded behind a ridge. I don't know if people hike there or not. It's not particularly scenic, just rugged. But let's put it this way, if someone told me to dump something so it wouldn't easily be found, that area would come immediately to mind.

[WonderWoman41]

Originally Posted by Awsi Dooger

One thing I'm not sure I mentioned about this case: the area near Laughlin is very rugged and secluded on the Nevada side. I'm not sure it would be absolutely necessary to bury the body carefully and have it not be found.

Interesting. I thought something like that might be the case, b/c some random killer, I would think, would be unlikely to go to the trouble of burying the body (as crystaldawn points out, that's a lot of work, and I would think random/serial killer types are interested in their "thrills," not in hard labour), and yet she's never been found. No matter who did it (assuming she was killed), that's probably what happened.

[WonderWoman41]

Originally Posted by crystaldawn

My problem is I don't think he would have been physically capable of killing Jean with his hands (i.e. strangling, blow to the head, etc.) Of course there is always a gun but someone, somewhere would have heard it probably. ... I still don't understand a motive for him to do it though.

Well, I went looking around online to see if I could get some scientific information on strangling, smothering, etc., and I haven't looked very much, I admit. But I did find out a couple of things:

One is that an apparently easy method is called "burking" after Burke & Hare, and means you just sit on the victim's chest, cover their mouth and nose, and push their jaw upward. Of course if not drunk (as B&H's victims usually were), the victim would flail a lot, but with the torso and legs taken out of the picture, they really aren't in a good position to fight. At all.

Another possibility is that some people are interested in strangulation, if you catch my drift. Al and Jean looked very clean-cut, but one can never tell what people are interested in when it comes to these matters, and maybe Al was doing his thing and it went too far. --I wouldn't think she was killed in the hotel room, though, just b/c removing the body would have been a rrreal chore - out in the car seems more likely.

I'm not saying he did it, mind you; it's just that leaving her purse and ring seems so odd and gives him the only real opportunity that I can think of.

[wiseguy182]

Sorry If I'm repeating this, I mentioned it in another thread: While the security cameras that failed to catch Jean at her favorite slot machine may not be totally reliable as some posters have mentioned, it does seem strange to me that no camera found Jean or Al at any point at any where in casino the day she disappeared. This would suggest to me they were never in there to begin with. The timeframe was sometime before noon, I believe around 10:00. I could be totally wrong, but I wouldn't imagine that's the busiest time of day for casinos, so it would seem like we would catch a glimpse of Al or Jean somewhere. Awsi might know more about that though, perhaps he could shed some light.

Awsi, I'm sorry if I took some things you said out of context the last couple of months. Perhaps I was reading too much into things, it wasn't intentional.

I wonder if the police ever asked anybody in the casino that day if they recalled seeing Al or Jean. They were there reportedly several days, yet there was only one sighting of them at the restaurant. But there wasn't anything that was extremely distinctive about them, so perhaps they just got lost in the crowd.

[Awsi Dooger]

Originally Posted by wiseguy182

Sorry If I'm repeating this, I mentioned it in another thread: While the security cameras that failed to catch Jean at her favorite slot machine may not be totally reliable as some posters have mentioned, it does seem strange to me that no camera found Jean or Al at any point at any where in casino the day she disappeared. This would suggest to me they were never in there to begin with. The timeframe was sometime before noon, I believe around 10:00. I could be totally wrong, but I wouldn't imagine that's the busiest time of day for casinos, so it would seem like we would catch a glimpse of Al or Jean somewhere. Awsi might know more about that though, perhaps he could shed some light.

Awsi, I'm sorry if I took some things you said out of context the last couple of months. Perhaps I was reading too much into things, it wasn't intentional.

I wonder if the police ever asked anybody in the casino that day if they recalled seeing Al or Jean. They were there reportedly several days, yet there was only one sighting of them at the restaurant. But there wasn't anything that was extremely distinctive about them, so perhaps they just got lost in the crowd.

No need to apologize, wiseguy. I annoy people everywhere I post.

I think plenty of it stems from posting in the wee hours, which I do so often including this post. I'll be on half an Ambien and think something is clear when obviously it isn't. Plus I hate using smilies especially if it's an attempt to be subtle, so sometimes I leave them out when maybe I shouldn't.

Expect another argument in a few days.

Let's see, Jean Moore. It depends what day it was, regarding the 10 AM. On weekends that will be very busy, especially on Sunday. People come to casinos cities on Friday nights, make Saturday a big day, then leave at checkout on Sunday. If it was a weekday, then it's much slower at that time, on average. There can always be a junket coming into town and I'm not really familiar with that specific casino, but 10 AM shouldn't be especially hectic on a weekday. I probably should know what day it was when she went missing, but I don't.

Regardless, there should be more sightings of both of them. I'm sure I've emphasized that Laughlin is primarily a short stretch of casinos. Go to the video site and do a search and you can get a feel for the layout of the city. Unless they were going on driving tours all the time, or heading to Bullhead City directly across the narrow river from Laughlin, Jean Moore and Al Henderson should have been doing what everyone does in Laughlin, sample casino to casino along the short route.

If she had a favorite slot machine then the change girl(s) in that area should have seen her often. That was an era when change girls were everywhere. Not all the machines had bill acceptors so if you ran out of coins and credits you pushed the help button and got more change. Change girls regularly got to know the customers who played a specific machine frequently. Same thing with women in carousels of slot machines. They would station a woman in the middle of the carousel and she would give out change, and tell people about jackpots hit on specific machines recently, and generally try to encourage people to play. Now that's passe, and change girls all but extinct. The machines have ticket in/ticket out. Change is all but gone. Pull out a quarter and try to put it into a machine and you've got nothing but a flat section of metal staring at you. The machines want bills or vouchers these days.

