Eastburn Family Murders Part 1

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Well, welcome back. Welcome.

We are in the podcast room. We are here in your noises in my home. So I was looking online because I wanted to figure out how many books it took to classify you as a library. I mean, you're certainly getting there.

Yeah. Well, apparently there's not like an actual number. The internet has decided it's a thousand, but that's not like, you know, anything and you said to get you 800. So I counted last night and I have like 655 books in here.

So I have probably 20. So pardon my flam. Yeah. So I went through and I counted all of them and I don't can't tell you how many I've read, not nearly that many.

Wow. But I don't know. There's a part of me that just like I've always wanted a library in my house and I love books and I'll never be bored. I felt very fancy when you were talking to your dad earlier and you said, we're in the library.

I was like, oh, wow. Well, and it's really just like this was obviously a bedroom, but I've made it into like a little home library. It's wonderful. I do love it.

It's very calm in here. You've got a little plan. I do have a nice aesthetic happening. Yeah.

This is the room that I like worked on for a while and now it's got any dang, something's up, but yeah, it's a lot of books. A lot of books. And you do have a shelf there that I probably wouldn't put a lot of books on and you smartly have not. Right.

Well, that one came from the Habitat for Humanity Restore situation and all the shelves were bent like so they're kind of bowed in the middle and all the shelves were like that. So I just flipped them, but that one is the one that's like anchored in to the shelf so you can't flip it. So eventually I will put books on it. Yeah, just anchored.

It's like anchored into the back of it in the sides. So I didn't want to risk taking it apart and the whole thing being unstable. So I just kind of left it and I'm hoping that it doesn't cave in. A room such as this in my house will never happen.

Number one, I don't read. Number two, I don't read like a lot of books. Usually I'm like, oh, I read it, take it, turn it back into the library or donate it. But also I was thinking just of shelving like this unless you anchored it to the wall.

I would be terrified of my sun climbing it. Yeah, the big tall one, I have one that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven shelves. I had like almost such as a ceiling, it's so tall. It's anchored into the wall, like my dad came over and screwed into the wall with like the brackets or whatever.

And then the one beside it is anchored, but that one is not anchored and then the little short one is not because I was thinking like, I mean, even for adults, like if that were to fall, you would kill you. Oh yeah, it would hurt bad. Yeah. Yeah.

So I probably need to get that tall one anchored into the wall. I just haven't done it yet. And there's not a lot of books on it right now. So it's just kind of holding.

I have bookshelves downstairs in our downstairs area, but they are anchored to the wall and they're not going anywhere, which is great. And I have my 20 books on them, which are mostly like the DSM and like, you know, clinical books. And then I have a lot of like photographs and like my son's artwork and like cool little things that I've collected and yeah, I've got you have so much cool collectibles in here as well. Yeah.

Yeah, just little pieces that I've and I would say the majority of the books on these shelves are thrifted. Oh yeah. Because I that's like one of my favorite pastimes is like going to like Goodwills and places like that and like looking for titles and going to like libraries, use book stores and going through this. I would say like the probably I'd say three fourths, I don't know about that much, over half though, I would say are thrifted.

If you ever go through store shopping with it, which we have like, I think a long time ago. But if we ever do, you will find that you will enter the building with me and I will go my own way. Oh, same. Yes.

So I would be probably good shoppers. Yeah. Because I'm like, if you're looking for me to spend time with you in the thrift store, we're probably not going to be right, you know, we probably shouldn't do this. But I go my way, you go here, do you go to books first or what do you go to first?

Um, yes, like I'm trying to think of my local goodwill. I usually will go in and I'll go straight to like the framed art and then like house where situation and shoes are in the back and then I hit the books. Yeah. And then I do clothes and then I exit.

I'm the opposite. I'm going to go straight for the clothes. Gonna look through those, then I'm going to look for clothes for my son. And then I'm going to go into the toys, the shoes, the housewares and then I find my way out.

Yeah. Totally opposite. Yeah. So we would be good.

We would be good because you know, you're like, well, I looked at clothes and I'm like, well, I looked at housewares. Let's check out. Yeah. And it's a win-win.

Yeah. We roll out. Why haven't we done this? I know we need to do this.

