Innocent Victims

by Whisnant, Scott;

  The agents told her she couldn’t have been on Summer Hill Road by 1:45. They questioned how she could see the man in foggy, misty weather. They tried to get her to say the threatening calls didn’t start until after Billy Richardson contacted her in March 1986, and suggested to her it was Saturday morning she saw the man and not Friday—as if a man leaving the Eastburn house the night before Mother’s Day wouldn’t have been significant.

  Charlotte told them everything she had to say was in the transcript of her court testimony. If they still had questions, she said, they could look there.

  By the time they left, she was in tears. “They had it set in their own minds what they wanted to hear, and that’s all they were going to hear no matter what I had to say,” she said. “I don’t think they believed it. Any of it.”

  The SBI questioned Julie Czerniak, who passed a polygraph and gave the SBI pubic hair samples. After four years, the state had yet to test whether the babysitter could have been the source of the unknown pubic hair in the Eastburn living room. Her hair didn’t match, and Julie was at last finished with the investigation of the Eastburn murders. She later married a soldier in the 82nd Airborne and left Fayetteville when he was transferred.

  “I’m someone totally different from what I was then,” she said six years after the murders. “I was young. In a way, I wanted to be in the limelight. I’d never been on TV, and it was kind of neat. But older people helped me realize what I was doing. Now I think, ‘God, I would’ve done it so differently.’”

  The SBI polygraphed John Raupach and took hair and fingerprint samples from him, telling him, “We don’t think you’re guilty, but we have to do this.” Raupach passed the polygraph and none of his samples matched. He dropped out of school and moved back to Summer Hill.

  The SBI found Patrick Cone in jail. Five weeks after Hennis was acquitted, Cone had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of stolen property in the case in which he’d been accused of trying to use a stolen credit card. He received a suspended sentence, but when he later was caught driving with a suspended license and no insurance, he received a seven-day sentence.

  The SBI asked him the same questions as before and polygraphed him on whether he’d used the stolen Eastburn bank card. Cone said he passed; the SBI won’t release the result. The SBI then left him alone.

  Cone works in a Fayetteville restaurant and stands by his story that he saw Tim Hennis early on May 10, 1985, on Summer Hill Road.

  “I kinda figure in the end, you know what I’m saying, he’ll get what he deserves,” he said. “Everybody got to go through the Man. He’ll get his. I still think he might come to my house sometime, but I don’t too much worry about that. I don’t want him coming to my house, but if he does, he’s got problems, for real. Then justice will be served. If he comes by here, he ain’t gonna leave here.”

  Since finishing his jail sentence, Cone has stayed out of trouble.

  The SBI reopened the investigation of WHJR. Oakes’s testimony at the misconduct hearing had revealed that WHJR’s co-workers recalled seeing scratches on his face, that his roommate drove a white van similar to the one Charlotte Kirby had described, and that he had money problems in the summer of 1985. WHJR bought a $19,000 sports car which was repossessed before he made the first payment. At the end of the summer, WHJR suddenly asked for a transfer to Raleigh, where he was fired after admitting he stole $500.

  Oakes had talked to WHJR’s former girlfriend, who remembered him breaking up with her because he’d gotten another woman pregnant. The girlfriend said she couldn’t understand it—WHJR had never made a sexual advance on her.

  The girlfriend also remembered telling Oakes that WHJR didn’t go to work the night of May 9. He was supposed to ride with her to go bowling that night. When she got to his home and knocked on his door, no one answered. She continued on to the bowling alley and kept calling as late as 10:30 before giving up and finding another ride home. WHJR later told her he’d fallen asleep on the couch and couldn’t hear her knocking or the phone ringing.

  The girlfriend said she’d recorded the events of May 9 in a diary she kept at that time, which she said she turned over to the police and never got back. Detective Ron Oakes denies he ever received a diary from the girlfriend.

  By the time the SBI interviewed WHJR, he had taken a job as a long-haul trucker, a fact that would bring Billy Richardson back to the Mr. X letters. “I’m passing through Fayetteville on my way to New Jersey,” the second one reads. By then WHJR had moved at least six times since leaving Fayetteville. The bank that loaned him money for the sports car couldn’t find him to serve a lawsuit on him, trying four different addresses over three years. Finally, the court would enter a default judgment against WHJR.

