Arrests latest in park woes
Boy’s death, feuds, bankruptcy rattle Schlitterbahn empire
SAN ANTONIO — The criminal arrests in the death of a 10year-old boy at a Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts park in Kansas City are just the latest in a string of troubles that have plagued the New Braunfelsbased amusement park company and its owners in recent years.
Co-owner Jeff Henry has a history of drug arrests and domestic violence accusations. A rift between Henry and his brother and co-owner Gary emerged as the water park group’s founding patriarch lay on his death bed.
Efforts to expand Schlitterbahn into the Austin area and Florida have been stymied by lack of financing or politics. A Schlitterbahn development on North Padre Island has been mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings since last year and is on the auction block.
Now, Jeff Henry along with two other Schlitterbahn employees, the amusement park group and its private construction firm stand charged in the death of Caleb Schwab, who was decapitated on the Verrückt water slide in Kansas City in 2016.
Jeff Henry was the ride’s mastermind and designer, though he has no formal education in engineering or physics. At 17 stories high, Verrückt was the tallest water slide in the world, certified as such by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2014. According to prosecutors, it was designed to catch the attention of producers at the Travel Channel’s “Xtreme Waterparks” series and “violated nearly all as-
pects of long-standing industry safety standards.”
Henry fast-tracked the ride’s development and cut corners from the get-go, according to the indictment. He failed to make key repairs, ignored warnings from his staff and “recklessly” killed Schwab while his executives sought to bury injury records, misled investigators and destroyed key evidence, prosecutors say.
Schlitterbahn has aggressively denied the allegations, insisting that the company didn’t alter or hide evidence from law enforcement agents and that it considers safety a core value of its business.
The indictment names Jeff Henry as Verrückt’s “visionary and designer” and John Schooley as the slide’s lead designer, but says neither man possessed technical or engineering credentials needed to build a ride as complex as Verrückt, a German word for “insane” or “crazy.”
“Jeff Henry has designed water park rides the world over,” company spokeswoman Winter Prosapio said in an email. “Nearly every water park that exists today has an attraction or feature based on his designs or ideas.”
Jeff Henry has had an atypical education for a water park executive and ride designer. A 2015 Texas Monthly article described him as a “self-taught savant of water park design.” He has no formal training, having dropped out of high school to work for his father as a teenager, prosecutors say.
He’s also been accused of running projects into the ground with cost overruns and missed deadlines. He has a mercurial personality, at times lashing out at family and business partners.
With the company’s river park and resort on Padre Island on the rocks in the fall of 2016, just days before the death of Schlitterbahn founder and family patriarch Robert “Bob” Henry, Jeff Henry sent an email to brother Gary and their business partner, Paul Schexnailder, on Oct. 26, 2016, according to a copy of the exchange included in a court filing.
“I am extremely tired of both of you guys, consider me your lifelong enemy now, as I have sworn on dads grave to avenge,” Jeff Henry raged. “Believe me now, I’m going to blow both of you out of the water or worse sink you below it. You may win in court but let me assure you you will not win in the end. Hell is where you both belong. Don’t worry Paul, Gary, one in the same, judges will eat you both!!!”
Bob Henry died five days later at 89.
Jeff Henry’s estranged wife has described him in divorce proceedings as an abusive alcoholic with a bad drug habit. He has been arrested at least twice on drug violations dating back to 1994, and his estranged wife alleges in court filings that he “has had in the past serious mental, psychological, psychiatric, anger management and emotional problems long standing in nature.” Considered a visionary
Before Caleb Schwab’s death, Jeff Henry had been considered a visionary. The 39-year-old firm was widely regarded as one of the nation’s top water park companies by industry analysts and insiders. Within the past five years, at least 9 million guests have visited Schlitterbahn parks, company spokeswoman Prosapio said.
An act of “hubris” on Jeff Henry’s part to build the world’s largest and fastest water slide, resulting in Schwab’s death, has put Schlitterbahn’s reputation on the line, said Martin Lewison, associate business management professor at Farmingdale State College in New York and an expert on the theme park industry.
“He wanted to break a record and he wanted to have a spotlight on his company,” Lewison said. “And it’s really a shame because Schlitterbahn is known as one of the best water parks.”
Schwab, 10, wasn’t the first person to die at a Schlitterbahn park. The company also has a high injury rate in Texas, where its four locations accounted for 13 percent of the 542 ride-related injuries reported to the state within the past five years — the second-highest for any single amusement park company operating in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Insurance.
Lifeguard Nico Benavides, 20, died in March 2013 after the gate of the company’s South Padre Island park’s wave generator hit his head and pinned him against the wall. Another park employee was severely injured in the incident.
Schlitterbahn paid $60,000 in fines in the case after the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration slammed the company with six safety violations in August 2013. The agency claimed the company “tragically exposed its workers to unnecessary risks.”
Since Feb. 1, 2013, Schlitterbahn has reported 71 ride-related injuries at its parks in New Braunfels, South Padre Island and Galveston Island, according to state insurance records.
Schlitterbahn and its other companies have been sued 25 times in Comal County since 1985, mostly over injuries sustained by water park patrons, which generated claims of negligence in the design of rides and training and supervision of its employees.
