November 18, 2025 • 30 mins
In this shocking true crime case from New Port Richey, Florida, discover the story of Patricia “Patty” Hennings, a 64-year-old grandmother brutally murdered in April 2023 after a long-running neighborhood feud. A retired waitress from Sonny’s BBQ, Patty was stabbed 74 times in a frenzied attack that involved her own kitchen knives and a ceramic garden frog, leaving the small community in horror. This real-life murder mystery involved child perpetrators, a manipulative mother, false accusations, and social media TikTok evidence that exposed months of harassment and bullying.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is true crime case files. Today's story takes us
to Newport Richie, Florida, a quiet Gulf Coast town known
for its palm trees, fishing docks, and close knit neighborhoods.
But in April of twenty twenty three, that calm was
shattered by a crime so shocking investigators said it looked
like a horror movie come to life. This is the
story of sixty four year old Patricia Patty Hennings, a grandmother,
(00:24):
a widow, and the victim of a neighborhood feud that
spiraled into unthinkable violence. In April of twenty twenty three,
Patricia Patty Hennings was sixty four years old and living
a quiet life in Newport Richie, Florida. A retired waitress
from Sonny's Bbu, Patty had spent most of her life
in Pascoe County. She was known at the restaurant for
(00:45):
her warm smile, strong coffee, and the way she called
everyone honey or Darlin. After working there for nearly three decades,
she retired in twenty twenty one, hoping to enjoy slower
days filled with gardening, her favorite TV shows, and visits
from friends. But Patty's life had not been easy. Five
years earlier, in twenty eighteen, she had suffered a terrible loss.
(01:07):
Her daughter Melissa and two young grandchildren were killed in
a shocking murder suicide in nearby Date City. The tragedy
broke her heart, but it also made her determined to
find peace. She sold her old home and moved into
a small, sky blue manufactured house on Colonial Drive, a
quiet street with palm trees, chainlink fences, and the hum
(01:28):
of wammowers most afternoons. She lived there with her orange
tabby cat, Kiven Dusty Collins Wreathes, a fat, lazy cat
who followed her everywhere and sometimes sat in the window
watching the world go by. To most of her neighbors,
Patty was a familiar sight, short, silver haired, often wearing
floral blouses and slip on sandals, carrying a plastic watering
(01:49):
can in one hand and a diet coke in the other.
Even though she lived alone, Paddy stayed busy. She baked
lemon bars for the mail carrier and kept her lawn
perfectly mowed, cutting it twice a week when the spring
rains made the grass grow fast. She loved her small
garden of zinnias and marigoles, and every morning around eight am,
she could be seen sweeping her driveway while Dusty sat
(02:10):
nearby swishing his tail. Despite her kind ways, Patty also
had a stubborn streak. She believed rules were meant to
be followed and that everyone in the neighborhood should respect
one another. When something bothered her barking dogs, loud music,
or kids leaving bikes on her lawn, she didn't hesitate
to take action. Sometimes she taped handwritten notes to her
(02:31):
neighbor's doors. Other times she called the police or even
knocked on the door herself to complain. She wasn't mean.
One neighbor later told investigators she just didn't know when
to let something go. In April twenty twenty three, Patty
was looking forward to spring cleaning. She had just bought
a gallon of light blue paint to refresh her backyard
shed and had been saving money to replace the broken
(02:53):
porch light that had gone out in March. Friends say
she'd been in good spirits, especially after finding a new
church that met for coffee every Wednesday at the duncan
On Ridge Road. She talked about maybe getting a second
cat for Dusty's company and taking a short bus trip
to Tarpin Springs to walk along the sponge docks. After
years of heartache, Patty seemed to be slowly finding her
(03:14):
footing again. But in just a few days, that peaceful
life and the quiet street she called home would be
shattered by unimaginable violence. It was Friday morning, April fourteenth,
twenty twenty three, in Newport Richie, Florida. The sun had
just started to rise and the air was warm and
sticky from overnight grain. The smell of freshly cut grass
(03:35):
and wet pavement hung in the air. It was a
quiet morning on Colonial Drive, the kind where most people
were just waking up, letting their dogs out, or pouring
their first cup of coffee. Across the street from Patty
Henning's small blue homes, seventy two year old Herald Red
Thompson stepped outside to grab his Tampa Bay Times from
the end of his driveway. Red was a retired electrician
(03:56):
and one of the earliest risers in the neighborhood. He
liked to water her his tomato plants while listening to
talk radio on his porch, but that morning something felt off.
The birds were chirping like usual, and he noticed dusty
Patty's orange tabby pacing nervously near the front steps. When
Red looked closer, he froze. On Patty's front lawn. Lying
(04:17):
near the mailbox was a figure. At first, he thought
she might have fainted or fallen, but as he walked closer,
the truth became clear. Patty Hennings was lying face up
in the grass, completely naked, her gray hair matted with blood.
The morning dew around her body glistened red in the sunlight.
She looked peaceful for a second. Red later told detectives,
(04:38):
Then I realized her eyes were open and there were
flies already starting around her face. Shaking, Red stumbled backward
and dropped his newspaper. His hands trembled as he reached
for his flip phone. He dialed nine one one at
seven twenty two am, telling the dispatcher, my neighbor's been murdered,
Please hurry. His voice cracked as he gave the address,
(04:58):
twenty one forty five Colonial Drive. The operator told him
to stay inside and not to touch anything, but Red
couldn't stop looking from his porch. He could see blood
smeared across the walkway leading toward Patty's front door. Her
porch light was still on, even though the sun was
now fully up. Within minutes, the sound of sirens echoed
down the street. Neighbors peeked from behind blinds and doorways.
(05:21):
Some came outside in their robes, whispering to each other
as patrol cars rolled up and officers tacked off the
yard with yellow crime scene tape. By seven thirty five am,
Colonial Drive was filled with flashing blue lights. A small
crowd gathered at the end of the street as deputies
moved them back. What it started as a quiet April
morning in a sleepy floor to neighborhood had now become
(05:43):
the scene of one of the most brutal murders Pasco
County had ever seen. Deputies from the Pasco County Sheriff's
Office arrived at twenty one to forty five Colonial Drive
just before seven thirty five am on Friday, April fourteenth,
twenty twenty three. By then, the spring sun was already
bright and hot, and curious neighbors were standing behind the
yellow police tape, whispering in disbelief. The quiet street that
(06:06):
usually smelled of orange blossoms and long clippings was now
filled with the sound of police radios. Camera shutters and
muffled voices. Detective Laura McNeil, aged thirty eight, and Surgeant
Eddie Wirke, age fifty two, were assigned to lead the case.
McNeil was known for her calm, careful approach, a former
crime scene technician who took notes in neat handwriting and
(06:28):
carried a small notebook everywhere. Rourke, a twenty year veteran
of the department, was blunt and straightforward. He had seen
his share of violence, but even he would later tell
reporters that this scene was the worst thing I've walked
into in a long time. The victim, Patricia Patty Hennings,
lay sprawled naked on her front lawn, face up toward
the sky. Her gray hair was tangled and streaked with blood.
(06:52):
She had been stabbed seventy four times with what investigators
later determined were six different kitchen knives, all traced back
to her own home. The attack was wild and frenzied.