  On June 22, 1989, agents Ratley and Allen visited him at his Raleigh home. Asked to explain rumors of scratches on his face, WHJR said he’d been riding his bike on Yadkin Road when a black man tried to steal it. He said the man threw a brick at him and hit his back, knocking him down and causing scratches on his back and face. He said he and his roommate later looked for the man to no avail.

  Three years earlier, WHJR had told Oakes that he never had scratches on his face.

  The agents talked to WHJR’s former girlfriend, who told them that her boyfriend had scratches on his face around the time of the murders, an apparent contradiction to what she’d told Oakes three years before. But she later said she’s confirmed those scratches to anyone who’s ever asked. She described three long scratches, as if made by a cat or a woman’s fingernails. WHJR told her two or three black guys jumped him and beat him up, she said.

  The SBI didn’t seem interested, she said.

  “They were going through the motions. They sat there and told me they didn’t know why they let Hennis out of prison, because he did it. I thought, ‘Why are you talking to me?’ They asked me the same things as before and said, ‘I know you’ve said this before, but we’ve got to write it down.’”

  Agents Ratley and Allen approached WHJR about taking a polygraph and giving hair, blood and fingerprint samples. WHJR agreed at first but later told the agents he would not be humiliated by the SBI.

  The agents went to WHJR’s home to ask again. He told them to “leave my fucking house right now.” To this date, he is the only person questioned about the case to refuse to give samples.

  The SBI left, and WHJR was again dropped as a suspect.

  Officially speaking, the Eastburn case is still open. But the SBI has thrown up its hands.

  Cumberland County’s law enforcement officers have put the Hennis case behind them as well. Grannis, Dickson, and Colyer are still with the district attorney’s office, Watts is a major in the sheriff’s department, and Bittle is the DA’s investigator. Haral Carlin graduated from law school and joined Beaver, Thompson, Holt and Richardson, P.A., the law firm he fought so vehemently against in the first trial. The former investigator still believes in Hennis’s guilt.

  So does William VanStory, who married the woman who once accused him of assault. She won the title “Mrs. North Carolina,” and VanStory continues to practice criminal defense law in Fayetteville. “I’ll go to my grave believing Timothy Hennis committed these crimes, and I would not have prosecuted the man for his life if I didn’t believe it,” he said after the case. As for the misconduct charges raised by the defense, he said, “Has the world gone upside down? A triple murderer is a hero and I’m a bad guy.”

  No one associated with Tim Hennis’s prosecution would discuss the case.

  Jerry Beaver and Billy Richardson reluctantly put the case behind them as well. Beaver’s firm, now with 10 partners, is still one of Fayetteville’s most prestigious, particularly in civil rights law.

  The city of Fayetteville never embraced their defense of Tim Hennis. When Richardson ran for the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1990, the daughter of an elderly couple murdered by one of his clients bought a newspaper ad during the week of the election.

  “Do you
want the same man representing us in Raleigh who represented Henry Spell and Timothy Hennis?” the ad asked. “Billy Richardson is a prime example of a liberal justice system where victims are further victimized, some criminals go free and slick lawyers get rich.”

  Richardson lost that election; but tried again in 1992 and won.

  He still thinks the Hennis case could be solved if someone had the money and time to compare the state’s and defense’s files. For more than four years, Richardson chased every lead and rumor the state threw out, living in fear he’d find an awful truth. Even after the case was over, he kept learning more about his client. But all of it pointed in the same direction.

  He learned that the SBI’s hair expert had determined that the unknown pubic hair was forcibly removed, boosting the defense theory that the hair was lost during the rape. The SBI denied that a forcibly-removed hair means anything.

  Four years after the state argued crime-scene contamination, the SBI tested the fingerprints of the officers who went inside the Eastburn home against the unknown prints from the Eastburn house. Detective Robert Bittle’s fingerprint matched a print lifted from the dryer. The other prints still have not been explained.

