‘This gives everybody hope that justice can prevail’: After 23 years, police solve Richmond murder of woman slain in her home

Meekiah Wadley, 28, was killed inside her Richmond home by a man who relatives say was attempting to spend the night there without her permission.

RICHMOND — After 23 years, the person who murdered a Richmond woman inside her home has been identified as a man who died within two weeks of the killing, police announced Thursday.

Meekiah Wadley, 28, was strangled to death inside her home on Carlson Boulevard, leaving behind an 18-month-old daughter whose father died before she was born. Wadley had just returned from the movies with a friend on the night of Jan. 9, 1999. Neighbors heard her arguing with someone before she was killed.

Now, police say they know who did it: a 35-year-old homeless man and Contra Costa Community College student named Jerry Lee Henderson. The Shreveport, La., native died of a suspected drug overdose just 11 days later. Henderson was identified through DNA evidence found under Wadley’s fingernails, police say.

Henderson was identified after police linked his DNA to a relative, in a process known as genetic genealogy. That technique was made famous by the Golden State Killer investigation.

Meekiah Wadley’s sister, Quila Wadley, told this news organization that she never suspected Henderson, an acquaintance of Meekiah who she met through a friend. She said police focused on the man Meekiah went to the movies with that night.

“This gives everybody hope that justice can prevail,” Quila Wadley said.

In an interview with this newspaper, Quila Wadley shared her theory behind her sister’s murder: that Henderson was living on friends’ couches and that another person had asked him to leave. He believed Meekiah was staying at another friend’s house that night and snuck into her home intent on spending the night, surprising him when she showed up.

“I think he thought he was going to sleep her in house, and when she came home, and must have found him in her house,” Quila said. “She was probably like, ‘Get out of my house, I’m gonna call the police,’ and they started fighting.”

In 1999, this news organization reported that Meekiah Wadley moved into the home where she was killed about three years before her death, with her daughter, Chantel Jones. In 1997, Jones’ father was gunned down in an ambush outside Richmond’s Roadrunner Club on Ohio Avenue. Family members said Wadley was still grieving years later.

At the time of her death, she worked at Target in El Cerrito, where co-workers described her as a serious, organized worker with a “great personality.” She made a resolution on New Year’s Day 1999 to go to college, which is where she met Henderson, relatives say.

Her murder went unsolved despite a DNA test in 2002 of swabs from Wadley’s hands, which yielded a DNA profile but no matches in the state’s offender database. In 2020, police requested “additional testing” of her fingernails and used DNA from them to identify a relative of her killer, which led investigators to Henderson.

Acting Richmond police Chief Louie Tirona and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the findings at a news conference Thursday.

“I hope today brings a measure of peace and closure,” Bonta said.