Patty's hands and arms were covered in defensive wounds, proof
that she had fought back hard. Clumps of grass and
dirt were stuck beneath her finger nails, showing she had
(07:12):
struggled to crawl or grab hold of the ground. Blood
streaks along the concrete walkway told part of the story.
The fight had begun inside and spilled out the front door.
Inside the small, sky blue house, the living room was
a mess. A coffee cup lay shattered near the recliner.
The curtains had been torn down, The kitchen floor was
slick with blood, and every knife from Patty's wooden knife
(07:35):
block was missing. On the counter, detectives found a ceramic
garden frog broken in half and stained with blood. The
medical examiner later determined that the attack started when Patty
was hit from behind with that ceramic frog. The blow
fractured her skull and knocked her to the floor. From there,
the attacker or attackers grabbed knives from the kitchen and
(07:56):
began stabbing. The assault continued out the front door and
into the yard, where Paddy collapsed near the porch lights
she'd been playing to replace that weekend. Every knife from
her kitchen set had been used. Detectives said it was
either the work of multiple attackers or a deliberate attempt
to confuse forensic testing. As the April heat rose, crime
scene technicians sprayed luminal to trace hidden blood patterns and
(08:18):
use cotton swabs to collect DNA. Photographers documented everything, the
overturned furniture, the broken frog, even the cat paw prints
tracked through blood near the doorway. By the end of
that long Friday, detectives had dozens of photos, evidence bags,
and one big question. Who could hate a sixty four
year old grandmother enough to kill her in such a
(08:39):
brutal way. The first suspects in the killing of Patricia
Patty Hennings weren't strangers. They were six kids from the neighborhood,
a rough, mischievous group who had been giving her trouble
for months. Locals described them as little bleeping spawns of
bleeping Satan in bleeping flip flops. The ringleader was beamer
Bug Dempsey, aged thirteen for his age, with shaggy blonde
(09:01):
hair and a skateboard that never left his side. Bud
was known for skating barefoot down the middle of Colonial drive,
cursing at passing cars, and lighting fireworks under park vehicles
for fun. His younger brother, Toyota Dempsey eleven, was moody
but smart, always filming pranks on an old, cracked iPhone
he carried in his fabby pocket. Then there was Audie
(09:22):
toad Dempsey nine, who was obsessed with frogs, snakes, and
anything slimmy. Once he caught a water moccasin and left
it in a neighbor's mailbox as a joke. The youngest Dempsey, Mercedes,
was only seven, Small and quiet. She followed her older
siblings everywhere, rarely speaking. Rounding out the group were Marlborough
and Camel Harper, ages eight and ten, two brothers from
(09:46):
across the street. They were known to join the Dempseyes
in exchange for candies, spare change, or stolen bake pens.
Throughout February and March twenty twenty three, the group made
Patty's life miserable. She was a widow who loved gardening
and spent most mornings trimming her rose bushes or tending
to her tomato plants while listening to old country music
(10:06):
on a portable radio. The kids would shoot her with
water guns, frow mud clumps at her windows, and leave
trash bags and broken toys on her porch staffs. One
afternoon in early March, they spray painted the words dumb
fat cow across her backyard shed and bright orange letters.
Patty filed nine separate complaints with the Pasco County Sheriff's
office between February tenth and March twenty eighth, deputies came
(10:29):
out twice, but nothing ever came of it. Officers told
her the kids were just being kids and suggested installing
a motion light or a security camera. Patty did both,
a sixty eight dollars ledd like from Walmart and a
small ring doorbell camera she set up herself in early April.
After her death, those complaints suddenly looked much more serious.
(10:51):
Detectives Laura McNeil and Eddie Rourke went door to door
on Colonial Drive asking neighbors for security footage and witness statements.
Most mentioned the same group of kids, loud, rude, and
constantly hanging around Patty's yard. When police brought Bug Dempsey
in for questioning, he was dressed in a torn fortnight
hoodie and dirty flip flops. He slotched in the chair
(11:13):
and laughed through most of the interviews, saying we didn't
kill that dumb bold chick. She was just a crazy
psycho Karen. His brothers and friends told similar stories, claiming
they had been at home that night watching YouTube and
eating pizza. The kid's alibis were weak, none backed by
adults or solid evidence, but there were no fingerprints, no blood,
(11:33):
and no weapon linking them directly to the murder. Detectives
noted that Bug's shoes matched a partial footprint near Patty's porch,
but it wasn't enough for an arrest. By late April
twenty twenty three, police began looking beyond the children. Still,
the neighborhood couldn't shake the feeling that these flip flop
delinquents knew more than they were saying. After ruling out
(11:53):
the neighborhood kids, detectives turned their attention to Christall Dempsey,
aged twenty nine, the children's mother. She lived directly across
the street from Paddy Hennings in a faded yellow mobile
home with missing skirting and a broken porch light that
had been out for months. Christall was well known around
Columbial Drive. She worked off and on at the Rusty
Hook Bar and Grill, a smoky dive on U. S nineteen,
(12:16):
where she waited tables a few minutes a week. When
not working, she was usually outside smoking menfols in a
tank top and Pageuma pants for her phone in one
hand and a can of Monster Energy drink in the other.
Neighbors said she had a mean streak and a sharp tongue.
One man told investigators she had screamed from her porch
like she was on the Jerry Springer Show. Loud music
(12:38):
and late night arguments were common at the Dempsey house,
especially on week ends when her boyfriend's friends came by
to drink beer in the driveway. Christall and Patty's feud
went back months. Patty complained about the Dempsey kids nearly
every week, the water guns, the trash, the graffiti. She
had called nine one one on Christall at least seven
times since January. For her part, chris Stall accused Patty
(13:01):
of spying on her children and harassing them. In one
report file February twenty six, Christall told deputies that Patty
had been stalking her kids with binoculars, but when officers checked,
they found that the so called binoculars were just a
pair of reading glasses tied to a string, something Patty
wore around her neck while reading mail or gardening. Still,
the arguments kept getting worse. Neighbors said the two women
(13:24):
screened at each other across the street several times a week.
One retired man recalled hearing Patty shout, control your pack
of animals, to which Christall screamed back, you keep talking,
fat cow, and I'll whoop your bleep. Their last documented
argument was on March twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, just
over two weeks before Patty's death. Afterward, Patty called the
(13:45):
Sheriff's office again, but was told there wasn't much deputies
could do unless there were threats or damage. She wrote
a short note in her spiral notebook later recovered from
her kitchen counter, that read Christall got in my face again.
