On Oct. 19, 2026, Judge Cindy Leos ruled that Linda Henning had not been competent to stand trial in 2002 and vacated her convictions. She is now presumed innocent. This page explains the evidence the jury heard at her 2002 trial. Whether the state will retry her has not been decided. For the full competency history, see the Henning competency timeline.

Explore the Evidence · Part 1

What tied Linda Henning to Girly's apartment?

On September 10, 1999, police found three damp stains that smelled of bleach on the carpet of apartment 53-D at 8401 Spain NE. Because police took the entire carpet, the lab later found smaller drops the cleanup had missed. Four were Henning's, and two were Girly's.

By Mark Horner · Published Nov. 11, 2026 · Updated Nov. 12, 2026: added trial exhibit photos

Tap or click any mark to see what the lab found.

Linda Henning's blood (circle) Girly Chew Hossencofft's blood (diamond) Chemically treated spot, no DNA result (dashed ring)

Reading the labels: Q numbers are the crime lab's numbers for "questioned" samples, items whose source was unknown when they were tested. Lowercase m numbers are the item numbers police gave evidence in the case. "Tape lifts" means Dickey and APD trace analyst Donna Arbogast pressed sticky tape across the carpet, on their hands and knees, to pick up tiny traces. The distance from the couch to the treated spots comes from prosecutor Paul Spiers' account of the case.

Stain positions follow APD forensic scientist Catherine Dickey's bench sketch of the carpet, drawn in the APD lab's triage room with Det. Nick Gonzales, and her Sept. 26, 2000 DNA report. The room's walls, window, door and furniture are placed from APD crime-scene photos of apartment 53-D. Colors follow the court exhibit: yellow for Henning, red for Girly, blue for the chemically treated spots. Not to scale. The kitchen opens just past the front door; the dining nook, with the hall to the bedroom and bath, opens past the east end of the couch.

The living-room carpet laid out at the courthouse, with squares cut out where samples were taken, pale halos around them where a cleaning chemical lightened the carpet, and yellow tape marking small stains — The carpet at the courthouse during the trial, Oct. 13, 2002. The dark squares are where samples were cut out; the pale halos are where a cleaning chemical lightened the carpet. Officers reported a strong smell of bleach. Yellow tape marks small stains. (Photo by Mark Horner)

The prosecution's scale model of the living room, with colored tags for the blood and treated spots, the couch along the top and the front door at the bottom — The scale model of apartment 53-D that prosecutors showed the jury at Henning's 2002 trial, photographed Oct. 13, 2002. Red tags mark Girly's blood, yellow tags Henning's, blue tags the chemically treated spots, and green a carpet sample used for comparison. The model is turned the other way from the plan above: the couch runs along the top and the front door is at the bottom. (Photo by Mark Horner)

Living room looking toward the front door, with the window beside it and pale chemically treated patches on the carpet — Toward the front door. The window is just left of it; the pale patches are the chemically treated spots. APD photo

Chemically treated patches in a line across the carpet in front of the window — The treated spots run in a line across the room in front of the window. APD photo

Evidence markers m-1 and m-2 on the carpet — Markers m-1 and m-2 on two of the three treated spots. APD photo

Skirt of the white couch, close up — The couch skirt, where Henning's blood was smeared. APD photo

The living room after the carpet was removed, showing couch, desk, blue chair and window — After police took the carpet: couch on the south wall, desk and blue chair on the west wall. APD photo

North wall with window and front door, carpet removed — The north wall: window, then the only door in and out, with the kitchen just past it. APD photo

Albuquerque Police Department crime-scene photos, 1999, from the department's photo DVD in Mark Horner's archive. Enhanced for display: enlarged with the AI upscaler Upscayl. AI upscaling can invent fine texture, so these are for viewing only; the unaltered originals are the record. Tap or click a photo to enlarge it, or “View original” to see the untouched file.

