34 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Fall 2018 TheCoastalBend.com change the tourism landscape of the Coastal Bend, and that would serve as the anchor of a major new resort development on the island— but by the time it opened in 2015, it was late. Very late. As construction dragged on, and one promised opening date after another was missed, some people who knew Jeff and his his- tory in the business—good and bad—were not particularly worried about whether the park would open. They knew Henry as an eccentric genius who always over-promised on delivery dates, but never disappointed on product and visitor experience. His conservative-minded local partners, however, led by developer and apartment owner Willard Hammonds, pulled their reported $11 million investment out of the Schlitterbahn Corpus Christi partnership after Henry missed yet another promised com- pletion date. At what point is “eccentric” behavior con- sidered erratic behavior? The answer is in the eye of the observer. As Henry became more fa- miliar to islanders, and his reputation spread through the restaurants and taverns frequent- ed by Schlitterbahn employees and contrac- tors, it was hard to find anyone who didn’t have a strong opinion about him, one way or the other. Kind of like the Cowboys—football fans either love ’em or hate ’em, but no one lacks an opinion. By the summer of 2014, just as Jeff Hen- ry eclipsed the summit of his greatest, and most tumultuous professional accomplish- ment—Verrückt in Kansas City—he was being both cursed and defended at high volume by many interested parties in Corpus Christi. At least a contractor or two were unhappy about not being paid on time, or at all. More than a few very confused job aspirants showed up at Schlitterbahn ready to work as lifeguards but were instead handed hardhats and shovels and told to start digging. Henry’s workers would take days or weeks building a design feature, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to be told to tear it down and start over using a different plan. One of the most cringeworthy episodes of Jeff Henry’s eccentricity occurred in spring of 2015 when he took KIII-TV anchor, Joe Gazin, on a live tour of the new resort and announced that it would be open in two weeks—to the shock of every employee on site, none of whom had any notice of the announcement, and all of whom knew it was an impossible, ridiculous promise. The park was nowhere close to being ready, and ultimately half of the park opened in the middle of the summer. There were episodes of Schlitterbahn staff headhunting workers out of the island’s most popular establishments, at a time when seasonal employees were in short supply, and horror stories told by workers at the park spread like a windblown grass fire, with Jeff Henry ultimately at the center of all of them. Before long, the ugliest rumors of drug use, heavy drinking and other nefarious activity by Henry, personally, bled into the fabric of island society, although his defenders chalked those stories up to hater-ism. Just as Henry had made international news, while scoring a Travel Channel realty series based on Verrückt, his most outrageous professional accomplishment, his personal life was starting its downward spiral. He paid a divorce settlement to his second ex-wife, Lou- ise Settree, of a reported $6.7 million. In her 2013 court filing, Settree claimed that she suf- fered “horrific assaults” at the hand of Henry, fueled by out-of-control alcohol and drug use, and that over their five-year marriage, he had “assaulted, battered, beat and tormented” her on a regular basis. Settree stated that Henry’s abusive treatment of her was, “atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” A man who lived like jet fuel ran through his veins, capable of extreme genius and ex- treme ugliness on any given day, was in no way equipped to deal with the stresses common to all our lives, like the death of elderly parents. The backbone of Schlitterbahn and patriarchs of one of Texas’ most successful family busi- nesses, died within a year of each other, Bob Henry in October 2016, and his widow Billye in 2017. After the horrifying, decapitation death of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab on Verrückt in Au- gust 2016, an elaborate cover-up policy was de- scribed to have been in place at Schlitterbahn Kansas City—a concerted effort to hide injuries that resulted from rafts going airborne after cresting the ride’s 55-foot, second hill. The cover-up conspiracy, allegedly orchestrated by Henry and carried out by park manager, Tyler Miles, involved the alteration and destruction of rider injury reports, the coercion and in- timidation of park staff, including lifeguards and medical personnel, into changing incident reports, lying to police and state investigators, and intentionally ignoring warnings by certi- fied engineers and maintenance staff about the dangers of Verrückt. Before the alleged con- spiracy was discovered, Henry and Schlitter- bahn paid a reported $19.7 million civil settle- ment to Caleb Schwab’s family. In the winter of 2017, four months after Caleb’s death, hundreds of daily incident re- ports from Schlitterbahn Kansas City were discovered to exist, originally denied by Miles when questioned by Kansas City (KS) police detectives the day of the incident. The “Daily Ops” reports, which Miles had packed up and driven from Kansas to New Braunfels in No- vember 2016, revealed eleven incidents of seri- ous injuries on Verrückt over its three seasons in operation, a fact also originally denied to police by Miles. The information in the reports led to a lengthy list of witnesses, victims, and possible conspirators in Schlitterbahn’s ongo- ing effort to conceal the exact type of injuries, caused by the exact malfunction, that resulted in the decapitation death of Caleb Schwab. The investigation by the Kansas Attor- ney General’s office was concluded by March 2018, and felony indictments were delivered by a grand jury against Jeff Henry, his lead designer John Schooley, park manager Tyler Miles, as well as Schlitterbahn Kansas City and Henry & Sons Construction. Henry was taken into custody in South Padre Island, in Cameron County, and extradited to Kansas where he was arraigned and released on $500,000 bail. On April 6, having arrived home to Texas on one of his private planes, and less than 24 hours af- ter being released from the Wyandotte County (KS) Jail, police were called at 2 a.m. to a house on Henry’s New Braunfels ranch where Terri Lange was living with her son, C. J. Conn, who was employed by Henry but in jail for a proba- tion violation. SETTREE CLAIMEDTHAT SHE SUFFERED “HORRIFIC ASSAULTS”ATTHE HAND OF HENRY, FUELED BY OUT-OF-CONTROL ALCOHOL AND DRUG USE,ANDTHAT OVERTHEIR FIVE-YEAR MARRIAGE, HE HAD “ASSAULTED, BATTERED, BEAT ANDTORMENTED” HER ON A REGULAR BASIS.