Henry McCabe // 432
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♪♪♪

What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today's episode was recommended by Abby. So big shout out to Abby for recommending this one. This is a case that I've heard about for a while. It's been kind of heavily covered because it's kind of like a controversial story. It is such a strange disappearance turned suspicious death case.

And, like, there are so many questions here. So, finally, we wanted to cover it. Yeah, this is one of those cases that has...

The most, I think one of the most terrifying voicemails I think I've ever heard. Yeah, the call associated with this case is horrifying. We are going to play it. We're going to talk a lot about it. So I think you guys are going to be very interested in this story. So please listen up, share the case, and thanks for tuning in.

Alright guys, this is episode 432 of Going West, so let's get into it. Intro

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In September of 2015, a 31-year-old man spent his evening at a Minnesota nightclub before being dropped off at a gas station by a friend.

Shortly afterwards, around 2.30 a.m., his wife received a phone call where he groaned in pain and potentially even claimed to have been shot. But strangely, when his body was found in a lake two months later, there was no sign of a gunshot wound. So what really happened to him? This is the story of Henry McCabe. ♪

Henry Tobey McCabe, who was also known as Joseph Borbertukwu, was born on September 16th, 1983 in Monrovia, Liberia on the western coast of Africa. But his family originally hailed from Lofa County, which is a hilly northern county along the border of Guinea.

But in 1989, when Henry was just six years old, a civil war broke out in Liberia, starting with a coup to overthrow the sitting president. And actually, Henry's father worked in politics in a very tenuous time for the government and was allegedly poisoned and killed.

So obviously afraid that they could be next, Henry and his brother fled the country and claimed that it would be unsafe to return until the president was no longer in power. After attending elementary and junior high school in Monrovia, he completed his high school degree in Ghana, graduating as the student class president. And then in 2003, Henry headed to the United States to attend college. So it seemed like he had this really, really tough start to life and

a very traumatic event that he endured regarding his father and just the state of his home. And, you know, but he was very smart and he really excelled. So when he got to the United States, he settled in Northern California and enrolled in Chabot Community College, where he was an honor student and the teacher's assistant to his economics professor.

He then transferred to California State University East Bay near San Francisco, where he again was an honors student, as well as a member of the accounting fraternity. And there he graduated with a double Bachelor of Science degrees in accounting and economics.

In February of 2004, about a year after he moved to the States, he met Corrine Wade, who is a native of Oakland, California, and the two began dating before getting married just months later in August.

They had two daughters together who were 10 and 2 at the time of Henry's disappearance, as we will discuss here in a bit. And once he was finished with school, Henry interned for a certified public accountant before going on to work as a financial analyst for Target and then landing a job as a corporate auditor for the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

Now, because of this new job opportunity, the family settled in Moundsview, Minnesota, which is a northern suburb of Minneapolis.

Yes, and that is where today's story takes place. Exactly. Before handing it over to Heath, I want to tell you a little bit about Henry's personality. So he was very passionate about politics, both in the U.S. and back in Liberia. He loved to discuss foreign policy and watch debates. And in his own activism, he was most interested in fighting corruption and poverty.

He was also an avid soccer player and a very charming, outgoing, and devoted family man who loved nothing more than spending time with his daughters and his nieces. In September of 2015, Henry was holding down the fort at the family home while his wife, Corrine, was back in California because the family had been preparing to move back to the West Coast after their stint in Minnesota.

So, getting ahead of their move, Henry was a candidate to become a CPA there. So, they were really excited to get back to California and get Henry to start in his new position. Corrine and presumably their daughters left the second week of August to get settled. So, on the evening of Sunday, September 6th, 2015, which was Labor Day weekend, Henry attended a barbecue with his two nieces who were spending the weekend with him while he was by himself.

Now, the party was hosted by his friend, Emmanuel D., at his townhome in Brooklyn Center, which is about a 15-minute drive from Henry's house in Mounds View. According to Emmanuel, Henry hadn't originally been invited, but found out about it and called his friend to ask about it, since he was pretty upset that he had been left out. There, Henry ran into some old friends, including an acquaintance named William Kennedy, who Henry had met only one time.

Allegedly, his nieces said later that they found William to be "odd and scary."

So put a pin in that for now. Yeah, especially because that is the impression that they're getting when they're meeting him at this barbecue, because obviously they had not met him before this. Henry himself had only met William one time before this. So at the barbecue, they're getting just bad energy from this man. Well, Henry invited William and a few other men over to his house after the barbecue was kind of winding down. And he and William continue to drink and just chat for a little bit.

As it got later, Henry asked if anybody wanted to head to a local bar, but William was the only one who took him up on it. So Henry told his nieces as they headed to bed that he wouldn't be out for too much longer and promised to bring treats home with him. So 32-year-old Henry is going out and he's leaving them at his house by themselves. I could not find out how old they were or how young they were.

Considering at this time his own children were 2 and 10 and he's 32, I can't imagine they were that much older than his kids or around his kids' ages. That's kind of my guess as well. And also the fact that he said, I'm going to bring some treats home for you. Yeah. They're probably kind of young. But also not young enough to not be able to leave them home alone at night. You must have felt somewhat comfortable doing that. But anyway...

The next few hours are still the source of so much debate in the case of Henry's disappearance, even among law enforcement themselves. But here is his known timeline. Henry and William, again, this is only their second time being around each other, left for the bar around 11 p.m. And at 11.24 p.m., they stopped at a TCF bank so that Henry could withdraw some cash.

He appears to already be intoxicated by this point, which makes sense. You know, he was at a barbecue. Now he's going out to a bar. He's having a good night. Yeah, I mean, it's Labor Day weekend. He's just having a good time with his buddies. Yeah, he's got the next day off work.

