Convicted killer pleads innocent in 1991 murder
Varner Unit inmate earlier confessed to slaying in letter
The convicted murderer who last year wrote a letter confessing to a 32-year-old slaying in north Arkansas and later confessed to investigators, pleaded innocent in court Monday morning, according to documents.
Rick Allen Headley, 48, entered his plea in Fulton County Circuit Court in the 1991 murder of Sabrina Lynn Underwood, 19.
Headley, an inmate at the Varner Unit in Lincoln County, was charged with first-degree murder on Oct. 21.
The next pretrial hearing is scheduled for Dec. 11. If the case goes to a jury trial, it’s scheduled for March 24-26, 2024.
The case is in the 16th Circuit Court.
Headley is represented by public defender Shannon Briese.
He was already serving a life sentence for the 2018 murder of his estranged wife, Kirstie.
The new charge against Headley came a year after he wrote a letter confessing to the murder of Underwood. On Aug. 24, 2022, he gave a jailhouse interview to state police Special Agent Justin Nowlin and Fulton County sheriff’s office investigator Dale Weaver.
In the interview, Headley provided grisly details about the killing of Underwood, a native of Huntsville who was last seen Jan. 20, 1991, when her mother dropped her off at the intersection of U.S. 412 and U.S. 62 near Bear Creek Springs in Boone County.
Underwood was thought to be hitchhiking roughly 70 miles east to Izard County, where her boyfriend was incarcerated at the North Central Unit in Calico Rock.
A police affidavit said Underwood had made the same trip a week earlier, on Jan. 13. This time she didn’t make it.
Sabrina’s boyfriend called her mother, Loretta Underwood, to ask why Sabrina hadn’t made her scheduled visit. On Jan. 24, Loretta filed a missing person report with the Madison County sheriff’s office.
On April 8, roughly 140 miles from Huntsville, two turkey hunters stumbled upon a suspicious bundle of clothing near Gum Springs Cemetery in Fulton County. An investigation of the area by the Fulton County sheriff’s office and state police found human hair, a pair of
panties, human bones and an earring stud.
The remains were identified as Underwood’s because the clothing the hunter had found matched what she had been wearing when her mother dropped her off. In an April 25, 1991, Arkansas Democrat story, state police investigator Tommy Cleveland said a medical examiner couldn’t determine the cause of death because only “slivers” of bones were left.
Headley, a native of Mountain Home, was 16 at the time.
He told the investigators he had been on his way home from dropping his uncle off in Huntsville when he encountered Underwood at a gas station in Bellefonte, about 12 miles southeast of where her mother had left her.
Headley said she asked for a ride and he agreed.
After the 50-mile trip to Mountain Home, Headley claimed Underwood asked if he would take her the rest of the way.
He again agreed. Headley recalled that Underwood told him she didn’t have any money to help pay for gas, which he said he wasn’t worried about.
As they headed toward Fulton County, the affidavit said Headley claimed Underwood began making sexual advances and “offered to take care of Headley another way” to compensate for her lack of money.
They eventually pulled into a small cemetery near Viola where he and Underwood had sex, Headley claimed.
In the interview, Headley provided grisly details about the killing of Underwood, a native of Huntsville who was last seen Jan. 20, 1991.
Afterward, Headley claimed Underwood asked for “a couple hundred dollars” or “she was going to tell everyone that he hurt her.”
Shocked, Headley said he “knew right then there was going to be problems.”
According to Headley, he told Underwood he would have to return home to get that amount of money.
Headley started to drive off and leave Underwood behind, “but he knew he could not let her ruin his life … over something he didn’t do.”
That’s when he attacked Underwood, dragging her deep enough into the woods behind the cemetery “to where no person could see what was about to happen.”
Headley claimed that he used a “Rambo-style” knife with a compass on the end of it to kill Underwood. He then used the knife and a rock to decapitate Underwood “so there would be no chance she would ever be able to tell on him.”
During the interview, Headley told the investigators that he remembered Underwood’s name “because you never forget the person if you’ve ever killed someone.”