Hennis sentenced to death for 1985 Eastburn murders

Source: Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, NC)

After 13 hours of deliberations, a grim-faced military jury on Thursday afternoon sentenced Army Master Sgt. Timothy Bailey Hennis to death for the May 1985 murders of Kathryn Eastburn and her daughters Kara, 5, and Erin, 3.

The decision closes the latest chapter in a murder case that has involved three trials, spanned three decades, been portrayed in a book and a television mini-series and brought heartbreak to two military families in the Fayetteville-Fort Bragg community.


Read more: http://www.fayobserver.com/Articles/2010/04/15/991361

---

This guy was a piece of work. On May 7, 1985, Hennis went to the Eastburn house and adopted their dog. Mr. Eastburn was an Air Force captain training in He later had sex with Kathryn Eastburn, and eventually killed her and two of the Eastburns' daughters. (He left a baby alive in a crib in the Eastburns' home.) Hennis' defense attorney tried pushing a reasonable-doubt meme--"he could have had sex with her several days before she was killed." Question for people who know forensics: does detectable semen stay in a woman's body several days after she had sex with someone?

He committed three murders in 1985 and was convicted in the Superior Court in Fayetteville in 1986. In 1989, he got a new trial in a new venue. They took him to Wilmington where he was acquitted. The Army took him back and he eventually retired with full benefits.

In 2006, a NC cold-case unit ran a DNA test on semen collected from Kathryn Eastburn's body linked Hennis to the crime. The Constitution prohibits retrying people in a civilian court after an acquittal. The Army said "he was ours when the crime occurred, we'll take the case." They gave him a court-martial before a jury of fourteen members. Last week he was found guilty of three counts of murder. In the sentencing phase, it would have taken 14 votes to sentence him to death, or 11 to sentence him to life without parole. They got the fourteen votes. He will spend the rest of his life on Leavenworth's death row.

yes, Semen can last for days inside a woman's body