So Henry walked up to the drive-thru ATM and withdrew $200. And he can be seen on security footage swaying a bit. By the way, this footage has not been released to the public. So unfortunately, we cannot confirm that he was swaying or what he looked like. But it has been reported that he was swaying a bit.

So this is why police think that he was intoxicated, other than, of course, other reports of him being intoxicated. But after this, he apparently walked to the corner and is seen urinating before running off camera, presumably to meet back up with William.

The two of them arrived at the bar, Pavlitsky's on 65 is what it was called. It's now closed, but it was located in Spring Lake Park, Minnesota. And on Google, it's described as, quote, a lively haunt with basic bar fare, DJ nights, and occasional live music, plus billiards, poker, and darts. And yeah, it's kind of a weird building. It seems like

It's in kind of like a shopping center, and it's this standalone building. It's on a highway, so it seems like a really strange place. It's kind of just like a shitty little dive bar. Yeah, your average shitty spot, but...

The reason that they closed is apparently because the bar received so many calls to police for disorderly conduct and assaults that the Spring Lake Park police chief and city council threatened to revoke their liquor license. So there's also a bunch of bad reviews for this place. Again, just seems like your typical kind of hole in the wall.

So on Sunday nights, the bar hosted a club night that they called C'est la Vie, complete with a VIP area. So this was happening when Henry and William were there. They arrived at the bar around 1130 p.m. and Henry ran into a friend there named Jonathan Thomas.

He told Jonathan that he arrived there with two people, William Kennedy, who was also nicknamed Papas or Poppy, and a female friend who has never been named publicly. Henry was at this bar until about 1.45 a.m., so over two hours, just kind of work in the room and buying rounds of drinks.

At one point, Henry handed Jonathan his wallet. Remember Jonathan Thomas, a friend that he ran into, saying that he owed his friend drinks because he hadn't gotten him anything for his most recent birthday. There was one instance when he tried to purchase another round and the card that he used was declined because he had used it so much.

William claimed that he also took or was given Henry's wallet and keys for safekeeping, and also so that Henry would stop buying drinks for other people. Now, Jonathan Thomas claimed that nothing threatening or out of the ordinary took place at the club, but that Henry had been drinking heavily.

While there, he ran into another friend named Kevin Johnson and was also spotted in the VIP area and on the dance floor with a woman. And we're going to kind of touch on this later. So just remember this interesting detail that he is seen dancing with a woman and there was another woman there that night with him. Yes, and Henry did tell Jonathan that the woman that he was with that night was mad at him, but didn't really explain why.

Now as the club shut down, Henry and William headed out to the parking lot and William claims that Henry got into the car with him without asking for a ride.

Even though they had come there together, and it seems logical that William would make sure that he got home safe. Yeah, it's like you drove him there, you drive him back. Exactly. Well, William said later that he didn't remember how to get back to Henry's house, and that he asked Henry for directions. But that Henry told him that he didn't want William to know where he lived...

even though they had been together at his house already earlier in the night. Which, why would he say that? Yeah, seems really silly and also kind of suspicious of William. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a little weird. Why don't you want this guy to know where you live? Yeah, and it definitely is possible that some of the misinformation contributed by William is due to the fact that, like Henry, he was drunk and probably shouldn't have been driving...

So, he may have left out or forgotten some details based on this so as to not get in trouble with the police for driving under the influence. But, anyway. From there, the night only became more tumultuous and confusing. The friend that Henry had ran into at the club, Jonathan, went home. And he had a missed call from Henry at 1:50 AM. And when he called him back, Henry said that he had gotten a ride home from William and that he had arrived there safely.

But Jonathan noted that it sounded like he was still out. So this is weird. Henry is saying he got home safe, but it didn't seem like he was home safe. And it really doesn't seem like that based on what's to come. Maybe he was just kind of avoiding the conversation and saying like, yeah, yeah, no, I'm good. I'm safe. You know, I'm home.

But maybe wanting to like stay out. I don't know why you would need to lie about that. But why did he call Jonathan in the first place anyway? Yeah, I have no idea. Maybe he had missed a call from him when Henry was trying to leave to say, hey, can you drop me off? And he's like, never mind. Sure, that's definitely a possibility. Yeah. Well, Jonathan also claimed that he heard what he thought was an altercation on the phone.

So Henry told him that he had Corrine on the other line, his wife, but said, quote, Now, William also said that Henry had taken a phone call from Corrine while in the car and that the two had argued a little bit. So these are two accounts saying that Henry is arguing with his wife. Yes.

Hearing how drunk he was and growing worried, Corrine said that she three-way called Henry's brother Timothy while they were on the phone, telling Timothy that she was worried about Henry and asking if Timothy could go pick him up. But Timothy didn't answer the phone, so Corrine left a voicemail. She also later claimed that her memory of her conversation on the phone with her husband is pretty foggy because she was calling Timothy and she was a bit distracted.

Now, at some point, however, she recalled him saying that he had a gun. Henry was so incoherent, Corrine said, that she wondered if someone had slipped something into his drink

And this was probably stressful for her because she's in California, he's in Minnesota, he's out, there's nothing she can do. This is her husband and she wants him to be safe, but she's like, you know, there's only so much she can do. And she's probably getting really frustrated that he's so drunk and he's out. Yeah, I mean, really, what are you going to do? You just have to tell him to go to bed, go home, go to bed, sleep it off.

Well, at 1.58 a.m., Williams said he dropped Henry off at a Super America gas station, which is now known as Speedway. And this is located on 73rd Avenue and Highway 65 in Fridley, Minnesota, which is about a 10-minute drive from Mounds View.

