in 2010, timothy hennis went on trial for the third time for the murders of katy 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 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 and three people had been arrested for evidence tampering. hennis lawyers asked for a postponement to investigate the lab, but the judge refused. meanwhile, the military prosecutors found a second smear from the rape kit and sent it to a new lab and the results also pointed to hennis. the medical examiner slide came back on every marker to the
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army to do it for you. but the judge denied the request to test other items. i cannot imagine a judge in a civilian court not allowing that. you have the evidence, why not test it. without dna results pointing to a different suspect, hennis lawyers decided to the offer an alternate explanation to the sperm. in the end they threw out the theory that tim hennis had consensual sex with mrs. eastburn. within a day or so of the homicides. and when he said that, you could feel the love leaving the room. everybody went, i don t believe he is saying that. there are certain things that you can do in front of the jury, and certain things that you can t. it is not how i would have done it. the 14-person court-martial jury declared unanimously that timothy hennis was guilty of murdering katy eastburn and her children. and the next task would be to decide if hennis deserved the death penalty.
have riled up the jury and pointed at him over and over again and you see that picture? he did it. you see that picture? he did it. our supreme court didn t just read the briefs but they got a projector and saw the show themselves, and within 22 day, they said, give them another trial. it broke all of our hearts, because we had to call gary and say, you have to go through it one more time. billy richardson reinvestigated every aspect of the case. we were so much better prepared for the second trial. when i started digging, we found how many things that we didn t know at the first trial. richardson began with hennis alibi for the night after the murder when somebody used katy eastburn s bank card. tim hennis had 24-hour duty at fort bragg with his unit. he could not leave. the people in his division remember him gluing shingles on a dollhouse for his infant daughter. but army paperwork that would have confirmed his whereabouts, went missing.
stressed the importance of taking unpopular cases. and then days immediately afterwards the news got worse for tim hennis, and he had no alibi and 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 something that he burned. the lady who owns the cleaners and he said that man that you all arrested brought that black members only jacket into my cleaners friday, and didn t look suspicious to me. the bank card of katy eastburn had been used twice. friday night and saturday morning, $150 each time and they found out that he was late on his rent by a tune of $300 which he paid on monday. and there was a lot of