Scared for Dusty. Maybe camera isn't enough. When detectives Laura
McNeil and Eddie Whirr questioned Chris Stow on April fifteen,
(14:06):
she was combative and sarcastic. You think I bleeping killed
that bleeping bleep. I can't even get my bleeping kids
to put on clean, bleeping underwear, she told them. She
claimed she was working her shift at the Rusty Hook
the night of the murder. However, her story didn't hold
up completely. Coworkers told police she left the bar earlier,
around nine thirty pm, saying she wasn't feeling right. The
(14:29):
murder was believed to have occurred sometime between ten o'clock
PM and midnight. Detectives also noted several small cuts on
her right hand and wrist, which she said came from
breaking up a fight between my dumb kids. No blood
or weapon directly tied her to the scene, but investigators
remained suspicious. By the end of April twenty twenty three,
the feud between the grieving widow and the fiery mother
(14:51):
across the street had become the center of the case,
a deadly neighborhood conflict that everyone on Colonial Drive saw coming,
but no one managed to stop. On April nineteen, twenty
twenty three, a sticky, humid Wednesday afternoon in Pascoe County,
Detective Laura McNeil stood inside the Sheriff's Office Digital Forensics lab,
(15:11):
staring at the glowing screen a confiscated Samsung Galaxy phone.
Hours earlier, a judge had signed a warrant allowing her
team to search cristall Dempsey's devices, including the phones used
by her four children. What they found would change the
direction of the investigation entirely. Inside the phone's tik Tok
app were dozens of videos the Dempsey kids had filmed
(15:31):
over the past several months. The clips showed them mocking
and taunting their elderly neighbor, Patty Hennings, often right in
front of her sky blue home on Colonial Drive. In one,
beamer Bug Dempsey danced barefoot on Patty's lawn while his
siblings laughed behind the camera. Another showed Toyota eleven and
Audi nine stuffing live snakes into Patty's mailbox while chanting crazy,
(15:53):
Patty's got mail. The children appeared to find it all hilarious,
but the most disturbing clip was one posted the night
before the murder, time stamped April thirteenth at ten forty
two pm. It showed Hayley, a neighbor friend who sometimes
joined the group, holding a kitchen knife and whispering into
the camera She's gone to get what's coming. The video
was filmed in a dimly lit bedroom, with giggles audible
(16:16):
in the background. When investigators located the knife in the footage,
they confirmed it matched one from Patty's own kitchen set,
the same kind of knife used in the attack. Detectives
also found a crumpled piece of notebook paper hidden in
Beamer Dempsey's dresser drawer. Written in messy blueing were the
words if we tell people she was a stripper and
she hurts boys, no one will care if she's gone.
(16:38):
It was chilling, not only because of what it said,
but because it revealed a deliberate plan to turn the
neighborhood against Patty. As detectives dug deeper, they uncovered that
the Dempsey kids had been spreading false stories about Patty
for weeks. They told classmates, neighbors, and even adults that
the sixty four year old woman was a crazy old
stripper who had kidnapped and hurt men. None of it
(17:00):
was true. Investigators later learned that the children had stolen
a box of old family photos from Patty, shed pictures
of her late daughter, Melissa, who had once worked as
a dancer in Tampa years before the twenty eighteen murder
suicide that took her life. The children apparently found those
photos and twisted them into a cruel rumor campaign. The
lies spread fast through social media and the local neighborhood
(17:22):
gossip chain. By early April, several residents admitted they'd started
keeping their distance from Patty because of what the kids
had said. In interviews, Detective Ocneil called the discovery beyond disturbing.
A perfect storm of cruelty, ignorance, and online attention seeking.
The videos were later removed by TikTok after being flagged
as part of a criminal investigation, but screenshots and clips
(17:45):
continued to circulate online among locals for days. With this
new evidence, investigators began to see Patty's death not just
as a violent act of rage, but as the final
result of weeks of bullying, lies, and digital humiliation. What
started as child life pranks had grown into something far darker,
a neighborhood tragedy that played out one post, one rumor,
(18:06):
and one cruel laugh at a time. By late April
twenty twenty three, the Pasco County Sheriff's Office had one
more name on their list. Wayland Skid Parsons, a forty
one year old homeless man known around US Highway nineteen
for penhandling outside gas stations and sleeping behind the rusty
hook bar and grill. Locals described him as a hard
luck drifter who always wore the same torn denim jacket
(18:29):
and carried a plastic grocery bag filled with half empty
beer cans. Police already knew Parsons, in fact, they'd encountered
him just two days before, Paddy Hennings was killed after
he flagged down deputies near a circle k on Ridge Road.
He was bruised, barefoot, and clearly under the influence. According
to the incident report, Parsons told officers that Paddy Hennings
(18:50):
had kidnapped and wrapped him inside her Columbial Drive home.
The story immediately raised eyebrows. Paddy was a sixty four
year old retired waitress who lived alone with her cat, Dusty,
and had no known history of violence or mental illness. Still,
detectives took the claim seriously. They questioned Patty that same day.
She was shaken and angry, insisting she'd never seen the
(19:13):
man before in her life. Two days later, Parsons came clean.
Sitting in an interview room at the Sheriff's office, he
admitted he had made the story up, saying he'd been
paid sixty dollars and a six pack of natural ice
beer to file the false report. When asked who paid him,
Parsons hesitated, then said some kids, tiny gangsters, the ones
that hang out near the drainage ditch behind Colonial Drive.
(19:36):
He told investigators the kids had promised to make him
famous on tik tok if he told the story. Detectives
later confirmed those kids matched the descriptions of the Dempsey children,
the same group who had tormented Patty for months. After
Patty's murder, police found blood on Parsons's clothes, which raised
new questions. At first, he denied ever going back to
her house, but forensic testing confirmed that the blood matched
(19:58):
Patty's DNA. When confronted with the results, Parsons broke down
and confessed that he had entered her home after she
was already dead. He claimed someone, possibly Christaal Dempsey, had
told him to make it look like a robbery in
exchange for cash and meth. She said, go grab a
few things, make it messy, Parsons told detectives he described
walking into the house through the unlocked side door, seeing
(20:20):
blood everywhere and panicking. He said he tried to take
Patty's purse, but dropped it when he saw her body
on the lawn. Security footage from a nearby home showed
Parsons riding a rusty bicycle down Colonial Drive around twelve
forty a m. The night of the murder, wearing the
same clothes later found with blood on them. Investigators eventually
determined that Parsons had not killed Patty, but had been
(20:42):
used manipulated by neighborhood rumors in desperation. Detective Laura McNeil
later told reporters he was a pawn and something much bigger.
They dangled sixty bucks in beer, and he did their
dirty work without even knowing what he was walking into.
By the end of April twenty twenty three, Parsons sat
in the county on charges of evidence tampering and false reporting.
(21:03):
But for detectives, one question remained. If Parsons didn't kill Patty,
who did and why had so many people wanted to
see her gone. By the third week of April twenty
twenty three, investigators were exhausted, but determined they had searched houses,
interviewed neighbors, and calmed through hours of phone and TikTok footage.