Girly's desk

The desk on the west wall of the plan was Girly's: green-and-black lacquer with what looks like mother-of-pearl inlay, and a matching chair with a red cushion. After she disappeared, the desk spent time with her neighbors Luz and Pedro Tirado, where Mark Horner filmed it for KOB-TV.

Girly's green lacquer desk with a lamp on top and a red-cushioned chair in front — The desk and its chair. KOB-TV

Close-up of two inlaid women in gowns on the desk's back panel — Inlaid figures in flowing gowns on the back panel. KOB-TV

Mark Horner in a dark suit at the desk, looking into the camera — Mark Horner reporting from Girly's desk, early 2000s. KOB-TV

What Dickey told the author

The dots can't show a fight. Dickey says the drops "soaked into the fiber," so "there's no directionality to them." There are too few to form a grouping, so no one can say whether they were shed at the same time. "You've got six dots of blood spread all over a room."
The couch skirt is a wipe, not a drop. "It's a wipe," Dickey says. "It's not just a dot of blood… It got smeared out."
How the small drops were found. After the first two stains, Dickey and Arbogast went over "every square inch of that carpet" on their hands and knees, picking up trace with tape. "That's when we found the other four."
What the cleanup missed. Dickey thinks the cleanup was hurried. Crime-scene photos show what are probably carpet-cleaner marks on the half of the room nearest the door and window, where the treated spots are. Most of the small stains were in the other half, which wasn't cleaned, and one of Henning's, near the window, was missed in the cleaned half.

Source: the author's reporting.

Her reference sample was saliva, not blood

To compare DNA, the lab needs a known sample, called a reference sample, from each person. Police took a swab from inside Linda Henning's mouth. They never drew her blood. Prosecutors argued this mattered: the lab never had a vial of Henning's blood that could have been planted. According to Dickey, Henning later accused the lab of planting her blood using a stained pair of panties taken from her car.

Sept 11, 1999Police take the entire living-room carpet, not just the three chemically treated sections. That decision led to the smaller drops being found later.
Sept 14Stains Q20-2 (later shown to be Girly's) and Q20-4 (later shown to be Henning's) test positive with leucomalachite green, a quick presumptive test: it suggests blood but can't confirm it.
Sept 24First DNA run. Q20-2 is Girly's. Dickey has a profile for Q20-4 but has not yet profiled Henning's reference sample.
Sept 27With Henning's saliva profile in hand, Dickey confirms the carpet and couch stains are Henning's. That same day, Henning testified before a special grand jury that she did not know where Girly lived.
Oct 1Tape lifts of the carpet by Dickey and Arbogast turn up four more very small bloodstains.

Sources: APD Criminalistics DNA Report, Sept. 26, 2000; search warrant affidavit SW 99-00008, Nov. 1999; State Bar of New Mexico course book Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence (2004), pp. 7–8; September Sacrifice, ch. 73; the author's reporting.

What the final lab report says

Dickey's Criminalistics DNA Report, dated Sept. 26, 2000, lists the carpet samples she tested and whose DNA each one matched.

Henning: carpet stains Q20-4, Q20-6, Q20-7 and Q20-9, and the couch fabric, Q24-1. The report puts the chance that an unrelated person matches at about 1 in 135 billion for Caucasians.
Girly: carpet stains Q20-2 and Q20-8, matching the profile from her toothbrush and hair. Girly's blood was also on the tarp, blouse, shorts, washcloth and duct tape found off Highway 60 west of Magdalena by midday on Sept. 10, 1999, the day after she was last seen.
Diazien Hossencofft: Q20-10, a hair root that Arbogast pulled from the carpet tapings.
The chemically treated spots: no DNA results for Q20-1, Q20-3 and Q20-5, or for the carpet pad under one of them. The lab described them as "chemically inhibited," meaning the cleaning chemical is believed to have kept the samples from producing a DNA profile.

APD Criminalistics DNA Report, Catherine Dickey, Sept. 26, 2000, case 99-114808; filed as an exhibit with Diazien Hossencofft's 2019–20 court petition.

