Juneau, WI: Waupun man pleads guilty in murder case

BY COLLEEN KOTTKE
The Reporter|ckottke@fdlreporter.com

JUNEAU — A jury will determine whether or not Larry Henry was mentally ill when he bludgeoned his wife to death in their Waupun apartment last summer.

The 44-year-old Waupun man entered a guilty plea during a motion hearing on Friday in Dodge County Circuit Court on charges he killed Tammy Henry. Henry is charged with first degree intentional homicide, a charge that carries a penalty of life imprisonment.

Because Henry entered an amended plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease at an Oct. 7 motion hearing, the plea requires a two-phased trial: one to establish if he killed Tammy Henry as charged, and the second to determine if he suffered from a mental condition that disabled him from telling right from wrong or made it impossible to conform to lawful behavior.

“In Wisconsin, those that enter a not guilty by insanity plea have a right to a bifurcated trial. Today his (Henry’s) plea was ‘yes,’ factually he did it — however, he couldn’t appreciate or understand what he was doing because of his mental state,” said Bob Barrington, managing attorney for the Dodge County District Attorney’s Office.

Judge Andrew Bissonnette agreed to appoint a psychiatric professional to perform a third report regarding Henry’s mental state.

“I take it that the previous reports done by (the defense and the prosecution) ended in a tie,” Bissonnette said.

During the motion hearing following Henry’s plea, Public Defender Greg Vollan asked to include information regarding the victim’s mental health issues and how her behavior may have impacted Larry Henry’s mental state.

Henry has been held in the Dodge County Jail on a $250,000 cash bail since he was taken into custody on July 13, 2009, after admitting to police and an emergency dispatcher that he had killed his 42-year-old wife.

According to testimony at a Feb. 22 motions hearing, Henry made a telephone call from a phone in the vestibule of the Waupun Police Department to the Fond du Lac County Dispatch Center around 6:30 p.m. the day of the alleged murder. During the call, Henry calmly related to the dispatcher that he had “taken his wife’s life” earlier that afternoon and that she was lying on a bed in the living room at their apartment at 503½ W. Main St. When asked by the dispatcher if there was any chance that his wife was still alive, Henry simply responded, “No, ma’am.”

Minutes later as Henry walked around to the back of the Safety Building with Waupun investigator Brian O’Donovan, the Waupun man volunteered that he had hit his wife in the back of the head with a metal rod and that he had then placed a plastic bag over her face, according to the criminal complaint.