(21:24):
Every new lead seemed to point back to the same small,
sky blue house on Colonial Drive and to the same
family across the street, the Dempseys. On April twenty second,
twenty twenty three, after nearly twelve hours of questioning, Toyota
Toy Dempsey, age eleven, finally broke down, sitting in a
small interview room at the Pascoe County Sheriff's office. She
(21:45):
cried into her hoodie and whispered the words detectives had
been waiting to hear. We didn't mean to kill her,
she said softly. We just wanted the money. Sheioedas detectives
learned that on the night of April thirteenth, Toyota and
her brother Beemer Buged Dempsey, age thirteen, had sneaked out
of their house around midnight. They carried flashlights and tiptoed
across the street to Patty Hennings's home. The children knew
(22:08):
Patty kept her small retirement savings about one thousand, two
hundred dollars in cash hidden in a coffee tin labeled
Rainy Day. They had seen it weeks earlier when Patty
asked Bug to help carry groceries inside. Toyota told detectives
that she and Bug slipped in through the side door,
which Patty often left unlocked for her cat. They began
(22:29):
searching drawers in the kitchen, but while they were rifling
through a cabinet, Patty woke up and came down the hall,
still in her night gown, holding a flashlight. When she
saw the kid, she shouted, what on earth are you
doing in my house. Panicking, Bug grabbed the nearest object,
a ceramic garden frog that Patty kept by her window sill,
and struck her on the back of the head. Patty
(22:51):
fell screaming, Toyota said. She grabbed one of the kitchen
knives from the counter and waved it, yelling for her
brother to stop, but everything spiraled out of control. She
was yelling and bleeding, Toyota said, through tears. Then Bug
started stabbing. I tried to stop him, but then I
just did it too. There was blood everywhere and we
couldn't stop. The noise woke their younger siblings, Audie nine
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and Mercedes seven, as well as the Harper boys Camel
ten and Marlborough eight, who had been sleeping in the
Dempsey living room after a late movie. The children rushed over, terrified,
but Bug ordered them to help. Together, they dragged Patty's
body outside and dumped her on the lawn, hoping to
make it look like she was drunk or something. When
(23:34):
their mother, Christall Dempsey came home around three am, she
found blood on bugs shoes and immediately realized what had happened.
In a panic, she cleaned the children, burned their clothes
in a metal bucket and came up with a plan.
The next day, she paid Wayland Skid Parsons sixty dollars
and a six pack of natural ice to file a
(23:55):
fake police report accusing Patty of assault. She hoped it
would shift the blame and distract investigators. That plan unraveled quickly.
By nine forty five pm on April twenty second, deputies
surrounded the Dempsey home. Neighbors watched from their porches as
Christall was led away in handcuffs, screaming, you can't take
my babies. Her four children were placed into state custody
(24:16):
under the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Detective Laura McNeil later told reporters the truth was far
darker and infinitely more childish than anyone could have imagined.
By March of twenty twenty five, nearly two years after
the shocking murder on Colonial Drive, the small community of Holiday, Florida,
(24:37):
was once again gathered around their televisions and phones. The
trial of Christall Dempsey and her two children, beamer Bug
Dempsey now fifteen, and Toyota Toya Dempsey, thirteen, had begun.
Reporters from Tampa Bay and even national outlets filled the
courthouse hallways, holding microphones and cups of gas station coffee.
The air outside was thick and warm. The early spring committed,
(25:00):
making tempers short and clothes stick to skin. Because of
their ages, Bug and Toyota were tried separately in juvenile court,
while their mother faced charges in adult criminal court for
tampering with evidence, child neglect, and obstruction of justice. Both
courtrooms were standing room only. Prosecutor Angela Moreno forty six
called the case a perfect storm of neglect, cruelty, and
(25:23):
childhood gone wrong. She described the night of April thirteenth,
twenty twenty three, step by step, showing jurors photographs of
Patty Hennings's kitchen, the broken ceramic frog, and the bloody
footprints leading to the yard. Hattie's only crime, Moreno said,
was being a kind neighbor who trusted the wrong family.
Defense attorney Mark Ellison fifty two painted a different picture.
(25:46):
He spoke about the Dempsey home, a cramped two bedroom
rental filled with noise, clutter, and constant chaos. He told
jurors that Bug and Toyota had grown up in an
environment of fear, confusion, and survival children, he argued, acting
on impulse, not evil. During Toyota's testimony, the courtroom was silent.
(26:06):
She spoke softly, clutching a tissue. I wish I could
take it back, she said, I didn't mean to hurt
Miss Patty. We just wanted the money she owed Mama.
Her words brought several jurors to tears. Bug, taller now
and wearing an oversized County issued polo, showed little emotion.
When asked by the judge if he understood his actions,
he replied, yes, sir, I do now. Family members of
(26:29):
Patty Hennings, including her sister Janet Keller, attended every session.
Janet brought a framed photo of Patty and kept it
on her lap each day. She was sweet, Janet told
reporters outside the courthouse she baked cookies for those kids.
She didn't deserve to die like that. When the verdicts
came down, the courtroom was heavy with emotion. Bug Dempsey
(26:49):
was found delinquent of second degree murder and sentenced to
twenty years in a high security juvenile facility with the
possibility of supervised release at age thirty. Toyota Dempsey received
fifteen years in a juvenile rehabilitation center. Their mother, Christal,
showed no expression as Judge Darren Lowell sentenced her to
twelve years in state prison for covering up the crime
(27:10):
and bribing a witness. She turned to her children as
deputies led her away and said, Mama loves you. Outside
the courthouse, neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. Some said the
punishments were too light. Others called it justice but heartbreaking.
As one local reporter summed it up on the evening news,
there were no winters today, only the echo of a
(27:31):
tragedy that began with children, a coffee tin, and a
terrible mistake that can never be undone. By March twenty
twenty five, nearly two years after the murder of Patty Hennings,
the quiet streets of Colonial Drive had begun to recover
from the chaos that had overtaken the neighborhood. The Dempsey House,
once loud and chaotic, was boarded up and left empty.
(27:53):
Windows were covered with plywood, and the overgrown yard was
slowly being reclaimed by weeds. Who had once tolerated the
family's disturbances said it felt like a small way had
been lifted from the block. Hattie's sky blue manufactured homes
still stood, but her shed, the sight of months of
neighborhood harassment, had been repainted as soft white. Locals carefully
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scrubbed away the remnants of graffiti that hadmired her lawn
and outbuildings. A small group of residents, including Harold Read Thompson,
the man who had discovered Paddy's body on that fateful
morning of April fourteenth, twenty twenty three, worked quietly to
restore the sense of normalcy Hatty had tried so hard
to maintain. Dusty Patty's orange tabby cat had been adopted
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by Thompson, who said he wanted to honor the woman
who had been kind even when people were cruel to her.
The cat, now comfortably settled in a somewhat corner of
Thompson's living room, became a quiet symbol of continuity and
remembrance for neighbors still grappling with the tragedy. The police
officers who had investigated the case also moved forward, though
the memories lingered. Detective Laura McNeil told reporters that the
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case still haunts her, not simply because of the brutality,
but because the perpetrators were so young, the thought that
children could commit such violence left a lasting impression. Surgeant
Eddie Worke, a veteran of decades of violent crime investigations,
retired in the fall of twenty twenty four, saying he
had seen enough blood for one lifetime. Both officers maintained contact,
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offering insight to younger detectives about how complicated juvenile cases
could become when influenced by fear, peer pressure, or neglect.
Patty's family, too, sought ways to honor her memory while
rebuilding their own lives. Her niece, Jennifer Larkin, took responsibility
for maintaining the small blue house. She planted lemon trees
in the yard, a tribute to Patty's habit of baking
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lenon bars for neighbors and friends. Jennifer often told visitors
Aunt Patty wanted things to be fair and kind, even
when people didn't treat her that way. These trees are
her way of still giving something back in the neighborhood.
