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' starting 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, plus 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 charges that he'd tried to bribe a juror.

In March 1995 Henley was convicted along with five others of conspiracy to traffic cocaine. (Overshadowed at the time by the O.J. Simpson trial, which was going on simultaneously in Los Angeles, the Henley trial had been marred by the questionable testimony of Tracy Donaho and other convicted criminals, plus plenty of dirty pool from both sides of the courtroom.) Henley immediately sought a new trial based on racism and drug use among the jurors -- two points that would eventually be proven true. But when this new trial bid failed, Henley lost all hope in the system, and began listening to a group of convicted drug dealers who lived on his cell bloc in downtown LA's Metropolitan Detention Center. Unbeknownst to Henley, these men were informants for the DEA, and they were all too willing to help the high-profile former athlete on the bloc set up a seven-figure heroin deal in order to raise money for more appeals. When Henley's man on the outside -- a Mafia soldier he'd never met -- offered to do away with Donaho and the presiding judge with part of the heroin profits, Henley agreed.

Only the Mafia soldier wasn't a Mafia soldier. He was an undercover DEA agent, and all of his conversations with Henley were on tape.

It was the end for Darryl Henley.

Until now.

In A Life Intercepted, Henley comes clean for the first time, and shares with readers the untold details of his startling 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 product of painstaking research, A Life Intercepted chronicles the DEA investigation that changed 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 judge's car.

Darryl Henley is not eligible for release until 2031.

Michael McKnight is a former staff writer at Fox Sports Net in Los Angeles. He has also worked as a 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 was a 2004 Olympic Games correspondent for the [Torrance, CA] Daily Breeze newspaper, and has reported from London for nfl.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.