Millionaire's charmed life implodes in bizarre kidnapping plot

Amanda McElfresh | The Daily Advertiser

Show Caption Hide Caption Lafayette businessman accused of kidnapping plot After a life of highs and lows, Michael Handley is now charged with hiring two Mississippi men to kidnap his estranged wife in Lafayette on Aug. 6, 2017.

Michael Handley did a little bit of everything in Lafayette.

He helped launch companies that sold vitamins, energy supplements and calcium creams. Business records show involvement in a Lafayette CrossFit gym.

A former alcoholic, he founded the Townsend Recovery treatment centers across the South. The facilities were successful, and in late 2015, were sold to a Tennessee company in a deal worth more than $21 million.

He and his wife, Schanda, ran the Handley Family Foundation. They hosted fundraisers at places such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, with money purportedly going toward groups that helped poor children, cancer patients and young professionals seeking to become involved in their communities.

On Facebook, Handley described himself as an “eternally optimistic serial entrepreneur who believes that nothing is impossible with God.” The page still features happy photos of the Handleys together – traveling, celebrating Mardi Gras and participating in CrossFit competitions.

That all changed in 2017.

Michael Handley, 49, has been in the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center since mid-August 2017. A grand jury indicted him on multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit kidnapping, violation of protective orders and online impersonation.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. After two psychiatric evaluations, a district judge found him mentally competent to stand trial, which is scheduled for Aug. 27, 2018.

In court documents, authorities allege that from the couple’s rural Mississippi camp, Handley masterminded the Aug. 6, 2017 kidnapping of his estranged wife from their Lafayette home. In a bizarre twist, the two alleged abductors drowned midway through the plot, throwing the scheme awry.

The Handley home was in the 300 block of Founders Street, a modern, two-story, bungalow-style house in a newer neighborhood in south Lafayette. The couple had put a Lafayette Strong sign in the front yard. A porch extended across the front and one side of the house. Across the street was a small park and community pool.

Authorities said this idyllic subdivision was the site of a brazen abduction on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon.

As Schanda Handley visited with her teenage daughter and a friend, two suspects – Sylvester Bracey and Montreal Haynes – allegedly forced their way into the home with semi-automatic handguns. Things turned more terrifying from there.

“The kidnappers handcuffed Mrs. Handley, placed a bag over her head and forcibly removed her from the home,” her attorney wrote in a court motion. “While in route to their destination where Mr. Handley was waiting, the two men stripped, tortured and abused Mrs. Handley, including but not limited to threatening to rape and/or kill her.”

During this time, Michael Handley allegedly waited in an unknown location for the kidnappers to bring Schanda to him. Before the abduction, he allegedly hired and paid Bracey and Haynes and bought items “necessary to kidnap, bind, torture and abuse Mrs. Handley.”

In an arrest affidavit, police said Michael Handley rented the van used in the kidnapping. The transaction reportedly took place Aug. 5, 2017 at an Enterprise in Baton Rouge. Two assistant managers identified Handley through photos, police said.

“They both described him as an older white male who was speaking about business ventures and bragging about how much money he made,” the affidavit said.

From Lafayette, Bracey and Haynes, both 27, allegedly put Schanda Handley in the van and headed east on Interstate 10 toward Baton Rouge.

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Things took an unexpected twist near Port Allen. A piece of equipment had overturned on the interstate, causing a major traffic jam. An off-duty Iberville Parish sheriff’s deputy was stuck in the delay when he saw a van driving on the shoulder of the road to escape the bottleneck.

West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes said the deputy pursued the van until it reached Hwy. 415 in Port Allen. The suspects could have turned left, Cazes said, “where they could have gone in any number of directions.” Instead, they turned right, onto a road that leads only to a dead end at an industrial fabrication facility.

“They ended up trying to drive around a fence. It’s swampy back there,” Cazes said. “The van got stuck, so they ran into the woods nearby.”

Surveillance footage captured the suspects running behind the facility, the last sighting of them alive.

Bracey and Haynes then apparently jumped into the Intracoastal Canal as they tried to escape. Cazes said search dogs picked up human scents near the water. Less than a day later, both bodies were found in the canal. Police found a gun in a nearby pipe that they believe belonged to Bracey or Haynes.

“Where they went in, it draws a heavy current,” Cazes said. “The canal is bigger than it looks. And they were fully clothed, wearing socks and shoes, which is going to pull you down. This isn’t a place where you go in and go swimming.”

Authorities had no idea Schanda Handley was in the van until they searched it and discovered her in the back.

