Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back.
Hi. Hi. So previously... Previously.
Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Hailey, rudely, dangled a carrot in front of my face and wouldn't give it to me. Yeah, I left or hang in. But from what I understand, today...
Today is the day. Is the day. And I'm so excited. What happened previously?
So on our last episode, we talked about the Eastburn family, who were murdered in their home. Three members of the family. The little girl Jana survived. Just two.
Three five-year-old were killed in the mall. The mother, Katie. So we have got a person of interest who has subsequently been charged on a trial and convicted of death for this crime with no physical evidence found. So he was identified by someone as leaving the house at like 3.30 in the morning.
They said it was him. Car matches, description matches. He was burning some stuff in the backyard. God is jacket-dry cleaned.
Paid his rent, which was, you know, the amount of money stolen from the house. And matched the description of the person who was using the bank card after the murders. However, the blood, hair, fingerprints didn't match. And the shoe prints found were three sizes too small for him.
So what we have is a man who was convicted circumstantially. Yeah. And his and his wife had recently adopted the Eastburn's dog. Okay.
Because they were going to move prior to the murder. They were going to move to England. The family was moving to England. They had the senior dog and they knew that it was going to be too stressful on the dog to be, you know, flown to England and then have to stay in quarantine for like a month.
So they were like, you know, the best thing for the dogs. We just re-home him so he can live out his retirement years. Yes, with a potential murder. With a potential murder apparently.
So that's kind of where we left off. Dun dun dun. And that's where we are. Oh, but you actually ended it with.
Yeah. So he's in jail right now, Tim Hennisses, and he gets this letter and this is what we're going to start off. I'm going to reread the letter and we're just going to get right back into it. Oh, okay.
I'm ready. All right. So the letter says, Dear Mr. Henniss, I did the crime.
I murdered the Eastburns. Sorry you're doing the time. I'll be safely out of North Carolina when you read this. Thanks, Mr.
X. Okay. Yeah. So like I said, last time, Sheriff's office also gets a letter similar to this.
But people think it was a hoax. Like because that's not uncommon. Right. Yeah.
It's weird. So in 1998, or 1988, sorry, 1988, Tim Henniss' appeal finally is ready to go. Back to court. So they get back in court and the defense was that the photograph slideshow presented the jury was completely discriminatory against their client.
The images of the brutal murders and autopsy scenes, they believed were too much and that the jury would have convicted anyone that was put before them for the crime. That was like an hour and a half long. Yeah, it was a 90 minute. Like a slideshow of horrific images and then they pointed this guy and they're like, this is the guy who did this 90 minute thing that you just saw of like brutally murdered children.
So the judge agreed that that was a little excessive. It was too many images. That was a lot. So Tim has given a new trial and it was moved 90 miles away for a fairer chance.
They're not unbiased. Yeah. So the same year the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that photographic presentation should be limited to not cause prejudice amongst jurors and they named the Henniss case for this excess. So if you look up like this case, it'll be that's tied to that screen for it really, which is kind of interesting.
Patrick Cone was a first on the stand. And if you remember from last week, Patrick Cone is the guy who said that he saw a man coming out of the house at 3 30 in the morning and getting into the white shavat and like picked Tim out of the lineup. That was like, yeah, that was the guy. The defense had planned to discredit this witnesses an accurate account of the night that he saw the tall blonde man in the white shavat.
They brought in a meteorologist and helicopter pilot who told the jury that the night was very overcast and dark and that Patrick would have found it difficult to see the man properly. Yeah. Patrick had been in trouble with a law between the two trials. He even told an officer that he was too valuable to lock up because he was a witness in the Henniss trial.
In the end though, enough doubt was thrown upon Patrick's reliability for the jury to disbelieve his account. Great. So they brought in the woman from the ATM machine back to the second trial. But by the time the police had found her, Tim Henniss had been on television and in the newspapers and she could have easily picked up his face from seeing these reports.
The defense also made the jury sit in silence for three and a half minutes to highlight the amount of time between the man's transaction at the ATM and her own. So to show like, you're not gonna like, that's weird, you know, like you're not gonna remember who that was. And back in 1985, I would assume they didn't have cameras on the ATM. So yeah, Tim Henniss' lawyer also stressed that the woman had told the investigators, quote, I don't remember anything before ensuring that her story was in place before the first trial.
Sheesh. Yeah. Great. So this time the evidence found that Eastburn's home was also brought up.
They asked, you know, who did the hair? Blood and footprints belong to because they're not Tim's. The burn barrel remains from Tim's home were also collected and tested and nothing of significance was found in those either. Just like brush sounds like it was just like brush or things that needed to be shredded.
