21/09/2022
Questions surrounding sisters' deaths 35 years ago continue to haunt family, friends
Jack Money
Oklahoman
Published 6:01 a.m. CT Sept. 21, 2022 Updated 6:27 a.m. CT Sept. 21, 2022
This time of year generates excitement about visiting the Oklahoma State Fair and enjoying its
midway games, rides and tasty treats.
But for family and friends of Cheryl Genzer and Lisa Pennington — sisters who were found murdered after attending the fair one night 35 years ago — the arrival of each year's fair only brings memories they would rather forget.
Haunting questions remain about the case family and friends hope can still be resolved. More: Another Oklahoma State Fair-related disappearance case remains unsolved
They are hoping their questions might be answered with help from the Homicide Victims' Families' Rights Act, a federal bill signed into law in August that enables family members of qualifying cold case murder victims to request additional reviews using the latest-available technology.
Recent success from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's cold case unit showcases what kinds of results today's technology can produce, they say.
"What if (identifiable) DNA is under fingernails or on some piece of the other physical evidence?" asks Dorian Quillen, a former newspaper reporter-turned private investigator- turned licensed professional counselor who befriended the sisters' parents decades ago and since has pursued numerous leads on their behalf.
"We still think there is value and merit in accounting for all the evidence and testing it, to the extent that it could be. This case — this family — deserves that. It has been hell for them."
Resolution certainly would be welcomed by Alan Pennington, a brother of Cheryl's and Lisa's who had spent time with them at the Oklahoma State Fair the last night they were seen alive.
Alan recalls how he left them at the fair to take his girlfriend home, only to discover they were not where they had promised to meet when he returned.
Alan, his wife and two sons now live in Plano, Texas, where he is a design engineer at a sign business.
Alan left Oklahoma in 1993 to get away from the family's pain after the slayings, he said. He often wonders how much of what he has heard over the years about what happened is actually true.
More: Murders deserve accountability, private investigator says
"I think about how things could be now — if I had been given the chance to enjoy watching their kids, my nieces and nephews, grow into adults — where I would be living. Basically, just a lot of what-ifs about how things would be today. Where would I be if that hadn't have happened?"
What we know about the cold case murders of Cheryl Genzer and Lisa Pennington
Cheryl, 25, and Lisa, 16, were last seen Sept. 23, 1987, after they had been to the fair and then had gone to a friend's house. They were reported missing several days later by their parents, Charlette and Rocky Pennington.
Cheryl, a tall blonde recently separated from her husband and staying with a friend, checked in regularly with Charlette. They last visited over a cup of coffee the day the sisters disappeared, where they discussed a house painting job Cheryl was trying to get.
Lisa, a quiet teenager who would have turned 17 the month after she disappeared, loved music and had bedroom walls covered with Motley Crue posters. Like her older sister, she never left home unless she looked perfect, their mother later recalled.
"It didn't matter if they were going anywhere or not," Charlette told The Oklahoman in 2007. "It was just part of their routine. They'd get up, shower and do their makeup. Every day."
Charlette and Rocky's concerns grew as days turned into weeks without knowing where their daughters were or what had happened to them.
Fears turned into grief after the bodies of Cheryl and Lisa were located in shallow graves in October 1987, less than a mile from where police had been told they were last seen alive in north Oklahoma City.
Within days, the sisters, shot in their heads by an assailant or assailants, were positively identified, and the Penningtons knew what had happened. But they still didn't know why.
While persons of interest were identified early on, no suspect was immediately charged.
However, that changed more than two years later after a fair worker who told police that he had given the sisters free monorail rides that night and had partied with them later that night changed his story, implicating a friend who lived where he said the sisters were last seen alive.
In exchange for immunity against being prosecuted for several felony drug charges, Doug Lawson told investigators he and Lane Henley III had left the fair with the sisters, went to one house to smoke ma*****na and snort co***ne and then had gone to Henley's place, where more drugs were consumed.
Lawson told investigators Cheryl and Henley argued later that night after Henley told her that he had r***d her sister. Lawson also said he had seen Henley attack Cheryl and then place her in his car.
Henley's home and property already had been searched by police based on what they had learned earlier in the investigation. Police carried away several items from the scene.
Based on collected evidence and Lawson's story, prosecutors charged Henley with two counts of first-degree murder.
But less than two years later, Lawson recanted, telling a judge his revised story was false. Henley ultimately was set free in 1992. Lawson meanwhile, was convicted of perjury and spent more than five years on probation as a result.
