Bad Henry: The Murderous Rampage of ‘The Taco Bell Strangler'

Praise for BAD HENRY by Ron Chepesiuk

Ron Chepesiuk [brings] the ghastly to life with deep research and brilliant storytelling. BAD HENRY uncovers new information and exposes deep-rooted challenges in the American criminal justice system.

—Bob Batchelor, award-winning author of Roadhouse Blues

[Here is a] well-researched, gut-wrenching story of a serial killer… true crime readers will not want to stop reading until the end.

—Barbara Casey, author of Velvalee Dickinson

The hapless police never connect the dots until the always-in-sight coincidences point to the culprit. Ron Chepesiuk uses the serial killer’s own words to set the stage for this engrossing true crime read.

—Alan Geik, author of Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz

A gripping and gritty journey into the world of Bad Henry Wallace, a real-life serial killer who terrorized Charlotte, North Carolina for years before law enforcement connected his string of murders. Chepesiuk’s research reveals eye-opening details into the creation and compulsions of society’s most dangerous predator: one who kills for the thrill of it. Regardless of your stance on the death penalty, [Wallace} qualifies as a deserving candidate who admits to his crimes and taunts law enforcement with the possibility that more bodies could lurk in his history.

—Caroline Giammanco, author of Inside the Death Fences and Bank Notes Revisited

Creative... captivating.... compelling!

—Ron Fino, author of The Triangle Exit

Readers are taken on a step-by-step dissection of the ten murders of African American women in the early nineties in east Charlotte, North Carolina. Like an adept medical examiner, Chepesiuk probes why Henry Louis Wallace did not fit the typical serial killer profile. With a city taken hostage for two years, doors and windows were shuttered while they awaited the next murder. Chepesiuk paints the painful story of charming fast-food restaurant manager, with links to each victim, who was overlooked for so long.

—David Larson, author of The Last Jewish Gangster

True-crime master Ron Chepesiuk chronicles a nightmarish tale of an implacably evil killer as he outwits a police force slow to grasp the magnitude of what it’s up against. The story has all the resonance of a horror movie, except that it happened in real life.

—Jerome Clark, author of Hidden Realms

BAD HENRY

The Murderous Rampage of

‘The Taco Bell Strangler’

RON CHEPESIUK

WildBluePress.com

BAD HENRY published by:

WILDBLUE PRESS

P.O. Box 102440

Denver, Colorado 80250

Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy and assumes no liability for the content.

Copyright 2023 by Ron Chepesiuk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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ISBN 978-1-957288-70-3 Trade Paperback

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ISBN 978-1-957288-69-7 Hardback

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"There’s the good Henry, and then there’s the bad Henry.

As the years progressed, bad Henry took over."

—Henry Louis Wallace, serial killer

CONTENTS

Prologue

1. Bad Beginning

2. Getting Started

3. Reckless Times

4. Trauma

5. A Violent Killer

6. Kill Zone

7. The Screw Up

8. Take Down

9. The Arrest

10. The Trial

11. The Verdict

12. The Aftermath

Chronology

Photos

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

PROLOGUE

Murderous Rampage

On March 9, 1994, twenty-eight-year-old Henry Louis Wallace was feeling cocky. He had been on a murderous roll, rampaging in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the cops were clueless. Wallace had constantly watched the TV evening news for information that the police were on to him, but they still had not connected the dots. He smiled as he watched outraged Black citizens complain about the lack of action on the part of the police in solving the murders. They demanded to know: Was the lack of action because all seven victims were Black?

The Charlotte police conceded that they were stumped by the killings. And why should they not have been? After all, each case was being handled by a different police investigator. No notes were compared and no links made. The police treated each of the murders separately.

Wallace didn’t fit the mold of a typical serial killer either. He looked normal. Around six feet in height, a little overweight, low key, disarming manner, Wallace could get lost in a crowd. He was slick, with a solicitous attitude, and women were taken in by his charm. He knew all of his victims and was able to gain the trust of each and every one of them. As author Anastasia Toufexis explained in a Time Magazine article, (Women) invited him into their homes for dinner, watched while he cradles (sic) their babies in his arms, and accepted his invitations to date.

While Wallace was smug in his belief that he was gaming the system, he was also in desperate straits. His crack cocaine habit was out of control, and he didn’t have the money for his next fix. He had learned that Vanessa Mack, a co-worker from Taco Bell, a popular fast-food restaurant, had received her income tax refund check from the IRS.