We live really far away and I have a child. That's probably why. That's probably why. Yeah.

And who has time during the day. But we should do this one day. Yeah. We should be like a weekend activity for sure.

Yeah. Because I love, there's one in particular, a good will that my colleague calls the Honey Hole. I call it the Hidden Jewel. She calls it the Honey Hole.

And she actually asked me just recently, have you been to the Honey Hole lately? And I said, no, I haven't. But I'd love to go. Let me know.

So, yeah. Check it out. I don't think I've ever been to that one. No, I don't think you have.

No. And there's one, not too far from my house. That's amazing. Yeah.

I totally have them into that one. But there's a big one that has like the bins. Yes. And I don't love the bins.

You can love the bins. I didn't love the meter. I didn't either. I did not either because I was like, this is gross.

You know, like, I don't really get it until my friend showed me the way. Yeah. She's me the way. I will teach you the way about the bins.

And I don't really want to share this, you know, just. We're gatekeeping. Yeah. We're going to gatekeeping.

You know what I'm saying? But I have found a new love. Do I go off and know obviously because it's kind of our way. But it's a thing.

There's a way to do it. And I think that you will like it once you get into it. Okay. Yeah.

Well, and I've never been one that really went through, which I don't know why. Like, I've ever really got a lot of clothes from Goodwill. And like, I don't know. I don't know why.

I just have recently started like within the past year, started getting most of my clothes from Goodwill. I was probably a rendering age when I started shopping at Goodwill. I didn't buy her. Yeah.

And I was like, why have I never done this before? Because I'm finding like perfectly good stuff and like, like good brands. Yes. And like cute stuff that I'll wear.

Yes. Mostly for work. Yes. Like, I find a lot of work items at the Goodwill.

Yeah. Me too. The shirt came from the Goodwill. And I love this shirt.

I don't think anything I have on came from the Goodwill. But to get these pants on sale of the old Navy and they are delightful. Yeah. But yeah, Goodwill is amazing.

Especially if you have young children who grow out of clothes with me, like, hit up your goodwill. The only thing I can't really find for my son to go, I can't find a lot of pants for him because boys are hard on their pants. Yeah. But I typically can find like shirts for him.

So every time I was just actually telling my mother this, every time we're going into like the fall season or we're going into like spring, he has to have a whole new wardrobe because I don't have any other children. Like, there's no hand me down. Right. So I constantly buy new clothes for him.

I feel and he's so expensive. Yeah. So expensive. Well, it's definitely just going to outgrow.

He might as well get a second hand. Exactly. If I can and it's not stained, I say go for it. Yeah.

It's more sustainable. It's, you know, it is and cheaper. I did buy him a shirt for six dollars at Old Navy. It's a Halloween shirt yesterday and it says Boo.

Yeah. And it has a little, has a little ghost on it. I thought it's super cute. I was like, Oh, he's gonna love that.

So yeah, but he has more new clothes than I ever get. So what is the one thing you won't get from the other store? Underwear. Okay.

I will not buy bras and underwear. That's like, nah, I'm good. Yeah. I'm, I'm weird about like pillows.

Yeah. I agree. A lot of like betting. Yeah.

I've recently started looking at the blankets because I'm like, I can wash those. Right. Like that's fine. But like anything that's like kind of down or yeah, something that's hard to clean.

Yeah. Like I think I'm, I'm wary of, I used to be wary of shoes and I've gotten over that. Nah. I know.

Years ago, I was too. Yeah. I just lost all of them in the moment. I did buy.

So I changed the aesthetic and my bedroom. I haven't shown you that because you're probably like, Oh, she'll make me pull up her bed to move that rug again because I repainted my bedroom a different color and kind of did a whole thing. So I was looking for a bougie, like a, like a thin, like little blanket comforter that I could put to make it look kind of decorative. Right.

And so, a friend of mine, a former coworker of mine, we were at the Goodwill together and a lo and behold, I found the exact color. Yeah. And it was like good quality and all these things. I'm like, but should I get it?

What if it has bed bugs? What if it has all these things? And finally, I was just talking myself into it. It was eight bucks.

Or so I washed it was super hot. I washed it twice just to ensure we're good. You know, and it looks amazing. Awesome.