Yeah. And he just burned some stuff. The defense spoke to the defense, spoke to the dry cleaner as well. And they told the lawyers that they didn't use any special blood cleaning chemicals on the member's only jacket.
So to prove their point, the defense poured blood on another jacket and cleaned it with chemicals that removed blood from fabric. And even with the right chemicals, a luminal test showed remnants of blood on the prop jacket. And when Tim's jacket was given the same treatment, luminal test didn't show any signs of blood. So it sounds like again, he just went to have his jacket cleaned.
And in the 1980s, members only to everybody had a member. My brother had a kid's only jacket. Like it was trendy. Like it's a thing.
Yeah. Yeah. So the final blood from the defense was a new witness who was the spitting image of Tim Henniss, John Ruppog, that lived a few streets away from the Eastburn's home and liked to walk around at midnight when he couldn't sleep. He was apparently doing so on that same night of the Eastburn's murders, wearing, you guessed it, a member's only jacket and a knitted hat.
Oh my gosh. So that also would match the statement of getting early start this morning as he's like, doing his power walk around the neighborhood because he can't sleep. Wow. So John told the jury that the police had interviewed him.
And when they realized how similar he looked to their suspect, they took his jacket and hat to hide from the defense and only gave them back when Tim was safely imprisoned. Oh my gosh. Two days later, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict for the three first degree murders and the rape. Tim Henniss left the court with his daughter who was now four years old and his wife and he was a free man.
Wow. How crazy. And how great that they stuck by his side. Yeah.
Because most, most people would have been like, forget you were divorced. Yeah. Yeah. No.
And like, he'd been sentenced to death and then like, for it to be free. Yeah. Yeah. So.
All right. Tim, rejoin the army receiving back pay for the years he's been in prison. And in 1990, he was in Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield. He returned home after a stint in Somalia where he received medals for his duty and service.
In 2004, Tim retired as a master sergeant and settled in a job at a waste facility in Washington. The family had moved there earlier several years earlier. And Tim was now filling his time as a leader of his son's scout group. So yeah, he's done.
Yeah. So he's doing all the things. All right. So Tim continues to live this normal life with his loving family for years.
However, so what the heck? So okay. Just kind of go back for a second. So the neighbor, nothing ever came up with a neighbor.
Right. Okay. Yeah. So the neighbor that was walking was like, this was just his normal thing that he did.
He had insomnia. He just walked the neighborhood at night. I used to do that. The dorms.
I used to clean. Like I would clean my apartment when I would wake up at like one or two in the morning and get sleep on such pens on the grad school. Yeah. So I would get up and clean my apartment.
I did it under grad. So I would just walk the dorm halls. Very quiet. Yeah.
Yeah. We'll speak. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah, the neighbor was just walking and I guess happened to pass this guy around, you know, 30 in the morning and was like, great day for a stroll. Yeah. Okay.
Early start this morning. Just walking in my members on the jacket and my big gap. That's one does. That's one does.
Okay. So it's 2004. It's 2006. Okay.
So remember this murder happened in 1985. Okay. We have already gone through a whole trial and conviction that has since been overturned. Yes.
And he's had a life and he's had this life now. Like she's gotten to live his life. In 2006, Gary Eastburn receives a call from a detective biddle. Technology had finally caught up and the rape kit used on Katie had been found at the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department.
It was sent to the crime lab and DNA swabs from Katie were tested. The semen found in Katie's body was a match to Tim Hiss. Oh my gosh. So that doesn't mean he's a killer, but it does mean he had relations with her whether forced or they were having a ferret.
Okay. Okay. So the problem is now double jeopardy. Tim's already been tried for the murder of Katie, Aaron and Kara.
Can't be tried again. Couldn't be taken to court again. However, Tim Hiss is military. So the army called Tim back to active duty and he was charged with the three murders of the Eastburns because you can be charged in military court.
It's a whole separate judicial system. He shouldn't have stayed in the military. So they called him back up, charged him for the murders. And on 17th of March, 2010, the trial for Tim Hiss began in the Fort Brad courthouse with a packed audience.
Wow. Yeah. So now in his 50s, Tim sat through the trial as he had done twice before. The defense pulled out the same evidence as the second trial that she prints the blood, fingerprints and hair.
But the luminal test done the crime scene showed an extensive cleanup had been done to the murder. And the one piece of evidence that Tim couldn't get rid of was a semen. We know that hair tests are notoriously inaccurate, right? We know that you know fingerprints, if he's trying to clean up and wiped everything down, there may not have been any usable fingerprints.
What about the shoes that were like sizes to start? Right. That's what I can't quite figure out. So the defense's argument was to introduce this idea of an extramarital affair, stating that a young wife who's has been gone for a long time could have impulsively decided to sleep with Tim Hinniss when he picked up the dog.
