He filmed his own death during a failed military coup. As he was filming, he was needlessly murdered by Héctor Hernán Bustamante Gómez, an Chilean Army corporal, who died in 2007 without having been tried for the crime.
His final image was recovered by Chilean journalist Eduardo Labarca, who noticed a soldier throwing the camera out into a sewer. Labarca recovered it two days later (the film was in good conditions) and smuggled out the country so the world could see Henrichsen's death caught on film.