So good. So. I love a good thrift find. Me too.

I mean, I'm like looking around this room right now and like a lot of this, like that lamp is thrifted and that it's like a Tiffany. It is. I look to see, I look, there's no way it's real. I don't think it is.

No, I can't be wrong. No, because you would have paid way more. I know. I was like, I feel like $12.

So I was looking at it and I'm like, either someone has made like a horrendous mistake and not known what this was, which does happen, which it does happen or it's fake and I'm pretty sure it's fake, but it looks pretty and it matches the aesthetic of the room. I love it. You do. This is so there's a new thing called Everything is Core, you know, like Country Core.

And so there's something called grandma core. That's me. I feel like that and not being unkind. It's an aesthetic.

Like it is a thing. I feel like this is your vibe and I love it. I have us literally a cross stitched framed piece of art on the wall. So that's totally cool.

Do I have a vibe? How is it clean? Like I think you're just like, yeah, but like I go into your house and it's like, does it clean? Like it's the breath of fresh air.

It's nice. My house is very lived in. But it's not dirty. No, and I make sure it's not dirty.

But there is like clutter. There is like dog care on the floor. But yeah, I make sure that it's not like a gross. No, it is not at all gross.

It's very clean. So I try to like make sure it's I have a clean home, but I do have like, I have clutter and things like, you know, I just don't. I will sometimes get in a zone and I will like, deep clean, deep clean. Same.

Um, however, that's not happened in the past couple weeks. So we have had over the last couple of weeks, a lot of play dates like that, back, back, back, back. And I have felt so much and work has been insane. But I have felt this pressure of like making sure my house, because when when somebody comes to your house, often you lose that like, Oh, I have to clean for you.

And with you, you and my other friend, I don't feel like like, like, like, it's Haley. Yeah, whatever. Um, but I have another friend that if she's coming, like, I try to make sure that my house is clean because I don't want her to judge. Not that she's a judgmental person, but she's a very clean person.

So I'm like, make sure my house is clean. But when new people come to your house, who've never been there, the last thing you want is for them to leave and say, well, yeah, she gave me that charcuterie board and we ate some cheeses, but her house was a disaster. You know, like, I don't want that to be the thing. So I want to have the clean house.

Um, so yeah, I get that and I will like, I do the thing where I shove everything in one room that doesn't have a place if I'm clean and quickly. I'll just shut the door. And then you have me who just goes through your house. Yeah.

That's why I don't care what it looks like when Holly comes over. Yeah, because I will tour your house. Yeah, I just like, I don't know. I did remove the, I had done my nails the other day.

So I had like, this box of like fake nails and like glue and stuff on the dining room table. So I did clean that up. And then I was like, what is this box? And then my brother, there was a box of just like ammunition.

Like your nails. So bullets on the dining room table. And I'm like, oh, I was like, you might want to lock those up. He's like, yeah, he said, then he said the guns lock up.

But the, and you're supposed to lock them up separately. Anyway, I keep with them in two different locations and he's like, yeah, I'll put them up sometime. Yeah, sometime. So he's got like, you know, he's a responsible gun owner and has, you know, good job.

All of those. Are you responsible and fake nail owner? Apparently not. Which by the way, your nails look amazing.

I think these are just pressons. So great. Yeah, very low commitment. Do you like mine?

I do. It's something called Chrome. Yeah. So what they do is, so I went to this alone because I saw a meme that says subtle ways you're no longer paying for daycare, which I don't pay for daycare now anymore, is like, you know, people are like driving Ferraris.

And I am actually getting my nails done, which is a simple pleasure that I have missed and loved. It's real hard to type because I got them too long. But anyway, so it's called Chrome and she does this like, it's like a powder. It's a gel, right?

So you do like the gel polish and then it is. It's like a powder. She sticks her thumb in the powder and then she like rubs it all on your nail kind of hard. And then you stick them back in under the UV light and then they're like, they look all different colors.

So it's pretty cool. There's kind of a purplish tint and yeah. Anyway, and it was so funny. My son noticed first thing.

I went to go get him from school and he said, did you get your nails done? And I was like, I have this moment of like, is he judging the appearance? I did buy him the shirt from the good wool. So he was judging me.

