The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast

The Von Stein Family Tragedy Part X: From Gifted Prodigy To Manipulator: Neil Henderson's Troubled Rise

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A boy who reads at three and crushes tests at five should be unstoppable, right? Neil Henderson’s story bends that assumption until it snaps. We follow a brilliant kid raised amid family rupture who rockets past classmates, dazzles teachers, and learns a dangerous lesson: results without effort feel the same as results with it. That belief shadows every choice he makes as freedom expands faster than discipline.

With mentor Weldon Slayton offering rare structure, Neil thrives on advanced work and intellectual play. Then a new world opens at a top science and math boarding school—games, first love, and the heady thrill of finding a tribe. Instead of sharpening his focus, the freedom feeds his appetite for novelty. Grades slip, probation follows, and he returns home determined to own his reputation. In a cluttered basement strung with posters and trophies, he shapes a persona that is equal parts prodigy and provocateur.

What begins as a shy crush from Kenyatta turns into a secret, high-stakes romance—bikes hidden in the woods, locked doors, and a furious discovery that ripples through both families. Neil cycles between charm and cold logic, arguing that feelings and actions can be neatly separated. Around the table, his Dungeons and Dragons strategies grow sharper and darker: less questing, more scheming; less teamwork, more control. Friends notice they’re being played. The patterns of the game echo in life—manipulation over trust, quick wins over earned growth.

This chapter of the Von Stein family tragedy examines how intelligence without guardrails can curdle into power-seeking. We explore gifted education’s blind spots, the lure of role-playing as social currency, and the moral drift that follows when accountability never keeps pace with ability. If you’ve ever wondered how a promising mind can become its own worst teacher, this story offers a gripping, uneasy answer.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—what moment hit you hardest?

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, Ciara, and we will continue with the Von Stein family tragedy. Let's begin. Castro County never had seen the likes of Neil Henderson. He arrived in the county when he was nearly eight with his two-year-old sister Heather and his mother Anne, who was fleeing a bad marriage. They moved into a small brick house of his maternal grandmother and stepgrandfather, set far from the road on a sandy lane guarded by three greensided tobacco farms, only short distance from the spot where a Bisha Slate's slave, Stephen, accidentally created bright leaf tobacco. Neil had been born only a few miles across the state line in Danville, where his parents had met. But before Neil was a year old, his father Jerry moved the family to Richmond, where he went to work for a family construction company. By the time Neil was six, his parents' marriage was in trouble. Later, he still would carry vivid memories of their arguments. He said that they didn't like doing it in front of him. He would jump up, throw his hands in front of them, and try to stop them, and he hated it. Anne Henderson left her husband after Neil finished the first grade. The separation was frenching for Neil. He said that he loved his father to death, and he and he his father loved him to death, and he was always with his father. His mother brought her children to North Carolina and moved in temporarily with her brother and his family in Chapel Hill. Neil missed his daddy and didn't understand why he couldn't be with him. He said that when he remembered being in Chapel Hill, then Mom had to go to Richmond to see about the divorce and she wouldn't take him. All he understood was that Mom was going to see his dad and she he couldn't go see him. Neil completed the second grade in Chapel Hill and by the time he entered the third grade at Barlett Jansey Elementary School, he already had left behind a string of amazed teachers and school officials who never knew what to do with him. His kindergarten teacher thought he should be at least in the second grade. His first grade teacher succeeded in having him sent to the second grade, but he had to repeat it again after he moved to Chapel Hill. There his teacher kept pulling him out of class to be tested. In the third and fourth grades in Caswell County, he was he was so far ahead of his of his classmates that he didn't have to pay attention to any of the instruction and still could make perfect scores on any tests they took. According to Neil, he says, quote, I was bored, I read constantly, I can't ever remember not reading. I think I was reading at three. I could just get a book, kick back, be happy. His reading was eclectic. He loved comic books, especially those about superheroes, and read them until he had memorized them. He even created his own comic books about a character he called Solar Boy, who performed amazing feats with bursts of solar energy. He discovered science fiction and fantasy and read whole series of several authors. One day, soon after Neil began the fifth grade, Weldon Slayton, then teaching at Diller Junior High School, got a call from Steve Williamson, director of special education. He said that he got this kid in the fifth grade and his mother's demanding they do something with him because he's knocking the top out of every test we give him. So Slayton, Rico, do you think that you could do anything with him? So Slayton, who was just beginning to teach gifted and talented students, was trying to was willing to try. So like the teachers who had encountered Neo before him, Slayton was amazed at the results of the test Neo had taken. The this fifth grader obviously was capable of high school work. His IQ had tested as high as 180, well into the range of genius. Slayton went to the elementary school and met with Neo and his mother. And according to Mr. Slayton, he was just a putty little kid who had a wonderful vocabulary, and he thought he found the world very amusing. And Hernderson was worried about her son's social development if he advanced into higher grades with older classmates. And Slayton worked out an arrangement in which Neo would sit spend mornings with him in the eighth-grade English and social studies classes, then returned to the elementary school in the afternoon. The other students in Slayton's class looked upon Neo as an oddity. And he said they like me, but even in the GT class, I was still the smart kid. I would run from the girl. They enjoyed chasing me. They thought I was just the cutest little thing. And I enjoyed the attention. Slayton discovered that Neo had a mischievous sense of humor. He came into class one day to find Neo missing and the other students grinning. Then he heard a giggle coming from a cabinet. He opened it to find that his star student had crawled into it to hide from him. Neil found Slayton's classes to be different from anything he had encountered. Slayton gave multiple assignments and left it to his students to figure out how to spend their time to accomplish them. For the first time, Neil was not bored in school. He enjoyed doing the work. He was sometimes late with it. He could never focus his interest on any one thing. If something else interested him, he would go and study it for a while, but he would get the work done. Slayton, on the other hand, he says that Neil procrastinated forever. Yet astonishedly, he it didn't seem to matter. Mr. Slayton recalled a time when he had scheduled a block of tests. Neil put off reading the material and still had not gotten to it when the time came for the test to begin. And Neil told him, let me have the test. And Mr. Slayton told him, Neil, you got some time. Why don't you take a couple today, then do the reading and take the others later? But Neil insisted, give me the tests. He sat down and breezed through them. When he finished, he had scored higher than anybody in the class.

