mark hawkins and donnie hendrix were being held responsible for vera lawrence s death. partners in life, they were now accused of being partners in crime, facing identical charges of third-degree murder and practicing medicine without a license. the prosecutor was counting on persuading the jury, partly through stories told from the stand by transgendered men, who claimed to know the accused as silicone pumpers. so an open-minded jury was a priority. i wanted people who were open culturally. i was very concerned i would have jurors who wouldn t hear the message because of the messenger. the prosecutor had reason to be doubly anxious about jury selection. because he decided to hold one trial that would be heard by not one but two separate juries. one for hawkins and one for hendrix. may it please the court, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury in his opening statement, prosecutor schinberg downplayed the right sexuality of his case and portrayed the defendants in a way th
they didn t even know their mother was going and getting injections. the lady, as it came down, the lady was a very vain lady. if vera lawrence wanted a voluptuous body, she paid the ultimate price for her vanity. a few days after vera s death, mark hawkins got in his car and drove home to greenville, south carolina, where hawkins says he cleaned houses for a living. it wasn t long before the police came calling. i was home a normal day and they knocked on my door and said i was wanted for murder. and you said? i was shocked. i said you ve got me mixed up with someone else. but, in fact, hawkins was at that pumping party. he went with his transgender partner of 15 years, donnie hendrix, a biological man living as a woman. an eyewitness had fingered hawkins and hendrix as more than just guests at a party. they were pumpers, responsible for injecting silicone into vera lawrence the night she died. they were locked up and charged with third-degree murder. ladies and gentlemen
i really felt that we showed up and that we were going to win this case. remember, each defendant had his own separate jury. the hawkins panel returned with a verdict first. the defendant is guilty of murder in the third degree as charged in the information. so say we all hawkins, guilty. count iii comes back, and i m shocked. are these your verdicts? vera lawrence s daughter tangela so bitter an atmosphere she says the defense created at her mother s trial was overcome by the verdict she so badly wanted. they were out of control in the courtroom. but the jury dealt with the evidence. i m glad we got them. it wasn t her time to die. the hawkins verdict was not a good omen for co-defendant donnie hendrix. i was blown away by their verdict of guilty on the murder charge. throughout the trial, prosecutors declared time and again that hawkins and hendrix were a team, each equally responsible in the eyes of the
silicone-pumping business that ended up killing vera lawrence. you ll see the big picture about this elicit enterprise, this business proposition that had deadly consequences for vera lawrence. how much money are we talking about? $3,000 to $4,000 a visit with the substance that i think they were paying approximately $40 for eight pounds of it. what a business. what a way to make money. so is selling heroin. before taking the jury through the night vera lawrence died, the prosecutor first tried to show the court that mark hawkins and donnie hendrix had a long history together, running an illegal silicone-pumping business, practicing medicine without a license. can you tell us how many times you were injected with silicone by the defendants? countless. here were witnesses, men with
wrong way, said they d done their best to follow the law. the judge ruled there would be no jury do-overs. the consequences of the two verdicts became a stark reality. donnie hendrix was sentenced to five years in a florida state prison. his partner, mark hawkins, got 30 years. i don t have words to describe how i felt when they read mark s verdict. mark is the most loving, kind-hearted, generous individual you would ever know. and for him to be found guilty of something, to be charged with murder and convicted of murder is this good justice? no. i have my faith and hope in knowing that if you didn t do something, you can get out of it. you can prove that you didn t do it. attorneys for both hendrix and hawkins immediately got to work appealing their convictions. isn t this game over, the points are on the board? everybody have a safe drive home? no. it s never over.