Former Schlitterbahn co-owner pleads guilty to drug charge stemming from 2018 arrest
The former co-owner of the Schlitterbahn water park pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge earlier this month, more than three years after his arrest inside a Merriam hotel room with methamphetamine and a woman who told police she was being prostituted.
Jeff Henry, 66, pleaded guilty to possession of meth with intent to distribute under a plea agreement entered Dec. 16, court records show. Under the agreement, the state will dismiss three other drug possession and buying sex charges and pursue a lower possible prison sentence.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 4 and Henry’s defense attorney, Carl Cornwell, plans to argue Henry should be sentenced to probation only, he said Wednesday.
“He’s accepted responsibility and we’re moving forward to sentencing,” Cornwell said. “He has been an excellent pre-trial release defendant, he hasn’t done anything wrong, and he is working to make his life better.”
Henry designed the infamous, 17-story Verruckt water slide at the since-shuttered Schlitterbahn park in Wyandotte County where 10-year-old Caleb Schwab was killed riding the slide in 2016.
Henry initially was criminally charged in the boy’s death and he was in Merriam in July 2018 for a court hearing in that case when police were called to a disturbance at a Drury Inn. Officers arrested Henry after finding him in a hotel room with methamphetamine and a woman who told them she was being prostituted by another man.
The second-degree murder and other criminal charges brought against Henry by a grand jury after the death of Schwab, son of Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, ultimately were dismissed by a Wyandotte County judge who ruled the state attorney general’s office had presented improper evidence to the jury.
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 11:23 AM.