William said that Henry insisted he be dropped off there and that he didn't want to be dropped off at home despite William's offer. Remember, like Heath told us, he said that he didn't want, apparently, he said that he didn't want William to know where he lived. And so he's just saying, drop me off at this gas station. Yeah, so strange.

William then drove home and went to bed, which was confirmed by his wife, who told police that he arrived home around 2.25 a.m.

But this doesn't make a lot of sense because Jonathan still had his wallet and William still had his keys. So even if he was able to walk all the way home, Henry wouldn't have been able to get inside the house if his house was locked. And then at 2.28 a.m., so three minutes after William allegedly got home, according to him and his wife,

a chilling voicemail was recorded, which is now what Henry's disappearance is best known for.

Henry's phone called Corrine's, his wife, leaving a voicemail of just over two minutes. Now, only part of this voicemail has been released, and even though it's very disturbing, we do want to play it so you guys can hear it. I mean, it's really hard to make out what's being said, but it's believed that Henry was being tortured or was at least in some kind of agony, as you guys will be able to tell. Now, some listeners report...

to hear like gurgling noises as if maybe he's being held underwater or even choking on his own blood. Others hear animalistic screams and clicks that they attribute to something supernatural. There's a lot of comments across the internet on TikTok, on YouTube, where people are saying it sounds really demonic. Like it's very difficult to understand what's going on, but a lot of it

just almost doesn't even sound human. It's very, very bizarre. Yeah, it honestly, this is like something that will give you nightmares listening to it too many times. I mean, it is truly terrifying. Well, around the two minute mark, it sounds like Henry accuses someone of shooting him. And near the end, many listeners report hearing someone say, stop it before the recording ends abruptly.

While some even claim to hear gunshots on the call, but here is that clip. .

I mean, it's hard to even know what to comment here. It's just really disturbing. Something, and I don't want to, I don't mean this insensitively, of course, but it's like what I think of is those phone calls in the original Black Christmas and how they're kind of, do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, yeah. It's like just mumbling, screaming, like whining.

just incoherent what the fuck, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to decipher what is actually going on here. Like, is he... I mean, some people have attributed this to him being possessed. It sounds demonic as hell. It does. And other people say that it sounds like his head is being pushed underwater because there's that part where it kind of sounds like... Gurgling, yeah. Gurgling, you know, or kind of like bubbles in, like, some sort of water. It's just so hard to know if...

Like what I would love to know is if they're able to, I couldn't find information about this, if they're able to determine how many voices there are, because it doesn't, there's not really like,

over. Yeah. You know, it could all be him, but is that his voice? The talking voice that we hear that kind of mumbling talking voice like there are transcripts out there, but they're so weird and I was reading them and listening and it didn't seem accurate to me. This is just

different people saying, oh, this is what I hear. But yeah, we're going to talk about that a little bit more as well. But it's impossible to figure out what is happening. We don't know if this was a pocket dial. I mean, this is 2015. So, you know, I feel like with smartphones, it's harder to make a pocket dial than it used to be, which then also brings me to another question of what kind of phone he had, which I could not find anywhere else.

Because that is kind of relevant to a detail we're going to bring up soon. But yeah, was he calling his wife on purpose? Was he trying to get help? Was he just really intoxicated and was kind of freaking out about something or having a panic attack? Was somebody hurting him? Like, what is going on? And I think that's why this case has been so heavily covered just based on this one voicemail. I mean, it's truly...

It is extremely disturbing. Well, a few sources say that Henry also left an alarming voicemail for his brother Timothy, but others claim that Corrine just called him to play the message for him.

Corrine later explained that she was still awake when she received this disturbing voicemail, but that after listening to it, she just kind of assumed that he was very drunk and then she went to bed. I guess I can understand that in a way, you know, hindsight's 20-20. We can't really hear what's going on in the call, but either way, it's very disturbing. You know, maybe she was just feeling fed up because like I said earlier, she wasn't even in the same state as him and she couldn't make sure that he made it home safe.

You know, everybody acts differently in that type of situation. It's kind of interesting to me off the bat that she wasn't alarmed by this. I mean, you've been drunk in Hollywood without me and I've almost driven, you know, gotten in the car, almost driven there to make sure that you're safe and not lying drunk on a street somewhere. But, you know, I don't know. Maybe she was just like,

I don't know what this is. Maybe he's just messing around. And then once she found out that he's missing, it's like, wait a second. Well, I mean, I don't know how...

you would have that sort of reaction just based on the content of the voicemail because it is so, like you said, we keep saying it, it's so disturbing. And that's the word for it. Well, later that morning, Monday, September 7th, 2015, Corrine woke up and hadn't heard from Henry. So growing worried, she called his brother who also hadn't heard from him.

That day, which was Labor Day of 2015, just nine days before his 32nd birthday, Henry McCabe was reported missing by both his wife and his brother. A police officer started the search for him by stopping by his home, and they found that the door had been left unlocked and that there was nothing out of place and no sign of a struggle whatsoever.

Calls to Henry's cell phone were going straight to voicemail at this point, and he hadn't used his credit or debit card since that $200 ATM withdrawal the night before. So, very puzzled, investigators sought to speak to people who had been present at the club the night before, especially Jonathan Thomas and William Kennedy, in order to kind of piece together Henry's movements throughout the night leading up to his disappearance.

