Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 7 - Double Jeopardy - full transcript
On this episode of " Death Row Stories"...
A triple murder of unimaginable brutality.
This is the one case
that truly screamed out
for the death penalty.
- An accused soldier who can't
even convince - his own lawyer...
I thought Tim was guilty as all get out.
Until the Prosecution's case falls apart.
- The state's primary witness said, "I feel
like I'm sending - an innocent man to prison."
And a shocking twist makes legal history.
Take a deep seat. I got something to tell.
There's a body in the water
He was butchered and murdered!
Many people proclaimed their innocence.
In this case, there are a number of
things that stink.
This man is remorseless
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
Mother's Day, 1985.
It was a beautiful day in Fayetteville,
North Carolina.
The dogwoods are blooming.
Little rolling hills.
- Neighbors know each other. Of course,
they're all - military families.
It's within a mile of the
Fort Bragg base itself.
But on Summerhill Road
something seemed amiss at the home of
the Eastburn family.
A neighbor noticed that the newspapers
in Kate Eastburn's driveway were piling up.
And he knew that her
husband was out of town.
So, that naturally raised his curiosity.
He went and peeked in the window
and heard the baby crying.
And then he called the authorities.
I received a call from um, dispatch.
It was a homicide on, um, Summerhill Road.
When I got there, there was one deputy who
had been in the building.
His eyes had teared up. He was kind of
holding his hat down, shaking his head.
And he said, "I, I,
I just... I don't understand this."
The baby was taken to safety,
and Detective Bittle and his partner
entered the house.
As we went down the hallway, on the bedroom
on the left-hand side,
the first daughter was in there
and she was in the first grade.
She was still in bed,
- and she had her "Star Wars" blanket
- pulled up around her neck.
And she was stabbed ten times.
You could see the stab
wounds through the blanket.
We went further to the master bedroom.
The youngest child was laying there.
She was on her back.
Her throat had been
cut. Almost decapitated.
And on the right-hand side,
facing the bed, was the mother.
The bra was up around her neck.
Her panties had been cut off of her.
She had 14 stab wounds.
The victims were Katie Eastburn, age 32,
Kara, age 5,
and Erin, age 3.
For so long after that homicide,
- I, I could close my eyes at night
and I could see - those children.
Katie Eastburn's husband, Gary, was
an Air Force Captain.
He rushed back from training in Alabama.
It's hard to explain.
You just, you just stop.
The world stops.
When you look in his eyes,
there was a void there.
Tears your heart out.
But you have to gather yourself
because you have a job to do.
We're going to find out who did this.
There was evidence all over that house.
They found a head hair
in Ms. Eastburn's bed.
They found a head hair on Kara's chest.
They found a pubic hair
at the scene of the rape.
They found fingerprints all over the house
They had bloody footprints.
They had a semen sample.
They were certain that physical evidence
would lead them to
whoever killed this family.
After walking through the house,
Gary Eastburn also
provided a tantalizing lead.
They were going to move to England
when Captain Eastburn
got done with training
in Alabama.
The family had decided to sell their dog.
So they put an ad out in
their local Fort Bragg Bee.
And Katie Eastburn wrote
a letter to her husband
saying a nice man came out
Tuesday night and got the dog.
We had no idea who it was,
- but anybody who went in and out
of that house, - we wanted to talk to.
Outside the crime scene,
someone approached investigators
with critical information
from the night of the murders.
There was a young black male,
named Patrick Cone.
He had been coming
from his girlfriend's house
Thursday night about
2:00 a.m. in the morning.
He saw a big white dude
walking down the driveway.
He had blond hair. About 6'2 ", 6'3".
And he had on a "Members
Only" black jacket, a stocking cap
and he had a mustache.
When they passed on the road,
- this person said, "I'm getting an early
- start this morning".
He got into a white Chevette,
and drove off.
I took Pat down to the SBI lab.
And they did a composite.
And I said, "You sure he looked like this?"
I said,"This guy's got he's
got a black man's nose,
and he's got this droopy, lazy eye."
And he said, "That's what I saw."
Six days after the murders,
- police put out a call for the man
who adopted - the Eastburn's dog.
Army Sergeant, Timothy Hennis,
home for lunch with his wife,
daughter and new dog,
heard it on the news.
Tim Hennis' wife, Angela,
said, "Hey, buddy, that's you."
So they immediately...
packed up and went to
the Sheriff's Department.
As I walk into the office,
Hennis is sitting there.
I stopped...
right in my tracks.
And I look at him,
and I look at that composite,
and I said, "Oh, my goodness,
this is our man right here."
They go find Patrick Cone.
And they put together a photo lineup.
He eventually settled on number two...
which, he bet, Tim Hennis.
Said, "Are you sure?" He said, "I'm sure."
- He also, in the parking lot,
picked Tim Hennis' - white Chevette out,
And said, "That's the car I saw."
Hennis is still in the
Sheriff's department.
He was being cooperative.
They wanted samples of his hair,
his blood, his saliva, which he gave.
About midway through,
he realized he was becoming a suspect
and he was getting madder and madder,
and madder.
- He is the most arrogant human
being I've ever - seen in my life.
He just felt like, "You can't touch me."
Well, yes, we will touch you.
We reached out and touched him.
At 1:00 a.m., Sheriffs arrested
Timothy Hennis.
They charged him with
rape and capital murder.
He would face the death penalty.
The arrest of a sergeant from
the nation's largest Army base
sent shock waves through
the tight-knit community
around fort Bragg.
Fayetteville bills itself as the most
patriotic city in the country.
If someone is murdered out of the blue,
that just...
That stirs the blood in Fayetteville.
Any idea who would do this?
Well, she was getting some
strange phone calls that she...
Julie! Don't be giving no ideas
who did something!
I ain't giving no ideas about...
Would you... Just look...
They get outraged. Justice must be done.
To defend their son,
Tim Hennis' parents hired
two young lawyers,
Gerry Beaver and Billy Richardson.
I thought Tim was guilty
as all get out. And so...
I didn't particularly care for Tim.
But the law school I went
to stressed the importance
of taking unpopular cases.
In the days immediately afterwards,
the news got worse for Tim Hennis.
He had no alibi.
Angela Hennis was out of town all weekend.
On Saturday morning,
he dragged a barrel out
in the middle of the backyard
and started burning stuff.
Something his neighbors
had never seen him do before.
I don't know what it was,
but it was something he burned.
Lady who owns a cleaners
- called us and she said, "That man that
- you all have arrested
Brought that black "Members Only" jacket
into my cleaners on Friday.
Doesn't it look suspicious to you?
Katie Eastburn's stolen bankcard
- had been used twice, on Friday night
- and Saturday morning,
$150 each time.
They found that Tim
Hennis was late on his rent
for the tune of about $300,
which he paid on Monday.
We really thought he was guilty.
- And there was a lot of physical evidence
- that was being tested.
And if some physical evidence
came back to Tim, he was dead.
And so we wanted to come
in ahead of time and get him to
plead before that came out.
But to Richardson's surprise,
Hennis refused to consider a plea deal.
- Tim said something that haunted
me. He looked - at us and he said,
"They can test whatever they want.
I was not in that house. I did not do it."
And it's just that simple.
And when the lab reports with blood type,
footprints, and fingerprints came back,
they corroborated Hennis' account.
- The physical evidence had not matched Tim Hennis.
- None of it had.
Inconclusive or negative,
inconclusive or negative.
There wasn't a shred of physical evidence
that was linking Tim to the crime.
Billy's viewpoint then became,
- he must get this man exonerated - 'cause
I believe him. Someone other than my client
Committed this crime.
From that point on, I was totally convinced
he was innocent.
But even without physical evidence linking
him to the crime,
Tim Hennis was about
to go on trial for his life.
Before he adopted the Eastburn's dog
in May of 1985,
Sergeant Tim Hennis had
a steady job in the military
and a growing daughter he was devoted to.
Then Hennis was arrested
for the brutal murder
of Katie Eastburn
and her two little girls,
aged five and three.
Hennis' lawyer had come
to believe in his innocence.
I was totally convinced, watching him
interact with Angela.
'Cause they do have a beautiful marriage.
And watching him with his daughter.
Tim is extremely good with children.
I remember with my children,
how good he was.
Of the fingerprints, blood, and semen found
at the crime scene,
None of it linked to Hennis.