unknown:

Mr.

SPEAKER_00:

Slayton had never seen another student like him. She just devoured books. He loved learning anything and everything. The following year, when Neil normally would have been in the sixth grade, Slayton went to teach at the high school. The decision was made to keep Neil in the eighth grade classes. He spent that year pretty well bored, just played the entire year. He did try to help the new teacher with his coursework. And the next day, when he was 12, Neil went off to high school to again become one of Slayton's kids. That year, Neil was allowed to take the SAT college entrance exams with the gifted and talented members of the senior class. He scored higher than any of them. In the next year, however, his life would take a fateful turn, though he didn't realize it then. He had heard two acquaintances, his own age, Choi Odome and James Upchurch, talking about a new game. Intrigued, he got hold of the basic book and read it, and then moved on to more advanced material. The following year, when he normally would have been in the ninth grade, Neil was taking junior and senior courses, but was assigned to a sophomore homeroom. They really never could decide exactly what he was. But school officials recognized that he needed more than what was available at Barley Janssen High. And that year Neil was accepted at the prestigious North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, a free tuition boarding school for some of the state's best students, or he would be considered a junior. Wharton Slayton had grown closer to Neil than he had ever allowed himself to get with any students. And although he and Neil's mother realized that Neil needed to get away from Castwell County to live up to his academic potential, both were concerned about him going off at age 15 to live on his own with older students. Neil never had close friends. He was still very immature without social skills or self-discipline. Would he be able to function without close and caring supervision? Would sending him away help him or harm him? Before Neil was accepted by the School of Science and Math, he wrote and well done Slayton's yearbook the following. You have always been the guiding force in my life. But who knows where you're guiding me? I hope that if I'm here next year, I get you for English. I don't know why though. Maybe I'm a masochist. Always your semi-willing slave, Neil. After his assist acceptance, Neil wrote again in Slayton's yearbook, Revenge of the Nealy. Ha. I have remembered to write in your yearbook more. I suppose I will get serious. I really I'm really sad that I would have to leave prematurely. Your strange ways and speech patterns have become part of my existence. Going away will tear that out. I hope that you won't mind if I call half crazed with panic instead of completely crazed, as usual. You better come and visit me or I'll come and visit you. Just always be around and be my mentor and friend, and everything should be alright. Your devoted pupil, Neil Henderson. Neil did call Mr. Slayton from Durham on a regular basis, and Mr. Slayton called him. Mr. Slayton also went to the campus to visit him, yet everything was not alright. Neil was doing more than procrastinating with his classwork. Some of it he wasn't doing at all. Soon after his arrival, he had become involved in several groups playing Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games, and for the first time he began making some close friends among the players. During the DD game in the first week of school, he met a female student from Charlotte and they began seeing each other regularly. Neil never had dated before and he was mesmerized by having a girlfriend. When they broke up after a month, Neil soon met another young woman, and with yet another girlfriend, he had his first sexual experience. Girls and DD were taking far more of his time than studies, and his grades soon showed. He was placed on privation, the principal lamenting that he was among the school's top students in ability and among its lowest in using ability. Despite warnings from his mother and Slayton, Neil did little to improve his work, and although he passed out of his subjects with C's and B's, he was not invited to return the following year. A polite way of rejecting him. He returned home to finish his final year of high school at Barletancy, still a year ahead of his classmates from elementary school, changering about letting down his mother and Mr. Slayton and others who had expected great things from him, but not at all sorry about leaving the school of science and math. He said that it wasn't for him. He just couldn't handle the freedom. He didn't have the self-discipline to do the work. Despite his lack of success, Neil returned to a campus where he was as well known as the captain of the football team and the head