Mack was a petite, energetic young lady of 23 years, who seemed to always have a smile for anyone. Her dream was to be a nurse, but it was tough saving the money she needed to go to college. Still, she managed to salt some money away.

Wallace had seen Mack’s ATM card, which she carried around with her. Surely, she would have some money in her bank account.

Wallace had totaled his green Maxima, so he caught a cab to Mack’s apartment, hiding a pillowcase under his jacket. Mack would normally not let young men into her apartment, but this was Henry Wallace, Uncle Henry, harmless, someone who was trusted. He charmed Mack into letting him enter her apartment. In the kitchen, he snuck up behind Mack and wrapped the pillowcase around her neck. He squeezed hard and demanded she give him her ATM pin number.

Mack cried and struggled, but finally gave it to him. As she gasped, Mack pleaded with Wallace for her life, but he continued to squeeze the life out of her. Mack’s limp body slumped to the floor. Wallace fumbled through her purse and found her ATM card.

Wallace dashed out of the apartment, caught a cab, and headed for Mack’s bank, the Bank of America, where he tried using Mack’s ATM card, but it didn’t work. Mack had given Wallace a fake number.

Enraged, Wallace pounded the ATM. He was in a sweat, desperate for a fix. He thought for a moment, hailed a cab, and headed off into the night.

Wallace showed up at the apartment of his friend, Lamar Squeaky Woods, who he expected to be at work. Woods was a friend of Wallace and he and Wallace would hang out often in their free time.

Woods lived at the Lake Apartments in East Charlotte with his 18-year-old girlfriend, Brandi Henderson. She had worked with Woods and Wallace at the Golden Corral. Wallace planned to rob, rape, and murder Henderson.

Wallace rapped on the door of Wood’s apartment and was surprised to see Woods answer. Brandi was at work, Woods told him. He was late for work, too, and had to leave.

Wallace turned around and walked away, anxious, frustrated. He still needed money for a fix. He remembered that he knew someone else who lived in the apartment complex—24-year-old Betty Baucom. Baucom knew that Wallace was the friend of the boyfriend of her girlfriend, Brandi Henderson, and she was more than happy to let Wallace use the phone.

When Baucom turned around to let Wallace into her apartment, Wallace grabbed and started to choke her. He demanded that she give him the alarm code and safe combination at the Bojangles where she worked as the assistant manager. Baucom resisted for nearly thirty minutes as Wallace got increasingly angry. Finally, Baucom surrendered the information and Wallace stopped choking her. He took the money from Baucom’s purse but was disappointed at the amount. He then raped her. Afterward, Wallace told Baucom to get dressed and then strangled her to death.

The next day, Wallace brazenly returned to Baucom’s apartment and took her VCR, checking to make sure she was still dead. Then he left Baucom’s apartment and took her car, ditching it in a parking lot a few miles away. He wiped the steering wheel, seats, door handles, the interior, and most of the exterior clean of fingerprints.

Wallace caught a cab. Trekking back to his apartment, he was feeling smug about himself. He had got his drug fix while continuing to outsmart the police. The man who would become known as the Taco Bell Strangler had thought of everything. Or so he thought. The one thing he had forgotten: to wipe clean the finger and palm prints from Baucom’s car trunk.

ONE

Bad Beginning

Henry Wallace would have few breaks in his early life. Many of the problems he faced later in life would stem from the problems and challenges he encountered in his childhood and teen years. Wallace’s troubled youth surprised many in Barnwell who grew up with or came to know the amiable young boy who was always ready to listen or to give a helping hand when needed.

Ouida Swan Dest, who went to high school with Henry and served on the school’s cheerleading squad, says she knew little about Wallace’s impoverished background at the time of their association, but, today, wonders how Wallace could appear so upbeat and positive when he came to school with such a dysfunctional background. He was just such a nice boy and so comfortable to be around, Dest recalled. He was even allowed to pick up and drive the kids to school in the school bus. That’s how much he was trusted.

Indeed, Wallace received a Certificate of Merit for having operated a school bus for the 1982-83 year with an excellent record. After Wallace graduated from Barnwell High School, Principal W. Reed Swann wrote a character reference on his behalf regarding his conduct while at the school. Swann lauded Wallace for never being involved in incidents of an aggressive or hostile nature, was well liked by his peers, and was supportive of the high school program.