After William told them that he had dropped Henry at a Super America gas station in Fridley, investigators successfully pulled security footage of a red Kia, like the one that William drove, pulling up to the station and dropping a man off. However, William claimed that he had dropped Henry off between 2 and 2.15 a.m., and this occurrence was time-stamped at 2.38 a.m.,

But when William received the footage, he pointed out that the car on the video footage had rims and his car did not. Also, the man dressed in a black hoodie who stepped out of the car did not resemble Henry in any way. Strangely, there was no record of Henry being dropped off at that gas station at all, even though William claims that that's what happened. So that was pretty suspicious off the bat.

In this interview with police, William said, quote, I was like, you got to show me the route to your house because I don't know how to get there. And he just said, oh, take me to that gas station. I said, are you sure? Because I don't have a problem taking you home. But according to William, Henry insisted, quote, take me to the gas station.

But with no sign of Henry there, not coming up on the camera as again, remember, police turned to the location pings from his cell phone, which showed him farther south than this Super America gas station, just about four minutes away from where Williams said he dropped him off.

Now, whether or not William intentionally deceived officers is unknown, though he claims that he just misremembered the exact spot. So again, like Heath was kind of saying, this could be the product of him not wanting to admit to officers that he was driving under the influence when he obviously shouldn't have been. But we just don't know.

But whether or not he was lying, it was strange that he says he dropped Henry off at a gas station in the middle of the night with no money, no keys, and no way of getting home, even if he had been asked to do so. Obviously, if William has no idea where Henry lives and Henry is not telling him, William doesn't have much of a choice. You know, Henry is a grown man.

I'm sure William just felt like he could figure it out, but we have kind of some questions about him anyway. So naturally we're wondering a little bit about this, but I want to mention that William has been cooperative with the investigation. So we're not saying he's involved, but since his story faulted a little and he was the last person to be with Henry and there were reports that he was a little bit creepy. It's normal to question this guy.

He later told the local news station, quote, I am willing, even if it costs me to pay for it, to take a lie detector test. I have no motive. I do not want to hurt Henry or anyone. He added, quote, I wish I had never given him a ride with all that was going on. I wish I never did. We were not friends, more like acquaintances. ♪♪

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streaming only on peacock being with finch felt like i was in some fairy tale like i write for gray's anatomy i was like what her writing was so highly regarded because then she had been through so much a hollywood writer's life when you love somebody you'll ignore red flags so they're hitting you in the head filled with fiction she would do whatever it takes to get ahead she saw her life like a tv series i don't know my

Anatomy of Lies, streaming now, only on Peacock. It was all a lie. Now, Henry was actually dropped off at a holiday gas station on Hackman Avenue Northeast, just south of Moore Lake. And there, police successfully pulled footage of Henry exiting William's vehicle. So now police were able to confirm that at least William did drop him off.

Afterwards, William drove off and Henry walked away from the gas station by himself. His cell phone's final ping was traced to a cell tower in New Brighton, Minnesota, which is near Creekview Park, about 4.5 miles or 7.2 kilometers from the Holiday Gas Station.

search parties scoured the circumference of his last cell phone ping and the area surrounding the gas station where he was last seen, desperate for more information. And based on the strange details in the case and Henry's harrowing final voicemail, the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension became involved in this search.

On September 17th, 2015, so 10 days after Henry was last seen, the Moundsview Police Department and the FBI met with a confidential informant who claimed to know Henry and his circle of friends pretty well.

The confidential informant listened intently to the voicemail and claims to have deciphered some of it. He says he heard Henry mention his parents' hometown of Lofa County in Liberia, indicating that he was likely talking to someone else who was from Liberia. This informant also claimed to have heard him say "Papas", which is William Kennedy's nickname.

And in an intriguing new theory, the informant says that he heard Henry screaming that he was Vu, or is possessed by a demon, and that if they killed him, they would be possessed by the demon as well, in a possible attempt to deter them from hurting him.

Now, we are going to play that call again because, or that voicemail again, because we want you guys to be able to see if you can decipher what is being said in it. So if you don't want to listen to that again, just skip ahead about a minute and 40 seconds. Yeah.

*Humming*

Yeah, it is just so hard to hear anything. I think of the Brandon Lawson case that we covered, I think it was sometime last year, where we were really playing that call and slowing it down and really piecing it apart. But I can't do that with this one. This one is just way too incoherent. And I can't make out anything personally. Can you? No, it's very, very hard. And I've seen people try to put words over the video clip or, sorry, the voicemail.

And I don't really know if that's accurate or not. It doesn't line up for me either. Everybody has a different layover of different words that are being said, so kind of hard to tell what exactly is being said there. Well, it's pretty interesting because at the search party organized for Henry on September 12, 2015, this informant spotted four men convening mysteriously and claims that when he approached them, they stopped talking.

This group consisted of Emmanuel D., who had hosted the barbecue the night before Henry disappeared, you know, the one who hadn't invited Henry, as well as three other men named Calvin Johnson, Kennedy White, and Jollik Hesley.

Later, the informant talked to the men one by one, either on the phone or in person, accusing William of being involved. And this was probably just a way to get information out of them. William is not any of these four men, but obviously they know who William is. So he's kind of trying to get something out of them, see if they're willing to give up a little bit of information if they do know something. So he said, quote, your friend killed my friend and I want to know why.

Well, Kennedy White, who remember is a different person than William Kennedy. Kennedy White claimed that he was out of town at the time. Jolla said that he had no intention of getting involved. And Calvin said that he wouldn't talk about it on the phone.

The informant came forward to police with all of this information, but unfortunately, it didn't lead anywhere because, you know, there's no smoking gun here. It was clear that these guys were at least suspicious and possibly knew what happened or were involved, but none of them wanted to talk about it.