cheerleader. He was the great Neil Henderson, according to Ken Yatin of the church, who soon was to play a major role in his life. He was a geek, but he was the real smart guy on campus. Neil was keenly aware of his reputation, or as he called it, his celebrity for better or worse. They think I'm weird. Fine. I'm going to be weird. And I think I was remarkably successful in that endeavor. And that is a direct quote from Neil. He made friends with a few of the smarter male students and organized them into a group playing some of the fantasy and strategy games he had learned at the School of Science and Math. He created a spy game and ran around the school half always pretending to be agent 006 and a half. He was secretary for the band in which he played tuba. He worked on the school yearbook. He sold candy to help the Junior Engineering and Technical Society raise money to buy a computer, then became the school's computer whiz, programming it even to play his fantasy games. Walton Slayton remained concerned about Neil and some of the habits he had gotten into during the year he was away. He spent too much time playing games, too little time in his schoolwork. And he was personally slovenly. Slayton had been shocked at the condition of Neil's basement room when he visited his his uh visit him at home. The room, which had been partitioned up with plyboard paneling, was a scene of wild clutter. Somewhere beneath it all was a bed, a dresser, a bookcase, a chair rarely employed for sitting, a stereo on records filled, a big shelf. Another shelf was lined with trophies and certificates, a big closet was packed with his grandparents' old clothing, posters, the Beatles, characters from science fiction and fantasy tales decorated the walls. Clothes were strewn with superhero comics, books, and Dungeons and Dragons materials. And Mr. Slain told him, Neil, this is a pick style. You need to clean this place up. If Mr. Slay was concerned that Neil had become slovenly and lazy, paying too much attention to frivolous activities before the school year was up, he would discover that Neil had found another reason to devote even less time to his studies. Kingata Upchurch, first cousin of Bart and Emery, knew Neil only by reputation. She was in the eighth grade at Dillard Junior High, where she too was a gifted student. Resent forth her free and easy back to the land upbringing and embarrassed by her parents' continuing 60s alternative lifestyle, she had begun spending much of her time with her grandmother, Carolyn, at her big house in Milton. Her life, as she saw it, had been independent and lonely. As a small child, she had been shy and withdrawn, but that had changed. Now she was talkative and almost hyperactive, aggressive, and outspoken about her feelings. Kenyatta played flute in the junior high band, and in the spring of 1985, she was scheduled to take part in a concert at the high school at the auditorium. Friends who were supposed to pick her up failed to do so. Fearful that she was going to miss the concert, she rode her bicycle to her uncle's house in tears. Her cousin Bart drove her to the school. She arrived still upset in the lobby of the auditorium. A friend became to her. And he said, Kenyatta, come over here. I want to introduce you to Near Henderson. And she recalled years later that she was crying, and she thought, well, big deal. She didn't pay any attention to him. Not long afterward, she was in the band room at the junior high when Neil came in to pick up some equipment to take back to the high school. And something about him just click, according to Kenyatta. She developed an immediate and immense crush, although she could never explain why. She said that Neil looked like the Pillsbury doughboy. Real rich type. And he walked like a turtle with his head all stuck up. And she said, quote, I will see him get off the bus and just watch him walk. I was just crazy about him. You know how eighth grade crushes are. They're very embarrassing. End quote. Her cousin Amory had become friends with Neil and she pestered him to tell Neil that she had a crush on him until he did it. On Thursday, April 18th, a date she never would forget, she got word that Neil wanted to meet her after school. She came on her 10-speed bike. He was standing at the road waiting for her by the stop sign. They went into the school and talked while Neil plunked away at a computer. Two hours later they were still talking, and Neil had given her his class ring. She said, quote, He told me later that he was desperate to get a girlfriend at that point. By summertime, they had moved beyond going steady. A basement door led to Neil's room at his grandparents' house. Kenyatta began riding her bicycle several miles to the house, hiding her bike in the woods, and sneaking up to the basement door where Neil would let her in. And she said later