Innocent Victims

by Whisnant, Scott;

  Richardson focused the trial back on the residents of Summer Hill, leading up to his next big surprise.

  David Hill was once again willing to say he’d seen a blue van across from the Eastburns’ house on the night of the murders, and this time the defense used him as a witness. Webster McClendon, the mailman for Summer Hill, said he’d nearly backed into a white Chevette parked along the road while delivering mail on the Saturday after the murders. At that time, Tim Hennis was tending a fire in his backyard.

  Finding McClendon had been another stroke of luck. Richardson’s five-year-old son, Matt, had struck up a conversation with the mailman two weeks before, while his father knocked on doors in Summer Hill. The mailman confessed to Matt that he’d nearly hit the car everyone had been talking about, and Webster McClendon got a subpoena.

  Richardson introduced the neighborhood walker to a new jury through Cheryl and Charles Radtke, who again described seeing a six-foot man walking in the middle of the night with a black jacket, black cap, and bag over his shoulder.

  Summer Hill neighbor Don Tillison, Margaret Tillison’s widowed husband, also testified he’d seen a man fitting that description. Richardson then used Tillison to attack Eddie Hollingsworth and even his own wife. Deputy Hollingsworth had testified that, a few days after the murders, Margaret Tillison told him about seeing a man parked across from the Eastburns’. Richardson had then forced Hollingsworth to admit that conversation actually took place almost a year after the murders, not a few days.

  But Hollingsworth had spoken to the Tillisons a few days afterward, and Don Tillison remembered his visit.

  “Mr. Tillison, during the course of that conversation, did Mrs. Tillison at any time ever mention seeing a person in that car?” Richardson asked.

  “Not to my knowledge, no.”

  “During the entire time that you knew her, did she ever mention to you seeing a person in that car?”

  “No.”

  Dickson pursued the point on cross-examination.

  “You weren’t there for the entire conversation, were you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Were you there for that entire conversation?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “The entire time? And you do not recall at this time whether she had mentioned seeing anyone in the car or not?”

  “No, I don’t recall her mentioning anyone.”

  Dickson asked Tillison about the walker he’d seen.

  “You only saw the person’s back?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Never saw his face?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Were you coming or going at that time?”

  “I was going to work. I was going north on Summer Hill road toward Yadkin Road.”

  “And that person was walking—”

  “He was walking north.”

  “Okay. Did you ever see anyone come out of the Eastburns’ driveway there, sir?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.”

  “Can you be more specific about the clothing you observed on this person?”

  “This person always wore dark clothes. Between 3:15 and 3:30 in the morning, it’s hard to determine exactly what color clothes a person is wearing.”

  The fact that the state had accepted Patrick Cone’s description of clothing made on the same dark road was beside the point. The state wanted to show the irrelevance of a few neighbors seeing somebody walking around. The prosecutors weren’t concerned. The defense had tried the “mystery walker” defense the first time and it hadn’t worked.

  Richardson stood and called his next witness.

  The double doors at the back of the room swung open and John Raupach burst through.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  As he walked down the center aisle, every head in Courtroom 401 turned to follow, as if watching a bride approaching the altar. But instead of nods and smiles, Raupach was greeted with blank stares and dropped jaws.

  They stared at his six-foot-three, 220-pound frame. They stared at his light brown hair. They imagined what he must look like in a dark jacket and hat with a bag slung over his shoulder. Then they eyed the defendant, whose build no longer seemed so unique.

  Hennis watched as closely as the others. Could’ve used you three years ago, he thought.

  John Dickson turned to Detective Robert Bittle. “Who is that?” he asked.

  “We’re in trouble,” Bittle said.

  As Raupach took his seat, Detective Ron Oakes got up and left the room. Richardson noted his departure. He’d wanted all the state’s detectives to see this.

  From the beginning, Billy Richardson knew he’d have to find the man Patrick Cone saw. No jury would believe Cone just made it up. Chen Radtke had given him a strong lead—a neighborhood walker with a black jacket and book bag. Her description was perfect. All Richardson had to do was find him.

  But neighborhood residents wouldn’t talk to Richardson. He’d parked on Summer Hill Road in the middle of the night for a month without finding a walker. He started to question whether he knew what he was doing. Finally, he gave up.

  “We just weren’t meant to find him,” Richardson told Bob Nelligar after those stakeouts.

  But that changed when Hennis was sent to Death Row. A day later, Beaver got a call at his home. The caller asked to remain anonymous and Beaver hung up on her. Then she called back. “My name’s Erica Davis,” she said. “I can’t believe Hennis got convicted. You should check into this guy named Raupach. He could pass as Hennis’s brother.”

  Beaver looked up the name “Raupach” in the phone book and saw one listed for 142 Summer Hill Road. Richardson remembered that name. The first time he’d talked to Julie Czerniak’s mother, she’d said he needed to look into “that crazy Raupach.” But he’d ignored her.

  “What should we do?” Richardson asked his partner.

  “We can’t call this guy up or knock on his door,” Beaver said. “For all we know, he’s the murderer.”

  They figured they’d best let an investigator handle it. Neither lawyer had the time or the stomach to keep investigating the Hennis case. Raupach was forgotten.