Which is suspicious on its own. Yeah, I mean, if you know someone who's missing, whether you like them or not, whether you know them well or not, you're not going to keep quiet or refuse to talk about it on the phone. Like probably worried that the call was being recorded. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. It just makes you look bad. It makes you look weird. Why would you not want to help somebody, right?

Well, Emanuel was not taking this kind of questioning against William Kennedy. He is saying that William barely knew Henry and he had nothing to do with it. And he even said that William was also very shaken up over his inadvertent connection to the crime. Trying to prove further, you know, none of us like that. Our names are being thrown around because we're not involved. We're not super close with him, but they're still, you know, whispering around about it.

The Moundsview police chief, Tom Kinney, sent the very disturbing, again using that word, voicemail to the FBI for further analysis in hopes that it would be cleaned up enough to hear what was being said. Heath and I have already been discussing how many people are trying to really break it down. Naturally, if you can figure out what is being said, it could help solve what's going on. Sure, and if anybody is going to do that, it's probably going to be the FBI. Exactly. Or so they were trying.

But then, on October 2nd, 2015, so almost a month after Henry went missing, an anonymous letter was sent to the new Brighton Police Department, postmarked the previous day from St. Paul, Minnesota.

The letter read, quote,

So kind of an interesting worded letter here. Pretty cryptic, I would say. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but, you know, maybe this person has nothing to do with it. It seems like they just... Here's the thing. How do they know that it's Henry's body? Obviously, his face is on the news. People in town are looking for him.

But the fact that they're so confident, not just, I found a body, here's where it is, I just want to let you know. They're saying Henry McCabe, they're naming him. So does this person know him? Do they know who did this to him? Why aren't they coming forward personally?

Although this could have been a red herring, it was an unsettling development to say the least because they still don't know exactly where he is. Because yeah, this letter is not saying anything almost. It just says his body is next to water and it's partially buried. There's nothing really there to work with. Yeah, it's not super detailed. So they're not saying, you know, specifics or directions.

direct location. It's very vague. But his family was really upset by this because his close circle really knew that something had to have happened to him. Not only because of the voicemail, now they're really looking at it from a different angle, but as a respected businessman and family man, they know that he would not abandon them or his responsibilities for any reason. So they maintain that foul play must be involved.

While navigating this horrific time, Henry's family sought the help of David Singleton, who sits on the board of the Minnesota Police Reserve Board Association and also works with the nonprofit organization Minnesota Community Policing Services. So David began acting as a de facto spokesperson for the family, agreeing that this seemed very out of character for Henry to just leave such a voicemail and go off on his own accord.

David attested, quote, David put foul play at the forefront of the investigation after hearing that voicemail, saying, quote,

But on October 20th, 2015, after only a few weeks of working together, the family announced that they had severed ties with David Singleton and the Minnesota Community Policing Services, who had organized multiple ground searches.

They announced on their missing person's Facebook page, quote, the family is focused and dedicated to continue the search for Henry McCabe in conjunction with the Moundsview Police Department and thanks the community for their continuing support and dedication to the search for Henry McCabe.

David's organization had been offering a $10,000 reward, but it was rescinded after the family ended their working relationship. According to David, this falling out was perpetrated by Corrine's, quote, "...willingness to mislead the public and this committee."

In one account, David claimed that Corrine was withholding information from the police because she had claimed that she had evidence that Henry was alive and refused to share what it was. However, she told police that she had asked God for a sign that Henry was still alive and believes that she had gotten it, so it's possible that that's what her information was, but...

David also alleges that Corrine attempted to control the investigation and what information was shared with investigators by making her personal cell phone number the number on the missing posters. Corrine in turn claims that David made her uncomfortable and even accused him of hitting on her. Timothy, who again is Henry's brother, also brought about suspicions against Corrine, claiming that she was enjoying the spotlight of being a grieving wife.

On July 31st, 2015, weeks before his disappearance, Henry had received a poor work review and had mentioned to his superiors that he had interest in moving to California, which it seemed like he and Corrine were already planning on doing. But Henry had also been taking meetings with grad schools.

And he was due back at work on September 8th after that very long weekend, but never showed up again, adding more suspicion to his unsettling disappearance. Now, a few of his coworkers claimed that he had been complaining about trouble at home, but that he hadn't elaborated on what was causing it, which kind of made some people feel like maybe Corrine should have been looked into further.

According to Corrine, Henry had kind of a wandering eye, and she actually confronted him about cheating on her. She even alleges that she believed that Henry had gotten another woman pregnant.

Corrine also heard from someone else that Henry had been threatened by a man for flirting with someone else's wife or possibly girlfriend. Which we hinted at earlier when we were talking about him at that bar because there was another woman there who, again, has not been publicly named. And then he was seen dancing with a different woman. So, you know, is he stepping out?

Or was he stepping out that night? Was he seeing somebody else behind Corrine's back while she was in California? It's just got a lot of questions there. When Corrine was asked if he left the country, she initially said that it was unlikely as he didn't have a valid passport. And according to Corrine and Henry's lawyer, Henry was set to receive a large settlement from a car accident that he'd been involved in in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota that resulted in him needing hip surgery.

So she didn't believe that he would skip out on receiving that payment by electing to go missing. So she's saying, you know, I don't see him going to Liberia because he doesn't have a passport. I don't see him running away because he would want this money. But in one of her interviews, she told investigators that she did believe he was alive and out there. She explained, quote, I believe he's on the East Coast where I don't know with

With whom? I don't know. Here's the thing. Like, I started suspecting he was cheating just because his behavior changed. And I know when he's cheating. So I accused him.