The scale of the work: in her own account of the case, Dickey wrote that she "performed 158 DNA extractions on 144 samples, producing 100 profiles." She called it the largest DNA case ever worked in New Mexico.

Catherine Dickey, "Case Number 99-114808," in Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence (2004).

What Dickey told the author

Henning volunteered her samples. On Sept. 16, 1999, early in the case, before she was seen as a real suspect, Henning came in to the APD crime lab "specifically to submit" samples, without a lawyer. She signed a consent form ("I give permission without threats or promises of reward"), so no warrant was needed. Dickey believes Det. Mike Fox asked her. With Arbogast as her witness, Dickey plucked 50 hairs from all over Henning's head.
Why the six small carpet drops are gone. "There's no DNA in a red blood cell," Dickey says. The DNA comes from white cells, which red cells outnumber by the thousands, so even a stain that looks big "doesn't really contain that much DNA." Whatever the lab uses "is gone," and before trial the key samples "had indeed been consumed by my testing."

Source: the author's reporting.

Sept. 10, 1999: a bloody tarp on Highway 60

On Friday, Sept. 10, 1999, while Albuquerque police were finding the chemically treated stains in apartment 53-D, a state highway worker named Raymond Gabaldon was driving U.S. 60 west of Magdalena. Between 10:30 and 11 that morning, he spotted what looked like a tarp on a slope about 20 feet off the road, near a culvert. When he got out of his truck, he found clothing on the shoulder. According to the State Police report, the clothing was "full of blood," and nearby lay "a curtain or a tarp, with blood on it." He took the items to his office and called the Magdalena marshal.

APD Det. Mike Fox, wearing a gray polo shirt, stands in front of a search map at an outdoor command post — APD lead detective Mike Fox at a news briefing at the search command post west of Magdalena, June 24, 2000. (Photo by Mark Horner)

Sept. 10, morningGabaldon finds the clothing and the tarp and takes them to his office.
Sept. 10, afternoonState Police officer Adrian Lucero is sent out shortly after 12:30 p.m. and meets Gabaldon at 1:45. Back at the scene, about 0.3 miles west of milepost 105 on the eastbound shoulder, Lucero finds another piece of duct tape with hair on it and photographs it where it lay.
Sept. 10Lucero logs seven items into the Socorro evidence vault: a green-and-white blouse, pink-and-orange shorts, a gray tarp, green panties, a white washcloth, two pieces of duct tape with blood and hair, and a piece of gauze. All seven had blood on them.
Sept. 14Lucero hands all seven items to APD lead detective Mike Fox, under the Albuquerque case number for Girly's disappearance.
Sept. 16Fox delivers the seven items from Highway 60 to Dickey at the APD crime lab.

A note on the location: the State Police report puts the find about 0.3 miles west of milepost 105. The Socorro evidence log lists mile marker 106, and Gabaldon, interviewed later by Fox, guessed "mile marker one six, point five, something like that." The records agree on the stretch of road but not the exact marker.

Green U.S. 60 mile marker 105 with a bullet hole beside the zero, beside a two-lane highway running toward mountains, with a faint rainbow in a stormy sky — Mile marker 105 on U.S. 60 west of Magdalena. The State Police report puts the find about 0.3 miles west of here, on the eastbound shoulder. Photographed Sunday, June 18, 2000, about nine months after the find. Dust and scratches were removed from the film scan for display. (Photo by Mark Horner)