But he was like, I like him. This was nice. I was like, thank you. I love that.

So, Will, we talked about Arthrifty and our style. Yeah, all the things. If you're still with us. Oh, come on.

You know you are. A lot of you OG's are like, I love Holly and Hailey's bands are like hanging out with my girlfriends. And then the others are like, they talk too much. They're the worst.

Yeah. My third grader could do better research. That was my favorite one. I don't even read that one.

I don't look at them really anymore. But that one I saw and I was like, dang. Then have at it. I would love to hire your third grader.

Yeah. If they're available, let us know because we'll definitely let them do our book reports for us. Yeah. I definitely feel like, okay, this is not our full time job.

Yeah. This is what we give her fun. This is our side hobby fun. And it takes a lot of work just to present what we present to you.

So, don't be a turd. F off or that. Yeah, you really mean that's fine. Yeah.

Anyway, okay, let's talk about the Eastburn family from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Okay. So, we're going to the other side. We are.

We are. We are. We are. Okay.

And speaking of not doing my research correctly, okay, there it is. I was trying to find when this actually happened. Don't make my f off. Not worthy.

Come on, Haley. Okay. So, we're going back to 1985. It's a great year.

Yeah. So, all right. So, if you don't know anything about Fayetteville, it's a big military town. So, there's a lot of active duty military.

There's a base there. It's very dangerous. It is actually surprisingly. Yeah.

With, you know, all this like military presence, you would almost think like the opposite. No, but it's not. It's not a debauchery. It is a very like, I guess off base is very dangerous area.

Yeah. It's like ranks up there. Yeah. It's pretty high for Raleigh and, you know, I remember like driving past there and I'm like, oh, don't want to stop again.

I guess there can't say you do. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Just keep on going to the West Coast. Keep on going to the West Coast.

Yeah. But okay. So, the Eastburns were a military family and they were actually about to move to England for the husband Gary's new role in the Royal Air Force. So, he was a captain and was having, was at a training facility in Montgomery, Alabama, which is about 500 miles away from his family in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

So, I guess he was going to be like attached to this Royal Air Force group or whatever. I mean, we are allies with it. I was going to ask, does that happen a lot? Because I would think don't you have to be a citizen of that country to be, I guess, but I would imagine like there are probably, you know, like foreign officers attached sometimes to different groups.

Makes sense. Yeah. He wasn't like a spy or anything. No, I don't know where we're off.

Okay. Well, and you know, with an ally, you don't really need a spy. Yeah. So, he was going to go work with them for something.

Who would love to go to the UK and just to know that I would. So, they were getting ready to move, make this big move to England. But he right now is in training in Alabama, which was about 500 miles away. It was really cute.

They spoke on the phone every Saturday. But when Gary called his wife Katie for the morning call, she didn't pick up. And this was in May of 1985. And there was not a whole lot else Gary could do, but wait for him to call her back.

Like he couldn't send her a text. For, you know, there wasn't like, he couldn't like check her location or anything. Find my iPhone. Yeah, couldn't do any of that.

So, they have this neighbor named Bob. My cord phone. Sorry. Yes, Bob.

So, Bob the neighbor. He noticed that there were newspapers piling up on the front porch. Yeah. And, you know, he assumed that Katie and her daughter's Kara, who was five and Erin, who was three and Jana, who was just under two had like maybe gone away on like a weekend trip or something.

And just, you know, so the mail was piling up right at the driveway. But then you notice like, that's where their car's still in the driveway. Maybe they flew. Right.

Maybe a friend took them to the airport, something like that. So he rang the doorbell because he's like, this just feels weird. So being neighborly, he went over and rang the doorbell or nosey. And there was no answer, but he could hear the baby crying inside.

So he knew that somebody was home. And he got this really bad vibe from this whole thing. So he told his wife to call the sheriff's office and he waited at the front door of the home for them to arrive. So the police go in and Jana the baby actually was passed through the window that they went in to Bob.

So Bob's standing outside and they like the police just handed the baby to the neighbor and were like, you're hold this. She's like, okay, this is this. So the police officer continued, you know, into the house. He then found the bodies of Katie, Erin and Kara after smelling a strong odor in the house and called in the deaths.

