Show Notes
The Eastburn family looked like the picture of a happy military family in 1985. Gary Eastburn was away at training. His wife Kathryn was home in North Carolina with their three little girls, preparing for the family’s upcoming move to England.
Then, on Mother’s Day weekend, a neighbour noticed newspapers piling up in the driveway.
Inside the house, police would find a scene so brutal it would haunt investigators for decades. Kathryn Eastburn and her daughters, Kara and Erin, had been murdered. Only 22-month-old Jana survived, found alone in her crib after spending days trapped inside the home.
Almost immediately, suspicion fell on a fellow serviceman named Timothy Hennis, a husband and father who had visited the Eastburn home just days earlier after answering an ad about the family dog.
What followed became one of the most shocking legal sagas in true crime history:a conviction, a death sentence, an acquittal, and then a DNA bombshell twenty years later that changed everything all over again.
Sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/07/three-trials-for-murder?
https://www.wral.com/news/local/topic/timothy_hennis/
https://www.fayobserver.com/search/?q=Timothy+Hennis
https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/timothy-hennis-found-guilty-eastburn-family-murders/story?id=10290831
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/timothy-hennis-convicted-again
https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hennis-timothy.htm
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