Waterpark Co-Owner Accused of Murder in Boy's Waterslide Decapitation Has Checkered Past
Amusement park owner Jeffrey Wayne Henry, who was charged last month with reckless second-degree murder in the 2016 waterslide death of a 10-year-old boy, has a history of drug arrests and accusations of domestic violence, PEOPLE confirms.
Henry, 62, was charged and later pleaded guilty to drug charges dating back to 1994, according to Guadalupe County, Texas, court records reviewed by PEOPLE.
In the first of those cases, Henry pleaded guilty to third-degree felony marijuana possession in 1994 and was placed on three-years deferred adjudication probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. According to the San Antonio Express-News, which first reported Henry’s criminal history, he was in possession of between 4 ounces and 5 lbs. of marijuana.
Henry’s probation was terminated after 16 months after his lawyer, Charles D. Butts, argued that it negatively impacted his relationship with potential customers, according to the Express-News.
“His consultations with some of his potential customers in planning, designing and building various theme and water parks are restricted and impaired somewhat by the fact of his being, in effect, under ‘the shadow’ of his deferred adjudication,” Butts wrote, according to the paper.
In 2007, Henry pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of 2 to 4 ounces of marijuana and was fined $4,000, according to court records obtained by PEOPLE.
Records also show that Henry was accused of domestic abuse by his then-wife, who alleged in her 2013 divorce petition that Henry “assaulted, battered, beat and tormented” her during their six-year marriage.
The assaults, she claimed, were “violent, physical and sexual in nature.”
His behavior — according to the court document, obtained by PEOPLE — was “so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”
What’s more, Henry was accused of threatening his spouse “by stating he would kill, batter and beat her which of course placed plaintiff in fear and apprehension of imminent bodily injury and also made good of his threats,” the petition states.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
Henry’s wife claims he attacked her while her young daughter was present, the petition states. She also said that some of the alleged assaults occurred at a Schlitterbahn Waterpark in New Braunfels, Texas.
The court issued a final decree of divorce last November and Henry was required to pay his ex more than $6.8 million in a settlement.
It was unclear from these documents if Henry responded to his then-wife’s abuse allegations. The attorneys who represented him in the divorce and in his drug cases did not return PEOPLE’s messages seeking comment.
Serious New Allegations
Henry’s checkered court history further underlines startling accusations made against him in March.
Along with two siblings, Henry is the co-owner of the Schlitterbahn family of corporations — a dozen-plus closely held companies that frequently overlap, prosecutors have said. Among other businesses, Schlitterbahn operates a construction firm and a waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas, which was once home to the world’s tallest waterslide, the 17-story Verrückt.
Last month, Henry and two employees were charged with reckless second-degree murder in the death of Caleb Schwab, the son of a state lawmaker, who was decapitated on Aug. 7, 2016, when his raft went airborne while riding down the Verrückt.
Caleb’s body collided with netting and metal hoops across the top of the slide, resulting in his fatal injury.
Also charged in Caleb’s death are John Schooley, a designer of the slide, Tyler Miles, a park executive, and the waterpark itself along with Henry & Sons Construction Company Inc., one of the family’s businesses.
Henry, Schooley and Henry & Sons face the most serious charge of murder while Miles and Schlitterbahn Waterpark are accused of involuntary manslaughter, according to the indictments against them. Each of the five faces a host of additional charges in connection with other riders who were injured on the slide.
The accused have strongly denied wrongdoing. But while Schlitterbahn has described Caleb’s death as “an unforeseeable accident,” state prosecutors allege that indicted were well aware of the slide’s long history of issues.
Authorities argued in court documents that the slide suffered from a “long list of dangerous design flaws,” including that its rafts traveled too fast and repeatedly went airborne. Despite this, Henry, a high school drop-out, allegedly hurried the ride into operation and “skipped fundamental steps in the design process,” the indictment states.
“Experts in the field of amusement ride design and safety examined Verrückt and found physical evidence which indicated that other rafts had gone airborne and collided with the overhead hoops and netting before the fatality,” according to the indictment.
These experts also noted that the slide’s design “violated nearly all aspects of the longstanding industry safety standards,” the indictment states.
The idea to build the waterslide allegedly came in 2012 in a “spur-of-the-moment bid” to impress producers of the Travel Channel’s Xtreme Waterparks series, according to the indictment. Another motivation for Henry was allegedly to “flaunt his achievements in the faces of the other waterpark owners.”
“Henry compared the construction of Verrückt to an arms race against rival waterparks,” the indictment states.
The indictment further claims that both Henry and designer John Schooley lacked the technical expertise and engineering credentials necessary to properly design the “complex” attraction.
“In place of mathematical and physics calculations, they rushed forward relying almost entirely on crude trial-and-error methods,” the indictment alleges.
Miles was further indicted on two counts of interference with law enforcement in connection with allegations he attempted to obstruct investigators. Schlitterbahn was also charged with one count of interference with law enforcement.
Of the three men, only one of them — Miles — has so far appeared in court in Kansas, where he pleaded not guilty. In a statement, his attorneys said he was unaware of the dangers of the Verrückt.
Schooley was reportedly out of the country at the time he was indicted and plans to turn himself into the custody of law enforcement while Henry is awaiting extradition from Texas, where he was arrested. Schooley’s attorney was not immediately available to comment and it is unclear if Henry has retained a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
