A former Mississippi state lawmaker was fatally shot over the weekend outside the same burned-out home where her sister-in-law was found dead following an arson fire after Christmas.
What are the details?
Ashley Henley, a Republican who represented Southaven from 2016 to 2019, was found with a gunshot wound to the back of her head in Saturday. Her body was discovered by investigators after her husband called a neighbor out of concern when she seemed to be gone for too long while cleaning up the property where his sister died.
Henley and her husband, Brandon Henley, have pressed local law enforcement on the investigation surrounding the death of Brandon’s sister, Kristina Michelle Jones, whose body was found Dec. 26 inside a trailer owned by Brandon and Kristina’s father.
Following Jones’ death, Brandon and Ashley put up a billboard-type shrine of sorts outside the property, insisting that Jones had been murdered and calling for justice.
“I feel that if something would have been done sooner this would have never happened,” Brandon told WJTV-TV following his wife’s death.
Brandon told the outlet that he believes both his wife and his sister were killed by the same person, and that the family “had just days earlier begun re-examining his sister’s death.”
“The fire investigators did confirm it was arson and the crime lab did confirm that there was no smoke in her lungs when she was found, so she was dead before the fire,” Brandon said of his sister’s death.
He said of the Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Office, “I’d like for them to do their job because this is the second person someone down there has taken from me.” He added, “My son doesn’t have a mother.”
The Washington Post reported that the Henleys had launched their own investigation into Jones’ death, and that Ashley’s friend and former colleague state Rep. Dan Eubanks (R) said Ashley “had grown increasingly frustrated in recent weeks and feared that Jones’ case would go cold.”
Eubanks told WLBT-TV:
“I really believe that what happened was, she continued to pursue certain leads and she ruffled some feathers and somebody wanted to put an end to that search. It’s obvious that it was an execution-style murder. Somebody wanted her dead. They didn’t rob her, they didn’t take any of her stuff. … They killed her and just moved on.”