Innocent Victims

by Whisnant, Scott;

  Colonel Parrish’s denial of the defense’s request to further test these and other items remains a major thrust of the pending appeals. The defense team had secured funding to pay for it, but the judge denied access to the evidence, ruling it was enough to argue that the items tested didn’t belong to Hennis.

  None of the appeals have been ruled out yet. The civilian courts have not ruled on them and will not do so until all military appeals are final, which is not the case. The prosecution of Tim Hennis, at this date, is still a military matter.

  So, no, the case is not over.

  Thirty-one years after the Eastburn family was murdered on Mother’s Day 1985, this much seems certain: It didn’t happen the way law enforcement continues to say it did.

  That theory, which has wavered almost none in these three decades, holds that Tim Hennis, living slightly beyond his means with his wife and new baby, wasn’t getting the sexual attention he needed. So when the mother and child went away for a weekend, he decided to visit an old girlfriend unannounced, but she sent him on his way. Then—despite living in a military town notorious for its ability to entertain soldiers on the prowl—his thoughts turned to the married mother of three he met two nights before when he picked up the dog.

  First, he went to his home on the other side the county, presumably to put on some corduroy pants after being seen wearing jeans by all other witnesses. He left home sometime after 9:05 p. m., and appeared unannounced at the Eastburn home, only to have his pitch go terribly bad. A rage the government would argue was always close to the surface manifested, and before it was over he had to kill Katie and two children as witnesses, but left alive another child who may or may not have been old enough to identify him.

  Around 11:00 p. m., he walked past five houses to where he’d parked his car by the side of the road, rather than parking across the street or even in the driveway. Neighbors were able to watch him gather supplies to clean up a triple murder. After returning to the Eastburn house and cleaning for more than four hours, he walked down the driveway at 3:30 a. m., casually greeted a stranger (“Getting an early start this morning”), and drove off.

  The next morning, he took a black jacket that presumably would implicate him in these murders to the same dry cleaner he always used. His workmates noticed nothing unusual that day, and then, for the rest of that weekend, he was on twenty-four-hour command duty for his unit. On that Friday night, around 11:00 p. m., when, if ever a charge commander would need to be available to handle any trouble, he left his post to drive across town to find an automatic teller machine where he could use the stolen card from the Eastburn home. He accomplished this even though witnesses place him in the unit during the thirty to thirty-five minutes he would have been gone, and an official form he signed indicated he was in the unit between 11:15 and 11:30 p. m.

  On Saturday morning, even though his replacement remembered Hennis leaving after 8:30 a. m., he again used the same automatic teller, at least twenty minutes away, at 8:56 a. m. A customer who used her card three and a half minutes later and remembered nothing about her seemingly routine transaction and encounter with this stranger for eleven months, later identified the bank customer as looking a lot like Tim Hennis.

  Hennis was home, another twenty to twenty-five minutes away, by either 9:00 or 9:30 a. m., depending on various versions remembered by neighbors, and had already started a roaring fire in a barrel in his back yard to destroy evidence, in full view of numerous neighbors and with Dixie, the dog that would tie him to the murder victim’s home, roaming in the backyard.

  In the state’s version, Hennis accomplished these acts without leaving any of his hair, fingerprints, shoe prints, blood, or any physical material in the Eastburn home—save for his semen inside of the victim’s body. Investigators would find head hair, pubic hair, fingerprints, and palm prints in the home, and in crucial places such as prints on the drawer from where money was stolen, hair inside the sheets of the victim’s bed, and prints next to bloody smears on the doorjamb. A bloody towel would be left behind in the bathroom. Shoe prints in blood that didn’t match Hennis’s feet would be found in various places and sizes. Yet, investigators credit Hennis with successfully removing any trace of himself from the home.

  At the same time, Hennis transferred none of the Eastburn victims or home onto his car, his clothes, his shoes, or anywhere in his home. A thorough analysis of the barrel, site of the mysterious fire, found nothing that ties him to the home, other than an odd contention that he burned a pair of corduroy pants inside, a fire so hot that it apparently consumed the zipper and snap.

  So goes the state of North Carolina’s theory against Tim Hennis. But there’s much to quibble with here. From his lawyers’ point of view, most crippling to the state’s theory is the seventeen-year period from Hennis’s acquittal in 1989 to his forced reenlistment in 2006. Both of his defense teams hired criminologists to profile who could commit crimes such as these, and they studied Hennis.

  The findings are consistent. The crimes are the product of rage and malevolent hatred of women, marked by inability to control it. After his acquittal, Hennis led a quiet life of Army service, family devotion, and community volunteerism. Both sides tried very hard to “find” something on him leading up to trial, and neither could do it. At the time of his arrest, his neighbors were shocked. Nothing about Hennis’s life as a free man suggests he is capable of this type of murder, and nothing about the murder suggests its culprit would go on to lead a normal life, no doubt questioning at times what got into him on May 9, 1985.

  The experts who have studied the crime and the defendant say they do not match.

  But, as Jim Blackburn famously argued in the Jeffrey MacDonald case, the question, of course, is not whether he could have done it, but did he do it. It is a given that there are examples in criminal history of murderers going on to live normal lives, though in most cases it turns out, after arrest, that they weren’t really that normal. That shoe has never dropped on Tim Hennis.

  So did he do it?

  I’m in no more position to say now than in 1993, when Innocent Victims was first published amid strong evidence, Hennis did not. The only conclusion I can draw is that there is a great deal we don’t know about how this murder took place and it didn’t happen the way law enforcement and the government say it did. Both have invested a great deal of resources and intellectual capital to protect their theory, and not so much to determine what actually happened.