The evening before his disappearance, Sunday, September 6th, they had a phone call where Corrine told Henry that she was coming back to Minnesota to talk things over, telling him, quote, I know for a fact you're cheating. I'm coming back and I'm going to put a stop to your cheating ways.

So, Kareem surmised that it was possible that the woman he was seeing had gotten pregnant. She continued, quote,

Corrine herself even flew under suspicion as accusations flew around wildly because although she was across the country at the time, some have noted that she could have had help. And then Henry's body was found.

Henry was pulled from the banks of a small lake on November 2nd, 2015, over four miles or over six kilometers from where he had been dropped off at the holiday gas station. Okay. So that letter was actually somewhat accurate. Yeah. Because by water, by water. And as you're, as I'm going to get into here in a second, he was kind of partially buried. Yeah. And, but it's interesting because like,

Like I said, over four miles or over six kilometers away. So how did he get to this spot? Would he really have walked four miles that night? That's not a super short stroll when you're drunk and you're walking alone in the middle of the night. Unless, of course, you know, as we said, he did seem to be possibly trying to walk home, but... Yeah, I agree. I mean, it definitely is possible, but I think it's probably less likely that he did that. And maybe instead...

somebody put him there. Very possible. Well, at 4.20 p.m. on Monday, November 2nd, a kayaker spotted Henry's partially submerged body while out on Rush Lake in New Brighton, Minnesota, just southeast of where he lived in Mounds View.

And we are going to post a map that shows all of these locations that we've been talking about. Because if he was walking home, I could see maybe how he would have ended up at Rush Lake. It's not in the other direction. It's not really...

Doesn't seem like the quickest direction. No, it's not a straight shot, but you could potentially go by there, I guess. Yeah, I mean, go look at the map. It's on our socials. I think it'll give you guys a better idea of maybe how he could have gotten there, I guess. But it's interesting to see where this was in relation to where he was dropped off and in relation to where he was allegedly heading, i.e. his home.

When Henry was found, he was wearing jean shorts, a Movado brand watch, a VIP wristband from the club, and his wedding band. His shoes were still on his feet, and his phone and some cash were in his pocket, likely eliminating the possibility of having been robbed. Now, as you can imagine, his body was badly decomposed, so his identity needed to be confirmed via dental records.

The medical examiner determined that his blood alcohol content was .053

though this could have been lowered because he spent so much time in that water. Yeah, exactly. And for those who, that number means nothing to you, according to research, a 0.05 level in an average size male is equivalent to just being buzzed. Yeah. So he wasn't like wasted as far as they could tell. Yeah. This is kind of like the second level of being on the way to being drunk. It's not even being drunk. So it is definitely possible though that it lowered. Well,

Well, here's where things get a bit strange. I mean, obviously they're already strange, but we're gonna get even more strange here. Officially, Henry's cause of death was quote, "probable drowning in fresh water."

The medical examiner assumed that it had been a result of intoxication, and the autopsy also read that there was "no evidence of internal traumatic injuries" and that the body was in "advanced state of decomposition." Moundsview Police Chief Tom Kenny announced that Henry's death "does not appear to be suspicious." There were no signs of any other injuries, and he had not been shot like many thought based on the voicemail.

However, the heavy amount of decomposition may have been covering potential injuries, which required forensic testing before it could be determined whether the body was male or female. And this is so strange anyway. We know Henry was intoxicated, most likely with a blood alcohol level of over 0.053. You know, he was asked to be dropped off at a gas station. He was.

Then these very disturbing voicemails come in, or at least one did, where it sounds like he's screaming out in pain or that something is happening to him.

There are some pretty suspicious characters that are clearly hiding something, at least in my opinion. But the autopsy says this, that there's nothing nefarious detected. They're basically alleging that Henry drunkenly fell into the water, passed out and died there accidentally. Well, the voicemail basically does not show that. I mean, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't.

show that he just fell into water and passed out in the water. I mean, he's clearly making a ton of noises, so

So in my opinion, that is completely wrong. It's just so hard, again, not knowing what he's saying on the call, not knowing what's happening on the call at all. Again, like I said, is he having a panic attack? Is he alone? Is he just really drunk? What is happening and how does it lead to this? Yeah, and I mean, way more questions were brought about by the discovery of Henry's cell phone.

So Henry had called an unknown number 24 times on the night that he disappeared. And his phone continued to make calls to this number up to three days after he vanished. So weird. Yeah, so strange. And somehow investigators never found who this number belonged to. How is that possible? I don't understand that.

Well, on the call logs of Henry's phone, it showed that he had made a phone call at 3.26 a.m. on the morning of September 7th,

So the day he disappeared to a number with a 409 area code, which is the area code for Beaumont, Texas and its surrounding areas, which is near the Gulf of Mexico and along the border of Texas and Louisiana. So not a local number and not a number, you know, anywhere that he's lived in the past. Yeah. And this call was placed about an hour after that voicemail came into his wife. Yeah, it just...

It's so bizarre to me. Well, his phone called this number again on September 9th at 1:01 p.m. and September 10th at 9:26 a.m. Investigators were able to determine that the number was registered to a T-Mobile cell phone in Texas. And there is a utility bill for that number that belongs to a woman named Elizabeth Bledsoe who lived in Texas City, Texas.

But investigators called the number and received a message that it was no longer in service. I mean, kind of sus on its own. Very sus. It's so weird. This is such a creepy part of the story to me. Who is making these calls and why? Yeah. And who were the people on the other line? Exactly. Who was he calling and why was he calling? Well, here's the thing also.

