BRADENTON, Fla. — A 20-year-old man who has confessed to fatally bludgeoning four members of his family on Thanksgiving said he is severely mentally ill and can't explain why he did it. "I have problems. I can't believe I did what I did," Richard E. Henderson Jr. told a Bradenton Herald reporter in telephone interviews from the county jail Thursday. "I want everyone to know I loved my family. I miss them and I love them."
Manatee County investigators said Henderson told them he sneaked up on his parents, younger brother and grandmother one by one and beat them with a 2 1/2-foot metal pipe on Thanksgiving night.
The bodies of the Hendersons — Richard Sr., 48; Jeaneane, 42, Jake, 11, and June, 82 — were found Sunday in separate rooms of their Myakka City home in eastern Manatee County. Richard Henderson Jr. was arrested walking along a busy road Sunday night. ...