Accusations again pursue suspect in 1985 killings, despite acquittal

For 17 years, Timothy Hennis' name has been synonymous with the wrongly accused.

After the Army sergeant was acquitted in 1989 of the slayings of a North Carolina woman and her two young children in 1985, Hennis became the subject of a book and a TV movie, and he was listed on dozens of Web pages that sought to protect the innocent from wrongful prosecution.

Hennis retired from the Army as a master sergeant in 2004 and settled into Lakewood, Pierce County, far away from Fayetteville, N.C., the scene of the horrific crime that upended his life.

That all seemed to be in the past until Sept. 26, when Hennis received a hand-delivered notice from the Army informing him he was being recalled to active duty. The purpose: so the Army can investigate him for the 1985 murders.

Hennis, a 48-year-old married father of two, has until Oct. 30 to report to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he will be assigned to a special troops battalion and given duties commensurate with his rank, said Col. Billy Buckner, an Army spokesman.

While Hennis is back in uniform, the Army says it will look into what Buckner says is new DNA evidence in the slayings. The ability to process DNA wasn't available at the time of the murders.

Hennis didn't return calls seeking comment.

Lt. Charlie Disponzio, of the Cumberland County, N.C., Sheriff's Office, said the department was running evidence taken from cold-case crime scenes for DNA information when it found evidence relating to the 1985 slayings and contacted the district attorney.

The district attorney provided the new evidence to the military, because Hennis already had been tried in state court and, under constitutional law, can't be tried there twice for the same crime.

The military has jurisdiction over soldiers even for crimes committed off base.

Legal maneuvers that make it possible to reopen a case and potentially retry a defendant after he's been acquitted are rarely used, generally being reserved for cases in which prosecutors believe justice has not been served, legal experts say.

"There are rules for prosecution in federal courts, and you shouldn't do this without some good basis for thinking that justice wasn't done," said University of Washington Law School professor John Junker.

The retrial is possible under the U.S. "dual sovereignty" doctrine, which holds that state and federal governments and their courts are "like separate nations," Junker said. Many cases actually could be tried in both jurisdictions but, for practical reasons, generally aren't.

"Federal prosecutors usually respect the state court's verdict, but they don't have to," he said.

The most notable case involving a dual-sovereignty issue was the 1992 Rodney King beating, in which a California jury found that Los Angeles police officers charged with assaulting King were not guilty. The officers were recharged and convicted in federal court of violating King's civil rights.

Hennis was recalled to Army duty because of a decision to pursue a military court-martial rather than a federal court case in the North Carolina slayings.

In 1985, Hennis was a married paratrooper, assigned to the Army's Fort Bragg, when he answered a classified ad placed by members of a military family, relocating to England, who needed a home for their dog.

Hennis went to the home of Kathryn Eastburn and her three children May 7. Her husband, an Air Force captain, was away on training. Hennis took the dog home.

Several days later someone came to the house, raped and killed Eastburn and fatally stabbed her two daughters, ages 5 and 3. Her 22-month-old baby was left unharmed in a crib.

Hennis and his wife, Angela, heard about the slayings and that police wanted to talk to the man who had taken the Eastburns' dog. Hennis contacted the authorities and was eventually charged with raping Eastburn and killing the three victims.

In a sensational trial during which the prosecution projected crime-scene images on a wall above Hennis' head, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court ruled the trial had been unfair and found there was little evidence linking Hennis to the scene. He was re-tried.

In Hennis' second trial, world-renowned memory expert Elizabeth Loftus, formerly of the University of Washington, testified about the fallibility of eyewitness recollections, undermining the testimony of a witness who claimed to have seen someone dressed like Hennis in the driveway of the Eastburn home at the time of the slayings.

In 1989, Hennis — who had spent more than two years on death row — was acquitted.

Somewhat in the book "Innocent Victims" but especially in the a made-for-TV movie by the same name, Hennis is portrayed as an innocent man who fought the system and won.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com