By Warren Kulo
A Mississippi woman arrested multiple times for crashing weddings and stealing gifts in Alabama was at it again, this time in her home state, according to authorities in Pontotoc County, Miss.
The Pontotoc County Sheriff’s Office said Sandra Lynn Henson, 56, was arrested last Saturday at a wedding to which she was not invited.
While details on what Henson may have stolen were not released, she is charged with petit larceny, trespassing and disturbing the peace.
“Apparently Miss Henson has been arrested in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi for crashing wedding and stealing money and cards from purses,” according to the sheriff’s department.
They were right. Henson is best described as a “serial wedding crasher.” She was convicted for stealing from a wedding in 2017 and given probation, but that did little to slow her down.
In 2019, Henson was charged with two wedding crasher theft cases in Florence, Ala., in 2019. In those cases, Henson was charged with two counts of theft — one misdemeanor and one felony. The disposition of those charges was not immediately available.
WHNT reported that Florence police were contacted in the wake of the 2019 arrest by a dozen people from different weddings in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, each telling police they saw Henson at their receptions, helping herself to gift envelopes and money from purses inside the wedding party changing rooms.
Her proclivity for the wedding thefts earned Henson the nickname “Mid-south Wedding Crasher,” according to Memphis TV station ABC24.
Over the next two years, she would be charged in multiple other cases, ultimately leading to a conviction and a five-year prison sentence in Mississippi after a judge in Tennessee revoked her probation. Henson had pleaded for leniency due to health problems, but the judge said if she was healthy enough to crash weddings, she was healthy enough to go to prison, according to the Memphis report.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections database shows Henson was due to remain incarcerated until January 2025. It does not indicate when or why she was released.