Not all of Barnwell was impressed with Wallace, though. Aleah Thomas Cole of Barnwell dated Wallace from 1989 to 1990, and she recalled how he was a gentle, generous and emotionally needy boyfriend who lavished her with attention and gifts. But she came to see Wallace as being a phony, elaborating, He could adapt himself to any situation. It was just a farce because I had never seen a man who could cry at the drop of a dime.

Unfortunately, many women never saw past the charming façade, and they would pay for their lack of perception with their lives. Henry Louis Wallace was a chameleon in the worst possible way: a sadistic serial killer.

Henry Wallace was born dirt poor on November 4, 1965, in Barnwell, South Carolina. He had a sister, Yvonne, who was born on January 1, 1962, the fourth child and only girl to Lottie Wallace. Barnwell is a sleepy rural southern town located in the southwestern part of South Carolina about forty-two miles from Augusta, Georgia. The city has a population of nearly 5,000 people, more than half of them African American.

Wallace’s mother, Lottie, who came to play such a seminal part in Henry’s life, was born in 1946. Wallace’s father walked out on Lottie, a heavy set, stern- looking woman, when she was pregnant. It was only one of many bitter disappointments Lottie encountered in dealing with the men in her life. It made her bitter, and she would often viciously take out her frustrations on her children.

Lottie was able to bond with her mother, but her mother died when Lottie was thirteen, a development that psychologists who studied the Wallace case say stymied her emotional development.

Lottie compensated for this loss by entering into an intimate relationship with a teacher who was married and at least 20 years older than her. The affair, which bore three children, lasted three years. While her lover provided for Lottie materially and emotionally, Lottie was to keep her mouth shut about their relationship, given the authority the male teacher had over her and the fact that he was much older. According to Carmeta Albarus, a certified social worker who later conducted a study of Wallace for his defense team at his trial, Lottie took out her anger from this relationship on son Henry. Albarus writes: Throughout his entire life, Henry paid for the wrongs that had been done to his mother by the men in her life. She made him pay through a process of control, abuse, and intimidation. It started during the earliest stage of his development and continued through his adult years.

Lottie’s lover never did provide material support for the children he had from Lottie. After Henry’s birth, he ended the relationship and then quit his job and left town.

Young Henry lived in a dilapidated four-room shack with few necessities, including plumbing and electricity. His mother had to work long hours at the local textile mill struggling to make ends meet. The shack would remain his home until he was eighteen. The bathroom was nothing but a room with no running water and a set of chamber pots. Henry’s daily chore was to empty out the chamber pots that contained the human waste. Henry shared a room with his sister and the waste pots remained in the room. Later, Wallace expressed one of his greatest fears while growing up: his school friends would see him emptying the chamber pots.

Henry never met his father and doesn’t even know what he looks like. He lived with his mother, grandmother, and sister Yvonne, who was three years older. Yvonne maintained a protective, almost motherly attitude toward her brother. The mother and grandmother did not get along, however, and they fought constantly.

As the family’s only means of support, Wallace’s mother struggled to pay the bills and put food on the table. The pressure of solely supporting the family was felt in how she treated her children. As criminologists Charisse Coston and Joseph Kuhns III explained in their study, Lives Interrupted: A Case Study of Henry Wallace, an African American Serial Killer in a Rapidly Expanding Southern City, She demanded that her children grow up quickly.

To say Lottie Wallace was a strict disciplinarian would be an understatement. Lottie would make Henry hold his feces until he was forced to go in his pants. Then young Henry would be chastised severely for messing in his pants. Terrorized by the thought of his mother finding out what he had done, Henry would often try to hide his soiled trousers or hurry home and wash his underpants before she could find out.

Lottie imposed strict rules on her children. She demanded that they get permission from her to take anything from the house. In punishing her children, Lottie often forced them to pick their own switch, which she would then use to whip them. Other times she would beat them with anything at hand, including a water hose, extension cords, and even tree limbs.

If she was tired from her day’s work, she would get Henry and Yvonne to whip each other. Later in life, Henry would recall how painful it was for him to beat on his sister.

The abuse was not just physical, but also verbal. Lottie would constantly call Henry stupid, dumb, or a son of a bitch, and complain that she wished she had never had him. He was ridiculed for his dark complexion, his mother joking that he had remained in the oven too long. He suspected that his sister was favored over