Widower of former Mississippi lawmaker blasts police investigation into deaths of wife, sister
In the moments just before she was fatally shot, a former Mississippi lawmaker was sprucing up the lawn surrounding a shrine she and her husband created to serve as both a memorial for his sister and a critique of authorities’ investigation into her death.
Kristina Michelle Jones was found burned to death inside the charred remains of her trailer in the Water Valley Boat Landing community on Dec. 26, 2020. Authorities believe the mobile home was set ablaze around 1:30 a.m.
In the months after, her brother Brandon Henley and his wife, Ashley Henley, have been outspoken critics of investigators’ handling of the case.
But now, Brandon Henley has another name to add to his cause. Over the weekend, Ashley Henley, a Republican who served in the state House from January 2016 to January 2020 from a district in DeSoto County, was fatally shot while she cut the grass outside the burned mobile home. Not far from her a body, a sign adorned with photos of her dead sister-in-law, along with the phrase “I WAS MURDERED,” remained standing.
“The sheriff didn’t care until my wife was murdered,” Brandon Henley told NBC News on Wednesday. “The way he tried to handle the case — he’s not there for the people, he’s there for the politics.”
Henley said his wife made the trip from their home in New Haven to the small Georgia community, a journey about 75 miles long, between 10 and 11 a.m. Ashley was planning on tidying up the overgrown property where her sister-in-law once lived when she was killed.
When she failed to return home later that evening, a concerned Henley requested a friend go check on the former lawmaker. The friend found her bloody body at about 8:30 p.m., but investigators didn’t arrive for another 90 minutes, Henley said.
Yalobusha County Coroner Ronnie Stark concluded earlier this week that Ashley was killed by a gunshot wound. Her death is being investigated as a homicide.
“She was an amazing person. She was a gift,” Brandon Henley told the news station.
“She was standing up and fighting for our rights. It didn’t matter who you were — if she saw someone not treated fairly, she was going to speak out about it. If she saw corruption, she was going to call it out. She was dynamite in a very small package. She stood for what was right.”
Jones’ postmortem report from the state medical examiner, a copy of which Henley shared with NBC News, revealed no proof of smoke inhalation and ruled the cause of death as inclusive. Henley said he believes that means she died before her trailer caught fire even though investigators have ruled out arson in the case.
Henley believes the same person is responsible for both Jones’ and Ashley’s deaths.
“I’m guessing this guy thought that if he got rid of her, he would get rid of the problem,” he said. “But he just started a war.”