Could you know the family adopted the dog? Right. Unfortunately, the jury was made up of officers who were often away from home for a long period of time. And so that argument resonated pretty badly with the jury.
What's more, Tim Hinniss had of the himily denied an affair with Katie. Please hold it to the lasagna as done. Okay. I returned from the lasagna.
We're letting it cool. We're letting it cool now. Hayley made homemade lasagna for me from yeah, super homemade freezer from the freezer. I like to think that she first made it, froze it.
And then packaged it to look like Stover's. She did put the plastic seal on it, got the box, sealed the box, returned it to the Ingalls Croture store to give them credit to say, hey, listen, you guys, this tastes so much like yours. I went to kind of pay for it again. Again, right.
Okay. So we're back with that. Well, Zanyo's cooling and I want to hear what the heck is going to happen. Okay.
So on the third of April, 2010, the jury took three hours to decide on their verdict and came back to court to decide that Tim Hinniss was guilty once again. So at sentencing, Gary Eastburn was asked to speak. After the murders of his wife and children, he and Janna had eventually moved to England in 1988. There, he'd met a nurse who he married, and after a few years of living in the UK, they'd all moved back to America when asked what he missed most about his family.
Gary replied them. I just miss being with them. Tim Hinniss was eventually sentenced to a dishonorable discharge from the army and to put to death. He was transferred to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where he still remains.
He's the only person who's been tried for life three times after not guilty and guilty verdicts. He's unlikely to be put to death though due to presidential approval for military execution, which hasn't happened since the 1960s. So since he was tried by the military, they are in charge of the sentencing and execution and all of that, and it doesn't look great. And even if they got approval for it, it's highly likely that he would just die in prison.
Right. Yeah. He was in the 50s. Yeah.
He was in the 50s in 2006. Oh, so he's probably 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah.
In February of 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces rejected his appeal. He was actually Gary Eastburn's father said in an interview by the Seattle Times in 2010, he said, I'm perfectly happy if he spends the rest of his life in jail. However, if they'd execute him, it was no more than he deserved. So essentially, this all happened because they put a dog to sell.
Yeah. And this guy was just looking for somebody. Maybe he was going in for a rape. Right.
We don't know. And that's the thing. We don't know the motive. Yeah.
We don't know like, but then what's the deal with this letter that was written? Just hoax. Gosh. Or was it?
I mean, or was it? He's still saying he's innocent. You know, did his wife end up divorcing him? Do you know?
I don't know. So it could have been that there was a secret affair or there was something like going on and she was like, listen, we can't keep this dog. He's like, yeah, we can take this dog and like told the wife, hey, I adopted this dog or something or the wife calls. But the wife calls.
The wife was called after the ad was placed. That's true. So then that doesn't add up exactly. Right.
So my thought is, you know, if he is innocent, did, did it happen like that where he went and like they did hook up or whatever when he picked up the dog? And then later somebody else broke in. I mean, a lot coincidence, but could it happen? Could have happened.
Right. But then everything else in this case, can we talk to coincidence as well? It's true. You know, you know, the thing that really got him was that the semen came back to him.
But it's, I mean, but the shoe sizes, the shoes, the three sizes too small, but you could chalk that up to like, you know, was it a gardener? Was it like just a random person? The neighbor who walked the neighbor who walked there, you know, any of that could be a thing. Could have walked through the crime scene, you know, the stir bill is the 80s.
We don't, you know, it's not, we don't have the CSI. Right. We don't have all the protocols that we have today. I mean, I mean, if you think nine years later, the O.
J. Simpson, you know, the extravaganza, all the things in 1994, you know, the LAPD had walked through a lot of the crime scene. So even at that point, even when we're talking like DNA kind of stuff, which they knew about then, they weren't following any kind of protocol. So if that's not happening in a massive city in 1994, can you only imagine in 1985?
Right. So yeah, I don't know. Do you think he's guilty? I think he's guilty of something.
Yeah. I just kind of wonder if there were multiple people involved, maybe. And that's why the hair doesn't match and the footprints don't, but then who would the other person be? Who would, yeah, who else would it be?
And I don't know, it's just there's too much. Like it's one of those that when you look at the whole picture, it's like, yeah, this guy's guilty. But when you start picking apart each individual piece of evidence, it's like, well, that could go. Yeah, really, anyway, like, it's so strange.
Who was this mysterious letter from? Yeah, like who's the letter from? Was he having this affair and just denied it? You know, I don't know.
I don't know. It's very strange. It is super strange. What I don't know, like I can get past the, yeah, he probably saw the other guy walking at night, but he also said he saw the car at night, right?