The allegations were denied each time by Schlitterbahn. ‘Biggest and baddest’
Schlitterbahn began in 1966 as a campground resort in New Braunfels called Camp Landa owned by Schlitterbahn founder Robert “Bob” Henry. The Henry family developed a larger complex of water slides and opened the first Schlitterbahn park — a portmanteau of the German words for “slippery” and “track.”
By the 1990s, the New Braunfels park had grown to more than 65 acres, hundreds of hotel rooms, dozens of slides and children water playgrounds. After the turn of the century, the theme park expanded its reach beyond Central Texas, adding facilities in South Padre Island, Galveston, Corpus Christi and Kansas City, Kan., the company’s only park outside of Texas.
But the expansion moves haven’t always panned out. Starting in 2006, Schlitterbahn and officials in Cedar Park had discussed building a potential park in the Austin suburb and even struck a $360 million development deal. But the project failed to secure financing by 2012 and has since fizzled, a Cedar Park spokeswoman said in an email.
Schlitterbahn sought to spend $110 million to build its “biggest and baddest” park in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on land leased by the city. But a federal judge nixed the agreement in March 2017 to develop the park when it discovered that Fort Lauderdale officials hadn’t sought competitive bids, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported.
When the formal bidding process began for the water park project, Schlitterbahn didn’t submit a proposal, ceding to the owner of Rapids Water Park in Riviera Beach, Fla., the newspaper reported.
As the indictments in Kansas were announced, a New York real estate brokerage firm searched for a buyer for the troubled Schlitterbahn water park and resort on North Padre Island.
A feud between Jeff and Gary Henry and their business partner Schexnailder over the Padre Island development ultimately led last spring to the group’s bankruptcy filing. The project had been losing money, court records show. It halted the 500acre development, which was supposed to include residential properties, a marina and a waterfront experience modeled after San Antonio’s famed River Walk.
Schexnailder, who contributed the land for the development, accused the brothers in September 2015 of fraud, conspiracy and malfeasance, among other allegations. Schexnailder is seeking $30 million in damages.
The project ran into funding troubles when Jeff Henry decided to expand it from about 20 rooms to 92 hotel rooms and event space. Schexnailder said the costs ballooned by about $30 million over budget to about $58 million.
Jeff Henry blamed Schexnailder’s “interference at all levels” for delaying completion of the water park’s 92-room hotel, according to an email he sent Schexnailder in December 2015.
Keen-Summit Capital Partners was hired by the bankruptcy trustee to find a buyer for the park and resort a few months ago. Harold Bordwin, the company’s managing director, said Jeff Henry’s indictment could impact the park’s operation. The trustee will likely hire an engineer to inspect the rides in light of current events, he wrote in an email.
“While the river may open, the rides will not open unless and until a qualified engineer certifies them as safe,” Bordwin said. Prosecutors cite dangers
Verrückt’s design was flawed from the beginning, prosecutors say. It was too high, too steep, too fast and the rafts were “guaranteed” to go airborne “in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants,” especially on the ride’s second hill that took Schwab’s life, according to the indictment.
Jeff Henry and Schooley favored “crude trial-and-error” methods over complex mathematical and physics calculations and didn’t employ a single qualified engineer in the project, the indictment says. Henry also pushed for the ride to be finished by mid-June 2013 — about seven months after he got the idea for it — considered an extremely short turnaround by industry experts who testified to the grand jury in Wyandotte County.
The injuries started piling up almost immediately after the ride opened: whiplash, concussions, broken toes, lacerations, slipped spinal disks and fractures, according to park records detailed in the indictment. More than a dozen other park visitors had been injured on the ride by the time Schwab and his 12-yearold brother climbed into Raft B on Aug. 7, 2016. The raft itself had a lengthy repair record and history of injury, prosecutors say.
Kansas City Director of Operations Tyler Miles is also accused of trying to cover up the company’s injury reports and silence park employees.
“The allegation that anyone concealed or tampered with evidence is patently untrue,” Prosapio said, adding that attorneys in a civil case related to Caleb Schwab’s death said the company fully cooperated.
Henry, Schooley and Henry and Sons Construction Co. Inc., Schlitterbahn’s construction firm, all face charges of seconddegree murder, aggravated battery and aggravated endangering of a child. Kansas law says suspects can be charged with second-degree murder if evidence shows the act was committed “unintentionally but recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.”
A grand jury in Kansas City, Kan., also indicted Schlitterbahn and Miles on charges of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery, aggravated endangerment of a child and interfering with law enforcement by concealing evidence. Miles also drew a separate charge of allegedly giving false information to a detective.
Miles pleaded not guilty. Jeff Henry is scheduled to enter his plea in court Thursday. A lawyer for Schooley told ABC News Friday that he was out of the country but intends to turn himself in.
Caleb Schwab’s family has reached settlements of almost $20 million with Schlitterbahn and various companies associated with the design and construction of the water slide. The two women who rode with Caleb settled claims over serious injuries with Schlitterbahn for an undisclosed amount.