Police say Sandra Lynn Henson of Mississippi has enjoyed a profitable career as an uninvited wedding guest and convicted thief.
According to the Alabama news site AL.com, authorities in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, arrested Henson, 56, on Saturday for petty larceny, trespassing and disturbing the peace at a wedding to which, once again, she had not been invited.
Little did they know that they had arrested the notorious “Mid-south Wedding Crasher.”
“Apparently Miss Henson has been arrested in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi for crashing weddings and stealing money and cards from purses,” the Pontotoc County Sheriff’s Office said.
Henson’s criminal career as a wedding crasher and thief dates to at least 2017, when she was caught on surveillance video stealing from Sarah Ormon’s wedding, according to WATN-TV.
“It was really kind of unnerving that someone had the nerve to do that,” Ormon told the news outlet in a 2021 interview.
By 2019, however, Henson had apparently expanded her operations. Two separate cases that year in Florence, Alabama, resulted in theft charges.
After those charges became public, guests who had attended wedding celebrations in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee reported seeing Henson at their weddings.
At that point, the thief’s targets and methods became clearer.
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According to AL.com, guests saw Henson “helping herself to gift envelopes and money from purses inside the wedding party changing rooms.”
Henson knew where to look for the wedding spoils.
Remarkably, her unusual criminal career did not end there.
Over the next two years, she had more encounters with law enforcement and the justice system. A Tennessee judge revoked her probation. Then, a Mississippi judge gave her a five-year prison sentence due to expire in January 2025.
“Henson’s lawyer asked the judge for leniency because of her health conditions, but the judge said if she was healthy enough to crash weddings, she is healthy enough to go to prison,” WATN reported.
Apparently, she received an early release, though the Mississippi Department of Corrections database did not explain why.
Thus, her criminal career continued through last week.
Notorious wedding crasher arrested once again after stealing gifts in three states https://t.co/08k9xQgGah pic.twitter.com/9iYo6FlrrO
— New York Post (@nypost) October 5, 2023
Henson’s ludicrous compulsion to steal and even more ludicrous decision to continue stealing after multiple arrests and a prison term reminds us of two basic facts pertinent to modern American life.
First, this sort of petty theft has skyrocketed in recent years. Some big-city stores now keep merchandise locked away. Other retailers have abandoned those cities altogether.
Second, criminals love soft targets. And it would be difficult to imagine a softer target than a large wedding.
The 2005 romantic comedy “Wedding Crashers,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, followed two unscrupulous-yet-likable bachelors who crashed weddings in order to meet women. Things went awry, of course, and hilarity ensued before the inevitable happy ending.
Amid the general gaiety and inebriation, no one noticed that the bachelors did not belong.
Perhaps Henson learned a few practical lessons.
If justice prevails, however, she will not get the same happy ending.
