UPDATE: On May 8, 2023, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office announced that Ronald Henry had died from hypothermia. According to the county coroner’s report, his death was ruled accidental.
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UPDATE: On March 6, 2023, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office announced that the body of Ronald Henry had been found.
According to the new release, on March 5 around 3:21 p.m., authorities “received a call from a property owner in Ellenboro Township that a body had been discovered in the woods near their property. A 14-year-old male had been walking in the woods looking for deer antlers and found a body in a ravine.” It goes on to say that the location was about a mile south of the home in Platteville, Wisconsin where Ronald was last seen.
The release states that an autopsy will be conducted later this week to determine the cause of death and that the “investigation remains open” as officials await results.
Ronald’s aunt, Layaloni Jacobs told NBC affiliate WMTV that Ronald’s family wants answers. “It’s hurting the entire family,” she said. “We want justice.”
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“He likes to be around people,” Tonya Makinye told Dateline about her son, Ronald. “He loves helping people.”
Thirty-four-year-old Ronald Henry was last seen on December 5, 2022, in Platteville, Wisconsin.
Tonya told Dateline that Ronald grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with seven siblings. “Ronald was my third born,” Tonya said.
“There’s not too many people you could find that if you asked them about Ronald, that would say bad things,” Tonya told Dateline “He’s fun to be around.”
Tonya told Dateline that Ronald was living with her youngest son in Milwaukee. She said she spoke with Ronald on December 3, and everything seemed normal. “We just basically always keep in touch with each other,” Tonya said. “Just to see what he was doing and everything.”
That was the last time Tonya spoke with Ronald.
Tonya told Dateline that on Thursday, December 1, Ronald took a Greyhound bus to Platteville – about two hours away from Milwaukee – for work. “He did farm work in Platteville and he’s gone there before to do that,” Tonya said. She told Dateline that Ronald was friends with the people he worked for and would stay at the farm, too. “These are people that he had known for years.”
Tonya told Dateline that Ronald was supposed to leave the farm on December 17 to head back to Milwaukee. But sometime in the evening of Sunday, December 4, into the early morning hours of December 5, Ronald disappeared.
According to Tonya, she received a worried call from Ronald’s girlfriend, Alicia Bennett, on Wednesday, December 7. “His girlfriend called me and told me she hadn’t heard from Ronald ever since Sunday night,” Tonya said.
Dateline spoke with Alicia, who said that she had been dating Ronald for seven months. “We actually met at our place of work,” Alicia said. “He just lights up the room when he walks in.”
Alicia said she last spoke with her boyfriend on December 4. “Our last conversation was kind of like a, ‘Goodnight, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’” Alicia said. “He told me when he had gotten home at midnight and then he said goodnight.”
Alicia told Dateline that when she didn’t hear from Ronald the next day, she initially wasn’t too worried. “We had been in an argument a little bit earlier on Sunday,” Alicia said. “So I thought he was just ignoring me on Monday when he didn’t call.”
But by the next day, Alicia said she knew something was wrong. “I started to get really concerned because he doesn’t go more than -- I mean, maybe four or five hours, without talking to me,” Alicia said. “So having him go the whole day Monday until the next day, I was concerned right away.”
Alicia told Dateline she began contacting Ronald’s family to see if they heard from him. She said she also reached out to Ronald’s friend at the farm where he’d been staying. “He said he last saw Ronald [Monday] morning around 3:30 a.m.,” Alicia recalled. “They were kind of texting back and forth when Ronald was on the couch and [he] was in his room.”
But she said the friend told her when he woke up the next day, Ronald wasn’t there.
Dateline has reached out to the friend but has yet to receive a response.
Alicia told Dateline on Wednesday, December 7, that she reported Ronald missing to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office in Lancaster, Wisconsin.
The next day, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that their office “conducted a search for Ronald Henry this afternoon utilizing a drone, helicopter & K9.” The post adds that “information was also received from two eyewitnesses who had observed Mr. Henry in the city of Platteville since the time he was originally missing.”
No further information has been released and it’s unclear of any of those sighting have proven to be true.
Alicia said that investigators conducted a search on the farm. “The deputies said that they brought out an eight-dog cadaver team,” Alicia said. “That’s kind of where we’re at right now -- a bunch of searching.”
Ronald’s cousin Christian Mariscal-Henry told Dateline that he has been helping with the search for his “favorite” cousin. “We looked at the farm. We looked inside and out,” Christian said.
Christian said he also spoke with Ronald’s friend who lives on the farm. “[He] was very cooperative,” Christian said. “He just seems really concerned, too. [He] came along with us and helped us look down the roads.” But they found no sign of Ronald.
“It’s just not like him to just, you know, disappear,” Christian told Dateline on Tuesday. “He’s a big sports fan -- Packers fan. He was supposed to go to the Packers game yesterday. He had won two free tickets.”
But Ronald didn’t go to the game. And his family is still searching for him.
“It’s just all kinds of different rumors going around,” Tonya Makinye told Dateline about her son’s disappearance. “I don’t care where he at. He would find a way to just call his family.”
Ronald’s girlfriend, Alicia, told Dateline that she started the ‘Find Ronald Henry’ Facebook page dedicated to spreading awareness and seeking answers.
Ronald is around 5’7” and weighs 170 lbs. He has long braids and a mustache. He was last seen wearing a blue coat, basketball shorts, and dark tennis shoes.
Anyone with information on Ronald’s whereabouts is asked to call the Grant County Sheriff’s Office 608-723-2157 or Grant County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-789-6600.