  More than a year later, Les Burns, the investigator Bob Hennis hired to reopen the case, read over the trial transcript and interview notes and came up with a proposal on where to start. Number one on his list was to find the walker.

  “All right,” Beaver said. “Go find him.”

  Burns started out knocking on doors on Summer Hill Road and got no help. He drove back out of the neighborhood and turned right on Yadkin Road, stopping at every business that looked like it’d been there awhile.

  “I’m looking for a guy who used to walk up and down Yadkin Road at night,” Burns would say. “He wore a Members Only jacket, white T-shirt, blue jeans, about six-foot tall, and wore a hat.”

  Burns had no luck until he went to the Winn-Dixie grocery store at the Ponderosa Shopping Center. An assistant manager listened to the description.

  “A real Rambo type?” he interrupted.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “He always carried something over his shoulder?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy,” Burns said. “He used to walk by here?”

  “He used to work here.”

  Burns took the walker’s name back to Beaver and Richardson: John Raupach.

  His schoolmates called him “Rambo” because he loved war games. John Raupach and his friends often camped out in the woods, where they staged war battles, throwing firecrackers at each other for gunfire. Raupach wore battle dress fatigues and read Soldier of Fortune magazine “because it had neat stuff about guns.” He collected knives and played Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy game in which players pretend they’re warriors from another era.

  In high school, Raupach picked up a nighttime job buffing floors at Winn-Dixie, a short walk from West-over High. He walked everywhere he went because he didn’t own a car. He carried a change of clothes in his book bag—Winn-Dixie wanted him to wear a
white dress shirt, a tie, and dark corduroys instead of battle fatigues.

  Though a little odd, Raupach was a good employee. His manager said he was a bit of a loner. “John kept a hyped-up attitude all the time,” Danny Smith said. “I don’t know if he came to work pissed off or got pissed off at work.”

  After work, Raupach was often too wired to sleep. He’d watch Benny Hill on television to wind down, but his mind raced. He got in the habit of taking long walks looping around the neighborhood, sometimes to pick up cigarettes, sometimes just to walk. It was not uncommon for him to walk at 3 or 4 in the morning.

  His walks took him past 367 Summer Hill, which was just another house to John Raupach—even after the Eastburns were murdered and everyone in the neighborhood couldn’t stop talking about it. “My biggest strength and biggest weakness is a healthy dose of apathy,” he said. “I don’t give a shit.”

  Raupach worked at Winn-Dixie until April 1986, a month before he graduated from high school. He was fired for stealing $21 worth of batteries and bubble gum and stashing them in his book bag. The next fall, he enrolled at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, in the mountains in the northwest corner of the state, unaware he was considered a pivotal witness in a triple-murder case.

  The state knew all about John Raupach. Two years earlier, during the first trial, Detectives Watts and Oakes had interviewed Raupach in his Summer Hill home. They noted his size and light brown hair. They asked about his walking habits. They asked what he wore.

  They sifted through his jackets and book bags and took what they needed. Raupach later met with Ron Oakes in his office. The detective had a fake hand on his desk, about the coolest thing the kid could say about a cop.

  The state never told the defense about him.

  Les Burns found Raupach in his college dorm room in March 1988, where Raupach told him about meeting with the detectives. Burns was outraged. He couldn’t help but think that Raupach’s appearance in a courtroom would’ve made a difference to a jury. He couldn’t wait to tell Beaver and Richardson.

  “You mean the police knew about him and didn’t tell us?” Beaver shouted. “That was our whole defense—that Cone saw somebody else. We’re putting that in the appeal.”

  “No, we’re not, Jerry,” Richardson said. “We’re going to play this card real tight. We’re saving it for trial.”

  Richardson prevailed. They’d both learned about playing cards at the right time.

  The night before he testified, Raupach took a bus to Charlotte, where Les Burns picked him up and flew with him to Wilmington. After he landed, Raupach heard Burns mention the phrase “the walker” for the first time. Like some Gothic warrior in the Black Forest, he thought. He didn’t like it and began to sulk.

  Burns pulled Richardson aside. “Billy, something’s wrong. He’s not acting the same. You need to talk to him.” They went in Raupach’s room.

  “John, what’s wrong?” Richardson asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “John, let me just ask you. You think we’re going to try to pin this on you?”

  Raupach hesitated. He knew how it all sounded—the knife collection, the war games, the Dungeons & Dragons, getting fired for stealing.

  “Well,” he said, “that has crossed my mind.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re not saying you did it, we’re saying you’re who Pat saw.”

  Raupach said he’d be all right. Alone in his room, after the lights went out, he kept returning to one thought: I’m getting used.

  The next day, Burns tried to keep up with Raupach as he wandered the courthouse back halls like a caged lion, waiting to testify.

  Bob Hennis stepped outside. “Where’s Raupach?” he asked Burns. “You still got him, don’t you?”

  “He’ll be there.”

  Burns hid Raupach upstairs, worried that one of the detectives would grab him and somehow detain him long enough to ruin their plan. Finally, Beaver went upstairs and found them. “Okay, John,” he said. “It’s time.”

