Prayers For Stepha Henry And Her Loved Ones

Stepha Henry (who I blogged about back in June last year) wasn't Natalee Holloway or Laci Peterson or even Jennifer "Missing Bride" Wilbanks. In other words, she wasn't a young, pretty, missing white woman. Instead Stepha happened to be black and unfortunately her race cost her the attention of cable news networks and morning news shows nationally who don't give near as much coverage to missing minorities as they do missing white women. So you can't be blamed if you've never heard of Stepha Henry. And now, despite the ignorance of the national media, tragically, after almost a year of being missing, the answer to Henry's disappearance has finally arrived:

The New York City Police Department this week arrested a suspect in the death of Stepha Henry, who has been missing since May 29, 2007. Kendrick Lincoln Williams was arrested on Jan. 15, police said. He was charged with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence, even though Henry’s body has not yet been recovered.

Miami-Dade Police spokesman Roy Rutland said a significant amount of blood – which a forensic analysis determined to be Henry’s – was found in Williams’ Acura Integra, leaving police to believe that she is dead.

Henry, 22, and her sister, Shola, were on vacation during the Memorial Day 2007 weekend. The two sisters were staying with their aunt, Carletha Clarke, in Miami Gardens.

The arrest came after a team of detectives, including two from Florida, found Williams asleep in a car near a Brooklyn pier, police said. Authorities believe he had been living in the vehicle. Police said they had forensic evidence, including blood from Henry found in the black sedan that Williams was driving the night Henry disappeared.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of Stepha Henry.

Shed Few Tears For Emily Sander

Sad, but not shocking:

Authorities said the preliminary physical description of the body found about 50 miles east of El Dorado matches that of missing college student Emily Sander. Investigators refused to give details about the state of the body or how it was found.

Sander's case drew wide attention after it was revealed that she appeared nude on a popular adult Web site under the name Zoey Zane. That site was temporarily inaccessible Thursday, as were several sites that bill themselves as "fan" sites of Zane.

But Police Chief Tom Boren insisted Thursday that Sander's Internet activity had no connection to her disappearance.

"The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation," Boren said. Police said publicity about Sander's explicit photos brought a flood of tips, many of them false leads.

Boren said the cause of death was not yet known. An autopsy is planned.

So yet another national alert goes up for a Pretty Young Missing White Girl (meanwhile, some two years later, Stepha Henry is still missing and CNN, CBS, MBNBC, et al could care less about that) and it turns out that she was a budding porno star on the side. Yet, the police, who seemed to have just found the body, want us to believe that there's no possible link between Emily Sander's lifestyle choice and her death.

Yeah ok.

Emily Sander was not a wholesome girl, she was a porn starlet who had over 30,000 subscribers on her adult website. One can imagine that she led a life that was not only exceedingly immoral, but fast, loose and dangerous. Yet, one has to wonder what would make any young woman want to live a life of porn? But we don't have to look any farther than the world we live in to answer that question. After all, we live in a world where we duck from personal responsibility and core moral values are being undermined the media and MTV--to the point that even the dirty and disgusting porno industry is becoming more and more accepted in mainstream society. And Sander's family was supposed to be "shocked" at the news that the young girl was an internet porn queen? Or is is that the family is just ducking from the responsibility they had in the girl's life? It's far less likely that the family are behaving honestly if they had permissive feelings concerning towards moral issues like divorce, sex, homosexuality and abortion. Far more likely that Emily Sander would still be alive if God, values and self-respect had played an important role in her life.

Where's The News Coverage For Stepha Henry?

If you pay any attention to these kind of things than you're long aware of the deal: a missing, pretty, white girl will receive far more attention from the national news media than their black counterparts (think back to Tamika Huston or LaToyia Figueroa). And like Kelsey Smith, the Kansas teenager who recently vanished after going shopping at a local Target, Stepha Henry has apparently vanished without a trace and Henry’s loved ones are very concerned about her whereabouts--just like Smith's loved ones were until her alleged killer was caught thanks in part to the huge amount of attention Smith's case got from the media--thanks in part to Kelsey Smith being young, pretty and white.

Yet it’s been a week since Stepha Henry went missing and her story hasn’t garnered a tenth of the national spotlight captured by Kelsey Smith, Natalee Hollaway (who still makes news to this day), Laci Peterson or even Jennifer Wilbanks (whom, as we all know ended up to be nothing but a deranged lunatic, much less a liar) in the days following their respective disappearances. The story about Henry, a 22-year-old college grad and honors student from New York City, appeared in my local paper for the first time the other day, nearly a week after she was reported missing:

An aspiring Brooklyn lawyer mysteriously disappeared a week ago while visiting a relative in Miami, and her family is sick with worry.

Stepha Henry, 22, an honors graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, flew to Florida on May 24 for a reggae concert.

But she hasn't been seen since May 29 - the day she was supposed to return home, Miami cops said.

"She has never done anything like this. We are very worried. We love her and just want her home," said Henry's mother, Sylvia, from her home in East New York.

Miami cops said Henry was last seen leaving her aunt Carletha Clarke's home on Northwest 191st St. with an unknown man about 1 a.m. She was on her way to a Fort Lauderdale dance club called Club Peppers when she stepped into a black sedan, possibly a four-door Acura. She was wearing a black jumper with a white tank top, Miami cops said.

"We are shocked by this. This is not the Stepha we know to disappear like this," said Richard Saulnier, assistant vice president for enrollment management at John Jay.

Henry, who graduated last year with a major in criminal justice and a minor in psychology, was one of only two students chosen to be a presidential aide to John Jay President Jeremy Travis while she was a senior, Saulnier said.

"She was chosen because of her academic record and the type of person she is," Saulnier said, describing Henry as "terrific" and "caring."

Henry had been working as an administrative assistant for Saulnier and studying for the law school entrance exam.

She is black, has red hair and brown eyes and is about 5-feet-2 and 110 pounds, police said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-8477 or NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.