Down here,
we didn't have the-the-the equipment
and the facilities that they have up north.
We had no DNA down here
when this crime occurred.
I would have liked to
have had a fingerprint.
He left his shoe or dropped something
that we can tie him to it.
- But I thought we had enough
to justify the case - and the trial.
The trial began on May 27, 1986.
Everybody wanted in in that courtroom.
The bailiffs, a couple of times,
had to break up fistfights.
The prosecutors called it "The Show."
They wanted to emphasize
how gruesome the murder was.
So they built a screen
that took up the whole wall.
And they took slides of
Kara and Erin Eastburn,
five and three-year-old girls,
on an autopsy table.
Splayed out, with no clothes...
Tim is sitting there going, "What do I do?"
If he acts like it's not bothering him,
he looks like he's a cold-blooded killer.
And if he gets emotionally upset,
he looks like he's expressing guilt.
What can he do?
This went on for two days.
Slide after slide after slide.
It felt like I was in a
slam-dunk competition
with Michael Jordan.
Prosecutor William VanStory told the Jury
that Hennis' motive had been sex.
Tim Hennis' wife was out of town,
had a new baby.
So he decided to make a pass at
- the married mother of three
from whom he had - gotten the dog.
And that didn't go well.
Hennis thinks he's a player.
So Ms. Eastburn said,
"No. You read this wrong.
I'm just a friendly person."
And then, with that temper of his,
he lost it.
Billy Richardson emphasized the lack of
physical evidence to the Jury.
But prosecutors argued
the absence of blood on
Hennis' "Members Only" jacket
was evidence of his guilt.
They kept saying there was
no blood because he took his
jacket to the dry cleaners.
The jacket was a damning piece of evidence.
Richardson also undercut
eyewitness Pat Cone,
who ID'd Hennis leaving the Eastburn home.
Richardson videotaped
Pat Cone during a tour of
the crime scene.
- When you start listening to his story,
- he's all over the place.
You bought her
some roses on a Sunday?
No, no,
no. That wasn't roses. That was some candy.
No it wasn't, that was roses.
We started asking,
"Are you sure about this?"
- He goes, "Now that I'm looking at it, you're
right, I couldn't - have seen what I said I saw."
Well, no, no, no, I can't say that.
But on the witness stand,
Cone cast aside any doubts.
Cone said,
"These lawyers have been tricking me.
- They've been pressuring me. I
know I've picked out - the right guy."
Finally, prosecutors presented
a surprise witness,
A woman who said that
two days after the murder,
she'd seen the killer
using Katie Eastburn's
stolen bank card.
All of a sudden,
the State introduced Lucille Cook.
A little old lady who used
a card on Saturday morning
after the killer did.
She had told us she couldn't remember.
She said, "I didn't tell the truth
the first time.
There was a big, tall white man,
mustache, blond-headed guy,
and he got into that little old,
tiny, white car."
"That's the man that used
the card right before I did."
- And she's pointing at Tim Hennis and
the jury's sitting there - looking at her.
- After she testified, I went into
the bathroom - and just threw up.
The jury deliberated for three days.
It was a 4:45 p.m. on Friday afternoon
when the Jury knocked.
He was guilty on three counts.
He would get the death penalty,
times three.
Tim Hennis could hear his father sobbing
in the courtroom.
He'd never heard that before.
When that jury said he's guilty,
you still had faith that
he was telling the truth?
Always.
Never once...
REPORTER: Not a doubt in your mind?
No, never.
At that time,
I felt like I did work for God.
We got our man. And it just felt good.
This is the one case
that truly screamed out
for the death penalty.
Tim Hennis had spent his entire career
serving the military.
Now he was serving time on death row.
But not long after his arrival,
Hennis received a mysterious letter.
It said, "Mr. Hennis, I did the crime,
you're doing the time.
Mr. X."
The letter provided no concrete leads,
only adding to Hennis' torment.
He got visits from his family,
and his daughter is now
two and a half years old.
And she would bang her
hands on the plexiglass
and say "Open it, Daddy, open it.
Why won't it open?"
Billy Richardson felt responsible for his
client's predicament.
We did not do as good a job
as we were capable of doing.
I made up my mind right then and there
I was going to become the
lawyer I'm supposed to be.
And I got off my butt and went to work.
Richardson and his partner
quickly filed an appeal
to the North Carolina
Supreme Court.
They had to decide what to emphasize,
from mishandling
evidence to possible perjury.
They quickly settled on the photographs.
That presentation was
thought to have riled up the jury.
It was pointed at him over and over.
See this picture He did it.
Our state Supreme Court
didn't just read the appeal briefs,
they got a slide projector and saw the show
for themselves.
And within 22 days,
they said, "Let's give him another trial."
It just broke all of our hearts,
'cause we had to call Gary and say,
"You got to go through this one more time."
Billy Richardson
re-investigated every aspect
of the case.
We were so much better
prepared for the second trial.
When started digging,
we found how many things we didn't know
at the first trial.
Richardson began with Hennis' alibi for
the night after the murder.
When someone used
Katie Eastburn's bank card.
Tim Hennis had 24-hour
duty at Fort Bragg with his unit.
He couldn't leave.
- The people in his division remembered
him gluing - shingles on a doll house
For his infant daughter.
- But Army paperwork that would've
confirmed - Hennis' whereabouts
Had gone missing before the first trial.
In the Army, paperwork's everything.
They have paperwork for paperwork.
We looked for that thing and looked for it
and there was a checkout
sheet for every day, but that day.
And so the prosecutor had a field day.
But before he second trial,
Richardson discovered why
the paperwork had gone missing.
- The reason they couldn't find it
is 'cause - the prosecutors had it.
They didn't make a copy of it and leave it,
they just took it.
And so this piece of evidence
that probably would have
exonerated him in 1986,
was kept in the prosecutor's
custody all that time.
Richardson had also uncovered information
that would undermine eyewitness, Pat Cone.
Pat Cone had helped
him out in between trials.
He was arrested using a stolen bankcard.
On another occasion, Patrick Cone was
drinking and disruptive
and the State dropped the case.
He was known to tell people
that the State couldn't
touch him 'cause he was
a prime witness.
Pat is not a strong-willed person.
Nice guy, don't misunderstand me,
but he got in a little
bit of trouble there,
but they were just minor things.
Still, Richardson wasn't sure he could
convince the jury that
Cone had lied about seeing Hennis...
until a new piece of evidence was found...
literally lying on the sidewalk.
As defense attorney,
Billy Richardson, prepared for
the re-trial of Tim Hennis,
new evidence turned
upon a Fayetteville sidewalk.
The deputy who picked up the wallet,
noted that it had a letter in it.
And we kept hearing that the letter said
Tim didn't do it.
You keep hearing rumors like that.
Billy goes to the sheriff's department,
and has to pretend he's
investigating another case
'cause if he let on he
was investigating this case,
it would've set off bells and whistles.
And sure enough,
the lost wallet belonged to
a fellow named Sean Buckner.
Sean Buckner was a
close friend of Pat Cone,
the prosecutor's star witness.
The letter in Buckner's lost wallet
called Cone's testimony into question.
That letter talks about Pat's doubts.
Pat Cone had told Sean Buckner
and his fiance about his doubts.
To the point where they wrote
each other a letter about it.
Richardson flew to Louisiana,
where Buckner was in
training for the Air Force.
But when he got there,
Buckner closed the door in his face.
He didn't want to get involved.
Sean Buckner had a dilemma
of whether to betray his friends
- and help free someone who may
be wrongly accused of - triple murder.
And that was a tough one.
Sean Buckner had no
reason to help Tim Hennis.
Richardson came home empty-handed,
hoping Buckner would
eventually change his mind.
The re-trial of Timothy Hennis began on
February 27, 1989.
Almost four years after the brutal murders
of Gary Eastburn's wife and daughters.
The State went into it thinking it'd be
a replay of trial one
Meanwhile,
the Defense had an entirely different case.
This time, Hennis would testify.
We'd just really drill him and film him
and let him watch it.
Did you kill these three people?
No, I did not kill these people.
I have a daughter of my own
and I could not hurt any children at all.
Did you do this crime?
No, I did not.
We felt if Tim showed rage or emotion,
- the jury would say, "Well, look, there,
you see, - he can get to that point."
- Extremely upset and angry.
On cross examination, the prosecutor
confronted Hennis
with the alleged motive for the murder.
