Lance Herndon’s Mansion: Murder, Baugh Trial, and Roswell Home

The Lance Herndon murder was the August 1996 killing of a 41-year-old Atlanta tech entrepreneur who was bludgeoned to death in his Roswell, Georgia home; after years of investigation and multiple trials, his former lover Dionne Baugh was convicted, saw that conviction reversed, and eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

Who Lance Herndon Was

Herndon founded and ran Access Inc., a computer consulting firm described at the time as the largest African-American-owned company of its kind in the Southeast, with annual revenue around $3 million. He ran the business out of his Roswell home. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the White House Conference on Small Business, calling him an “innovator” and a “rising entrepreneurial star.”¹ Both the Clinton and Bush administrations named him “Entrepreneur of the Year.”²

The private life behind the public image was more tangled. Author Ron Stodghill, who spent three years researching the case, concluded Herndon’s lifestyle was “largely based on image rather than substance” and that he had been overspending.³ He had been married and divorced three times and, by multiple accounts, maintained simultaneous relationships with several women, giving some of them access to his credit cards and luxury cars.⁴

How He Was Killed

On the morning of August 9, 1996, Herndon’s mother went to his home on Bluffview Trace after he failed to show up at his office. She found him dead in his bed.⁵ He had been beaten while lying nude on his waterbed, his head wrapped in a sheet and his facial bones crushed inward.⁶ A medical examiner determined he had sustained a single non-fatal blow to the back of the head followed by numerous strikes to the front and right side of the face that proved fatal.

Blood spatter on the wall and ceiling indicated the killer had climbed onto the bed and straddled Herndon as the blows landed. Three alarm clocks in the bedroom had been unplugged, with one frozen at 4:10 a.m. A bedside photograph of one of Herndon’s girlfriends had been placed face down. Silver gum wrappers were found near the garage.⁷ There were no defensive wounds on his hands, suggesting he may have been asleep or incapacitated when the attack began.³

The suspected weapon was a 16-inch adjustable crescent wrench Herndon’s housekeeper identified as missing from the home. He had recently used it to assemble exercise equipment and had left it accessible.⁷

How Investigators Zeroed In on Dionne Baugh

The case reached into almost every corner of Herndon’s life, and detectives explored business rivals and multiple romantic partners.⁸ Several people were looked at and cleared. Kathy Collins, his girlfriend at the time, had an alibi. Jeannine Price, an ex-wife who stood to collect $1 million on a life insurance policy, had what investigators called an “airtight alibi.” Shaun Nelson, the husband of one of Herndon’s lovers, was in Jamaica when the murder occurred.

Attention turned toward Dionne Baugh, a Jamaican immigrant and one of Herndon’s lovers. One month before the killing, Baugh had been arrested for criminal trespass after banging on Herndon’s door when she discovered Collins inside. Herndon filed charges, and his court date on that case happened to fall on the day his body was found.⁵

Police did not have enough to charge her at first. The break came in 1998, when Baugh’s estranged husband Shaun Nelson told investigators that during a heated argument she had threatened to kill him “just like she did Lance.”⁷ Baugh also gave sworn statements in her divorce case that contradicted what she had told homicide detectives, placing herself at Herndon’s home around the time of the murder rather than at her own residence.⁹

The Evidence Against Baugh

A Fulton County grand jury indicted Baugh in February 1998 on malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, theft by taking, and financial transaction card fraud.⁵ The case was circumstantial but layered.

DNA from under Herndon’s fingernails matched both the victim and Baugh. Two head hairs and one pubic hair recovered from his nude body were consistent with her samples.¹⁰ A $3,500 laptop that had gone missing from Herndon’s home office turned up in Baugh’s possession nine days later. On the day his body was found, she used one of his credit cards to buy roughly $3,000 in furniture, identifying herself as “Dionne Herndon.”⁵

A search of Baugh’s purse produced three documents: one claiming a car she drove had been bought by Herndon and should transfer to her upon his death, another describing an agreement tied to their romantic relationship, and a third summarizing the trespass case Herndon wanted dropped.⁵ Her initial alibi also collapsed: she said Herndon had visited her home the evening before his death, but phone records and a witness named Talana Carraway, who spoke with Herndon by phone until midnight, placed him at his own residence throughout the night.⁷ Prosecutors argued Baugh killed Herndon because he refused to resume their relationship.⁹

Conviction, Reversal, and Plea

Baugh’s first trial began April 9, 2001, in Fulton County Superior Court. On April 17, the jury found her guilty on all counts. She was sentenced to life in prison for malice murder, with concurrent five-year and two-year sentences for theft by taking and credit card fraud. The felony murder count was vacated by operation of law, and the aggravated assault charge merged with the malice murder conviction.⁵

The conviction did not hold. On July 10, 2003, the Supreme Court of Georgia reversed, finding that the trial court committed harmful error by admitting hearsay: the lead investigator had been allowed to relay prior consistent statements from state witnesses to bolster their credibility in circumstances that did not permit it.⁵ A second proceeding ended in a mistrial. Before a third trial could begin, Baugh pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison.⁷ She was released in July 2011 and placed on ten years of probation.⁴

The Roswell Home

Herndon’s residence at 9060 Bluffview Trace in Roswell served as both his home and the headquarters of Access Inc.¹¹ It was the scene of the murder, the place where the missing wrench was identified, and the site of Baugh’s earlier trespass arrest. His absence from the office he kept there is what prompted his mother to check on him and find his body.⁵

Books and Film

Journalist Ron Stodghill, a former editor-in-chief of Savoy magazine, published Redbone: Money, Malice and Murder in Atlanta in 2007 after three years of reporting on the case.³ In September 2023, BET+ released Love & Murder: Atlanta Playboy, a two-part film based on the book. Taye Diggs starred as Herndon, with Keesha Sharp, Ciera Payton, and Apryl Jones in supporting roles. Jaira Thomas directed; Gregory R. Anderson wrote the screenplay.¹² Executive producer Mona Scott-Young described the project as a “passion thriller” and “whodunnit.”¹³

1
UPI. Noted Black Businessman Slain
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BET. Taye Diggs Is Murdered Businessman Lance Herndon in New BET Film
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NPR. Redbone Tells Story of Murder in Atlanta
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Corrections1. 1996 Killer of Roswell Millionaire Out of Prison
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FindLaw. Baugh v. State
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Publishers Weekly. Redbone: Money, Malice, and Murder in Atlanta
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Oxygen. Dionne Baugh Killed Atlanta Tech Mogul Lance Herndon
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NBC. Atlanta Millionaire Lance Herndon Bludgeoned to Death in Home
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Court TV. GA v. Baugh (2001)
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Oxygen. Dionne Baugh Has Sex With Boyfriend Before Bludgeoning Him
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Southern Fried True Crime. Lance Herndon
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People. Taye Diggs Love and Murder Atlanta Playboy Trailer
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BET. Mona Scott-Young Talks Love and Murder