Life came continued in small, cautious stets. Mail carriers resumed
their usual rounds without fear, and children played in the
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yards again, though with a heightened awareness of the past.
The story of Patty Hennings, a woman marked by tragedy
at remembered for her kindness and stubborn sense of fairness,
remained a quiet lesson on the consequences of unchecked cruelty
and the strength of a community trying to heal a
feud between neighbors, a family pushed past the breaking point,
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and a grandmother who search for peace ended in unimaginable
violence in Newport, Ritchie. The scars of April twenty twenty
three remain her reminder that sometimes the most dangerous battles
happened just across the street. This has been true crime
case files
This is true crime case files. Today's story takes us
to Newport Richie, Florida, a quiet Gulf Coast town known
for its palm trees, fishing docks, and close knit neighborhoods.
But in April of twenty twenty three, that calm was
shattered by a crime so shocking investigators said it looked
like a horror movie come to life. This is the
story of sixty four year old Patricia Patty Hennings, a grandmother,
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a widow, and the victim of a neighborhood feud that
spiraled into unthinkable violence. In April of twenty twenty three,
Patricia Patty Hennings was sixty four years old and living
a quiet life in Newport Richie, Florida. A retired waitress
from Sonny's Bbu, Patty had spent most of her life
in Pascoe County. She was known at the restaurant for
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her warm smile, strong coffee, and the way she called
everyone honey or Darlin. After working there for nearly three decades,
she retired in twenty twenty one, hoping to enjoy slower
days filled with gardening, her favorite TV shows, and visits
from friends. But Patty's life had not been easy. Five
years earlier, in twenty eighteen, she had suffered a terrible loss.
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Her daughter Melissa and two young grandchildren were killed in
a shocking murder suicide in nearby Date City. The tragedy
broke her heart, but it also made her determined to
find peace. She sold her old home and moved into
a small, sky blue manufactured house on Colonial Drive, a
quiet street with palm trees, chainlink fences, and the hum
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of wammowers most afternoons. She lived there with her orange
tabby cat, Kiven Dusty Collins Wreathes, a fat, lazy cat
who followed her everywhere and sometimes sat in the window
watching the world go by. To most of her neighbors,
Patty was a familiar sight, short, silver haired, often wearing
floral blouses and slip on sandals, carrying a plastic watering
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can in one hand and a diet coke in the other.
Even though she lived alone, Paddy stayed busy. She baked
lemon bars for the mail carrier and kept her lawn
perfectly mowed, cutting it twice a week when the spring
rains made the grass grow fast. She loved her small
garden of zinnias and marigoles, and every morning around eight am,
she could be seen sweeping her driveway while Dusty sat
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nearby swishing his tail. Despite her kind ways, Patty also
had a stubborn streak. She believed rules were meant to
be followed and that everyone in the neighborhood should respect
one another. When something bothered her barking dogs, loud music,
or kids leaving bikes on her lawn, she didn't hesitate
to take action. Sometimes she taped handwritten notes to her
(02:31):
neighbor's doors. Other times she called the police or even
knocked on the door herself to complain. She wasn't mean.
One neighbor later told investigators she just didn't know when
to let something go. In April twenty twenty three, Patty
was looking forward to spring cleaning. She had just bought
a gallon of light blue paint to refresh her backyard
shed and had been saving money to replace the broken
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porch light that had gone out in March. Friends say
she'd been in good spirits, especially after finding a new
church that met for coffee every Wednesday at the duncan
On Ridge Road. She talked about maybe getting a second
cat for Dusty's company and taking a short bus trip
to Tarpin Springs to walk along the sponge docks. After
years of heartache, Patty seemed to be slowly finding her
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footing again. But in just a few days, that peaceful
life and the quiet street she called home would be
shattered by unimaginable violence. It was Friday morning, April fourteenth,
twenty twenty three, in Newport Richie, Florida. The sun had
just started to rise and the air was warm and
sticky from overnight grain. The smell of freshly cut grass
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and wet pavement hung in the air. It was a
quiet morning on Colonial Drive, the kind where most people
were just waking up, letting their dogs out, or pouring
their first cup of coffee. Across the street from Patty
Henning's small blue homes, seventy two year old Herald Red
Thompson stepped outside to grab his Tampa Bay Times from
the end of his driveway. Red was a retired electrician
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and one of the earliest risers in the neighborhood. He
liked to water her his tomato plants while listening to
talk radio on his porch, but that morning something felt off.
The birds were chirping like usual, and he noticed dusty
Patty's orange tabby pacing nervously near the front steps. When
Red looked closer, he froze. On Patty's front lawn. Lying
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near the mailbox was a figure. At first, he thought
she might have fainted or fallen, but as he walked closer,
the truth became clear. Patty Hennings was lying face up
in the grass, completely naked, her gray hair matted with blood.
The morning dew around her body glistened red in the sunlight.
She looked peaceful for a second. Red later told detectives,
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Then I realized her eyes were open and there were
flies already starting around her face. Shaking, Red stumbled backward
and dropped his newspaper. His hands trembled as he reached
for his flip phone. He dialed nine one one at
seven twenty two am, telling the dispatcher, my neighbor's been murdered,
Please hurry. His voice cracked as he gave the address,
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twenty one forty five Colonial Drive. The operator told him
to stay inside and not to touch anything, but Red
couldn't stop looking from his porch. He could see blood
smeared across the walkway leading toward Patty's front door. Her
porch light was still on, even though the sun was
now fully up. Within minutes, the sound of sirens echoed
down the street. Neighbors peeked from behind blinds and doorways.
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Some came outside in their robes, whispering to each other
as patrol cars rolled up and officers tacked off the
yard with yellow crime scene tape. By seven thirty five am,
Colonial Drive was filled with flashing blue lights. A small
crowd gathered at the end of the street as deputies
moved them back. What it started as a quiet April
morning in a sleepy floor to neighborhood had now become
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the scene of one of the most brutal murders Pasco
County had ever seen. Deputies from the Pasco County Sheriff's
Office arrived at twenty one to forty five Colonial Drive
just before seven thirty five am on Friday, April fourteenth,
twenty twenty three. By then, the spring sun was already
bright and hot, and curious neighbors were standing behind the
yellow police tape, whispering in disbelief. The quiet street that
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usually smelled of orange blossoms and long clippings was now
filled with the sound of police radios. Camera shutters and
muffled voices. Detective Laura McNeil, aged thirty eight, and Surgeant
Eddie Wirke, age fifty two, were assigned to lead the case.
McNeil was known for her calm, careful approach, a former
crime scene technician who took notes in neat handwriting and
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carried a small notebook everywhere. Rourke, a twenty year veteran
of the department, was blunt and straightforward. He had seen
his share of violence, but even he would later tell
reporters that this scene was the worst thing I've walked
into in a long time. The victim, Patricia Patty Hennings,
lay sprawled naked on her front lawn, face up toward
the sky. Her gray hair was tangled and streaked with blood.
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She had been stabbed seventy four times with what investigators
later determined were six different kitchen knives, all traced back
to her own home. The attack was wild and frenzied.