The Prosecutor says, "You lost your cool,
and went in there,
tried to have sex with her,
and when she refused,
you snapped and killed her."
They were trying to provoke Tim Hennis
on the stand.
And he had to calmly say,
"No, I didn't. No, I did not."
He said, "I never had sex with that woman.
That never happened."
And when it was over, they hadn't gotten
the reaction they wanted to...
To see him in a different light than
the first jury had seen him.
It made a huge difference.
At the first trial, the absence of blood
on Hennis' jacket had helped convict him,
as the state's expert
insisted dry cleaning had
removed any blood stains.
But Richardson saw it differently.
When I talked to the dry cleaner, he said,
"You have to use a special chemical
to remove blood."
And I said, "Well,
did you use it in this case?"
He says,
"No. I just used ordinary dry cleaning."
And when the prosecution challenged
the dry cleaner's knowledge,
Richardson was ready with his own expert.
This chemist got a "Members Only" jacket,
put some blood on it
and took the jacket to a dry cleaner,
and ran a Luminol test on the jacket.
And it glowed just as bright as can be.
"There's the blood. Still there."
Hennis' "Members-only" jacket
on the other hand, had no signs of blood.
- Richardson had turned the
Prosecution's evidence - against them.
Richardson was also
prepared for Lucille Cook,
who swore she saw Hennis at an ATM
two days after the murder.
Lucille Cook had made dozens and dozens and
dozens of ATM transactions
around the time of this one.
- So they asked her could she remember
- any of those.
And of course she could not.
- Bank logs also showed a three and half
- minute gap
Between the victim's card being used
and Lucille Cook's transaction.
Well, that doesn't seem like a lot of time
until you sit there and time it.
We had the jury sit there
to see how long it was.
It was the longest
three and a half minutes.
Why would the killer wait
three and a half minutes
till someone sees him?
One of the jurors said
they got in the jury room
and laughed at her.
Now it was time for Richardson to go after
the state's star witness,
Pat Cone.
After some soul-searching,
Sean Buckner agreed to
testify against his old friend.
He testified that Pat Cone
was extremely drunk that night.
In addition to that,
he had doubts about what he saw.
Patrick had told Sean Buckner,
"I feel like I'm sending
an innocent man to prison."
But Richardson knew he had to answer
one last question.
- In the back of their mind, the jury's
still saying, - "Well, the kid saw something.
If it wasn't your client, who was it?"
So Richardson called his next witness.
The back doors burst open
and everyone in the courtroom
turned and looked around.
The Prosecutor says, "Who is that?"
That was as close to a Perry Mason moment
as I've ever had.
And the lead detective goes,
"We're in trouble."
Defense attorney Billy Richardson had
always wondered,
if wasn't Tim Hennis,
who did eyewitness Pat Cone
see near the Eastburn's home
on the night of the murders.
Billy was going door to door,
interviewing every neighbor.
- And a couple that said, "Why don't you
talk to that kid - who walks the street?"
She goes, "I see that fellow all the time.
He walks the neighborhood all the time."
They didn't know who he
was. And so Billy did a vigil.
It became this quest
for this mythical figure
of "The Walker".
You cannot win your
case sitting in your office.
So I sat out there for six weeks.
Richardson even hoped he might find
the real perpetrator.
But he came up empty-handed.
Then, before the second trial,
Richardson hired an investigator to
renew the search.
And finally, they found their mystery man.
No murderer, but a high school senior
who worked at the local supermarket.
A kid by the name of John Raupach
lived down the street from the Eastburn's.
He was an uneasy sleeper,
and he had a habit of
walking the neighborhood
on Summer Hill Road at
3:00 a.m. in the morning.
He was a big blond kid
with a blond mustache.
It just fit. It just fit like a glove.
During the retrial,
Richardson kept his discovery
from the Prosecution,
timing the mystery walker's
entrance for maximum impact.
The back doors burst open.
"Defense calls John Raupach."
And at 3:30 a.m. in the morning,
you couldn't help but think,
"Now, could that have been who
Patrick Cone saw on the road?"
Here's another tall white guy, blond,
walking down the street
Oh, it was effective.
- It was just one of those magical moments
- in the courtroom.
The Walker gave that jury a reason to have
reasonable doubt.
They gave them a reason to say,
"It wasn't Tim."
When the walker took the stand,
Richardson asked what
he wore on his nightly walks
down Summer Hill road.
He often wore a beanie hat,
and he had a, uh, "Members Only" jacket.
A black "Members Only" jacket.
After the walker's testimony,
the defense moved
to have the case thrown out.
Defense accused the
Prosecution of just outright cheating.
Because it turned out the
Prosecutors knew exactly
who John Raupach was.
The state had found
the guy and had basically
hid him from us.
As the jury began deliberating,
Richardson told the judge
what he'd discovered about
the Prosecution's conduct.
A deputy sheriff went to John Raupach
and brought him in.
And they had him bring
his jacket and his hat.
And they took it from him
and put it in the trunk of
one of the detectives' cars.
And they returned it to John Raupach after
Tim Hennis was on death row.
That's exactly the kind of
evidence in a close case
that could've tilted this the other way
in the first trial.
We just got plain mad at that point.
- You get slapped enough, you say,
"All right, - I've had enough of this."
- It just got more incredible to sit in that
courtroom - and watch this thing unfold.
And I went from thinking, "He's guilty",
to "I'm not sure a
jury's going to be able to
find him guilty,"
to, "He didn't do it and
they have to let him go."
And then the jury knocked.
After deliberating less than three hours,
the jury announced its verdict.
Not guilty on all counts.
I just broke down and started crying,
because I knew what they'd been through.
Next to marrying my wife,
next to the birth of my children,
that was probably the
happiest day in my life.
The jurors came out and
they hugged Tim Hennis.
They were adamant that they needed to
re-investigate this case
and quit picking on this guy.
Somebody said,
"Why are they bothering this poor man?
Hasn't he suffered enough?"
Talking about Hennis!
"Why are they bothering this poor man?
Has he not suffered enough?"
A man that killed two children and a woman!
How much did Gary suffer?
The rest of his life.
Whether you like it or not,
Tim is our client
and if he dies, we live with it.
In the years that followed,
the Hennis case became
a textbook example of
wrongful prosecution.
Scott Whisnant's book about
the case was even adapted
into a TV movie.
With this case people
noticed that not everybody
sitting in prison is guilty.
North Carolina now has a commission
that actually has released a
number of innocent people.
Despite all the attention
to Hennis' acquittal,
the Eastburn murders would
go unsolved for another 16 years.
Until 2005,
when Scott Whisnant spoke about the case
at a criminology seminar.
- Fayetteville detective Larry Trotter was
- in the audience.
- The premise was that here were all
these other - unknowns that were out there,
People that potentially maybe
not have been interviewed,
other forms of evidence.
If he's innocent, then who's guilty?
- The State of North Carolina
didn't pursue this - for 17 years.
Why isn't somebody
trying to find who's guilty?
Somebody was stalking that woman...
For weeks,
Ms. Eastburn was writing her husband,
saying,
"There is a fool out there following me.
I don't like it.
What do I do about it?"
Why isn't that being looked at?
Who does it lead to?
After Whisnant discussed the evidence,
Detective Trotter approached him privately.
He said, "I just want you to know
that the way they investigated
this case 20 years ago,
we're not like that anymore."
And I said,
"Somebody should re-investigate this case.
I think it can be solved
now. Technology's improved."
And that's how we left it.
In fact,
Trotter had been assigned by the Sheriff's
office to review cold cases.
We had well over 100 unsolved cases
at that time.
As I went through the docket,
I realized that they had
a vaginal swab
that was taken from Ms. Eastburn
during the autopsy.
It had never been sent off for testing.
When the murder happened,
DNA was in its infancy,
so the obvious thing to do
was to send it off for testing.
For over two decades, Gary Eastburn had
lived without closure
for the devastating murder
of his wife and two daughters.
We'd done a great injustice to this man.
How he stood up or withstood,
I just don't know.
You just wanted to do something for him.
You want to make sure
that you get this solved.
In May, 2006,
The state crime lab contacted
the Sheriff's Department.
They'd found a positive match for the DNA.
Detective Bittle called Gary Eastburn
to tell him the news.
I said, "You sitting down?"
He said, "Yeah. What's going... Why?"
I said, "Take a deep seat.
