DARRYL HENLEY: LA Rams cornerback 1989-94, Federal prisoner 1995-

"He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink, he didn’t do drugs, [he had] great parents, and now he’s a drug trafficker and a murderer?"
- James Washington, college and pro teammate, Super Bowl champion

"The layperson just pictures him sitting at home, making $800,000 a year, thinking, ‘How can I get richer? I know! I’ll be a drug lord.’ It didn’t happen like that."
- Chuck Miller, college teammate

"So Darryl finally found someone he trusts enough to write this book."
- Jerome Stanley, LA-based sports agent and attorney

"I don’t know what happened. I don’t think anyone really knows, except Darryl. That’s why I want to read this book."
- Troy Aikman, college teammate, Super Bowl MVP

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On the morning of July 15, 1993, Los Angeles Rams cheerleader Tracy Donaho stepped off a plane, and into Atlanta's Hartsfield airport. As she reached for her suitcase at baggage claim, the attractive blond was approached by two DEA officers who would later discover twelve kilos of cocaine in her luggage.

It was the beginning of the end for Darryl Henley.

Henley, the Rams' bright, educated, fifth-year cornerback, had met Donaho just five months earlier. During those five months, his life - once a life of promise - was sucked into a whirlpool of former friends turned criminals, and eventually a DEA investigation, an NFL season played under the watch of armed guards, a ten-week federal drug trial (at which Tracy Donaho was the star witness), and Henley's eleventh-hour attempt to bribe a juror.

In March 1995 Henley was convicted along with four others of conspiracy to traffic cocaine. His trial had been marred by the questionable testimony of Tracy Donaho and other criminal witnesses, and influenced in many ways by the O.J. Simpson trial being held simultaneously 30 miles north. After the verdict Henley filed a motion for a new trial based on racism and drug use among the jurors -- two allegations that would later be proven true. But when his new trial bid failed, Henley lost all hope in the system, his cynicism turned to anger, and he began listening more closely to a group of convicted drug dealers who lived on his cell bloc in a downtown LA prison.

These inmates were also informants for the DEA, eager to help the ex-pro athlete in their midst set up a seven-figure heroin deal so he could raise funds for appeals. When Henley's drug supplier -- a Mafia soldier he'd never met -- offered to do away with Donaho and the presiding judge with part of the heroin profits, the former first-team All American whispered into his contraband cell phone in the middle of the night in a highrise prison: "I want it."

But the Mafia soldier was a DEA agent who recorded that call, and every other phone conversation he had with Henley. Henley's desperate run from the law had finally come to an end.

In A Life Intercepted, Henley lifts the lid for the first time on his descent from NFL role model to federal inmate. Former Fox Sports and NFL Network writer Michael McKnight tells a story that unfolds not in the ghetto, but in the suburbs, where Henley was raised by supportive parents who could never have foreseen their middle son's fall from grace.

A Life Intercepted chronicles the DEA investigation that changed the perception of Henley from 'parochial school product with a spotless record' to 'cold-blooded criminal,' and tracks the desperate quest for freedom that followed his conviction -- a downward spiral whose lowest point had the former All American planning the "Oklahoma-style" bombing of a federal judge's car.

Darryl Henley is currently in a medium-security prison in the South, where he works as a GED teacher and mentor to younger inmates. He is not eligible for release until 2031.

“The problem is that everyone believes it can’t happen to them, they’ll never get caught. And they look at the guys like me who get caught and assume it must be because I had a background that was worse than theirs, or wasn’t as smart as they are or something.
But to say that, you’ve got to know who I am.”

– Darryl Henley

Michael McKnight is a former staff writer at Fox Sports Net in Los Angeles. He has also worked as a staff writer and feature producer at NFL Network, has written three original screenplays, and has co-written a fourth which was acquired by Focus Features. McKnight has written for nfl.com and sportsillustrated.com. A Life Intercepted is his first book.

McKnight earned a B.S. from the University of Florida, where he studied Journalism and Sports Management.

A Life Intercepted
The shocking true story of one man's rise to NFL stardom, followed by his inexplicable descent into federal prison. A Life Intercepted documents one of the most bizarre stories in our federal judicial system's history, and illustrates how even the mightiest men can fall.
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Projects pending:

Thanks For The Own Goal
Sports fanaticism at its darkest and most dangerous is explored through the eyes of Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar, who was murdered in his drug-infested native country just days after mistakenly kicking the ball into his own goal during the 1994 World Cup. The book's title echoes what eyewitnesses claim were the last words Escobar heard before being shot twelve times in a Medellin parking lot.