What the lab found

Girly's blood. Dickey's Sept. 26, 2000 DNA report matched Girly's profile to stains on the tarp, the blouse, the shorts, the washcloth and the duct tape.
A mixed stain on the blouse. The right shoulder held a mixture of two people's DNA. The report found it about 41 quadrillion times more likely to have come from Girly and Diazien Hossencofft than from two unknown people. The DNA report calls it a mixture. In his 2004 account of the case, prosecutor Paul Spiers wrote that Hossencofft's DNA came from his saliva and argued that he had spit at her.
A hair on the tarp. APD trace analyst Donna Arbogast first told a grand jury, in February 2001, that a head hair on the tarp was consistent with Bill Miller, an associate of Diazien Hossencofft and Linda Henning. Mitochondrial DNA testing at the University of North Texas excluded Miller, and Dickey later testified that the hair's mitochondrial DNA was consistent with Linda Henning's. Mitochondrial DNA is shared by relatives on the mother's side, so it narrows the source rather than naming one person. Dickey agreed with the author that if the hair on the tarp had been the only evidence against Henning, it would have been very arguable for the defense, because hair can transfer. Miller was never convicted of any crime tied to Girly.
Shoe prints. The tarp's white side bore four partial shoe prints. In May 2000 the lab compared them with two pairs of athletic shoes collected in the investigation and found that neither pair made them. No match to anyone was ever reported.
Animal hair and feathers. Arbogast's February 2001 tally listed 101 cat hairs, five dog hairs, two dyed rabbit hairs and two dyed green feathers on the tarp. Detectives compared them with hair from Henning's and Miller's cats and with deer hair and fly-tying feathers seized from Miller's house. Spiers later wrote that the cat hairs were consistent with both households' cats. Miller's lawyers wrote that once those trace conclusions came under scrutiny, the State relied only on one microscopic green fragment, possibly a feather. The examiner said it could have come from the same source as material from Miller's house, but could not tell whether it was dyed or came from the same bird.

A second tarp

The tarp measured about 9 feet by 11 feet 8 inches: gray fabric on one side, a white rubbery coating on the other. When detectives searched Henning's townhome on Oct. 15, 1999, they reported finding "gray tarp or curtains similar to" the Highway 60 tarp on an upstairs bed. In May 2000 the crime lab compared the bloody tarp, item m-44, with a second drop cloth logged as item m-45. The lab found the two "virtually identical" in style, material, size and stitching, but could not say they were bought together or came from the same batch.

Prosecutors also showed a Home Depot receipt and a check for a tarp Henning bought on Sept. 8, 1999, the day before Girly disappeared. Testifying at Henning's trial, Diazien Hossencofft said the two of them were together when it was bought.

The State argued

Girly's blood, a mixed stain with Hossencofft's DNA, a hair consistent with Henning's, a tarp like one found in her home and the receipt for a tarp she bought the day before linked the roadside evidence to both defendants.

The defense answered

Defense attorney Monica Baca told the court there was no evidence Henning had anything to do with leaving the tarp and clothing near Magdalena, and that no blood or DNA in her Honda suggested they had ever been in her car. Trace evidence, the defense argued, can be carried from place to place. And the lab could not say the two tarps were bought together or came from the same batch.

Sources: New Mexico State Police incident report 99-13345 and Socorro evidence log, Sept. 10, 1999; Raymond Gabaldon interview with APD Det. Mike Fox; APD receipt and chain of custody, Sept. 14–16, 1999; APD Criminalistics DNA Report, Sept. 26, 2000; APD trace evidence report, June 27, 2001; APD firearm/tool mark report, May 18, 2000; search warrant affidavit SW 99-00008, Nov. 1999; sentencing memorandum in Bill Miller's case, Sept. 30, 2003; Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence, pp. 11, 184–187, 202, 299.

DNA shows whose blood it is, not how or when it got there.

Defense, at trial (Oct. 15, 2002)

Blood and trace evidence "could be easily transported from one place to the next, not necessarily by the person who … had the blood." There were "no other admissions, no other statement" tying Henning to the killing.

Monica Baca, motion for directed verdict, in Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence, pp. 184, 187.

Henning's claim

Henning accused Dickey of using a stained pair of panties taken from Henning's car to plant her blood in the apartment.

The author's reporting.