I got something to tell you"
After Tim Hennis was
freed from death row in 1989,
he didn't know where to turn.
You feel very diminished.
Very worn out, dragged out.
Don't have the self-confidence
or reliability that you had.
His lawyers told him,
"Get out of the Army."
It's just a bad place to be."
But he'd been on death row.
There weren't a lot of employers
who would take that on.
The Army had to take
him back. So he stayed in.
After readjusting to Army life,
Tim Hennis built a successful
25-year career in the military.
Tim Hennis served in Somalia,
he served in Desert Storm...
honorably.
Tim's supervising colonel
told me he was without a doubt
the best NCO he ever worked with.
He retired in 2004.
He was good at being a husband and father.
He and Angela had a son
- that they never would've had,
had he not gotten his life - back together.
But Tim Hennis had no idea
Eastburn murder case was
about to break wide open.
In 2006,
a 21-year-old rape kit
yielded new DNA results.
Detective Robert Bittle
- called the victims' husband and father,
Gary Eastburn, - to give the news.
I said, "They got a hit on that DNA."
He said, "Who is it?"
I said, "Hennis."
You could have knocked
me over with a feather
when I got that call.
- Just hit with this wave of emotion, I
was just like, - "God, I don't believe it."
I was so happy. I mean...
I was walking on Cloud 9.
Defense lawyer, Billy Richardson
was driving through Mississippi
when he heard the news.
I said, "Stop the car."
And...
it was just like somebody had
taken a two by four and hit me
upside the head with it.
I was convinced that if
anybody could ever run
an actual DNA on that sample,
they would find someone
other than Tim Hennis.
I believed that in every fiber of my being.
But the shocking DNA results led to
a pragmatic question.
What the heck do you do now?
Timothy Hennis had
been adjudicated not guilty.
- Therefore the State of North
Carolina wasn't going - to try him again.
We fought a revolutionary war
because the king of England
could try somebody over and over
for the same offense.
And our founders put it in the Constitution
that there will be no double
jeopardy in this country.
Well, I understand that,
but I think there might be
certain cases like this...
You've got this DNA now
that says he was the man who
raped this woman and killed her.
I think you should be
able to. I think somehow,
the judicial system is going to
have to workaround that.
And it was the DA's office
who decided to see if the Army is
- interested in bringing him back off
retirement and - trying him for the murders.
A team of lawyers from the ranks
helped evaluate the case
for the army.
My personal opinion about
why this is important to the military
is that military sent
Gary Eastburn for duty
in Alabama.
And his family was left behind.
And they were murdered.
I'm sure there was a
debate within the military.
It's high-profile, it's controversial,
but you had an enlisted
person killing an officer's wife.
How do you let that go?
Two years after he retired,
Timothy Hennis was recalled to act of duty.
As soon as he returned to Fort Bragg,
Hennis was charged with
three counts of murder.
Tim Hennis is the only
person in United States history,
who's been tried for his life three times,
after guilty and not guilty verdicts.
I can't comment as to why
it has not happened before,
however, the legal analysis of it,
actually was pretty simple.
It is honestly a well settled law,
nothing a state does
affects what the federal government can do.
- They can claim it's under a
different jurisdiction - all they want,
This was the state of North Carolina
using the army to get to
do what they wanted to do.
Plain and simple.
Billy Richardson now on the sidelines,
the court martial of
Timothy Hennis commenced
on March 17, 2010.
The Prosecutor's case
hinged on the DNA results.
The sperm found in the
vagina of Ms. Kathryn Eastburn
- is the person who raped and
slaughtered her - and her children.
And that's Timothy Hennis'.
But when a scandal
erupted at the state lab,
the DNA evidence against
Timothy Hennis would be
thrown into question.
They were mixing up DNA samples
and almost put an innocent guy in prison.
In 2010,
Timothy Hennis went
on trial for a third time
for the murders of Katie Eastburn
and her daughters.
But a scandal rocked
the state lab that identified
Hennis' DNA.
The lab had been skewing results
to help Prosecutors.
The woman who handled
the sample back in the 80s
got in trouble for mixing up...
some DNA samples in another case,
And almost put an innocent guy in prison.
They didn't do a good job
of preserving the evidence.
Three people have been
arrested for evidence tampering.
Hennis' Lawyers asked for postponement
to investigate the lab.
The judge refused.
Meanwhile, military prosecutors
found a second smear from the rape kit.
They sent it to a new lab,
and the results also pointed
to Hennis.
The medical examiner's slide
came back on every marker...
to the defendant.
Tested by Army USACIL, the crime lab.
You had two chains of custody.
The defense could not attack the slide.
For Prosecutors, the DNA results swept away
all previous doubts.
They went back and
replayed the first two trials,
some of the old discredited inferences.
Patrick Cone seeing Timothy Hennis coming
down that driveway.
The fact that Master Sergeant Hennis
took a "Member's Only"
jacket to the dry cleaners.
Using the ATM card.
You had numerous pieces
of evidence that tied him
to this crime.
For Hennis' defenders the Prosecution's
case had serious flaws.
- And their top priority was getting
their own evidence - in front of the jury.
There's a ton of physical
evidence in that house that
they still can't explain.
They found a head hair
in Ms. Eastburn's bed...
that's not Tim Hennis'.
There's a pubic hair right
where the rape took place.
What is male DNA doing
under Mrs. Eastburn's fingernails
that's not Tim's?
There is male DNA under
the daughter's fingernail
and it's not Tim's.
The prosecution and defense agreed on that.
Nothing else came back to Timothy Hennis
Underneath the fingernails?
That's not Timothy Hennis'.
But what is that vaginal swab?
To me, the male DNA evidence
under a fingernail of a woman
who is raped...
is pretty damaging evidence.
Who is it?
The fingernail scrapings weren't enough
for a full DNA profile.
So the defense asked to test
- all the crime-scene evidence that
might point to - a different perpetrator,
Including a blood-soaked towel.
Now whoever had sex with
her didn't necessarily kill her.
But you can't argue that
whoever cleaned up the blood,
did have something to with it.
Let's find out what happened.
In the military, if you need a test done,
you have to ask the judge to
make the army do it for you.
The judge, though,
denied the defense's request to
test other items.
I can't imagine a judge in a civilian court
not allowing that.
You had the evidence. Why not test it?
Without DNA results pointing to
a different suspect,
Hennis' lawyers decided to offer
an alternate explanation
for the incriminating sperm.
At the very end,
they threw out there the theory that
Tim Hennis had consensual
sex with Mrs. Eastburn...
within a day or so of the homicides.
Well, when he said that,
you could feel the love leaving that room
I mean, everybody went,
"I don't believe he said that."
I mean, there's certain things
you can do in front of a jury,
and there's certain things you can't.
It would not have been
how I would have done it.
The 14-person court-martial jury
declared unanimously...
that Timothy Hennis was guilty
of murdering Katie Eastburn
and her children.
Their next task would be to
decide whether Hennis deserved
the Death Penalty.
When you got a man that, for 25 years
after this occurred,
did nothing, but raise his family,
serve in two wars,
honorably discharged,
and still married to the same woman,
- why are you just going to look and say,
- "That's the monster"?
He leads the prayers at church.
He gives cookies to kids. It
doesn't make any difference.
We're not there to say,
"How could he do it?"
We're not there to say, "why did he do it?"
We're there to say, "he did it.
The Prosecution ended
their presentation with
another slide show show.
Gary Eastburn counted out...
the birthdays he's missed...
with his daughters,
anniversaries,
baptism...
One of my trial partners asked Gary,
"What do you miss the most?"
- And he, just from his heart,
with tears in his eyes, - just said,
"I just miss them."
On April 15, 2010,
the jury sentenced Timothy Hennis to death.
Do I feel vindicated for
some things you heard
when they got a "not guilty"?
When the smiles and smirks
you see from certain people?
You're damn right I do. Yes, sir, I do.
I feel vindicated.
Tim Hennis now,
sits in solitary confinement
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
His appeals,
both in the military and Federal Courts
could take decades.
I still think Tim's innocent.
But I'm not his lawyer now.
- And it would be totally improper for me
- to sit down and say,
"All right, Tim, did you or didn't you?"
I'm dying to have that
conversation with him.
But how can you put a
man to death based solely on
one piece of evidence?
Our country was formed on the premise that
one person wrongly
convicted is a grave injustice.
I don't know what the
outcome of this is going to be.