  “Mr. Raupach, in 1985, where did you live?” Richardson asked.

  “One-forty-two Summer Hill Road.”

  “And how long up to that point had you lived on Summer Hill Road?”

  “Since birth, I guess. Sixteen years.”

  “Mr. Raupach, in 1985 did you have a mustache?”

  Raupach nodded his head. The judge counseled him to answer out loud.

  “Was it unusual for you to walk on Summer Hill Road at 2 or 3 in the morning?”

  “No. There was a couple of stores up there that were open 24 hours. If I wanted cigarettes or a Coke, I would walk up there. It was a cheap excuse for a destination.”

  “Then when you walked, you usually wore a jacket, did you not?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It was a black jacket, wasn’t it?”

  Raupach nodded.

  “Was it a black—what type of jacket was it? Describe it to the jury.”

  “Basically a cheap imitation of a Members Only jacket, kind of made of plastic material. I don’t know exactly what it would be called.”

  Raupach described the three book bags he carried and the hats he wore, including a black beret known as a “beenie.” Patrick Cone had used that word when he first described the man’s hat.

  “Directing your attention to June of 1986, do you recall at that time being interviewed by members of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department?” Richardson asked.

  “I do.”

  “Do you recall being taken to the district attorney’s office during that time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you recall whether or not the detectives asked you for your jackets and your book bags?”

  “Yes, I do. I brought them to my room and they picked out pretty much what they wanted and took that with them.”

  “Did they bring those back to you?”

  “When I went down to the courthouse I picked them back up.”

  Richardson asked him to describe the jackets when they were returned.

  “Better than when they left. They were in bags like you would get back from a dry-cleaner.”

  Jurors stirred in their seats. Observers in the now crowded courtroom looked at one another for confirmation of what they’d heard.

  “Mr. Raupach, when you would carry your bag, was it unusual for you to carry it over your shoulder?”

  “No. Anyone that carries a bag long enough knows that your hands get tired. It is easier to rest it there.”

  Richardson stood up. “We would like to be heard outside the presence of the jury,” he said.

  After the jurors were excused, Richardson spoke. “Your Honor, I would like to preface this first by saying that what I’m about to say should in no way reflect upon Mr. Dickson or Mr. Colyer. They were not a party to this action three and a half, four years ago, and I have never known them to do anything like this whatsoever, sir.”

  Richardson reminded Judge Ellis that he and Beaver from the start of the case had asked the state to turn over all evidence that would help negate Hennis’s guilt.

  “Our evidence indicates that this young man during the first trial was subpoenaed by the state, was taken to their office, that his clothing was tested, that he was interviewed, that work records were ascertained.…

  “We have not been provided with this young man’s name. We have not been provided with any of his test results or anything like that, his walking habits or anything. But here you’ve got a young man on this stand who has testified that he has lived in this neighborhood. It is not unusual for him to walk three or four times a week. It is not unusual for him to walk at 2, 3, 4 in the morning.

  “That he wears a black jacket, like a Members Only type jacket, that he carries a bag over his shoulder. He has a hat that he wears constantly. He had a mustache back in 1985. You look at the size of him. If you put a hat on his head, the resemblance is striking, especially at 3:30. This court has heard testimony about how dark it is on this ro
ad.

  “We should have been provided with this man’s name back in 1986, and we could have developed it a whole lot more. We have been prejudiced by this.

  “In addition, you can’t look at this in a vacuum. The crime scene was released the day my client was indicted. The day we were entitled to access to the crime scene and inspect it, it was released.

  “In addition to that, one of the state’s exhibits, the crime prevention checklist, that has been testified to extensively in this trial, we looked for that thing. I personally went out and looked for that thing for two days out at Fort Bragg. I could not find it anywhere. We looked in the records and looked and looked and looked and could not find it.

  “The reason we couldn’t find it is because it was in the custody of the state of North Carolina …

  “When you take all of these things together, it clearly shows misconduct on the part of the state.”

  Beaver took up where Richardson left off. “I would ask Your Honor to consider dismissing this case for prosecutorial misconduct,” he said.

  “We make that motion, and in the alternative, Your Honor, we ask this court to hold some type of hearing to determine what should be done about this matter for the misconduct that went on in this case. It is serious misconduct. It is deliberate misconduct.”

  Dickson stood up, not sure what he should do. He could defend the DA’s office, or he could wash his hands of it. He had nothing to do with it. But he was the one who had to respond. “To be quite frank, Your Honor, I’m not sure how to respond at this point.”

  Judge Ellis set a misconduct hearing for later in the trial. Then he brought the jury back in.

  Bob Hennis leaned forward. “Ask him this,” he said, handing Richardson a note. He looked at it, then turned to the witness stand.

  “Mr. Raupach, if an individual is walking down Summer Hill Road and said they saw somebody approximately six-foot tall, a big guy, with light brown hair and had a mustache, had a hat on his head, carrying a bag over his shoulder, and had a dark Members Only type jacket on, who would that person be describing?”

  Dickson objected and Judge Ellis sustained it. But not before John Raupach had raised his right hand high for the jurors to see.