Patty's hands and arms were covered in defensive wounds, proof
that she had fought back hard. Clumps of grass and
dirt were stuck beneath her finger nails, showing she had
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struggled to crawl or grab hold of the ground. Blood
streaks along the concrete walkway told part of the story.
The fight had begun inside and spilled out the front door.
Inside the small, sky blue house, the living room was
a mess. A coffee cup lay shattered near the recliner.
The curtains had been torn down, The kitchen floor was
slick with blood, and every knife from Patty's wooden knife
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block was missing. On the counter, detectives found a ceramic
garden frog broken in half and stained with blood. The
medical examiner later determined that the attack started when Patty
was hit from behind with that ceramic frog. The blow
fractured her skull and knocked her to the floor. From there,
the attacker or attackers grabbed knives from the kitchen and
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began stabbing. The assault continued out the front door and
into the yard, where Paddy collapsed near the porch lights
she'd been playing to replace that weekend. Every knife from
her kitchen set had been used. Detectives said it was
either the work of multiple attackers or a deliberate attempt
to confuse forensic testing. As the April heat rose, crime
scene technicians sprayed luminal to trace hidden blood patterns and
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use cotton swabs to collect DNA. Photographers documented everything, the
overturned furniture, the broken frog, even the cat paw prints
tracked through blood near the doorway. By the end of
that long Friday, detectives had dozens of photos, evidence bags,
and one big question. Who could hate a sixty four
year old grandmother enough to kill her in such a
(08:39):
brutal way. The first suspects in the killing of Patricia
Patty Hennings weren't strangers. They were six kids from the neighborhood,
a rough, mischievous group who had been giving her trouble
for months. Locals described them as little bleeping spawns of
bleeping Satan in bleeping flip flops. The ringleader was beamer
Bug Dempsey, aged thirteen for his age, with shaggy blonde
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hair and a skateboard that never left his side. Bud
was known for skating barefoot down the middle of Colonial drive,
cursing at passing cars, and lighting fireworks under park vehicles
for fun. His younger brother, Toyota Dempsey eleven, was moody
but smart, always filming pranks on an old, cracked iPhone
he carried in his fabby pocket. Then there was Audie
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toad Dempsey nine, who was obsessed with frogs, snakes, and
anything slimmy. Once he caught a water moccasin and left
it in a neighbor's mailbox as a joke. The youngest Dempsey, Mercedes,
was only seven, Small and quiet. She followed her older
siblings everywhere, rarely speaking. Rounding out the group were Marlborough
and Camel Harper, ages eight and ten, two brothers from
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across the street. They were known to join the Dempseyes
in exchange for candies, spare change, or stolen bake pens.
Throughout February and March twenty twenty three, the group made
Patty's life miserable. She was a widow who loved gardening
and spent most mornings trimming her rose bushes or tending
to her tomato plants while listening to old country music
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on a portable radio. The kids would shoot her with
water guns, frow mud clumps at her windows, and leave
trash bags and broken toys on her porch staffs. One
afternoon in early March, they spray painted the words dumb
fat cow across her backyard shed and bright orange letters.
Patty filed nine separate complaints with the Pasco County Sheriff's
office between February tenth and March twenty eighth, deputies came
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out twice, but nothing ever came of it. Officers told
her the kids were just being kids and suggested installing
a motion light or a security camera. Patty did both,
a sixty eight dollars ledd like from Walmart and a
small ring doorbell camera she set up herself in early April.
After her death, those complaints suddenly looked much more serious.
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Detectives Laura McNeil and Eddie Rourke went door to door
on Colonial Drive asking neighbors for security footage and witness statements.
Most mentioned the same group of kids, loud, rude, and
constantly hanging around Patty's yard. When police brought Bug Dempsey
in for questioning, he was dressed in a torn fortnight
hoodie and dirty flip flops. He slotched in the chair
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and laughed through most of the interviews, saying we didn't
kill that dumb bold chick. She was just a crazy
psycho Karen. His brothers and friends told similar stories, claiming
they had been at home that night watching YouTube and
eating pizza. The kid's alibis were weak, none backed by
adults or solid evidence, but there were no fingerprints, no blood,
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and no weapon linking them directly to the murder. Detectives
noted that Bug's shoes matched a partial footprint near Patty's porch,
but it wasn't enough for an arrest. By late April
twenty twenty three, police began looking beyond the children. Still,
the neighborhood couldn't shake the feeling that these flip flop
delinquents knew more than they were saying. After ruling out
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the neighborhood kids, detectives turned their attention to Christall Dempsey,
aged twenty nine, the children's mother. She lived directly across
the street from Paddy Hennings in a faded yellow mobile
home with missing skirting and a broken porch light that
had been out for months. Christall was well known around
Columbial Drive. She worked off and on at the Rusty
Hook Bar and Grill, a smoky dive on U. S nineteen,
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where she waited tables a few minutes a week. When
not working, she was usually outside smoking menfols in a
tank top and Pageuma pants for her phone in one
hand and a can of Monster Energy drink in the other.
Neighbors said she had a mean streak and a sharp tongue.
One man told investigators she had screamed from her porch
like she was on the Jerry Springer Show. Loud music
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and late night arguments were common at the Dempsey house,
especially on week ends when her boyfriend's friends came by
to drink beer in the driveway. Christall and Patty's feud
went back months. Patty complained about the Dempsey kids nearly
every week, the water guns, the trash, the graffiti. She
had called nine one one on Christall at least seven
times since January. For her part, chris Stall accused Patty
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of spying on her children and harassing them. In one
report file February twenty six, Christall told deputies that Patty
had been stalking her kids with binoculars, but when officers checked,
they found that the so called binoculars were just a
pair of reading glasses tied to a string, something Patty
wore around her neck while reading mail or gardening. Still,
the arguments kept getting worse. Neighbors said the two women
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screened at each other across the street several times a week.
One retired man recalled hearing Patty shout, control your pack
of animals, to which Christall screamed back, you keep talking,
fat cow, and I'll whoop your bleep. Their last documented
argument was on March twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, just
over two weeks before Patty's death. Afterward, Patty called the
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Sheriff's office again, but was told there wasn't much deputies
could do unless there were threats or damage. She wrote
a short note in her spiral notebook later recovered from
her kitchen counter, that read Christall got in my face again.
Scared for Dusty. Maybe camera isn't enough. When detectives Laura
McNeil and Eddie Whirr questioned Chris Stow on April fifteen,
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she was combative and sarcastic. You think I bleeping killed
that bleeping bleep. I can't even get my bleeping kids
to put on clean, bleeping underwear, she told them. She
claimed she was working her shift at the Rusty Hook
the night of the murder. However, her story didn't hold
up completely. Coworkers told police she left the bar earlier,
around nine thirty pm, saying she wasn't feeling right. The
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murder was believed to have occurred sometime between ten o'clock
PM and midnight. Detectives also noted several small cuts on
her right hand and wrist, which she said came from
breaking up a fight between my dumb kids. No blood
or weapon directly tied her to the scene, but investigators
remained suspicious. By the end of April twenty twenty three,
the feud between the grieving widow and the fiery mother
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across the street had become the center of the case,
a deadly neighborhood conflict that everyone on Colonial Drive saw coming,
but no one managed to stop. On April nineteen, twenty
twenty three, a sticky, humid Wednesday afternoon in Pascoe County,
Detective Laura McNeil stood inside the Sheriff's Office Digital Forensics lab,
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staring at the glowing screen a confiscated Samsung Galaxy phone.
