In the immediate aftermath of the crime, robbery was developed as the likely motive, as a money clip, a gold watch, a gold chain, and a diamond ring were among the items Klein usually had on his person that were missing from his body. Klein's car was located about two miles away from where his body was found, and fingerprints were taken from the auto. The only other lead in the case was the fact that some kids in the area of the murder said they'd heard what sounded like gunshots around 8 p.m. on the evening of the 13th, which gave investigators a good idea of the time of death. A day or so later, a witness came forward to give a description of a vehicle he had seen following Klein's Mustang shortly before the presumed time of the murder. Another witness said he had seen Klein eating at a restaurant on East Sunshine with a blonde woman not long before the murder.
After a five-month investigation, Greg Crusen, 28, and Judy Henderson, 32, both of Springfield, were arrested in Fairbanks, Alaska, as suspects in the Klein murder. The two were known to have been acquaintances of Klein, and they were thought to have been the occupants of the car seen following Klein on the night of his murder. Henderson was thought to be the woman who had been seen with Klein at the East Sunshine restaurant. Authorities said Crusen and Henderson were identified as suspects early on in the investigation, but they had left Springfield immediately after the crime and had been moving from place to place ever since. When they lived in Springfield, Crusen had been a real estate agent, and Henderson had run a tanning salon. A former associate of Henderson described her as a real nice person. Henderson kept company with Crusen, although the associate said Henderson claimed not to consider Crusen her boyfriend.
The suspects waived extradition, and they were brought back to Springfield on the last day of 1981. Arraigned on first-degree murder charges on January 4, they remained in jail in lieu of $500,000 bond each. At their preliminary hearing in early February, an Alaska woman testified that Judy Henderson, while drunk, had confessed to her in a Fairbanks bar to having set a man up and having participated in his killing because she hated the man, although she did not give names or other specifics. The same witness said both Henderson and Crusen seemed nervous when they first arrived in Fairbanks, and they mentioned that they had witnessed a murder and thought a hitman was after them. The witness said she saw a wound on Henderson's body and that, when she asked about it, Henderson said a bullet had struck her after passing through a man's body. Both defendants were bound over for trial in the circuit court.
The defendants were granted separate trials, and Henderson went on trial first, in July 1982. On July 27, the jury came back with a guilty verdict and a sentence of life imprisonment. In a letter to the judge, Henderson said she thought the punishment was overly harsh, because she had not killed anyone. The whole truth had not yet come out, she said, because she had been advised not to say certain things that might hurt someone else's cause (presumably Crusen's, since she and her co-defendant had the same lawyer).
The original charge against Crusen was dismissed because he and Henderson were charged jointly. A new indictment charging Crusen by himself was then filed in order to allow Henderson to testify against him. Although listed as a possible witness, Henderson ended up not being called to testify at Crusen's trial in July 1983, although other prosecution witnesses testified that Crusen had confessed to killing Klein. Crusen, however, took the stand in his own defense to deny the charge, saying that Henderson alone had carried out the killing and that he was not even with her at the time but rather met up with her later and that she was hysterical and crying that she had shot Klein. Described as "clean cut," Crusen was acquitted of murder, despite the fact that much evidence suggested that he, not Henderson, was the actual trigger man in the crime. Why the prosecutor chose not to call Henderson as a witness against Crusen is not quite clear.
Henderson filed a number of appeals over the years but to no avail until her sentence was finally commuted to time served in 2017 by Governor Eric Greitens, after she had spent 35 years behind bars. In explaining his decision, Greitens said the judge at Henderson's trial had told him that she actually had a relatively minor role in the murder, and Thomas Mountjoy, who had prosecuted the case, also supported clemency, saying it was the first time in his career he had ever supported clemency in a case he had prosecuted. Greitens also cited the obvious conflict of interest in the fact that Henderson's lawyer also represented Crusen. Henderson had been offered, through her attorney, a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Crusen, but the offer had never been passed on to Henderson. In addition, four defense witnesses had allegedly been paid to lie in Crusen's case. Suffice it to say that, if all this was indeed true, the fact that Judy Henderson served 35 years in prison for the murder of Harry Klein while Greg Crusen got off scot free was a grave travesty of justice.
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