that she bet she spent half the summer in that basement. By telling her parents that she was staying at her grandmother's and telling her grandmother that she was staying at home, she even was able to spend nights in Neil's room and they revel in the illicit excitement of knowing that they were getting away with something right under the feet of Neil's mother and grandparents. It was made all the more delicious by the knowledge that Neo's mother didn't like Kenyatta and didn't want him seeing her. All of that came to an end after school started again late that summer. Neil was repeating the 12th grade. After his poor performance at the School of Science and Math, his mother and Weldon Slayton thought it best and he hold back and go to college with classmates his own age. Another year of high school would allow him to a chance to mature and think about the responsibilities of college. That fall, he was to begin an independent study of calculus, a class of one, the first student ever to do such a thing in Castwell County. But one school day morning in September, Neil and Kenyatta were in bed in his basement room. Neil got up and went upstairs to bid his mother goodbye before she left for her job at JC Penny's and Danville. Kenyatta remained in bed. And Kenyatta recalled years later the following, she said. Quote, next thing I knew, I heard her high heels clicking down the stairs. End quote. Neil's mother tried the door, but Neil had locked it from the inside as he left. And Kenyatta heard her demanding, why is this door locked? There's somebody in there, isn't there? There's nobody in there, mom. Open the door, Neil. And he said, I can't. Open the door. And Neil's mother said with you know with force. And Neil said in resignation, open the door, Kenyatta. Kenyatta opened the door to find Aunt Henderson in a hot furry. Fury, so I should say. So she called Kenyatta everything in the book. Call her a homewrecker. She told Neil, I can't believe you would jeopardize this family like this. She said if his grandfather knew that was going on, he would kick the whole family out. And Kenyatta just stood there. And she was saying, Excuse me, Neil would like to step, would you like to step in here? But Neil never said a thing. He never took up for her. He just let her take the brunt of it. So she just left. She got all her stuff together and split. Next day at school, he told her, I think it would be better if we broke up for a while. The breakup did not last long. He was only the first of many in what would be a long and tumultuous relationship. Once tapped, Neil's libido was boundless. He was excited 24 hours a day, according to Kenyatta. Three times, during Neil's final year at Barley DNC High, Kenyatta would discover that he had sex with other girls while going steady with her. He didn't think that sleeping with other girls should affect her because he didn't love them and he was only satisfying a physical need, so it wasn't a big deal. Of course, they argue about that. That was a big point of disagreement. Mr. Slayton said that Neil told him that girls were easy to use. It was their fault if they got hurt. And as Slayton recalled, he said he told him, Neil, you can use people. And Neil replied, but they're so easy to manipulate. And Mr. Slayton said, Be more honest. And he said, Well, it's their fault if they can't figure it out. Kenyatta discovered that year that her competition for Neil's attentions was not just the vulnerable girls he found so easy to manipulate, but his games and his male friends as well. Neil had joined Bart Upchurch's Dungeons and Dragons group and was becoming more and more involved in their long campaigns. Kenyatta thought that Bart and the other dungeon members resented her, thought that she was imposing herself on Neil and trying to take him away from the game. Neil balanced precariously between the two. The truth was, however, that he found DD more mystifying and intriguing than Kenyatta or any other female. And he said later of DD, quote, it was a kind of intellectual exercise. I like the idea of having spellcasters and ladies to save. When he first joined Bart's dungeon, Neil became a magic user fighter and created the Legion of Love, his own version of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. But the game soon took another turn. Bart later remembered that Neo was always scheming. And he says, quote, his character was always trying to get more powerful. He rarely went on adventures. He was just scheming to kill somebody's character and get his stuff. Neil controlled everybody, and they never knew they were being controlled. With Neil, if you didn't work for him, you work against him. You were his enemy. It got to be everybody against Neil. Thank you for listening to the murder book. Have a great week.

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