the rest of his life. like it or not, tim is our client and if he dies, we will live with it. in the years that follow, the hennis case was the textbook case of wrongful prosecution. scott whisnant spoke about the case, and it was adapted into a tv movie. not everybody sitting in prison is guilty. north carolina now has a commission that actually has released a number of innocent people. despite all of the attention to hennis acquittal, the eastburn s murders would go unsolved for 16 years until 2005 when scott whisnant spoke about the case at a criminology seminar, and he spoke at a seminar with larry fayetteville was in the audience. there were potentially other evidence out there.
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. east burn within a day or so of the homicides. when he said that, you could feel the love leave in that room. i mean, everybody went, i don t believe he said that. i mean, there are certain things you can do in front of a jury and there are 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 east burn and her children. their next task would be to decide whether hennis deserved
noted that there was a letter in it. and the letter said that tim didn t do it. and you were hearing rumors like that. and billy goes to the sheriff s department and he has to pretend that he is investigating another case, because if it was this case, it would have set off bells and whistles. and sure enough, the wallet belonged to a fellow named shawn buckner. it belonged to a friend of pat cone, the prosecution s star witness. the letter called his testimony into question. that letter called his testimony into doubts. it told his fiance about doubts, and to the point they wrote each other a letter about it. so richardson flew to louisiana where he was in training with the air force, but when he got there, buckner closed the door in his face. he did not want to get involved. he had to decide whether or not to betray his friend and help someone wrongly accused of a triple murder. and shawn buckner had no reason to help tim hennis.
place to be, but you have been on death row, and there were not a lot of employers who would take that on, and 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 and desert storm honorably, and tim s supervising colonel told me that he was without a doubt the best nco that he had ever worked with. he retired in 2004 and he and angela had a son who they would not have had if he had not gotten his life back together. but tim had no idea that the eastburn case was about to be breaking wide open. in 2006, a rape kit yielded new results. and the prosecutor called gary eastburn and said that there was a hit on the dna. and he said, who? and they said hennis.
so he packed up and went to the sheriff s office. i stopped in the track, and i looked at him and i said, this is the man right here after i looked at the composite. i said oh, my goodness, this is our main man. they put together a photo lineup, and settled on number two, and that is tim hennis. he said, are you sure? and he said, yes, i am sure. and he picked out the white chevette, and he said, yes, that is the car. he was being cooperative and they wanted samples of the hair and the blood and the saliva which he gave and midway through, he realized that he was the suspect, and he was getting