two years after he retired, timothy hennis was recalled to active duty. as soon as he returned to ft. bragg, hennis was charged with three counts of murder. tim hennis is the only person in the united states history who has 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, illegal analysis of it was actually pretty simple. it is honestly well settled law. nothing the state does affects what the 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 what they wanted to do. plain and simple. with billy richardson now on the sidelines, the court-martial of timothy hennis commenced on march 17th, 2010. the prosecutor s case hinged on the dna results. the sperm found in the vagina of kathryn eastburn was the person who raped and slaughtered
built a screen that took up the whole wall and they took slides of kara and erin eastburn, 5 and 3-year-old girls on an autopsy table, displayed out, no clothes. tim was sitting there going, quha what do i do? if he acts like it s note bothering him, he looks like 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. felt like i was in a slam dunk competition with michael jordan. prosecutor william vanstory also 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 d gotten the dog, and that didn t go well. hennis thinks he s a player, so mrs. eastburn said, no, he read this wrong, i m just a friendly person. with that temper of his, he lost it.
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 and 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 did not. no, i did not. he said, i never had sex with that woman. that never happened. when it was over we had not got the reaction i wanted to. see him in a different light than first jury had seen him. 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. i talked to the dry-cleaner and he said you have to use a special chemical to remove blood. i said, well, did you use it in this case? he said, no. i just used ordinary dry-cleaning. when the prosecution challenged the dry-cleaner s knowledge, richar
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 because if he let on he was investigating this case it would have set off all kinds of bells and whistles. sure enough the lost wallet belonged to a fellow named shawn. shawn buckner was a close friend of pat cone. the prosecutor s star witness. the alert in the the letter in buckner s lost wallet called cone s testimony into question. that letter talks about pat s doubts. pat kind of hoped shawn 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 training in the air force when he got there buckner closed the door on his face. he didn t want to get involved. shawn buckner didn t know whether to betray his friend and
it was the longest 3 1/2 minutes. why would the killer wait 3 1/2 minutes until 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, shawn buckner agreed to testify against his old friend. he testified that pat cone was extremely drunk that night, that in addition to that he had doubts about what he saw. patrick had told shawn 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 still saying, well, the kids 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