Henry's phone was in his pants pocket when his body was recovered. So either Henry was alive for some time after his disappearance or his body was stashed somewhere and then dumped in the water later. You know, I just, I find it hard to believe that he was alive after this night for days and just...

chilling out there in public in this area near this lake and not going home or going to work. Yeah, that doesn't seem like something that Henry would do. But also on the flip side, why would someone days later be using his phone? Like why? Why would anybody be using his phone and not their own phone? Yeah, that doesn't make sense. So it's like it was either him or it was somebody else. But

But it doesn't appear that it was him, and it doesn't appear that it was somebody else. Like, what? Who the hell was using the phone? It's so creepy to me, honestly, to even think about this, because...

We know that he was intoxicated again. So I can't imagine that he had his phone on him. Yes, he didn't have his wallet. He couldn't call a cab or call an Uber or anything like that. He also didn't have his keys. But why was he so hellbent on being dropped off at a gas station anyway? Well, he could call an Uber because obviously Uber is an app on his phone. Sorry, I was going to say taxi. Yeah, yeah, taxi. But then I was like, wait, this is 2015. Oh, no, 2015. Was Uber a thing?

You know what? I'm actually not sure. I think it was kind of in the first days of being a thing, but probably in bigger cities, honestly, because I remember Uber didn't come around in Eugene, Oregon, which is where I'm from, for a while. Until 2019. Yeah, it took a while for them to get there. In LA, I feel like I definitely took an Uber in 2015 or 16, but I was, you know, I'm in LA, so that would make more sense, but not in this area of Minnesota. Yeah.

So yeah, he couldn't have called a taxi without his wallet. You know, so I just, I don't see why he would want to be dropped off at a gas station just to drunkenly try to potentially walk home. Was he trying to meet up with somebody and then something happened to him? I cannot, I cannot figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the strangest part is like, what was his intention after the gas station was like,

was he planning on meeting up with a girl? Was he planning on meeting up with somebody for something else, drugs, whatever. But I'm also just so curious why he didn't want William to know where he lived. I mean, it's not like if, if you didn't want the guy to come over, that's fine. But it seemed like the guy was trying to give you a ride home and just drop you off. But also then why are you hanging out with him at all? If you, if he is a character that you don't want to know where he,

You don't want him to know where you live. Why are you even hanging out with him at all? That's true. Yeah, that's a good point. So many questions. Well, here's another thing that's strange is that his battery and his phone were separated. There was one in each pocket of his jeans, phone in one, battery in the other, which is why I was asking earlier about the whole butt dial thing is if he had an iPhone at this time because...

to take out the battery of your iPhone, you have to unscrew those little tiny baby screws. He's not going to do that when he doesn't even have, he doesn't have a screwdriver on him, you know? Yeah. I don't think, I don't, in my opinion, he probably did not have an iPhone. It was probably a phone that where it's a lot easier to take out the battery because you know what, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I mean,

because it was out. So obviously he would have been able to get it out or somebody would have been able to, but also why did that happen? Why was the battery separated from the phone? So many small, strange details.

Well, Deborah Faith, who, like David Singleton, works with the Minnesota Community Policing Services, claimed that this is something Corrine asked people to do when discussing the case with her so that it wouldn't be tracked. And she found it suspicious that his phone was recovered in the same manner because, remember,

It's a couple months after he went missing. Maybe the battery wasn't removed right away, but why would somebody remove it later? Very, very strange. I mean, maybe this is something that Corrine and Henry used to do, or maybe this is just something that Corrine was used to doing before.

I don't know. Well, this is something that's a little weird to me as well that I have questions about is why, you know, Corrine is talking to people. We know that her cell phone number is on the missing person's number. She wants all the tips to come into her when usually they go into the police. When there's a case like this, a lot of people could be calling. You know, why direct it to your personal cell phone where you could miss things or not be able to properly follow up on them yourself because you're not the police.

So why would she want people to remove the battery and,

in fear of police tracking it. Are you talking about something the police can't know about? Like, this is your husband's disappearance. Why would that be the case? Wouldn't you want police to know everything so they could find him? Yeah, I mean, I don't know why that would matter at all. Like, what are you trying to hide here? Exactly. And Henry's brother, Timothy, also upheld this account, saying that Corrine had done this same thing to him before,

when they were discussing Henry's case, afraid that the FBI was listening in on their conversation. Which again, don't you want them to be kind of like... Yeah, that just throws me off. That just gives me a weird, weird vibe. Yeah. But yeah, apparently she thought it was odd that his phone was found without the batteries and she's telling so many other people to do this. So I guess maybe she's wondering, is somebody that I talked to behind this? Like, again, so many questions. Yeah.

Well, one pervasive theory in this exceedingly bizarre case is that of the involvement of someone from Liberia and that Henry's death was a hit or some sort of political message. And we have to remember that his father, Henry's father, was in politics before

And he was poisoned and murdered. And that's why Henry and his brother fled the country. Yeah, and that was 25 years earlier. So I can't imagine after all that time someone is still trying to come after him. I guess it's possible. But there's a little bit more to this because Henry was allegedly kind of trying to get into politics in Liberia himself.

Because he first, you know, like I think you said it, Heath, that he was wanting to go back to school, to grad school. And so his whole thing was he wanted a complete graduate school, get hired as a CPA, then bankroll more money for his campaign so that he could run for president back in Liberia.

Corrine herself told police that Henry had been offered a job in government in Liberia, and she posed the possibility that he had headed back to Liberia without telling anyone. But, and this is of course before his body was found, but his mom, who still lived there, had not heard from him, so this seemed kind of unlikely, and as we said, he didn't have a current passport.

