Henschel finally speaks–enough to complete plea

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Photo: Vanessa Henschel

A retired circuit court judge, sitting in for Judge Gordon Webb, was successful in getting 27-year-old Vanessa Henschel of Briarcliff to talk — at least enough to complete a plea so her case could be closed.

Judge Kathleen Bell of Helena told Henschel, who has sat mute during court appearances and refused to speak to her attorney and staff at the Baxter County jail, that she needed to understand the process. “You need to know what’s going to be done to you,” Judge Bell told the defendant, “and you won’t have that understanding unless you participate in the process.”

While talking to the judge, Henschel initially only nodded her head to respond to questions. After a short time, the defendant began to verbally communicate with Judge Bell. She eventually agreed to meet with Deputy Public Defender Mark Cooper just outside the courtroom to discuss her case.

When Cooper returned to the courtroom, he said Henschel had engaged in conversation with him and agreed to accept a plea agreement offered by the state. The agreement will result in Henschel’s probation being extended for two years. Henschel was on probation for 12 years stemming from an earlier case in which she was accused of stabbing a former friend at a local motel in early February 2016.

Henschel was facing the revocation of her suspended sentence based partly on new charges in which she was accused attacking her father in mid-July. According to an investigative report on the incident, a Baxter County deputy sheriff responded to an address along Bonnie Lassie Lane July 16 to meet with Henschel’s father.

The father reported earlier in the day his daughter had punched him numerous times on the side of the head and hit him in the face with her backpack. The father said he had left the residence to get away from her. When he returned home in mid-afternoon, he found his daughter gone and his flat screen television damaged.

Henschel was located at an address along North Highland and taken into custody. She has been an inmate in the Baxter County Detention Center since being arrested in July.

In the earlier case stemming from the motel stabbing incident in which she picked up the 12 year probation sentence, Henschel had been charged with first-degree battery. She had been arrested Feb. 2, 2016, after entering a room at the Town and County Motel and stabbing a then 23-year-old female. According to the probable cause affidavit in the case, the victim’s boyfriend let Henschel into the room based on the past relationship between the two women.

He then went outside to retrieve articles from a vehicle when he heard screaming and ran back to the room. He told investigators he found Henschel astride his girlfriend stabbing her. The boyfriend struck Henschel knocking her off the victim. The victim received non-life-threatening injuries when she was stabbed in the neck and torso. She told police there was no conversation between the two prior to the attack. She said she was in bed and Henschel jumped on top of her and starting stabbing, saying, “I’m sorry,” during the attack.

Henschel underwent a psychological evaluation as part of the stabbing case and was found fit to proceed. She spent 530 days in the Baxter County jail prior to being sentenced on charges stemming from the stabbing incident.

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