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Ohio Mom Who Convinced Son to Kill Her Husband Speaks 15 Years Later: “I Live With Regret"
Pandora Zan’s son, Cody Henderson, also talks for the first time about why he stabbed his stepfather more than 50 times in an exclusive interview on Snapped: Behind Bars.
When Pandora Zan called 911 dispatchers in Miamisburg, Ohio near Dayton on Oct. 17, 2009, she tearfully claimed she and her husband, Charles, had been victims of a home invasion, and Charles was dead.
“That started the first lie: ‘Somebody broke in.’ Because I didn’t know what to say,” Pandora Zan said in an all-new Snapped: Behind Bars, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen. The story of Charles’ murder was featured on a Season 25 episode of Snapped, that first aired on March 10, 2019.
“I’m doing this interview so I can share my truth,” Zan said in a conversation filmed on Feb. 7, 2024. “I didn’t take responsibility back then. I wasn’t honest in my part in everything.”
But Miamisburg police chief John Sedlak doesn’t believe much of anything Zan has to share more than 15 years after her husband’s murder.
“There’s indication that Pandora is not only a master manipulator, but she’s a pathological liar,” he told Snapped: Behind Bars. “There’s indications she’s lived her whole life that way. There’s no indication that that will change.”
Zan’s son, Cody Henderson, was convicted of his stepfather’s brutal murder. While speaking for the first time in an exclusive interview on March 4, 2024, he shared, “I never got a chance to tell my side of things. I did what I did out of love for my mom, and I’m sorry for anybody that I’ve hurt.”
Read on to find out more of why the mother and son masterminded and executed the vicious slaying of Charles Zan.
How did Cody Henderson and Pandora Zan kill Charles Zan?
Charles Zan was stabbed more than 50 times, from head to toe, in his bed and in his home. A knife was even shoved into his eye, in what police called a “crime of passion.”
“This would be one of the ones that really stands in your mind for how horrific and how bloody this scene was,” Sedlak said. “It leaves an imprint.”
Cody Henderson eventually confessed during police interviews that his mother had approached him about killing Charles Zan to get life insurance money. He alleged that his mom gave him the money to buy a hunting knife, and even picked the date for the killing to be carried out. But Zan claimed that although she let him into the apartment, her son Cody was the one ultimately responsible.
“After it was over with, I was like, ‘What am I going to tell people?’ And Cody was like, ‘I don’t know. You better think of something,’” Zan said from prison. “When I came in … [Charles] was almost gone then. But he was still trying to fight. And then he just stopped fighting. And he was gone.”
Why did Pandora Zan and Cody Henderson want Charles Zan dead?
Although they weren’t allowed to speak about it at their trials, Zan and Henderson both claim they had a good reason to get rid of Charles: abuse.
“The abuse started slowly,” Zan said from prison. “I wish I’d been strong enough to leave him. And stay gone. If I could go back and change things, I absolutely would.”
She alleged that the abuse extended to her children and stepchildren.
“It was rough,” Henderson said from prison. “I couldn’t understand how somebody could act like that. Like how Chuck treated us.”
Zan indicated she was pushed to her breaking point in her marriage.
“I didn’t protect myself. I didn’t protect my children,” she said. “But I’d had enough. I knew that I had to do something.”
Zan said she turned to her son for help.
“I told him, ‘I can’t do this anymore. One of two things is gonna happen,'” Zan said from prison. “'I’m either gonna kill myself, or I’m gonna kill him.’ And Cody said, ‘No, you’re not, I’ll take care of it.’”
Henderson alleged he believed killing his stepfather was necessary.
“I really, at the time, believed it was the only way to save my mom’s life,” he said from prison. “And I would save her in a heartbeat, any time.”
Now, Zan claims she regrets what she told her son.
“I wish that I’d never involved him in this,” she said from prison. “That I’d never said anything to him. That I’d have just done whatever it is that I was gonna do. He was 19 when this happened. So, he didn’t even get a chance to grow into a man, and really have a life and a family. And I hate that for him.”
How does Cody Henderson feel that his mother set up his confession and arrest?
Pandora Zan used her cell phone in front of police to call her son and get his confession to killing his stepfather recorded.
“I felt like she kinda threw me to the wolves to try and save herself. She abandoned me after everything I did for her,” Henderson said from prison. “She worked with them. I understand why she did it. She didn’t want me to hurt myself or to get hurt. But at the time, it didn’t make it any easier knowing that out of all the people that she was the one that set me up.”
But all these years later, Henderson doesn’t hold a grudge against his mother.
“I love you like crazy. I miss you. I just hope that you don’t let this beat you up,” he said from prison. “It’s not your fault. I did what I did to protect you and I don’t regret that. I wish we could change things, but I’m just happy that you’re OK.”
Watch all-new episodes of Snapped: Behind Bars on Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen and the next day on Peacock.