I'm not sure what type of camera system that casino had. Some systems use brief clips from many different cameras, ten or more. It's not like every camera was taping constantly on those systems, especially in that era. You get brief shots from one camera then it switches to another. That's basically what we saw on the UM segment, a short clip of the area where the slot machine supposedly was.

Camera systems like that could miss someone coming or going, but it shouldn't matter if she played the machine often. Unless the camera system was so primitive it taped over itself.

There really wasn't enough info on the UM segment. I assume authorities and the casino asked Al Henderson for other points in time she would have been playing that machine, allowing them to check it out including the video and talk to any employees who were working in that section at the time. To provide the tidbit that it was her favorite machine and then focus on solely the last day when she supposedly went missing seemed ridiculously weak to me. They had to come back to the hotel and room at some point, no matter where they were during the day. Where was the scrutiny of whether they can be seen in the parking garage, or near the elevator leading to the hotel room, or walking toward a specific restaurant, during the previous days?

Again, and this is a good guess, unless the casino didn't want UM to reveal how overrated the camera system is. If you've got Robert Stack saying on national TV that no videos existed for the prior days or even the hours before she was reported missing, then that's not the see-all/know-all image the industry wants.

[wiseguy182]

I'll rewatch the segment tonight and see if they mentioned what day it was, I'll post back.

Awsi, if you're interested, I offered my 2008 senate predicions on the politics forum on this site, available in two parts. Anyone that wants to access it has to ask TJ or Seth for permission, but they should let you in if you want. It's not as active as other political forums as evidenced by the fact that nobody responded to my posts there, which was a tad annoying because they were 2 of my longest posts, profling all 33 senate races next year.

[mozartpc27]

I believe it was a Thursday.

[wiseguy182]

Yup, it was a Thursday. The timeframe was from 9:30 - sometime before quarter to noon. I just re-watched the segment in its entirety.

One of my favorite cases, also one of the most confusing.

I was partially wrong when I said the cameras never caught Jean or Al. Actually, the cameras did catch Al driving into the parking lot, and later entering the casino. However, Al is not spotted beyond the front entrance, and Jean is never picked up by the cameras.

In re-watching the segment, I have found more things that lead me to believe Al is guilty that I haven't noticed or mentioned before:

First item: Stack metions that "the cameras covered every square inch of the casino, 24 hours." Since Jean is not spotted even once at anywhere in the casino, this would lead me to believe that she was either never in there to begin with, or was nabbed very early upon entering the casino. This would tend to dispel the theory that she won a jackpot and was targeted because of it.

Second item: Al claims that, after dropping Jeanie off at the casino, he went to find a parking spot. Unable to find one, he handed it off to the valet to park, and then went into the casino. So, we're talking about a few minutes here in all likelihood. Upon entering the casino, he instantly went to her favorite machine, but found it already in use by another player. After the other player left, he used the machine for a half an hour under the belief that Jeanie might return in which case Al would let her have the machine, but she never showed. But here's two things that don't make sense to me. First, the machine should have showed AL playing the machine. He was there for a solid half hour as he claims. However, there is no evidence that he played that machine or any other. Second, Jeanie is supposedly under the assumption that Al was going to quick drop off the car, and come back into the casino. So, we're not talking about very long here, a couple minutes. The machine was supposedly already being used by another player. That's possible, but knowing Al was coming right back, why would Jeanie take off? Why wouldn't she hang around the machine, even if it was being used, instead of leaving him in the dust?

Third item: As I concluded above, since there is no evidence at all of Jeanie being in the casino, at least for very long, she would have been nabbed very early upon entering the casino, if she was there at all. She did not have her purse on her, nor would she have had time to win any money, so the robbery aspect seems unlikely.

Fourth item: Al's bookeeper or secretary claims that Al called her on Tuesday I believe it was, and after Al was done takling to her, Al asked if she wanted to talk to Jeanie. Jeanie came on the phone. The secretary claims that Jeanie was supposedly escatic about a winning streak she had on a poker machine. Yet we're talking about a couple that had a net worth of at least 2.5 mil, so Jean becoming estatic about a slot machine seems unlikely. It would have been "chump change" for them.

Fifth item: there was a sighting of them at a gas station on Tuesday in California. The waitress reported seeing them in Laughlin on Monday. Assuming that these two reports from eyewitnesses are true, this would mean that the couple navigated from California to Laughlin, NV to California from Sunday to Tuesday. This is where it gets fuzzy. We know Al was in Laughlin on Thursday, but we don't know if Jean was. I've got to wonder if Al murdered her in California, and then staged the disappeance at the casino because it is a possible scenario. He could have set it up so that they went to Laughlin on Monday to prove that they were there, murdered her in Calif, then came back. Yet why would they drive the 6 hours to their home in CA in the middle of the Laughlin trip. This seems strange.

[wiseguy182]

Sorry if I'm on a "Al Henderson is guilty" bent, but I just thought of something else: Stack says that Jean wanted one more chance at her favorite machine. This would indicate that she's played it at least once, if not several times during their 3 day (at most) holiday. If there was no evidence of Jean playing the machine on Thursday, which there doesn't appear to be, then they should have checked the previous days tapes to see if she was there at all during the week. Given that Jean was spotted in Laughlin on Monday and California on Tuesday, we really don't know if Jeanie was in Laughlin past Monday. This would make Al look more suspect if there's no records on the tapes in any of the days.