520 pages
10 photographs, 1 map
The product of eight years of investigative research and over one hundred interviews, Intercepted takes us into Henley’s fourth season in the NFL, when he met Rams cheerleader Tracy Donaho and bumped into a boyhood friend named Willie McGowan, a onetime youth-league standout who had since turned to drug trafficking. Henley, Donaho, and McGowan embark on a scheme to transport cocaine that lands Henley in federal prison, where he attempts to arrange a Mafia hit on the sentencing judge and Donaho, who had been the star witness against Henley at his trial. Detailing how one of the best and brightest of our professional athletes destroyed himself through temptation, arrogance, and anger at a justice system that he felt had failed him, Intercepted is also a cautionary tale about American culture, as disturbing as it is impossible to ignore.
“Gritty and intimate, Intercepted is a mind-blowing account of an NFL star’s fall from fame. McKnight is a first-rate reporter who masterfully tells a story that will leave readers unable to put the book down. The detail and the drama are breathtaking.”—Jeff Benedict, Sports Illustrated contributor and author of Poisoned
“This tormented tale of hubris and corruption, loaded with seedy characters, reads like a legal thriller. But McKnight’s thorough examination of former Los Angeles Rams cornerback Darryl Henley’s sordid fall from grace is a cautionary all-too-real story of sex, drugs, and murder. . . . Sports Illustrated writer McKnight’s meticulous research and attention to detail nearly indicts the U.S. justice system and its own glaring flaws.”—Publishers Weekly
“In the end what proved the fatal flaw of a man who looked as if he should have succeeded in the NFL and beyond? William Kopeny, an attorney who helped Henley’s defense team, offered McKnight this explanation: ‘Vanity and cool . . . That’s the only thing I can come up with. Vanity and cool.’”—Bill Littlefield, Boston Globe
“A legal/mystery novel with a compelling tale of both justice and injustice of our legal system. There were definitely two sides to this story of Henley.”—Gridiron Greats Book Review
“[A] crime story page-turner.”—Library Journal