Five year old Kara had been stabbed in the chest multiple times and was found curled under a Star Wars blanket. 32 year old Katie was found without her pants or underwear on and had been sexually assaulted. She'd also been stabbed about 15 times. Three year old Erin had received blunt force trauma to her chest and back and all of their throats had been cut.

So just a absolute blood bath. Yeah, this is vicious. Yeah, like slaughter in that house. And that many stab wounds, like this is like a crime of passion.

Yeah. And why my question is, why did you leave the baby? Right. Yeah.

So only to kill a three year old. Why wouldn't you kill a two year old? Yeah, that's it's crazy. So Janna was asked about what happened that night.

And she actually told the child psychologist to hide because they quote bad men were coming. So she clearly like saw or heard all of this. Oh, so she hid and that's why she wasn't killed. They believe that her sister has actually told her to hide, which is why she survived the attack.

Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm about growing up with trauma.

Yeah. So they came in and took, you know, fingerprints, hair samples. There were some semen samples found as well. And they did a luminal test that showed that a lot of the blood had actually been cleaned up.

So somebody had some time on their head. Yeah. Very methodical. Yeah.

It sounds like somebody who probably knew that the husband wasn't there. They would be there by themselves. That kind of thing. So Gary was contacted soon after by the detective at Jack Watts who told him to come home immediately as there had been a death in the family.

He gave the detective and his partner, Robert Biddle, all the information he could and told them that the family had a dog. But he knew his wife had put an advertisement in the paper for someone to adopt her as I didn't think the dog, the older dog could cope with a journey to England or the quarantine the dog would have to have. So they had decided to rehome the dog. So it was a little bit more of a peaceful retirement for the dog.

It kind of sounds extreme for someone who's just like pretending. I don't know. Wow. Okay.

So they he was like, okay, there was a dog but then there's not a dog. So Gary gets there. And he had to walk the house obviously once the bodies were removed to see if he could notice anything that we're missing. Katie's bank card.

There was an envelope containing around $300 and the password for the bank card appeared to be the only things that were missing. Instead of having to appeal for witnesses that one actually came forward on his own accord, Patrick Cohn had been in trouble with the place before. But what he'd seen that night, he knew he needed to like tell the police that he'd seen something. He told them that he'd seen a man in a member's only jacket around 3 30 a.m.

That morning. The man was white, blonde and tall with a wide nose and mustache. He wore a knitted cap and jeans and was walking away from the East Prince house carrying a like a bag. Okay.

The man spoke to Patrick stating quote, leaving a little early this morning as he walked towards his car, which is a white shavit. Patrick said, sat with a sketch artist from the North Carolina SBI and was able to create an image of the man he'd seen that morning. So it sounds like he may have seen the guy who did this like leaving. It's just so nonchalant.

Yeah, like leaving for work. Leaving early. Oh, which is weird. Oh, that just gives me chills.

Yeah. Wow. So the East Prince babysitter also spoke to police and told him that Katie thought she had a stalker. Oh, the family had apparently been receiving crank calls for about a month before the murders.

And sometimes the caller spoke about doing sexual things to Katie. Oh, God. You know, a few days before the murder, the babysitter picked up the phone to take a call from a woman named Angela. She was interested in looking at the dog and the babysitter took her details.

Okay, call her back. And the note, however, wasn't found in the house when the search was done. So and that could be nothing. Like, I mean, it's through it a little way.

Yeah, she's right away. Like that was kind of weird. Wow. So six days later, Angela, Henniss and her husband Tim were watching the news report on the murders.

And they quickly realized that the dog that they had recently adopted an old red setter had been picked up from that very same house only days before. And that the white shavit sitting in the driveway was the car the police were looking for. Wow. So they're like, Oh my gosh, this is our car.

Like we were at that house. Like we just adopted their dog. Yeah. Like this is weird.

And then they were murdered. And then the family was murdered. So Tim Henniss drove to the police station to speak with he's like, not me. He's like, I'm doing it.

So he drove to the police station to speak with the detectives about his encounter. And when the detective walked into the interview room, he immediately saw the likeness to the sketch Patrick at the parade. Oh, no. So and like I can get, okay, yeah, they saw the white car.