Hours earlier, a judge had signed a warrant allowing her
team to search cristall Dempsey's devices, including the phones used
by her four children. What they found would change the
direction of the investigation entirely. Inside the phone's tik Tok
app were dozens of videos the Dempsey kids had filmed
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over the past several months. The clips showed them mocking
and taunting their elderly neighbor, Patty Hennings, often right in
front of her sky blue home on Colonial Drive. In one,
beamer Bug Dempsey danced barefoot on Patty's lawn while his
siblings laughed behind the camera. Another showed Toyota eleven and
Audi nine stuffing live snakes into Patty's mailbox while chanting crazy,
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Patty's got mail. The children appeared to find it all hilarious,
but the most disturbing clip was one posted the night
before the murder, time stamped April thirteenth at ten forty
two pm. It showed Hayley, a neighbor friend who sometimes
joined the group, holding a kitchen knife and whispering into
the camera She's gone to get what's coming. The video
was filmed in a dimly lit bedroom, with giggles audible
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in the background. When investigators located the knife in the footage,
they confirmed it matched one from Patty's own kitchen set,
the same kind of knife used in the attack. Detectives
also found a crumpled piece of notebook paper hidden in
Beamer Dempsey's dresser drawer. Written in messy blueing were the
words if we tell people she was a stripper and
she hurts boys, no one will care if she's gone.
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It was chilling, not only because of what it said,
but because it revealed a deliberate plan to turn the
neighborhood against Patty. As detectives dug deeper, they uncovered that
the Dempsey kids had been spreading false stories about Patty
for weeks. They told classmates, neighbors, and even adults that
the sixty four year old woman was a crazy old
stripper who had kidnapped and hurt men. None of it
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was true. Investigators later learned that the children had stolen
a box of old family photos from Patty, shed pictures
of her late daughter, Melissa, who had once worked as
a dancer in Tampa years before the twenty eighteen murder
suicide that took her life. The children apparently found those
photos and twisted them into a cruel rumor campaign. The
lies spread fast through social media and the local neighborhood
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gossip chain. By early April, several residents admitted they'd started
keeping their distance from Patty because of what the kids
had said. In interviews, Detective Ocneil called the discovery beyond disturbing.
A perfect storm of cruelty, ignorance, and online attention seeking.
The videos were later removed by TikTok after being flagged
as part of a criminal investigation, but screenshots and clips
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continued to circulate online among locals for days. With this
new evidence, investigators began to see Patty's death not just
as a violent act of rage, but as the final
result of weeks of bullying, lies, and digital humiliation. What
started as child life pranks had grown into something far darker,
a neighborhood tragedy that played out one post, one rumor,
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and one cruel laugh at a time. By late April
twenty twenty three, the Pasco County Sheriff's Office had one
more name on their list. Wayland Skid Parsons, a forty
one year old homeless man known around US Highway nineteen
for penhandling outside gas stations and sleeping behind the rusty
hook bar and grill. Locals described him as a hard
luck drifter who always wore the same torn denim jacket
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and carried a plastic grocery bag filled with half empty
beer cans. Police already knew Parsons, in fact, they'd encountered
him just two days before, Paddy Hennings was killed after
he flagged down deputies near a circle k on Ridge Road.
He was bruised, barefoot, and clearly under the influence. According
to the incident report, Parsons told officers that Paddy Hennings
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had kidnapped and wrapped him inside her Columbial Drive home.
The story immediately raised eyebrows. Paddy was a sixty four
year old retired waitress who lived alone with her cat, Dusty,
and had no known history of violence or mental illness. Still,
detectives took the claim seriously. They questioned Patty that same day.
She was shaken and angry, insisting she'd never seen the
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man before in her life. Two days later, Parsons came clean.
Sitting in an interview room at the Sheriff's office, he
admitted he had made the story up, saying he'd been
paid sixty dollars and a six pack of natural ice
beer to file the false report. When asked who paid him,
Parsons hesitated, then said some kids, tiny gangsters, the ones
that hang out near the drainage ditch behind Colonial Drive.
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He told investigators the kids had promised to make him
famous on tik tok if he told the story. Detectives
later confirmed those kids matched the descriptions of the Dempsey children,
the same group who had tormented Patty for months. After
Patty's murder, police found blood on Parsons's clothes, which raised
new questions. At first, he denied ever going back to
her house, but forensic testing confirmed that the blood matched
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Patty's DNA. When confronted with the results, Parsons broke down
and confessed that he had entered her home after she
was already dead. He claimed someone, possibly Christaal Dempsey, had
told him to make it look like a robbery in
exchange for cash and meth. She said, go grab a
few things, make it messy, Parsons told detectives he described
walking into the house through the unlocked side door, seeing
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blood everywhere and panicking. He said he tried to take
Patty's purse, but dropped it when he saw her body
on the lawn. Security footage from a nearby home showed
Parsons riding a rusty bicycle down Colonial Drive around twelve
forty a m. The night of the murder, wearing the
same clothes later found with blood on them. Investigators eventually
determined that Parsons had not killed Patty, but had been
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used manipulated by neighborhood rumors in desperation. Detective Laura McNeil
later told reporters he was a pawn and something much bigger.
They dangled sixty bucks in beer, and he did their
dirty work without even knowing what he was walking into.
By the end of April twenty twenty three, Parsons sat
in the county on charges of evidence tampering and false reporting.
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But for detectives, one question remained. If Parsons didn't kill Patty,
who did and why had so many people wanted to
see her gone. By the third week of April twenty
twenty three, investigators were exhausted, but determined they had searched houses,
interviewed neighbors, and calmed through hours of phone and TikTok footage.
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Every new lead seemed to point back to the same small,
sky blue house on Colonial Drive and to the same
family across the street, the Dempseys. On April twenty second,
twenty twenty three, after nearly twelve hours of questioning, Toyota
Toy Dempsey, age eleven, finally broke down, sitting in a
small interview room at the Pascoe County Sheriff's office. She
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cried into her hoodie and whispered the words detectives had
been waiting to hear. We didn't mean to kill her,
she said softly. We just wanted the money. Sheioedas detectives
learned that on the night of April thirteenth, Toyota and
her brother Beemer Buged Dempsey, age thirteen, had sneaked out
of their house around midnight. They carried flashlights and tiptoed
across the street to Patty Hennings's home. The children knew
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Patty kept her small retirement savings about one thousand, two
hundred dollars in cash hidden in a coffee tin labeled
Rainy Day. They had seen it weeks earlier when Patty
asked Bug to help carry groceries inside. Toyota told detectives
that she and Bug slipped in through the side door,
which Patty often left unlocked for her cat. They began
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searching drawers in the kitchen, but while they were rifling
through a cabinet, Patty woke up and came down the hall,
still in her night gown, holding a flashlight. When she
saw the kid, she shouted, what on earth are you
doing in my house. Panicking, Bug grabbed the nearest object,
a ceramic garden frog that Patty kept by her window sill,
and struck her on the back of the head. Patty
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fell screaming, Toyota said. She grabbed one of the kitchen
knives from the counter and waved it, yelling for her
brother to stop, but everything spiraled out of control. She
was yelling and bleeding, Toyota said, through tears. Then Bug
started stabbing. I tried to stop him, but then I
just did it too. There was blood everywhere and we
couldn't stop. The noise woke their younger siblings, Audie nine
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and Mercedes seven, as well as the Harper boys Camel
ten and Marlborough eight, who had been sleeping in the
Dempsey living room after a late movie. The children rushed over, terrified,
but Bug ordered them to help. Together, they dragged Patty's
body outside and dumped her on the lawn, hoping to
make it look like she was drunk or something. When
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their mother, Christall Dempsey came home around three am, she
found blood on bugs shoes and immediately realized what had happened.
