Two women identified as a couple who are charged with the May 22, 2026, murder of the mother one of them in her Silver Spring home and who were arrested three weeks later in Ohio are scheduled to go on trial for murder April 19, 2027.

According to online records filed with Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville, Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson, 29, of Clarksburg, Md., and Samantha Raebel, 36, of Phoenix are being held without bond in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility until the time of their trial.

Statements from Montgomery County police show the two women were arrested June 10 in Genoa, Ohio, after fleeing from the scene of the murder in Silver Spring. Police statements and court records show they were extradited back to Maryland in July, where prosecutors with the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office obtained indictments against them for murder.

Earlier statements from Montgomery County police say their investigation into the murder led to their decision to initially charge the two women with first-degree murder for the death of Hilde Henderson, 67, who was Tjongarero-Henderson’s mother.

“Through the course of the investigation, detectives identified Henderson’s daughter, Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson, and Vanessa’s girlfriend, Raebel, as the suspects,” one of the police statements says. It says police obtained arrest warrants for both women and launched a nationwide search seeking help from the public in in locating them.

One of the police statements says an autopsy determined the cause of Hilde Henderson’s death was blunt-force trauma injuries brought about by a murder. Police and the State’s Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, have yet to disclose whether they have determined a motive for the murder.

Court records show that prior to the start of the April 19, 2027, trial a “motion” hearing was scheduled for Oct. 30, 2026, a pre-trail conference was scheduled for Feb. 12, 2027, and another motion hearing and a status hearing were scheduled for March 12, 2027.  

Court records also show that Tjongarero-Henderson is being represented by attorneys with the Montgomery County court system’s public defender service. The records show that Raebel initially had been represented by a public defender service attorney, but updated records show Aug. 14 is listed as the “removal date” for that attorney.    

The docket shows that on Aug. 20, two new attorneys with the prominent D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling made their official appearance as her attorneys in the murder case. One of them, Daniel Solomon, told the Washington Blade in response to an inquiry that the defense has no comment at this time on the case.

He confirmed that Covington & Burling is representing Raebel on a no-cost, pro bono bass.

The office of the Montgomery County public defender service didn’t immediately respond to a phone message from the Blade asking for a comment on the Tjongarero-Henderson case. 

The Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission voted to fine Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 last month due to a discrimination complaint filed by a trans woman over her use of the bathroom. 

Katie Sorber, a transgender woman, said that on April 5, 2023, she was stopped by employees and told she could only use the men’s bathroom due to the “male” gender marker on her driver’s license. This occurred after Sorber presented her ID upon entering the bar and ordering a drink. 

Sorber took to Facebook to complain about her experience at the bar after she was told to use the men’s bathroom. 

On April 12, 2023, Sorber returned to the Hideout but was barred from entering due to her post on social media. 

Following Sorber’s post, Bryan Derrickson, the owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille, allegedly began enforcing a policy in which patrons had to use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender marker on their ID.

Derrickson was ordered to pay $10,000 to Sorber, $5,000 to the Special Administration Fund, as well as conduct anti-discrimination training with employees, remove the ban on Sorber from the establishment, and revise the bar’s bathroom policy. 

The commission ruled that the bar and Derrickson had wrongfully discriminated against Sorber on the basis of her gender. 

Derrickson’s explanations for the denial included safety concerns, a third-party patron complaint, and a reference to the health code. The panel found this to be inconsistent and lacking factual support upon cross-examination.

The case was evaluated under the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination and retaliation in places of public accommodation based on gender identity.

This was the second time that the bar has been fined for discriminating against a transgender woman. The bar received a $2,000 penalty in September of last year for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023. 

Half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the trans woman who experienced the discrimination. Brown is the founder of TransLiance, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Delaware. 

A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election. 

The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election

In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.

The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.

“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.  

If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.

McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.

The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.

The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.

“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.

Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.

McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.

Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known. 

1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him

1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate] 

1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]

Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him

1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him

1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him

1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him

2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him

2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him

2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him

2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him

2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him

2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him

2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him

2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him

3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him

3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him

4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him

4B10  – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her

4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them

4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him

5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him

5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her

5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him

5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him 

6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him

6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her

7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him

7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him

7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green

7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him

8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him

8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him