But this is a good case.
I knew we were right.
A triple murder of unimaginable brutality.
This is the one case
that truly screamed out
for the death penalty.
- An accused soldier who can't
even convince - his own lawyer...
I thought Tim was guilty as all get out.
Until the Prosecution's case falls apart.
- The state's primary witness said, "I feel
like I'm sending - an innocent man to prison."
And a shocking twist makes legal history.
Take a deep seat. I got something to tell.
There's a body in the water
He was butchered and murdered!
Many people proclaimed their innocence.
In this case, there are a number of
things that stink.
This man is remorseless
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
Mother's Day, 1985.
It was a beautiful day in Fayetteville,
North Carolina.
The dogwoods are blooming.
Little rolling hills.
- Neighbors know each other. Of course,
they're all - military families.
It's within a mile of the
Fort Bragg base itself.
But on Summerhill Road
something seemed amiss at the home of
the Eastburn family.
A neighbor noticed that the newspapers
in Kate Eastburn's driveway were piling up.
And he knew that her
husband was out of town.
So, that naturally raised his curiosity.
He went and peeked in the window
and heard the baby crying.
And then he called the authorities.
I received a call from um, dispatch.
It was a homicide on, um, Summerhill Road.
When I got there, there was one deputy who
had been in the building.
His eyes had teared up. He was kind of
holding his hat down, shaking his head.
And he said, "I, I,
I just... I don't understand this."
The baby was taken to safety,
and Detective Bittle and his partner
entered the house.
As we went down the hallway, on the bedroom
on the left-hand side,
the first daughter was in there
and she was in the first grade.
She was still in bed,
- and she had her "Star Wars" blanket
- pulled up around her neck.
And she was stabbed ten times.
You could see the stab
wounds through the blanket.
We went further to the master bedroom.
The youngest child was laying there.
She was on her back.
Her throat had been
cut. Almost decapitated.
And on the right-hand side,
facing the bed, was the mother.
The bra was up around her neck.
Her panties had been cut off of her.
She had 14 stab wounds.
The victims were Katie Eastburn, age 32,
Kara, age 5,
and Erin, age 3.
For so long after that homicide,
- I, I could close my eyes at night
and I could see - those children.
Katie Eastburn's husband, Gary, was
an Air Force Captain.
He rushed back from training in Alabama.
It's hard to explain.
You just, you just stop.
The world stops.
When you look in his eyes,
there was a void there.
Tears your heart out.
But you have to gather yourself
because you have a job to do.
We're going to find out who did this.
There was evidence all over that house.
They found a head hair
in Ms. Eastburn's bed.
They found a head hair on Kara's chest.
They found a pubic hair
at the scene of the rape.
They found fingerprints all over the house
They had bloody footprints.
They had a semen sample.
They were certain that physical evidence
would lead them to
whoever killed this family.
After walking through the house,
Gary Eastburn also
provided a tantalizing lead.
They were going to move to England
when Captain Eastburn
got done with training
in Alabama.
The family had decided to sell their dog.
So they put an ad out in
their local Fort Bragg Bee.
And Katie Eastburn wrote
a letter to her husband
saying a nice man came out
Tuesday night and got the dog.
We had no idea who it was,
- but anybody who went in and out
of that house, - we wanted to talk to.
Outside the crime scene,
someone approached investigators
with critical information
from the night of the murders.
There was a young black male,
named Patrick Cone.
He had been coming
from his girlfriend's house
Thursday night about
2:00 a.m. in the morning.
He saw a big white dude
walking down the driveway.
He had blond hair. About 6'2 ", 6'3".
And he had on a "Members
Only" black jacket, a stocking cap
and he had a mustache.
When they passed on the road,
- this person said, "I'm getting an early
- start this morning".
He got into a white Chevette,
and drove off.
I took Pat down to the SBI lab.
And they did a composite.
And I said, "You sure he looked like this?"
I said,"This guy's got he's
got a black man's nose,
and he's got this droopy, lazy eye."
And he said, "That's what I saw."
Six days after the murders,
- police put out a call for the man
who adopted - the Eastburn's dog.
Army Sergeant, Timothy Hennis,
home for lunch with his wife,
daughter and new dog,
heard it on the news.
Tim Hennis' wife, Angela,
said, "Hey, buddy, that's you."
So they immediately...
packed up and went to
the Sheriff's Department.
As I walk into the office,
Hennis is sitting there.
I stopped...
right in my tracks.
And I look at him,
and I look at that composite,
and I said, "Oh, my goodness,
this is our man right here."
They go find Patrick Cone.
And they put together a photo lineup.
He eventually settled on number two...
which, he bet, Tim Hennis.
Said, "Are you sure?" He said, "I'm sure."
- He also, in the parking lot,
picked Tim Hennis' - white Chevette out,
And said, "That's the car I saw."
Hennis is still in the
Sheriff's department.
He was being cooperative.
They wanted samples of his hair,
his blood, his saliva, which he gave.
About midway through,
he realized he was becoming a suspect
and he was getting madder and madder,
and madder.
- He is the most arrogant human
being I've ever - seen in my life.
He just felt like, "You can't touch me."
Well, yes, we will touch you.
We reached out and touched him.
At 1:00 a.m., Sheriffs arrested
Timothy Hennis.
They charged him with
rape and capital murder.
He would face the death penalty.
The arrest of a sergeant from
the nation's largest Army base
sent shock waves through
the tight-knit community
around fort Bragg.
Fayetteville bills itself as the most
patriotic city in the country.
If someone is murdered out of the blue,
that just...
That stirs the blood in Fayetteville.
Any idea who would do this?
Well, she was getting some
strange phone calls that she...
Julie! Don't be giving no ideas
who did something!
I ain't giving no ideas about...
Would you... Just look...
They get outraged. Justice must be done.
To defend their son,
Tim Hennis' parents hired
two young lawyers,
Gerry Beaver and Billy Richardson.
I thought Tim was guilty
as all get out. And so...
I didn't particularly care for Tim.
But the law school I went
to stressed the importance
of taking unpopular cases.
In the days immediately afterwards,
the news got worse for Tim Hennis.
He had no alibi.
Angela Hennis was out of town all weekend.
On Saturday morning,
he dragged a barrel out
in the middle of the backyard
and started burning stuff.
Something his neighbors
had never seen him do before.
I don't know what it was,
but it was something he burned.
Lady who owns a cleaners
- called us and she said, "That man that
- you all have arrested
Brought that black "Members Only" jacket
into my cleaners on Friday.
Doesn't it look suspicious to you?
Katie Eastburn's stolen bankcard
- had been used twice, on Friday night
- and Saturday morning,
$150 each time.
They found that Tim
Hennis was late on his rent
for the tune of about $300,
which he paid on Monday.
We really thought he was guilty.
- And there was a lot of physical evidence
- that was being tested.
And if some physical evidence
came back to Tim, he was dead.
And so we wanted to come
in ahead of time and get him to
plead before that came out.
But to Richardson's surprise,
Hennis refused to consider a plea deal.
- Tim said something that haunted
me. He looked - at us and he said,
"They can test whatever they want.
I was not in that house. I did not do it."
And it's just that simple.
And when the lab reports with blood type,
footprints, and fingerprints came back,
they corroborated Hennis' account.
- The physical evidence had not matched Tim Hennis.
- None of it had.
Inconclusive or negative,
inconclusive or negative.
There wasn't a shred of physical evidence
that was linking Tim to the crime.
Billy's viewpoint then became,
- he must get this man exonerated - 'cause
I believe him. Someone other than my client
Committed this crime.
From that point on, I was totally convinced
he was innocent.
But even without physical evidence linking
him to the crime,
Tim Hennis was about
to go on trial for his life.
Before he adopted the Eastburn's dog
in May of 1985,
Sergeant Tim Hennis had
a steady job in the military
and a growing daughter he was devoted to.
Then Hennis was arrested
for the brutal murder
of Katie Eastburn
and her two little girls,
aged five and three.
Hennis' lawyer had come
to believe in his innocence.
I was totally convinced, watching him
interact with Angela.
'Cause they do have a beautiful marriage.
And watching him with his daughter.
Tim is extremely good with children.
I remember with my children,
how good he was.
Of the fingerprints, blood, and semen found
at the crime scene,
None of it linked to Hennis.
Down here,
we didn't have the-the-the equipment
and the facilities that they have up north.
