An Alabama woman was charged alongside her bigamist husband for the death of the man’s pregnant wife and members of her family, which included two minors.
According to PEOPLE, Rhonda Carlson, 48, pleaded guilty for her part in the 2015 killings of Kristin Smallwood Henderson, the victim’s unborn child, her mother Jean Smallwood, her eight-year-old son, Clayton Daniel Chambers, and her 1-year-old nephew, Eli Sokolowski.
Carlson, who is also a mother, avoided the death penalty because she agreed to go on the stand against her husband Christopher Henderson, who she claimed was the mastermind behind the murder.
Apparently, he left Carlson but never legally divorced her for Kristin. But after that relationship began to plummet, he reached out to Carlson. That is when Madison County Chief Deputy District Attorney Tim Gann said the two devised their plot and carried it out,
“[Carlson] was assuming they would get together and resume their marriage but Kristin was pregnant and she was only a few weeks away from delivery, and he was tied up with the divorce and possibly having to pay child support,” says Gann. “I think this was an easy fix for them just to kill everybody. They kind of thought they would walk away.”
“It was as bad as you could ever imagine,” adds Gann. “It is really unspeakable.”
Henderson, who worked in maintenance, was upset that he had to pay child support to Kirstin, coupled with the possibility that he may lose visitation rights for their child.
Henderson also had beef with his father-in-law, Kristin’s dad, because he allowed Kristen to live with him after the couple started having problems.
However, the original plan was to kill Kristen’s dad.
“They had originally planned to just kill the father but he felt like it would be worse on the father if he killed the rest of the family and the father had to live with it. So he killed everybody else in the family while the father was gone to work,” says Gann.
In August, Henderson and Carlson drove over to the father-in-law’s home just after Kristin went to pick up up her son Clayton from school.
Henderson went inside the house, and Carlson acted as a lookout “to make sure Kristin was coming to let him know to be ready,” Gann stated.
That is when Henderson shot Kristin’s mother, Smallwood, and then stabbed 15-month-old Eli several times while he was inside his bassinet. After that, he waited for Kristin and Clayton to arrive.
“When Kristin and Clayton went into the house, he killed Clayton first and then attacked Kristin in the garage area,” he says.
Ganns also said Henderson “stabbed her multiple times and cut the baby out of her womb and stabbed it.”