What I'd like maybe like, they were just confused. But you're saying you spoke to this guy at 3 30 in the morning. You don't tend to my dog at 3 30. Adopt a dog at 3 30.

Something's real. It's weird. It's weird. Um, yeah.

So Tim was a 27 year old army sergeant who had recently become a father to Christina earlier that year. The police interviewed him as if he was a suspect and Tim was pretty wary of them. All right. Hit me.

Okay. So he asked them if he needed like a lawyer, because they were treating him like a suspect and police told him, you know, this is just a routine interview, which like red flag number one. Yeah. So he told them that he went to pick up the dog on Tuesday, which was two days before the murder took place.

He said after that he'd taken his daughter and wife to visit family. And they stayed behind, which meant he didn't have an alibi for the night question because his wife and daughter were at a family member's house. That's convenient. Yeah.

He did let the detectives take fingerprints, saliva, hair and blood samples. And while police were collecting what they needed from him, they were also creating a lineup for Patrick. Apparently, Tim had bounced some checks in the past. So they had a photo of him from when he had been arrested before.

They placed it between the images of five other men and Patrick immediately picked out Tim as the guy he saw that night. So Tim was actually released after several hours of questioning and he drove home. Police knew though that they had found their main suspect and began interviewing people around him. Tim's neighbors said they had seen him burning items in a barrel outside his home, and he'd stood there for about five hours tending to the fire.

They said they'd never seen him burn anything before in a barrel and found it kind of weird. Why start now? I mean, it only just adds to your guilt. I don't know.

Yeah. Like I just randomly decided to have a burn barrel and burn some stuff. If you say that, if you come to me and say, well, I started a burn barrel, I will look at you differently. Well, we need a burn barrel on my property because we've got a whole lot of brush that needs to be burned.

I, well, we're not allowed to have burn stuff, but I would like that because so many like twigs and stuff on now. Who would be nice? Let me know. I can add to your burn barrel.

I'll let your brother do some work. I'm gonna let him do that. Oh, for sure. So his local dry cleaner also came forward until police at Tim had come in the day after the murders to have his jacket cleaned.

His members only jacket? It was a members only jacket. Yeah, it was. When questioned Tim's landlord told police that Tim was late with rent that month.

He said his tenant owed $345 and he'd been able to pay the rent a few days later just after the murders. And about $300 was missing along with the bank code. Yep. Also, can we just give some credence here to the fact that rent was $345?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Can we go back to that?

That would be incredible. Yeah. So Tim was arrested and charged with rape and the three murders in the first degree. He was offered a plea deal immediately, but he refused to take it.

Tim said he didn't want to plead guilty because he didn't do it. Was there any match to the fingerprints or saliva samples or he so he told the police test the samples? It's not me. So the blood type fingerprints and hair were all tested, but it was the 80s.

So we still had a ways to go. The blood came back as inconclusive because there was so much of it, apparently, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whatever. The fingerprints and hair weren't a match or were deemed inconclusive. So there's no physical evidence.

So the blood doesn't match. Like the blood type. That's really what we could do back then was typing. Blood type didn't match.

The hair didn't match. Fingerprints don't match. Wow. Okay.

So essentially what we have here is a man who meets the description has the same kind of car, has no real alibi because his wife and daughter were out of town, has a members only jacket, was burning thing. So he seems highly suspect. But on the other hand, there's no physical evidence. There's no physical evidence.

Connect him. Why? Yeah. That would be hard to share a court.

So there was some other evidence that began to mount against Tim. And then there was another witness that appeared. So Katie's bank card that had been stolen during the murders had been used to withdraw money after her death. A woman had used an ATM machine a few days after the attacks.

And the person standing before her had used Katie Eastburn's bank card. She was sure that the blonde man wearing camouflage trousers was Tim Hinnis. So though none of the evidence found in the trial could be linked to Tim, the prosecution still wanted to move forward with the trial. We've got all the circumstances in the evidence.

Tim went to trial almost a year after the murders. The jury was shown a slideshow of the crime scene in autopsy photographs with a prosecution presentation lasting 90 minutes. Wow. None of the physical evidence matched him Hinnis.

