Eastburn family murders

Kathryn "Katie" Eastburn and her daughters Kara, age 5, and Erin, age 3, were found dead in the family's home in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on May 12, 1985. The Eastburns were a U.S. Air Force family; Katie's husband was away at officer training in Montgomery, Alabama, when the killings occurred. Katie had been stripped to the waist, raped, and stabbed 15 times; Kara had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest, and Erin had been bludgeoned in the chest and back. The youngest child, 22-month-old Jana, was found alive at the scene, dehydrated and ill.

Cumberland County Sheriff's Office detectives Robert Bittle and Jack Watts led the investigation and determined the killings likely occurred overnight between May 9 and May 10, 1985. A witness reported seeing a man carrying a garbage bag leave the Eastburns' driveway in the early hours of May 10 and provided a description used to produce a composite sketch. U.S. Army Sergeant Timothy Hennis, who had visited the Eastburn home on May 7 to take in the family's dog after responding to a classified ad, resembled the sketch closely enough that investigators identified him as the prime suspect. Hennis was interviewed, provided blood, saliva, hair, and print samples, and was picked out of a photo lineup by the witness; he was arrested on May 15, 1985. Investigators also tied Hennis to unauthorized withdrawals on Katie's stolen ATM card and to other circumstantial evidence, including a jacket he brought to a dry cleaner and items neighbors saw him burning in a barrel.

At trial in Cumberland County in 1986, the prosecution argued Hennis killed Katie after she rejected a romantic advance. A jury convicted Hennis of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree rape, and he was sentenced to death on July 8, 1986. In 1988, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction by a 5-2 vote, ruling that graphic crime-scene photographs shown to the jury had been unfairly prejudicial, and granted a new trial. At the April 1989 retrial, the defense challenged the reliability of the eyewitness testimony and presented forensic evidence — footprints, blood, and hair — that did not match Hennis or the victims; the jury acquitted Hennis of all charges.

The case remained closed until 2005, when Cumberland County Sheriff's Office Captain Larry Trotter revisited archived evidence, including a semen sample recovered from Katie's body that could not be DNA-tested in the 1980s. A 2006 forensic test at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's crime laboratory found the sample was 1.2 quadrillion times more likely to have come from Hennis than not. Because the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause barred a second civilian trial, the U.S. Army recalled Hennis to active duty in September 2006 and court-martialed him under the military's dual-sovereignty authority. His court-martial at Fort Bragg began on March 17, 2010; on April 3, 2010, a military jury unanimously found him guilty of all three murders. On April 15, 2010, the panel recommended a death sentence, and Hennis was dishonorably discharged and incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Hennis pursued appeals through military and federal courts, arguing the Army lacked jurisdiction to try him for a case tied to an enlistment period that had ended with his 1989 acquittal and honorable discharge. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his final petition for certiorari on January 11, 2021, leaving the conviction and death sentence in place.