We had no DNA down here
when this crime occurred.
I would have liked to
have had a fingerprint.
He left his shoe or dropped something
that we can tie him to it.
- But I thought we had enough
to justify the case - and the trial.
The trial began on May 27, 1986.
Everybody wanted in in that courtroom.
The bailiffs, a couple of times,
had to break up fistfights.
The prosecutors called it "The Show."
They wanted to emphasize
how gruesome the murder was.
So they built a screen
that took up the whole wall.
And they took slides of
Kara and Erin Eastburn,
five and three-year-old girls,
on an autopsy table.
Splayed out, with no clothes...
Tim is sitting there going, "What do I do?"
If he acts like it's not bothering him,
he looks like he's a cold-blooded killer.
And if he gets emotionally upset,
he looks like he's expressing guilt.
What can he do?
This went on for two days.
Slide after slide after slide.
It felt like I was in a
slam-dunk competition
with Michael Jordan.
Prosecutor William VanStory told the Jury
that Hennis' motive had been sex.
Tim Hennis' wife was out of town,
had a new baby.
So he decided to make a pass at
- the married mother of three
from whom he had - gotten the dog.
And that didn't go well.
Hennis thinks he's a player.
So Ms. Eastburn said,
"No. You read this wrong.
I'm just a friendly person."
And then, with that temper of his,
he lost it.
Billy Richardson emphasized the lack of
physical evidence to the Jury.
But prosecutors argued
the absence of blood on
Hennis' "Members Only" jacket
was evidence of his guilt.
They kept saying there was
no blood because he took his
jacket to the dry cleaners.
The jacket was a damning piece of evidence.
Richardson also undercut
eyewitness Pat Cone,
who ID'd Hennis leaving the Eastburn home.
Richardson videotaped
Pat Cone during a tour of
the crime scene.
- When you start listening to his story,
- he's all over the place.
You bought her
some roses on a Sunday?
No, no,
no. That wasn't roses. That was some candy.
No it wasn't, that was roses.
We started asking,
"Are you sure about this?"
- He goes, "Now that I'm looking at it, you're
right, I couldn't - have seen what I said I saw."
Well, no, no, no, I can't say that.
But on the witness stand,
Cone cast aside any doubts.
Cone said,
"These lawyers have been tricking me.
- They've been pressuring me. I
know I've picked out - the right guy."
Finally, prosecutors presented
a surprise witness,
A woman who said that
two days after the murder,
she'd seen the killer
using Katie Eastburn's
stolen bank card.
All of a sudden,
the State introduced Lucille Cook.
A little old lady who used
a card on Saturday morning
after the killer did.
She had told us she couldn't remember.
She said, "I didn't tell the truth
the first time.
There was a big, tall white man,
mustache, blond-headed guy,
and he got into that little old,
tiny, white car."
"That's the man that used
the card right before I did."
- And she's pointing at Tim Hennis and
the jury's sitting there - looking at her.
- After she testified, I went into
the bathroom - and just threw up.
The jury deliberated for three days.
It was a 4:45 p.m. on Friday afternoon
when the Jury knocked.
He was guilty on three counts.
He would get the death penalty,
times three.
Tim Hennis could hear his father sobbing
in the courtroom.
He'd never heard that before.
When that jury said he's guilty,
you still had faith that
he was telling the truth?
Always.
Never once...
REPORTER: Not a doubt in your mind?
No, never.
At that time,
I felt like I did work for God.
We got our man. And it just felt good.
This is the one case
that truly screamed out
for the death penalty.
Tim Hennis had spent his entire career
serving the military.
Now he was serving time on death row.
But not long after his arrival,
Hennis received a mysterious letter.
It said, "Mr. Hennis, I did the crime,
you're doing the time.
Mr. X."
The letter provided no concrete leads,
only adding to Hennis' torment.
He got visits from his family,
and his daughter is now
two and a half years old.
And she would bang her
hands on the plexiglass
and say "Open it, Daddy, open it.
Why won't it open?"
Billy Richardson felt responsible for his
client's predicament.
We did not do as good a job
as we were capable of doing.
I made up my mind right then and there
I was going to become the
lawyer I'm supposed to be.
And I got off my butt and went to work.
Richardson and his partner
quickly filed an appeal
to the North Carolina
Supreme Court.
They had to decide what to emphasize,
from mishandling
evidence to possible perjury.
They quickly settled on the photographs.
That presentation was
thought to have riled up the jury.
It was pointed at him over and over.
See this picture He did it.
Our state Supreme Court
didn't just read the appeal briefs,
they got a slide projector and saw the show
for themselves.
And within 22 days,
they said, "Let's give him another trial."
It just broke all of our hearts,
'cause we had to call Gary and say,
"You got to go through this one more time."
Billy Richardson
re-investigated every aspect
of the case.
We were so much better
prepared for the second trial.
When started digging,
we found how many things we didn't know
at the first trial.
Richardson began with Hennis' alibi for
the night after the murder.
When someone used
Katie Eastburn's bank card.
Tim Hennis had 24-hour
duty at Fort Bragg with his unit.
He couldn't leave.
- The people in his division remembered
him gluing - shingles on a doll house
For his infant daughter.
- But Army paperwork that would've
confirmed - Hennis' whereabouts
Had gone missing before the first trial.
In the Army, paperwork's everything.
They have paperwork for paperwork.
We looked for that thing and looked for it
and there was a checkout
sheet for every day, but that day.
And so the prosecutor had a field day.
But before he second trial,
Richardson discovered why
the paperwork had gone missing.
- The reason they couldn't find it
is 'cause - the prosecutors had it.
They didn't make a copy of it and leave it,
they just took it.
And so this piece of evidence
that probably would have
exonerated him in 1986,
was kept in the prosecutor's
custody all that time.
Richardson had also uncovered information
that would undermine eyewitness, Pat Cone.
Pat Cone had helped
him out in between trials.
He was arrested using a stolen bankcard.
On another occasion, Patrick Cone was
drinking and disruptive
and the State dropped the case.
He was known to tell people
that the State couldn't
touch him 'cause he was
a prime witness.
Pat is not a strong-willed person.
Nice guy, don't misunderstand me,
but he got in a little
bit of trouble there,
but they were just minor things.
Still, Richardson wasn't sure he could
convince the jury that
Cone had lied about seeing Hennis...
until a new piece of evidence was found...
literally lying on the sidewalk.
As defense attorney,
Billy Richardson, prepared for
the re-trial of Tim Hennis,
new evidence turned
upon a Fayetteville sidewalk.
The deputy who picked up the wallet,
noted that it had a letter in it.
And we kept hearing that the letter said
Tim didn't do it.
You keep hearing rumors like that.
Billy goes to the sheriff's department,
and has to pretend he's
investigating another case
'cause if he let on he
was investigating this case,
it would've set off bells and whistles.
And sure enough,
the lost wallet belonged to
a fellow named Sean Buckner.
Sean Buckner was a
close friend of Pat Cone,
the prosecutor's star witness.
The letter in Buckner's lost wallet
called Cone's testimony into question.
That letter talks about Pat's doubts.
Pat Cone had told Sean Buckner
and his fiance about his doubts.
To the point where they wrote
each other a letter about it.
Richardson flew to Louisiana,
where Buckner was in
training for the Air Force.
But when he got there,
Buckner closed the door in his face.
He didn't want to get involved.
Sean Buckner had a dilemma
of whether to betray his friends
- and help free someone who may
be wrongly accused of - triple murder.
And that was a tough one.
Sean Buckner had no
reason to help Tim Hennis.
Richardson came home empty-handed,
hoping Buckner would
eventually change his mind.
The re-trial of Timothy Hennis began on
February 27, 1989.
Almost four years after the brutal murders
of Gary Eastburn's wife and daughters.
The State went into it thinking it'd be
a replay of trial one
Meanwhile,
the Defense had an entirely different case.
This time, Hennis would testify.
We'd just really drill him and film him
and let him watch it.
Did you kill these three people?
No, I did not kill these people.
I have a daughter of my own
and I could not hurt any children at all.
Did you do this crime?
No, I did not.
We felt if Tim showed rage or emotion,
- the jury would say, "Well, look, there,
you see, - he can get to that point."
- Extremely upset and angry.
On cross examination, the prosecutor
confronted Hennis
with the alleged motive for the murder.