  Richardson learned even more about the rape allegation against Hennis in Minnesota. The victim had described a man with dark hair, an upturned nose, and protruding lower lip, all characteristics that don’t match Hennis. The victim picked four suspects from area high school yearbooks, and none were Hennis. No arrest was made.

  But the Minnesota girl had hurt more than Hennis’s lawyers ever knew. Though she was not mentioned in court, the jurors somehow heard of a rape charge from Hennis’s past and discussed it during deliberations. None could remember how it got there, but it didn’t come from the defense camp.

  “That’s probably why Hennis didn’t testify,” one of the jurors said during deliberations before convicting Hennis of murder.

  Richardson fears the case no more.

  “You can look anywhere you want,” he said. “Talk to anybody you want. You’re not going to find Tim Hennis did this.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Eight years later, about the only way the Eastburn murders will be solved is with a confession, and the killer’s conscience doesn’t appear ready to crack.

  Other possibilities fade with each passing year. The physical evidence from the Eastburn house is in the possession of the state of North Carolina, and the state hasn’t shown interest in finding a match for more than three years. The semen sample is ruined.

  Even if the state did produce a match, it would be difficult to get a conviction based only on that evidence—defense lawyers would argue that their client’s pubic hair could have come in the house stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe, and the state would have difficulty refuting that logic. Lay witnesses would be needed, and there aren’t many of those who still remember much about Mother’s Day 1985.

  It’s almost unthinkable that someone knows the killer’s identity but hasn’t told anyone by now. Charlotte Kirby came the closest to fingering someone other than Tim Hennis, but she’s made it clear that she can’t say who she saw walking in the Eastburns’ yard.

  If the killer had an accomplice, as Paul Stombaugh believes, one could implicate the other, possibly as a way to reduce a prison sentence. But the accomplice would either have to negotiate a plea-bargain from the state, which would be difficult to justify before a jury, or face the same sentence as the killer, which would certainly be death.

  The two prosecutions of Hennis have left it nearly impossible to successfully prosecute someone else. The district attorney in Cumberland County and the state’s attorney general’s office are on record as believing Hennis is the killer. Admitting they’ve been wrong all this time would be an embarrassing political decision. Even if the state made such an admission, it would be too late. Any good lawyer could raise the “Hennis defense” and use the state’s long history of prosecution to raise reasonable doubt.

  The unfortunate part is that the case is not without leads.

  There are four sightings of a van parked near the Eastburn house on the weekend of the murders. About 9 P.M. on May 9, Cheryl Hill saw a blue van parked across from the Eastburns’. Around the same time, Summer Hill resident Delbert Routh saw a light blue van next to a silver car parked next to the used car lot. Later that night, Charlotte Kirby saw a light-colored van below the house.

  The next night, Summer Hill resident Erica Davis came home from bowling with her daughter around midnight and swerved to miss a light blue van partially parked in the Eastburn yard.

  Kirby, Hill and Routh described a short man, around five-foot-seven, with stringy dirty blond or brown hair near the vans they saw.

  WHJR is not the man Charlotte Kirby saw—he’s several inches taller, heavier and had short hair—and the WHJR theory lacks a link to Kathryn Eastburn. Investigators from both sides never turned up involvement with other men or found any reason to believe she’d been threatened in her final days. One rumor that has persisted, though, is that she argued a few days before she died in the parking lot of her neighborhood Winn-Dixie with a man who’d been bothering her. WHJR didn’t work at that Winn-Dixie, but he shopped there. No one has ever linked him to that argument.

  Still, the questions surrounding WHJR and the scratches on his face haven’t been answered.

  The other theory still seriously considered is that a drug dealer irritated with a fifteen-year-old informant came to the Eastburn home thinking he’d surprise Julie Czerniak there. If that is true, Katie and the girls are tragic bystanders in an underground drug dispute.