In a panic, she cleaned the children, burned their clothes
in a metal bucket and came up with a plan.
The next day, she paid Wayland Skid Parsons sixty dollars
and a six pack of natural ice to file a
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fake police report accusing Patty of assault. She hoped it
would shift the blame and distract investigators. That plan unraveled quickly.
By nine forty five pm on April twenty second, deputies
surrounded the Dempsey home. Neighbors watched from their porches as
Christall was led away in handcuffs, screaming, you can't take
my babies. Her four children were placed into state custody
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under the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Detective Laura McNeil later told reporters the truth was far
darker and infinitely more childish than anyone could have imagined.
By March of twenty twenty five, nearly two years after
the shocking murder on Colonial Drive, the small community of Holiday, Florida,
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was once again gathered around their televisions and phones. The
trial of Christall Dempsey and her two children, beamer Bug
Dempsey now fifteen, and Toyota Toya Dempsey, thirteen, had begun.
Reporters from Tampa Bay and even national outlets filled the
courthouse hallways, holding microphones and cups of gas station coffee.
The air outside was thick and warm. The early spring committed,
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making tempers short and clothes stick to skin. Because of
their ages, Bug and Toyota were tried separately in juvenile court,
while their mother faced charges in adult criminal court for
tampering with evidence, child neglect, and obstruction of justice. Both
courtrooms were standing room only. Prosecutor Angela Moreno forty six
called the case a perfect storm of neglect, cruelty, and
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childhood gone wrong. She described the night of April thirteenth,
twenty twenty three, step by step, showing jurors photographs of
Patty Hennings's kitchen, the broken ceramic frog, and the bloody
footprints leading to the yard. Hattie's only crime, Moreno said,
was being a kind neighbor who trusted the wrong family.
Defense attorney Mark Ellison fifty two painted a different picture.
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He spoke about the Dempsey home, a cramped two bedroom
rental filled with noise, clutter, and constant chaos. He told
jurors that Bug and Toyota had grown up in an
environment of fear, confusion, and survival children, he argued, acting
on impulse, not evil. During Toyota's testimony, the courtroom was silent.
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She spoke softly, clutching a tissue. I wish I could
take it back, she said, I didn't mean to hurt
Miss Patty. We just wanted the money she owed Mama.
Her words brought several jurors to tears. Bug, taller now
and wearing an oversized County issued polo, showed little emotion.
When asked by the judge if he understood his actions,
he replied, yes, sir, I do now. Family members of
(26:29):
Patty Hennings, including her sister Janet Keller, attended every session.
Janet brought a framed photo of Patty and kept it
on her lap each day. She was sweet, Janet told
reporters outside the courthouse she baked cookies for those kids.
She didn't deserve to die like that. When the verdicts
came down, the courtroom was heavy with emotion. Bug Dempsey
(26:49):
was found delinquent of second degree murder and sentenced to
twenty years in a high security juvenile facility with the
possibility of supervised release at age thirty. Toyota Dempsey received
fifteen years in a juvenile rehabilitation center. Their mother, Christal,
showed no expression as Judge Darren Lowell sentenced her to
twelve years in state prison for covering up the crime
(27:10):
and bribing a witness. She turned to her children as
deputies led her away and said, Mama loves you. Outside
the courthouse, neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. Some said the
punishments were too light. Others called it justice but heartbreaking.
As one local reporter summed it up on the evening news,
there were no winters today, only the echo of a
(27:31):
tragedy that began with children, a coffee tin, and a
terrible mistake that can never be undone. By March twenty
twenty five, nearly two years after the murder of Patty Hennings,
the quiet streets of Colonial Drive had begun to recover
from the chaos that had overtaken the neighborhood. The Dempsey House,
once loud and chaotic, was boarded up and left empty.
(27:53):
Windows were covered with plywood, and the overgrown yard was
slowly being reclaimed by weeds. Who had once tolerated the
family's disturbances said it felt like a small way had
been lifted from the block. Hattie's sky blue manufactured homes
still stood, but her shed, the sight of months of
neighborhood harassment, had been repainted as soft white. Locals carefully
(28:16):
scrubbed away the remnants of graffiti that hadmired her lawn
and outbuildings. A small group of residents, including Harold Read Thompson,
the man who had discovered Paddy's body on that fateful
morning of April fourteenth, twenty twenty three, worked quietly to
restore the sense of normalcy Hatty had tried so hard
to maintain. Dusty Patty's orange tabby cat had been adopted
(28:37):
by Thompson, who said he wanted to honor the woman
who had been kind even when people were cruel to her.
The cat, now comfortably settled in a somewhat corner of
Thompson's living room, became a quiet symbol of continuity and
remembrance for neighbors still grappling with the tragedy. The police
officers who had investigated the case also moved forward, though
the memories lingered. Detective Laura McNeil told reporters that the
(29:00):
case still haunts her, not simply because of the brutality,
but because the perpetrators were so young, the thought that
children could commit such violence left a lasting impression. Surgeant
Eddie Worke, a veteran of decades of violent crime investigations,
retired in the fall of twenty twenty four, saying he
had seen enough blood for one lifetime. Both officers maintained contact,
(29:23):
offering insight to younger detectives about how complicated juvenile cases
could become when influenced by fear, peer pressure, or neglect.
Patty's family, too, sought ways to honor her memory while
rebuilding their own lives. Her niece, Jennifer Larkin, took responsibility
for maintaining the small blue house. She planted lemon trees
in the yard, a tribute to Patty's habit of baking
(29:46):
lenon bars for neighbors and friends. Jennifer often told visitors
Aunt Patty wanted things to be fair and kind, even
when people didn't treat her that way. These trees are
her way of still giving something back in the neighborhood.
Life came continued in small, cautious stets. Mail carriers resumed
their usual rounds without fear, and children played in the
(30:06):
yards again, though with a heightened awareness of the past.
The story of Patty Hennings, a woman marked by tragedy
at remembered for her kindness and stubborn sense of fairness,
remained a quiet lesson on the consequences of unchecked cruelty
and the strength of a community trying to heal a
feud between neighbors, a family pushed past the breaking point,
(30:27):
and a grandmother who search for peace ended in unimaginable
violence in Newport, Ritchie. The scars of April twenty twenty
three remain her reminder that sometimes the most dangerous battles
happened just across the street. This has been true crime
case files
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