The Prosecutor says, "You lost your cool,
and went in there,
tried to have sex with her,
and when she refused,
you snapped and killed her."
They were trying to provoke Tim Hennis
on the stand.
And he had to calmly say,
"No, I didn't. No, I did not."
He said, "I never had sex with that woman.
That never happened."
And when it was over, they hadn't gotten
the reaction they wanted to...
To see him in a different light than
the first jury had seen him.
It made a huge difference.
At the first trial, the absence of blood
on Hennis' jacket had helped convict him,
as the state's expert
insisted dry cleaning had
removed any blood stains.
But Richardson saw it differently.
When I talked to the dry cleaner, he said,
"You have to use a special chemical
to remove blood."
And I said, "Well,
did you use it in this case?"
He says,
"No. I just used ordinary dry cleaning."
And when the prosecution challenged
the dry cleaner's knowledge,
Richardson was ready with his own expert.
This chemist got a "Members Only" jacket,
put some blood on it
and took the jacket to a dry cleaner,
and ran a Luminol test on the jacket.
And it glowed just as bright as can be.
"There's the blood. Still there."
Hennis' "Members-only" jacket
on the other hand, had no signs of blood.
- Richardson had turned the
Prosecution's evidence - against them.
Richardson was also
prepared for Lucille Cook,
who swore she saw Hennis at an ATM
two days after the murder.
Lucille Cook had made dozens and dozens and
dozens of ATM transactions
around the time of this one.
- So they asked her could she remember
- any of those.
And of course she could not.
- Bank logs also showed a three and half
- minute gap
Between the victim's card being used
and Lucille Cook's transaction.
Well, that doesn't seem like a lot of time
until you sit there and time it.
We had the jury sit there
to see how long it was.
It was the longest
three and a half minutes.
Why would the killer wait
three and a half minutes
till someone sees him?
One of the jurors said
they got in the jury room
and laughed at her.
Now it was time for Richardson to go after
the state's star witness,
Pat Cone.
After some soul-searching,
Sean Buckner agreed to
testify against his old friend.
He testified that Pat Cone
was extremely drunk that night.
In addition to that,
he had doubts about what he saw.
Patrick had told Sean Buckner,
"I feel like I'm sending
an innocent man to prison."
But Richardson knew he had to answer
one last question.
- In the back of their mind, the jury's
still saying, - "Well, the kid saw something.
If it wasn't your client, who was it?"
So Richardson called his next witness.
The back doors burst open
and everyone in the courtroom
turned and looked around.
The Prosecutor says, "Who is that?"
That was as close to a Perry Mason moment
as I've ever had.
And the lead detective goes,
"We're in trouble."
Defense attorney Billy Richardson had
always wondered,
if wasn't Tim Hennis,
who did eyewitness Pat Cone
see near the Eastburn's home
on the night of the murders.
Billy was going door to door,
interviewing every neighbor.
- And a couple that said, "Why don't you
talk to that kid - who walks the street?"
She goes, "I see that fellow all the time.
He walks the neighborhood all the time."
They didn't know who he
was. And so Billy did a vigil.
It became this quest
for this mythical figure
of "The Walker".
You cannot win your
case sitting in your office.
So I sat out there for six weeks.
Richardson even hoped he might find
the real perpetrator.
But he came up empty-handed.
Then, before the second trial,
Richardson hired an investigator to
renew the search.
And finally, they found their mystery man.
No murderer, but a high school senior
who worked at the local supermarket.
A kid by the name of John Raupach
lived down the street from the Eastburn's.
He was an uneasy sleeper,
and he had a habit of
walking the neighborhood
on Summer Hill Road at
3:00 a.m. in the morning.
He was a big blond kid
with a blond mustache.
It just fit. It just fit like a glove.
During the retrial,
Richardson kept his discovery
from the Prosecution,
timing the mystery walker's
entrance for maximum impact.
The back doors burst open.
"Defense calls John Raupach."
And at 3:30 a.m. in the morning,
you couldn't help but think,
"Now, could that have been who
Patrick Cone saw on the road?"
Here's another tall white guy, blond,
walking down the street
Oh, it was effective.
- It was just one of those magical moments
- in the courtroom.
The Walker gave that jury a reason to have
reasonable doubt.
They gave them a reason to say,
"It wasn't Tim."
When the walker took the stand,
Richardson asked what
he wore on his nightly walks
down Summer Hill road.
He often wore a beanie hat,
and he had a, uh, "Members Only" jacket.
A black "Members Only" jacket.
After the walker's testimony,
the defense moved
to have the case thrown out.
Defense accused the
Prosecution of just outright cheating.
Because it turned out the
Prosecutors knew exactly
who John Raupach was.
The state had found
the guy and had basically
hid him from us.
As the jury began deliberating,
Richardson told the judge
what he'd discovered about
the Prosecution's conduct.
A deputy sheriff went to John Raupach
and brought him in.
And they had him bring
his jacket and his hat.
And they took it from him
and put it in the trunk of
one of the detectives' cars.
And they returned it to John Raupach after
Tim Hennis was on death row.
That's exactly the kind of
evidence in a close case
that could've tilted this the other way
in the first trial.
We just got plain mad at that point.
- You get slapped enough, you say,
"All right, - I've had enough of this."
- It just got more incredible to sit in that
courtroom - and watch this thing unfold.
And I went from thinking, "He's guilty",
to "I'm not sure a
jury's going to be able to
find him guilty,"
to, "He didn't do it and
they have to let him go."
And then the jury knocked.
After deliberating less than three hours,
the jury announced its verdict.
Not guilty on all counts.
I just broke down and started crying,
because I knew what they'd been through.
Next to marrying my wife,
next to the birth of my children,
that was probably the
happiest day in my life.
The jurors came out and
they hugged Tim Hennis.
They were adamant that they needed to
re-investigate this case
and quit picking on this guy.
Somebody said,
"Why are they bothering this poor man?
Hasn't he suffered enough?"
Talking about Hennis!
"Why are they bothering this poor man?
Has he not suffered enough?"
A man that killed two children and a woman!
How much did Gary suffer?
The rest of his life.
Whether you like it or not,
Tim is our client
and if he dies, we live with it.
In the years that followed,
the Hennis case became
a textbook example of
wrongful prosecution.
Scott Whisnant's book about
the case was even adapted
into a TV movie.
With this case people
noticed that not everybody
sitting in prison is guilty.
North Carolina now has a commission
that actually has released a
number of innocent people.
Despite all the attention
to Hennis' acquittal,
the Eastburn murders would
go unsolved for another 16 years.
Until 2005,
when Scott Whisnant spoke about the case
at a criminology seminar.
- Fayetteville detective Larry Trotter was
- in the audience.
- The premise was that here were all
these other - unknowns that were out there,
People that potentially maybe
not have been interviewed,
other forms of evidence.
If he's innocent, then who's guilty?
- The State of North Carolina
didn't pursue this - for 17 years.
Why isn't somebody
trying to find who's guilty?
Somebody was stalking that woman...
For weeks,
Ms. Eastburn was writing her husband,
saying,
"There is a fool out there following me.
I don't like it.
What do I do about it?"
Why isn't that being looked at?
Who does it lead to?
After Whisnant discussed the evidence,
Detective Trotter approached him privately.
He said, "I just want you to know
that the way they investigated
this case 20 years ago,
we're not like that anymore."
And I said,
"Somebody should re-investigate this case.
I think it can be solved
now. Technology's improved."
And that's how we left it.
In fact,
Trotter had been assigned by the Sheriff's
office to review cold cases.
We had well over 100 unsolved cases
at that time.
As I went through the docket,
I realized that they had
a vaginal swab
that was taken from Ms. Eastburn
during the autopsy.
It had never been sent off for testing.
When the murder happened,
DNA was in its infancy,
so the obvious thing to do
was to send it off for testing.
For over two decades, Gary Eastburn had
lived without closure
for the devastating murder
of his wife and two daughters.
We'd done a great injustice to this man.
How he stood up or withstood,
I just don't know.
You just wanted to do something for him.
You want to make sure
that you get this solved.
In May, 2006,
The state crime lab contacted
the Sheriff's Department.
They'd found a positive match for the DNA.
Detective Bittle called Gary Eastburn
to tell him the news.
I said, "You sitting down?"
He said, "Yeah. What's going... Why?"
I said, "Take a deep seat.
I got something to tell you"
After Tim Hennis was
freed from death row in 1989,
he didn't know where to turn.
