Leonardtown’s Forgotten Murder: Local Author Confronts The Unsolved 1959 Killing Of Henrietta Ragan

LEONARDTOWN, Md. — In 1959, Leonardtown awoke to a crime that would shadow the community for generations: the brutal killing of 44-year-old Henrietta Elizabeth Ragan inside her home, just steps from the town square. Officially a homicide — and still an open cold case — the crime has lingered for decades without answers, leaving behind whispers, fear and a story many believed had been quietly swallowed by time.

A lifelong St. Mary’s County resident is bringing that story back into focus.

Leslie LeDonne, first-time author of “Killing Henrietta,” has spent the last decade digging into what she describes as “a homicide hidden in plain sight.” Her book examines the crime, the missing documentation that once surrounded it and the events that allowed a major case in a small town to fade from institutional memory.

LeDonne first heard about the murder in 1975 while attending beauty school in Leonardtown. Though 16 years had passed, local women still spoke about “the murder” — never using the victim’s name, because everyone already knew who they meant. It took LeDonne four decades to learn that the woman they spoke of was Henrietta Ragan, a widow, community volunteer, musician and bookkeeper at the Thrift Oil Company across the street from her home.

That discovery sent LeDonne on a 10-year investigation fueled by public records searches, interviews and long-forgotten leads. What she uncovered, she says, raises serious questions about what happened after the crime — including missing evidence, missing files and a lack of preserved investigative records at both the Maryland State Police and the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Department, the agencies originally involved in the 1959 investigation.

For women in Leonardtown at the time, fear was immediate. Stores sold out of locks overnight. Concern rippled through a small community trying to understand how a woman known for her kindness and her strong Catholic faith could be murdered inside her own home.

LeDonne hopes her book gives voice to that fear — and to the victim at the center of it.

“If Henrietta’s life didn’t matter,” she said, “whose does?”

“Killing Henrietta” offers readers a fresh look at a 65-year-old case still officially unsolved. It challenges long-held assumptions, resurrects forgotten details and revisits a story many in St. Mary’s County have never stopped wondering about.

The book is available now for pre-order and will be released on Nov. 28, 2025.

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