  This was the theory raised by Keith Smith in the second trial when he said a cocaine deal was supposed to be completed in the Eastburn home on the weekend of the murders. It would gain credibility if someone else remembered events the way Smith did. Julie said she never invited a drug dealer to the Eastburn home, and none of Smith’s superiors with the Cumberland County’s narcotics unit remember anything about this drug deal. Smith never linked this deal to the weekend of the murders until four years after the murders. But Smith did say in 1985 that Ox, the one drug dealer he said Julie had set up, drove a light blue van and hung out with a skinny, short man with long hair. He said the skinny man drove a Vega. And Julie has always said a blue van followed her home from Womack Hospital the day after the bodies were found.

  Investigators were never able to find Ox or his skinny friend.

  The MacDonald copycat theory has been reduced to a curious irony. Instead of history repeating, the cases were mirror images. MacDonald was a charming Green Beret doctor no one believed capable of murder. Hennis was the angry buck sergeant everyone thought was capable. But physical evidence convicted MacDonald and exonerated Hennis.

  Whoever murdered the Eastburns has no qualms about killing. He could kill again, perhaps even get caught and wind up confessing. The case should never have had to rely on such a tragic possibility.

  The killer may have already struck. In 1987, a twenty-three-year-old mother had her throat cut after being bound and raped just 80 miles from Fayetteville. Her two-year-old son was left crying in the house. Police believe the killer answered a classified ad about a water bed to get inside the house. In 1990, the thirty-two-year-old president of a local chapter of the National Organization for Women had her throat cut in her Charlotte home; her thirteen-month-old son was left crying in the house. After that murder, Jerry Beaver got an anonymous postcard from the North Carolina mountains.

  “Ah! history,” the card said.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The funeral was held on May 18, 1985, a bright spring day in Lenexa, Kansas, at a cemetery known as “Resurrection.”

  The green grass on Resurrection’s lonely hills had at last made a stand after another bleak eastern Kansas winter. Jayhawks sang from oak trees guarding nearby graves. The same priest who married Gary and Katie delivered the eulogy. After a brief service, the girls’ tiny coffins were lowered next t
o their mother’s in graves that Gene and Jane Furnish had given to Gary. They’d bought the plots for themselves, not their grandchildren.

  Gary Eastburn still goes to Resurrection every time he’s in Kansas.

  The flat bronze marble headstones lie inches apart, under a tree that sheds leaves on them in the fall. Gary had a few words engraved underneath each name.

  “Tiny Dancer,” under Erin’s. “Daddy’s shadow,” below Kara’s. “Sunshine of my life,” under Katie’s.

  Gary prefers the living memorial at Alger Wilkins Elementary School in Fayetteville. After Kara died, the school planted a tree, choosing a white dogwood because of the legend of Jesus’ crucifixion on a dogwood limb. The dogwood is said to have always grown smaller so that its limbs could never again be used that way.

  Kara’s tree is no taller than she was, still waiting for the growth spurt she never saw. The tree blooms around Mother’s Day.

  Gary didn’t make a promotion to major, a circumstance he said had more to do with his devotion to Jana than his attitude toward his job. He left the Air Force in 1992 and took a civilian job as an air-traffic controller consultant. He still lives in England and married a British nurse named Liz in 1991. Jana calls her “Mother.”

  On their honeymoon, Gary introduced Liz to Katie’s parents in Westwood, Kansas. It was Mother’s Day, May 12, six years to the day after the bodies were found.

  “It was not a very easy day for me,” Jane Furnish said. “Mother’s Day is not much fun anymore.”

  Gary said Jana is “growing like a weed” and starting to resemble her mother. She speaks with a British accent. Gary cannot imagine life without her. When Desert Storm broke out in 1991, Gary worried that Jana’s school was susceptible to terrorism. He summoned his mother to England to take Jana back to the United States until the end of the war.

  He’s finally gotten used to life without Katie, Kara, and Erin, but it took six years. He used to dream about Katie once or twice a month. “For some reason, she’s back and she says, ‘Well, the police didn’t tell you I lived, they kept it a secret,’ or something, but, anyway, for some reason, they’re back—every dream was a different reason why they were alive and I wasn’t told. But at the end of the dream, I say, ‘Oh good, we can start living our life together,’ and she’d say, ‘Well, I’m not sure I want to.’