But Henry has a best friend who lives in Philadelphia and had apparently talked to this friend about obtaining a Liberian passport. He was never able to do so because he would need his birth certificate from Liberia, which he did not have. But this friend claimed that Henry may have known some powerful Liberian government officials who could help him get around this.

Leveta Toubai, who founded the Coalition for Justice in Liberia and the United States, announced after the discovery of Henry's body that she strongly believes that Liberian nationals, or even Liberian officials, were involved in whatever happened to Henry. Leveta said, quote, "...they would kill without remorse. They've done it for years. We need to find out what happened. I don't think somebody would just drown himself. Somebody was inflicting harm."

Unfortunately, after the autopsy's finding that the death was, you know, more likely an accidental drowning, the investigation mostly stopped, and Henry's death has remained unexplained. The theories in this case are some of the most plentiful and outlandish of any disappearance case that we've covered, with some blaming ghosts, UFOs, or even Bigfoot. It's also possible that Corrine was correct, and that Henry was cheating on her and had angered someone because of this.

Though David had severed his relationship with Corrine McCabe, he still speculates about the case from time to time, saying, quote, "...I don't believe that he just wandered that far on his own, and the audio doesn't support the idea that his death is not suspicious."

David also said, quote,

I gotta agree with him, and it's not just because this is a true crime podcast and that call was extremely foreboding, but I just, it's really hard for me to believe that he just drunkenly wandered there, fell in the water, and died by accidental causes. Again, and that this voicemail was made, and that all these calls were made days after he would have sobered up, you know? Yeah, there's just way too many factors involved here,

The cell phone and the battery being separated and put in different pockets. The fact that Corrine was out of town and didn't seem to be bothered by this voicemail that if anybody had heard that, if I had heard a voicemail from you that sounded like that, I would be like, what in the fuck is going on? You know what I mean? Of course. And then you have all these different characters. You've got William Kennedy. You've got all these other guys that seem...

strange and they don't want to say anything, you know, like, yeah, it's hard for me to just chalk this up to, oh, he was drunk and he fell in the water and that happens. There's so many other elements that sure could be coincidence and they don't mean anything, but we know for sure that somebody was using his phone. Is it possible that somebody stumbled upon his phone and decided to use it even though he's dead lying there? I guess, but yeah.

I just don't see it. Well, there's one other theory that I kind of wanted to talk about, and that's the theory of possible... Like, Henry possibly being drugged at the club. Right. You know what I mean? Yes, Kareem did say that. Sure, yeah. And in the voicemail, it does sound...

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's that. You know, I don't know. But also we have to think about what you said, all those different phone calls that happened days later. I do wonder about the drug theory, especially because Corrine herself, when she spoke with him, said that he seemed more than just drunk. Something seemed to be going on like he was on drugs, but he wasn't known to take drugs. He wasn't that type of person. Right. So we know that he was going back home to his nieces, right?

He was just having a fun night before the holiday weekend was over and he was going to go to work one day after this. So is it possible that maybe either, I don't know, the Liberian official thing is really weird or the Liberian national thing because what they, they followed him to this bar and then,

I guess it's possible, but what a weird place to attack him, I guess, is from a bar in public. But also, he was making plans to potentially get into politics. It's not like he was already in politics, right? Yeah, I just think it would make more sense to me, I guess, if it happened in his house? I don't know, but...

back to the drug thing really quick. Sorry. Um, I wonder if, if this did have something to do with a girl that he was seeing who was in a relationship, if he did get her pregnant or didn't get her pregnant, whoever she may be, um,

Did somebody drug him to then later be able to do something to him? Did they drown him? Was he passed out from the drugs and they put him in the water and they followed him? I mean, it would look like a pretty solid alibi if they had drugged him and

And then drowned him in the lake and then said, you know, later said, oh, well, he just he just fell into the lake. He was really drunk that night and he passed out. And that's how he died. You know, like. But then how does that explain the 24 plus phone calls that were made over the course of the next couple of days? Because he would have sobered up if he didn't die right then there. And if he did die right then and there, then who was who stuck around his body? You know, this is why we had said, did somebody dump his body there later?

Did while he was walking, did somebody see him, pull him over, do something to him, hold him? Like, I don't know. Well, I guess one thing that would be really interesting here is the fact that they were able to find out his blood alcohol content, but...

But we don't really know if they were able to find drugs, you know? Yeah, we don't know if they found any drugs. So that would be great to know if they did or not and what they tested for because that could help us a lot to know if there were drugs in his system. Yeah, and I think you can go round and round and, you know, you can sit there and speculate for...

years on this case. That's what's tough is I start kind of going along with one theory and thinking, oh, could this be it? But then I'm like, well, what about this? This doesn't make sense with that. I still can't find an answer for this. So yeah, this is a tough story. I feel like Charlie Day, like trying to, you know, like put all the, put all the pins on that map or whatever, like from that Always Sunny episode. Like, yeah,

I just feel like crazy when I talk about this case. Well, I would love to know what everybody else thinks of this story because, I mean, this is truly one of the most wild cases we have ever covered. If you have any information about the death of Henry McCabe...

please call the New Brighton Police Department at 651-638-2100.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I really want to know what you guys think about this one. So please head over to our discussion group on Facebook or go give us a follow on Instagram. You can find us at Going West Podcast.

Give us a follow. Go check out the maps and the photos from this case and all the other cases that we've covered. Yeah, remember there is a map that will help just give you a visual idea of where everything happened. But yeah, again, would love to know what you guys think about this story. It is truly so baffling. I can't wrap my head around it. I can't wrap my head around any particular theory. It's just...

So, so odd. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. Big thank you again to Abby for recommending this case. And we will see you guys on Tuesday. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger.

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