Intercepted
The Rise and Fall of NFL Cornerback Darryl Henley
-
-
5.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
The product of eight years of investigative research and over one hundred interviews, Intercepted has all the dark corners and unexpected twists of the most sophisticated legal thrillers. Michael McKnight takes us into Henley’s fourth season in the NFL, when he met a Rams cheerleader named Tracy Donaho and bumped into a boyhood friend named Willie McGowan—a onetime youth-league standout who had since turned to drug trafficking. The tale devolves from there, as Henley, Donaho, and McGowan embark on a scheme to transport cocaine that lands Henley in federal prison, where he attempts to arrange a Mafia hit on the sentencing judge and the star witness against him: Donaho. Detailing how one of the best and brightest of our professional athletes destroyed himself through temptation, arrogance, and anger at a justice system that he felt had failed him, Intercepted is also a cautionary tale about American culture, as disturbing as it is impossible to ignore.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This tormented tale of hubris and corruption, loaded with seedy characters, reads like a legal thriller. But McKnight's thorough examination of former Los Angeles Rams cornerback Darryl Henley's sordid fall from grace is a cautionary, all-too-real story of sex, drugs, and murder. Henley was named first-team All-American at UCLA and drafted in 1989 by the Rams, where he became a role-model teammate and anti-drug spokesman. But a chance reunion with a boyhood friend-turned-drug dealer in 1993 set Henley on an irreversible path of destruction; he is now serving more than 40 years in federal prison for conspiring to traffic cocaine, bribing a prison guard, and plotting to murder both the federal judge handling his case and the prosecution's star witness (Henley's former girlfriend and Rams cheerleader Tracy Donaho). Sports Illustrated writer McKnight's meticulous research and attention to detail nearly indicts the U.S. justice system and its own glaring flaws. And while he cites Henley as his primary source, the author also interviewed more than 100 other individuals associated with the case, although Donaho and others refused to cooperate. Additionally, McKnight draws comparisons between Henley's drug trial and O.J. Simpson's murder trial, which took place simultaneously in neighboring Southern California counties.
Customer Reviews
Amazing story of a good person making bad decisions.
Very insightful book about the fall of Los Angeles Rams cornerback Darryl Henley. Henry had almost everything a person could ask for, yet he got caught up with the wrong people. He went from not really being a part of the drug smuggling to setting up a drug deal along with putting hits on a judge and witness.