And the tactics used across the question was questionable. To give the jury 90 minutes worth of graphic images and details. It's a lot. That's a lot.

It's a lot. So I feel like you could get in, get out in probably 20. Yeah. Yeah.

You can have a get your point across. Like an hour and a half worth of just graphic. And then look point to the guy and be like that's the guy who did it. Yeah.

After you've seen 90 minutes of like graphic of children, right, who were gruesomely murdered, right, and their mother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Not great. So the jury returned from deliberation and found Tim Hinnis guilty. Of course they did. Of three first three murders and the rape of Katie.

He was transferred to Raleigh and three days after the trial, he was sentenced to death. Wow. Despite the verdict, there were still questions around the case. There were fingerprints and hair all over the East Prince House that didn't match Tim Hinnis.

And there were also footprints found outside of the East Prince home that were three sizes smaller than Tim's feet. Cannot be. None of these pieces of evidence were ever questioned during the trial. Oh my gosh.

Yep. So while he was, you know, in prison and an appeal was being prepared, Tim received a strange letter in prison and says, dear Mr. Hinnis, I did the crime. I murdered the East Burns.

Sorry you're doing the time. I'll be safely out of North Carolina when you read this. Thanks, Mr. X.

What? Oh my gosh. The sheriff's office also received a letter from the unknown writer, but many, you know, thought the letter was a hoax. So to recap, we have this gruesome murder.

Okay, we have this guy who was seen leaving the house at 3 30 in the morning. Description matches Tim. The car matches Tim's car. But none of the physical evidence matches.

We've got this weird thing where he is burning stuff. The bank card was used. Remember his only jacket? Somebody who looked like Tim or the lady thought looked like Tim.

We've got the jacket. And to be fair, how many blonde guys do you see out and about? Like, that's kind of a rare thing. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So, well, I'm going to leave you with that. No! That's part one.

What's wrong with you? So, would you do that to us? And we'll be back next week. I have to come back next week and wait.

Yeah, this is bullshit. For part two. I do not care for that. So, I left you with the letter where somebody is apparently confessing.

And we'll get back into it. I hope we investigate this. We'll find out. Oh my gosh.

We'll give me anything. If you want to email Haley and tell you tell her how much you do not care for this, you are welcome to and you can sit at twomountainmysteries.haveallegion at gmail.com. You can find us on Facebook at Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Find us on Instagram at mountainistries.appleatcha and patreon.com slash mountain mysteries.

Excuse me, ma'am. Do you have a shout out? I do. Let me get there.

Show all these plans. Just make me wait. Leave me on the edge. Good job though.

All I can see is like to be continued. And then hopefully next time you go previously on Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Okay, let's go Wadsworth, Ohio. Is it Wadsworth or Wadesworth?

One of the two. Sounds great. Thanks for listening, Ohio. Thanks, Ohio.

Ohio. That's like a thing now. It's like, Trindy, your kids are like, oh, Ohio. Like it's like a, yeah, like kids are like, that's in the vernacular now of this gen Z.

Just saying Ohio. Well, I think Ohio has like a negative connotation. Like, oh, it was like Ohio or something. That's so like that's so high.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I haven't heard that from my team.

Well, you heard Riz and I don't from my kids. Really? Yeah. I don't really hear that from mine.

Yeah. My, my child is now into calling me bro all the time. He's like, thanks bro. I'm like, I'm not your bro.

I'm your mom. That's kind of a younger too. Because like, I get my kids don't. Yeah.

They're not really. Tells me bro. Like what? I was like, he's like, hey, thanks bro.

Thanks for dinner. I'm like, I'm not your bro. I'm your mother. I'm your mom.

And he's like, yeah. All right. Catch you later. He told my, my friends.

So we call her Tia, which in Spanish means aunt. So he just calls her Tia. And so he says, hey, thanks bro. And she's like, I'm not your bro.

I'm your Tia. And he's like, okay. So then he started calling her Tia, bro. That's great.

Yeah. She really hated that. I think that's hilarious. I think it's clever as it is.

Yes. He's like, listen, I'm following the rules. You said not just bro. So yeah, I like it.

Yeah. Until next time. Until next time. Bye.