And that's a very specific, a white Chevy Chivette. Yeah, it's very specific. Very specific vehicle for him to see that. But it was dark.
Yeah. You know, who knows? Right. That could be charged out.
And the weather experts who said it was dark. It was dark. It was foggy. It was all the stuff.
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm leaning more towards, yeah, he probably did it. Yeah.
But I think there's a good case. There's a good case for not. And he didn't commit any crimes in between now. Not that we know of.
Like it seems odd that if this was your first crime and it was the murder of murdered rape of a woman and the murder of her two young kids. Yeah. And then you go on and just live this normal life and you didn't commit a crime before or after. Well, we recently, I did an episode recently of an individual who had murdered a raped and murdered a woman in the 70s.
And he wasn't caught until years recently. Yeah. And he lived a whole life without any other crimes. He was like your regular dad and like four kids.
So it does happen. It's not often because they tend to be repeat offenders. Like I got away with it once. Yeah.
I don't know. Maybe he was trying to stay on the straight and narrow. So he maybe he got maybe broke back into the house for this rape. Maybe.
And you know, was there signs of force entry? That didn't say. Okay. I just wonder like, yeah, if he came in with the intention of rape and then things just went out of control.
Did they ever find the knife? There's no mention of any murder weapon. So but this is also too like, you know, military trials are usually pretty secretive too. I mean, they just don't release a lot of it.
I mean, it was tried publicly. But there was enough no mention of the murder weapon. So I guess if they found it, it didn't have any evidence on it. So something to kind of think through is if he brought the knife with him, this shows like intent and like he was intending to perform a rape and a murder.
If it was one of and I'm not saying, Oh, wow, so much better. But if he had gone with the intention to rape her and then things got out of control and like her kids were there and all these things and he like lost it and grabbed a knife, that's different. It's not premeditated right, right. Or maybe he went with a knife just to scare her into the rape.
Like if you don't do what I say, I'm going to kill you kind of thing. I don't know. It's strange overall. I mean, he could have burned the knife.
He could have thrown it somewhere. Yeah, who knows. There's a plethora of things, but yeah. What a story.
Oh my God. It's wild. Well, I hope you'll tune in for the second part because I know what tends to be for us is that like a lot of people listen to the first one and then they don't as much to it in a second, which is so weird to me. But please do because this is so worth it.
Oh my gosh. It's crazy. Yeah. So and it's one of those things to think about like if what if you have in the military?
They couldn't try again. They couldn't have tried him again. Yeah, that's right. And that's why I think we see sometimes with these cases of where it's kind of like, okay, this could be overturned at some point.
They won't try for all of the murders. Like they may leave somebody out so they can come back later if they do have to go to another trial and try and try for that woman. Yeah. I don't know if that's like a common thing, but I feel like like that would make sense to me.
Like if you have a case with a lot of circumstantial evidence where you think, okay, it could be overturned in the future and we have to retry. Well, we can't retry for something they've already been, you know, tried for once. So we have to go back. But it's also scary for the individual who truly is innocent of all this that they can't be exonerated of the entire crime.
And that that's always kind of over your head of like, what if they're going to try and get you for this? You know, your innocent? Yeah. I don't know.
I don't know. Oh my gosh. What a cool story. Pretty crazy.
Yeah. Thank you for bringing this to us. You find some good ones. You really do.
That one just kind of came to me. Did your third grader help you with the research? No, no. I didn't speak.
Didn't come through. Well, you know, I'm not sure I'd won a third grader doing this kind of research on break and murder. No, maybe not. Maybe like they should stick to like the haunted like history ones, like maybe times tables.
Yeah, maybe that maybe North Carolina history. That would be great. Yeah. Great.
That feels much more appropriate. Yeah, then you know, even murder. Yeah, maybe don't encourage your third grader to do this research. No, I don't think so.
No. No. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, if you want to get ahold of Haley and just tell her some things, that'd be great. You can do so by emailing us at mountain mysteries at Appalachian at gmail.com. You can find us on Facebook at mountain mysteries tales from Appalachia. Find us on Instagram at mountain mysteries dot Appalachia.
And for the best time ever, join us on patreon.com slash mountain mysteries. I'm supposed to be finding a location during all that. Sure. Just sit in there.
Just staring at my loveliness. I know I am breathtaking. Thank you so much. All right, let's go.
Jay, name. J.A.Y. Oh, okay. May just J.
Well, thanks, Maine, for listening. We appreciate you. One of my bosses is from Maine. Oh, very lovely.
Lovely. I'm going to tear into that lasagna now. Yeah, absolutely. Haley, Mabel's on you.
I did so lovingly. See you next week. Bye.