Background: The Charter House senior living center on Fenwick Lane in Silver Springs, Md. (WTTG/YouTube). Insets (top to bottom): Samantha Raebel, Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson (Montgomery County Police Department).
Two women are behind bars for the alleged killing of one of their mothers in a Maryland senior living center, with their arrests hundreds of miles away stemming from the intervention of a woman apparently just trying to help them out.
Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson, 29, and Samantha Raebel, 36, have both been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Tjongarero-Henderson's mother, 67-year-old Hilde Henderson, the Montgomery County Police Department announced. The defendants are being held at the Ottawa County Detention Center.
On May 26 at about 11:10 a.m., officers with the police department were called to the Charter House in the 1300 block of Fenwick Lane in Silver Springs, Maryland, "for a check the welfare of a resident." The Charter House brands itself as "an affordable 55+ senior community in the heart of Silver Spring."
Responding police found Henderson dead, and an autopsy "determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma and the manner of death, homicide." Investigators believe she had been dead for four days after being killed on May 22.
The police department said that through its investigation, detectives identified Henderson's daughter and the daughter's girlfriend as their suspects, though authorities have not revealed what evidence they found. The women were charged, and police asked for the public's help in finding them.
Days later, about 450 miles away in the small village of Genoa in northwestern Ohio, Adrienne Behrman said two women came into her workplace and said they were homeless. She decided to help them.
"I've been down and out myself—homeless, without money … you know, just not wanting to be a charity case or anything like that, and I just felt like … I was led to help them," she told Toledo ABC and The CW affiliate WTVG.
According to Behrman, she let Tjongarero-Henderson and Raebel stay at her apartment and even reached out to her church for additional help, but as she dug deeper, she felt something was off.
"I started asking deeper questions about where they were coming from, where they wanted to go … things were not adding up," she said, noting that she consulted with her friend, Nikki Peters.
Peters apparently had an even more uneasy feeling.
"I instantly said, 'what if they're murderers,' cause I watch a lot of true crime, and everybody laughed at me," Peters told the Ohio TV station.
She said she saw a Cash App payment request for cigarettes from an account that did not match one of the names that the suspects had told them. She searched the name online and found posts from authorities searching for the women.
(From left to right): Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson and Samantha Raebel after their arrests (Montgomery County Police Department).
"I almost passed out," Peters said.
Behrman called 911 and confirmed that the women were wanted. Tjongarero-Henderson and Raebel were arrested and booked into jail; as of Thursday, they were awaiting extradition back to Maryland.
Authorities have not shared a suspected motive.