A Lake City man convicted to two life sentences for the brutal 2014 first-degree murder of a woman and her son in a Glidden mobile home filed another appeal in Carroll County District Court last Thursday. The handwritten application for vacating the conviction from 57-year-old Thomas Henderson states that he should be granted a new trial because a local newspaper said there was no evidence to support his convictions, that his attorney did not attack the DNA evidence presented and that his trial counsel did not put up a defense. He asserts this was a violation of the Constitution and the court did not have the jurisdiction to impose the sentence. Henderson himself says that further review of his first appeal was denied in March of last year. He was found guilty by a Carroll County jury on Friday, May 15, 2015 in the blunt force trauma death of 48-year-old Tami DeVore and the blunt force trauma and stabbing death of her 30-year-old son, Karl DeVore. One of the prosecutor’s, Carroll County Attorney, John Werden, argued that a fight erupted between Henderson and DeVore while he was giving her a tattoo in the bedroom of the trailer home. Henderson allegedly beat her to death and then bludgeoned and stabbed her son, who was sleeping in the living room. Henderson’s DNA was already in a database from a crime committed in California, and was matched to evidence found on a YoshiBlade knife as well as the blade and handle of a second knife. There is no chance for parole in the mandatory life sentence for a first-degree murder conviction in Iowa.