The State's answer

The lab never had a vial of Henning's blood to plant. And Henning told the grand jury she hadn't been injured in the two weeks before. Prosecutor Paul Spiers: "Her blood is all over that carpet, four spots on the carpet and all over the couch." The lab reports themselves identify four carpet stains and a smear on the couch skirt.

Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence, pp. 7–8, 189 (Spiers citing the grand jury transcript, p. 165).

Diazien Hossencofft's version

Testifying at Henning's 2002 trial, Diazien Hossencofft claimed he planted "female DNA" himself. He has given many conflicting accounts over the years.

Trial testimony, Oct. 15, 2002, in Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence, pp. 207–209.

What Dickey told the author

Her stake in the result. "Showing one person is absolutely, definitely innocent is far more important to me than showing that, you know, these people were involved," Dickey says.
The second swab. Before trial, the key samples had been used up and Henning believed her DNA had been planted. Dickey says she went with defense attorney Monica Baca to the jail "and assisted in collecting another buccal swab," a mouth swab, from Henning, "that we sealed up right in front of her." She handed it to Baca, who shipped it to the defense's own lab.
Bill Miller. Prosecutors alleged Miller took part; he was never convicted of anything tied to Girly. Dickey: "My work, the DNA, does not implicate Bill Miller in any way. There is none of Bill Miller's DNA in there." She cautions that the DNA alone doesn't say whether he was there, and says she was surprised Miller's lawyer never subpoenaed her to tell a jury so. By then, Miller had already pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor counts of attempted tampering with evidence, so there was no trial.
Not a nosebleed. Dickey rejects an innocent explanation for Henning's blood, Henning "sitting on the couch having a friendly chat with this nice lady she met at the bank and her nose starts bleeding and she runs to the bathroom." "It's not consistent with that." She also rejects a version at the door, where Girly "opens the door, screams, pops her in the nose, slams the door," because the blood was in five places inside: four on the carpet and one on the couch skirt, "just barely above the floor." She says there is speculation that a fight happened, but "we'll never know," because "you can't reconstruct that from that blood spatter."
Saliva on the blouse. Dickey says the blood dots on the blouse kept testing as mixtures, which told her Hossencofft's DNA was coming from something other than blood. She tested around the dots for amylase, "a presumptive test for saliva, and I got saliva." But she could never separate the two, so his saliva over her blood is "the assumption." "There's no way to know."
The carpet cleaner. Dickey says both chambers of the carpet cleaner "were still damp" when it was shipped back from South Carolina, and the film in its dirty-water reservoir "still smelled of cleaning agent," though, she adds, "it's a carpet cleaner, it's gonna smell." That residue tested positive on a presumptive test for blood (leucomalachite green, and possibly luminol), "but I was never able to get any DNA out of it." (Her view of how the cleanup went is in Stop 1.)

A gray Hoover SteamVac carpet cleaner standing on the courtroom floor, its base wrapped in a white evidence bag

Close-up of the Hoover SteamVac's label, with lab item numbers Q115a and Q115b and the date 10/4/99 written on its two tanks

The carpet cleaner at the courthouse during Henning's 2002 trial, photographed Oct. 13, 2002. Lab item numbers Q115a and Q115b, dated Oct. 4, 1999, are written on its two tanks. (Photos by Mark Horner)

Source: the author's reporting; Albuquerque Tribune, July 16, 2003.

In October 2026, Judge Cindy Leos ruled that Henning had not been competent to stand trial and vacated her convictions, even though experts for both sides had found her competent before trial. The ruling made no finding about the blood evidence. See the Henning competency timeline.

By Mark Horner. Sources: Catherine Dickey's APD Criminalistics DNA Report (Sept. 26, 2000) and her bench sketch of the carpet; APD crime-scene photos of apartment 53-D; New Mexico State Police and APD reports on the Highway 60 evidence; the State Bar of New Mexico course book Factual and Forensic Development of Evidence (2004); court filings in Mark Horner's archive; and the author's reporting. Built with the help of AI tools and reviewed by Mark Horner.