You feel very diminished.
Very worn out, dragged out.
Don't have the self-confidence
or reliability that you had.
His lawyers told him,
"Get out of the Army."
It's just a bad place to be."
But he'd been on death row.
There weren't a lot of employers
who would take that on.
The Army had to take
him back. So he stayed in.
After readjusting to Army life,
Tim Hennis built a successful
25-year career in the military.
Tim Hennis served in Somalia,
he served in Desert Storm...
honorably.
Tim's supervising colonel
told me he was without a doubt
the best NCO he ever worked with.
He retired in 2004.
He was good at being a husband and father.
He and Angela had a son
- that they never would've had,
had he not gotten his life - back together.
But Tim Hennis had no idea
Eastburn murder case was
about to break wide open.
In 2006,
a 21-year-old rape kit
yielded new DNA results.
Detective Robert Bittle
- called the victims' husband and father,
Gary Eastburn, - to give the news.
I said, "They got a hit on that DNA."
He said, "Who is it?"
I said, "Hennis."
You could have knocked
me over with a feather
when I got that call.
- Just hit with this wave of emotion, I
was just like, - "God, I don't believe it."
I was so happy. I mean...
I was walking on Cloud 9.
Defense lawyer, Billy Richardson
was driving through Mississippi
when he heard the news.
I said, "Stop the car."
And...
it was just like somebody had
taken a two by four and hit me
upside the head with it.
I was convinced that if
anybody could ever run
an actual DNA on that sample,
they would find someone
other than Tim Hennis.
I believed that in every fiber of my being.
But the shocking DNA results led to
a pragmatic question.
What the heck do you do now?
Timothy Hennis had
been adjudicated not guilty.
- Therefore the State of North
Carolina wasn't going - to try him again.
We fought a revolutionary war
because the king of England
could try somebody over and over
for the same offense.
And our founders put it in the Constitution
that there will be no double
jeopardy in this country.
Well, I understand that,
but I think there might be
certain cases like this...
You've got this DNA now
that says he was the man who
raped this woman and killed her.
I think you should be
able to. I think somehow,
the judicial system is going to
have to workaround that.
And it was the DA's office
who decided to see if the Army is
- interested in bringing him back off
retirement and - trying him for the murders.
A team of lawyers from the ranks
helped evaluate the case
for the army.
My personal opinion about
why this is important to the military
is that military sent
Gary Eastburn for duty
in Alabama.
And his family was left behind.
And they were murdered.
I'm sure there was a
debate within the military.
It's high-profile, it's controversial,
but you had an enlisted
person killing an officer's wife.
How do you let that go?
Two years after he retired,
Timothy Hennis was recalled to act of duty.
As soon as he returned to Fort Bragg,
Hennis was charged with
three counts of murder.
Tim Hennis is the only
person in United States history,
who's been tried for his life three times,
after guilty and not guilty verdicts.
I can't comment as to why
it has not happened before,
however, the legal analysis of it,
actually was pretty simple.
It is honestly a well settled law,
nothing a state does
affects what the federal government can do.
- They can claim it's under a
different jurisdiction - all they want,
This was the state of North Carolina
using the army to get to
do what they wanted to do.
Plain and simple.
Billy Richardson now on the sidelines,
the court martial of
Timothy Hennis commenced
on March 17, 2010.
The Prosecutor's case
hinged on the DNA results.
The sperm found in the
vagina of Ms. Kathryn Eastburn
- is the person who raped and
slaughtered her - and her children.
And that's Timothy Hennis'.
But when a scandal
erupted at the state lab,
the DNA evidence against
Timothy Hennis would be
thrown into question.
They were mixing up DNA samples
and almost put an innocent guy in prison.
In 2010,
Timothy Hennis went
on trial for a third time
for the murders of Katie Eastburn
and her daughters.
But a scandal rocked
the state lab that identified
Hennis' DNA.
The lab had been skewing results
to help Prosecutors.
The woman who handled
the sample back in the 80s
got in trouble for mixing up...
some DNA samples in another case,
And almost put an innocent guy in prison.
They didn't do a good job
of preserving the evidence.
Three people have been
arrested for evidence tampering.
Hennis' Lawyers asked for postponement
to investigate the lab.
The judge refused.
Meanwhile, military prosecutors
found a second smear from the rape kit.
They sent it to a new lab,
and the results also pointed
to Hennis.
The medical examiner's slide
came back on every marker...
to the defendant.
Tested by Army USACIL, the crime lab.
You had two chains of custody.
The defense could not attack the slide.
For Prosecutors, the DNA results swept away
all previous doubts.
They went back and
replayed the first two trials,
some of the old discredited inferences.
Patrick Cone seeing Timothy Hennis coming
down that driveway.
The fact that Master Sergeant Hennis
took a "Member's Only"
jacket to the dry cleaners.
Using the ATM card.
You had numerous pieces
of evidence that tied him
to this crime.
For Hennis' defenders the Prosecution's
case had serious flaws.
- And their top priority was getting
their own evidence - in front of the jury.
There's a ton of physical
evidence in that house that
they still can't explain.
They found a head hair
in Ms. Eastburn's bed...
that's not Tim Hennis'.
There's a pubic hair right
where the rape took place.
What is male DNA doing
under Mrs. Eastburn's fingernails
that's not Tim's?
There is male DNA under
the daughter's fingernail
and it's not Tim's.
The prosecution and defense agreed on that.
Nothing else came back to Timothy Hennis
Underneath the fingernails?
That's not Timothy Hennis'.
But what is that vaginal swab?
To me, the male DNA evidence
under a fingernail of a woman
who is raped...
is pretty damaging evidence.
Who is it?
The fingernail scrapings weren't enough
for a full DNA profile.
So the defense asked to test
- all the crime-scene evidence that
might point to - a different perpetrator,
Including a blood-soaked towel.
Now whoever had sex with
her didn't necessarily kill her.
But you can't argue that
whoever cleaned up the blood,
did have something to with it.
Let's find out what happened.
In the military, if you need a test done,
you have to ask the judge to
make the army do it for you.
The judge, though,
denied the defense's request to
test other items.
I can't imagine a judge in a civilian court
not allowing that.
You had the evidence. Why not test it?
Without DNA results pointing to
a different suspect,
Hennis' lawyers decided to offer
an alternate explanation
for the incriminating sperm.
At the very end,
they threw out there the theory that
Tim Hennis had consensual
sex with Mrs. Eastburn...
within a day or so of the homicides.
Well, when he said that,
you could feel the love leaving that room
I mean, everybody went,
"I don't believe he said that."
I mean, there's certain things
you can do in front of a jury,
and there's certain things you can't.
It would not have been
how I would have done it.
The 14-person court-martial jury
declared unanimously...
that Timothy Hennis was guilty
of murdering Katie Eastburn
and her children.
Their next task would be to
decide whether Hennis deserved
the Death Penalty.
When you got a man that, for 25 years
after this occurred,
did nothing, but raise his family,
serve in two wars,
honorably discharged,
and still married to the same woman,
- why are you just going to look and say,
- "That's the monster"?
He leads the prayers at church.
He gives cookies to kids. It
doesn't make any difference.
We're not there to say,
"How could he do it?"
We're not there to say, "why did he do it?"
We're there to say, "he did it.
The Prosecution ended
their presentation with
another slide show show.
Gary Eastburn counted out...
the birthdays he's missed...
with his daughters,
anniversaries,
baptism...
One of my trial partners asked Gary,
"What do you miss the most?"
- And he, just from his heart,
with tears in his eyes, - just said,
"I just miss them."
On April 15, 2010,
the jury sentenced Timothy Hennis to death.
Do I feel vindicated for
some things you heard
when they got a "not guilty"?
When the smiles and smirks
you see from certain people?
You're damn right I do. Yes, sir, I do.
I feel vindicated.
Tim Hennis now,
sits in solitary confinement
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
His appeals,
both in the military and Federal Courts
could take decades.
I still think Tim's innocent.
But I'm not his lawyer now.
- And it would be totally improper for me
- to sit down and say,
"All right, Tim, did you or didn't you?"
I'm dying to have that
conversation with him.
But how can you put a
man to death based solely on
one piece of evidence?
Our country was formed on the premise that
one person wrongly
convicted is a grave injustice.
I don't know what the
outcome of this is going to be.
But this is a good case.
I knew we were right.