The sudden deaths of Bracey and Haynes marked the end of lives filled with disturbing criminal histories, beginning when they were teens living in and around Jackson, Miss.

Their rap sheets included charges of home invasion, robberies, auto theft and aggravated assault. In 2009, they allegedly threw a brick through a patio door of a woman’s home, chased her, tied her up, placed her in a bathtub and demanded her car keys.

It was not clear how much jail or prison time Bracey or Haynes served.

Their connection to Handley was vague and unclear. Neither had any known ties to Lafayette. They had no criminal records in Lafayette Parish. Handley’s only known tie to Mississippi was the camp he and his wife owned in Woodville, about two hours south of Jackson.

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It isn’t clear how Michael Handley learned the kidnapping scheme had unraveled. But at some point, he apparently went on the run. Police found him on Aug. 11, 2017 in a hotel in Slidell. Court filings allege he had tried to charter a plane to escape capture.

The situation is the latest in what has been a life of highs and lows for Handley.

He found business success early in the technology industry. He was a millionaire by the time he was 30.

The success was too much for him, though. He started drinking heavily, leading to a downward spiral where he lost most of his money and was barred from seeing his children.

“All of a sudden, I had more money than I ever thought I’d have,” Handley told The Daily Advertiser in 2008. “You give someone like me too much money and no accountability, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

Handley eventually turned his life around and returned to the business world. After dabbles in the health industry, he agreed to be Townsend’s chief executive officer, attracted by its “intensive outpatient” treatment.

Despite the outward business success, there was trouble for Handley.

Federal court records show authorities charged him in 2005 for submitting a fake $22,000 check to a charter airplane company. He was sentenced to one day in jail and three years of supervised probation, which he successfully completed in 2008.

In 2004, a Shreveport building materials company sued Handley for allegedly failing to pay a nearly $3,000 bill. It appears from court records that the case may never have been completely resolved.

Josepha Morgan didn’t know any of this when she worked for Handley in the mid-2000s, just after he started his vitamin companies. She was in her early 20s and new to the workforce, but there were things that made her raise her eyebrows.

“I would make documents, and he would take my name off and put his name on them,” Morgan recalled. “I thought maybe that’s just how things were done, but at the same time, it felt kind of sneaky to me.”

Morgan was concerned when Handley discussed offering her a contract to be his “executive personal assistant.” But the job wouldn’t come with a significant raise, and Handley kept delaying a formal offer, saying that finances needed to be in order first.

“I was doing all this extra work and I wasn’t getting paid,” she said.

Morgan was working for Handley around the time he met Schanda. The office gossip held that the two ran off to Las Vegas and got married. But court records show they actually married in Hawaii in April 2006.

“I remember her being well put-together all the time,” Morgan said. “She reminded me of a celebrity. She always had her shades and a giant handbag. She was very pretty.”

By most accounts, things were good between Michael and Schanda until spring 2017. Court records show that around March of that year, things turned volatile, resulting in multiple restraining orders and serious allegations.

In April 2017, Michael Handley initiated divorce proceedings in district court in Lafayette. He alleged that Schanda had attacked or threatened him multiple times, hired a hit man to kill him and sent threatening text messages.

The most serious allegation was that in late March 2017, Schanda allegedly barricaded herself in a bedroom at the Mississippi camp, destroyed furniture and shot two bullet holes in a wall. She was arrested in Lafayette on July 12, 2017 on two domestic violence warrants from Mississippi.

Schanda soon bonded out. In October 2017, a Mississippi judge acquitted her of all charges.

In court documents, Schanda denied many of her husband’s allegations. She said she never intended to harm him or her daughter. She admitted, though, that she was “hostile” and depressed after learning of Michael’s alleged infidelity and “excessive prescription drug use.”

Schanda leveled her own allegations. Records show she accused Michael of trying to access her email, installing a tracking device on her phone, allowing his “subservient mistress” to contact her and installing spyware on her computer.

Other documents show Michael Handley allegedly sent threatening texts to Schanda in the month before the alleged abduction.

Those texts included statements such as “You are facing Armageddon and no court or order will save you,” “We will take her first and let you suffer for awhile before putting you out of your misery” and “If you ignore us like usual someone you love will suffer tomorrow.”

MORE DETAILS: Police say suspect threatened 'Armageddon' in weeks before kidnapping

The alleged messages came from unknown numbers. The victim suspected Michael was sending them via an app that uses bogus numbers.

Aside from his pending criminal charges, the divorce case between the Handleys is still working its way through civil court. Schanda Handley's friend, who was at the Founders Street home at the time of the alleged abduction, filed her own civil suit against Michael Handley. She is seeking damages for emotional distress.