The Penningtons continued to work with authorities and private investigators to learn how their daughters died.
Henley later moved to New Mexico, where authorities looked at whether he might have been involved with a girlfriend's death in 2000.
Molly Keahy, 35, had been found dead in a shallow grave about 15 miles outside of Roswell. She had been shot in the head. Henley was never charged.
Then, in 2008, Henley barely escaped a fire at his trailer home with his own life. His girlfriend then at the time, identified as 38-year-old Amy Mirabal, died in the fire.
While authorities didn't suspect foul play after the fire, Quillen describes circumstances surrounding Henley as "kind of weird."
Henley died in 2015.
More about the new federal law
The Homicide Victims' Families' Rights Act was co-authored by U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D- California, and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.
The House approved the measure in March, while the Senate adopted it last month before it was signed into law.
Swalwell and McCaul are both former prosecutors. Swalwell sits on the House Judiciary Committee and was an Alameda County (Calif.) deputy district attorney. McCaul was a federal prosecutor and a Texas deputy attorney general.
“As a former prosecutor, I saw first-hand the unimaginable tragedy of losing a loved one to homicide,” Swalwell said. “Accountability is crucial to beginning the healing process and getting justice, and when families miss out on that opportunity, it is a massive failure of our systems. We must do more to give those families — who have already been through so much — the closure they deserve.”
But Quillen and relatives of Cheryl's and Lisa's are still waiting to learn whether this measure, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, will be any help.
As written, the law only grants family members of homicide victims in cases that could be prosecuted in federal court the right to request a review.
But Charlette, Quillen notes, was a member of the Cheyenne & Arapaho tribes. That might make Cheryl's and Lisa's deaths eligible to be reviewed.
Could 21st-century technology provide the family with more answers?
Could 21st-century technology provide the family with more answers?
Quillen said she is hopeful that could happen, pointing toward a cold-case unit established in 2018 by the OSBI that recently has celebrated several findings helping them unravel other cold cases.
In June, a woman was charged with first-degree murder in Choctaw County District Court after confessing to cutting her newborn's son throat almost 30 years earlier.
Investigators at the agency say they were able to narrow suspects down to the baby's mother, Meaonia Michelle Allen, after working with Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs, which conducted a genetic genealogy search using the victim's DNA to identify the woman.
As for the homicides of Cheryl and Lisa, while Oklahoma City police declined to confirm what specific items were collected where the sisters' bodies were discovered, a spokesman did confirm investigators still have what was collected at the scene.
But Oklahoma City police Master Sgt. Gary Knight said Cheryl's and Lisa's cases are complicated by the fact that no recoverable DNA (other than the victims') was discovered on what police found.
"The bodies were so decomposed when they were discovered, there was no suspect DNA remaining."
Still, investigators wouldn't turn away assistance, he added.
"As a police department, we are welcoming of anything that will help us solve a heinous case such as this one," Knight said.
Family's questions deserve answers, Quillen says
Quillen first met the sisters' parents, Rocky and Charlette Pennington, as they participated in support group activities for homicide victims' families when she worked for a daily newspaper in Yukon.
Information the Penningtons gave Quillen ultimately prompted her and a friend to obtain private investigator licenses so they could help the grieving parents learn who might have been responsible for Cheryl's and Lisa's deaths.
Over the past 35 years, Quillen, her friend and others have worked with the Penningtons to learn more about how Cheryl and Lisa died.
They have developed leads and shared information with prosecutors about another person of interest who still lives in Oklahoma City, but never was charged.
They even worked with a retired New York City homicide investigator to create an episode about the case for "America's Most Wanted."
Rocky and Charlette Pennington died in recent years and are buried alongside Cheryl and Lisa in a small cemetery outside of Geary.
Quillen said she promised Charlette before she passed last year she would continue to do everything she could to help the family find justice. Quillen, Allen and others plan to hold a news conference Friday, Sept. 23, at the site where the family is buried at the North Family Cemetery, where she plans to call for the case to be reopened.
"The family wants to know if the collected evidence remains viable and whether or not it could be tested using today's improved technology for DNA samples that might identify the killer, or killers," Quillen said.
"We want the case reopened, and we want the evidence retested and an accounting of what is found."
Alan simply seeks closure.
"More than anything, I just wish I could tell my parents and sisters through prayer at their gravesites that we finally knew who did it," he said. "That would mean the world to me."