  All the evidence from the case should be tested for DNA, either for the first time or subjected to further testing that could result in a match. How can it not be? To paraphrase Frank Spinner’s disastrous closing argument, you can argue that the person who used a bloody towel to clean up the crime scene is more certain to be connected to the actual murder than someone who had sex with Katie Eastburn, notwithstanding the unfortunate aspersions that casts on her. The male whose DNA is under Erin Eastburn’s fingernails will likely have a great deal of explaining to do. And if male DNA that does not belong to Tim Hennis were to emerge from the pubic hair combings, then the case is truly in turmoil.

  Why wouldn’t the government want to find out?

  The testing of physical evidence has, from the start, had a certain and crucial proponent: Tim Hennis. When his lawyers told him, six days after his arrest, that investigators had samples “with sperm intact,” he said it wouldn’t be him, a curious bluff from a staff sergeant who wouldn’t know anything about “masking” of blood types by the victim or other problems a forensic lab might encounter.

  Three years after his acquittal, when Hennis had nothing to gain from further exposure to the evidence, Billy Richardson, then (and again in 2016) a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, helped pass a state law that created a DNA database. He wanted the state to test items found in the Eastburn home, but first had to run this past his former client. Any reason not to test this evidence?

  None, said Tim Hennis. He gave Richardson permission, but the st
ate never tested it.

  Today, Hennis’s lawyers are fervently trying to get a court to order the tests, and they continue to have the full support of their client, knowing full well that another positive hit to his DNA will likely expedite his execution and drain what little support he still has among the public.

  To date, Hennis has never publicly resisted any forensic testing on the physical evidence. What this says about the case remains unclear. In his only public testimony, he denied having sex with Katie Eastburn and has never corrected or amended that statement since. So we only have the government’s explanation of how his DNA appeared there.

  The case is not over, but a chapter unlike any in American judicial history is. The question for now: Will there be another?

  1The author participated in this workshop on May 12, 2005, the 20th anniversary of the Eastburn bodies being discovered.

  Image Gallery

  Captain Gary Eastburn, 1985. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Julie Czerniak, age 15, on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1985. The Eastburn baby-sitter had been in contact with Jeffrey MacDonald. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Key witness Patrick Cone leaves courthouse after the suspension hearing. His mother, Betty Cone, is on the right. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  John Raupach’s senior photo. (Westover High School Yearbook, 1986)

  Tim Hennis at the time of his bad-check arrest in 1983. Witness Patrick Cone used this mug shot to identify Hennis as the killer. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Composite prepared by Patrick Cone, May 14, 1985.

  Tim and Angela Hennis walk past 367 Summer Hill during the jury view at the first trial. Hennis’s lawyers were furious when they saw him walking past the house. Angela’s mother, Judy Koonce, is in the foreground, and Tim’s sister, Beth Brumfield, is at far left. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Tim Hennis on his way to Death Row. He’s smiling at Angela to try to keep her spirits up. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Defense attorneys Billy Richardson, left, and Jerry Beaver after Tim got the death penalty. “Three consecutive death penalties and a life sentence,” Beaver had just said. “Thank God that man had a lawyer.” (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Prosecutor William VanStory IV, moments after Tim Hennis got the death penalty. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Tim Hennis after being released on $100,000 bond on December 16, 1985. At the far left is his father, Bob Hennis. Marylou is beside Bob. Angela Hennis is at Tim’s left. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Bob Hennis, Beth Brumfield, and Marylou Hennis on July 8, 1986, just after Tim got the death penalty. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  Tim Hennis and daughter Kristina after his April 19, 1989, acquittal. (Fayetteville Publishing Company)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My list will always begin with Pam Sheppard, who tirelessly brought her “Tiger” intensity to every page. I also want to thank Luke Mitchell for working out the computer logistics that always stumped me.

  In Fayetteville, I want to thank Barbara Richardson and her children, mostly for the company and the feedback they provided all those nights while I chased interviews. I’m also grateful to Carolyn Beaver and T. V. and Cindi O’Malley, and Adele, Debbie, Shannon, and everyone else at the law offices of Beaver, Holt, Richardson, P.A. Thanks also to the Fayetteville Observer-Times, especially Daisy Maxwell in the library and the photography staff.

  I am grateful to the staff of the Wilmington Morning Star for their support. Also, Stephanie Rivenbark, Bill McIlwain, Gray Laughridge, and Ken Wells are owed for their editing and advice.

  I also thank Jane Ruffin of the Raleigh News and Observer, the Robesonian in Lumberton, North Carolina, the Kansas City Star and the Examiner in Independence, Missouri, Louise Foster in Overland Park, Kansas, and the staff at Bishop-Meige High School are also owed my gratitude.

  I especially want to thank my mother and father for their unflagging support and my sisters for their interest and encouragement.

  I appreciate everyone who let me interview them. I will not try to list them individually, but I must single out Gary Eastburn, Billie Brown, and Gene and Jane Furnish. Our interviews must have been painful, but their grace and dignity pulled us through and they will always have my respect. All they asked was that this book preserve the memories of Katie, Kara, and Erin, and that has been my goal.

  About the Author

  Scott Whisnant is a former editor and writer for the Morning Star (Wilmington, North Carolina). As a courtroom reporter he covered the case of Tim Hennis, who had previously been convicted of murder and was sentenced to death before the state supreme court awarded him a retrial. Whisnant is the author of Innocent Victims, which details the historic case.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 1993 by Scott Whisnant

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3914-7

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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