and shaking it off just fine. ♪ on this episode of "death row stories," a triple murder of unimaginable brutality. >> this is the one case that screamed out for the death penalty. >> an accused soldier who can't even convince his own lawyer. >> i thought he was guilty until all get out. >> until the state's case fell apart. >> i felt like i was sending an innocent man to prison. >> and a shocking twist makes legal history. >> take a deep seat. i've got something to tell you. >> there's a body on the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case, there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life.

>> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs, and let the truth fall where it may. ♪ mother's day 1985, a beautiful morning in fayetteville, north carolina. >> the dogwoods were blooming, rolling hills, neighbors know each other. of course, they're all military families. it's within a mile of the ft. bragg base itself. >> but on summer hill road, something seemed amiss at the home of the eastburn family. >> the neighbors noticed that the newspapers in the driveway were piling up, and they knew that the husband was out of town. so that naturally raised his curiosity. they went and peeked in the window and a heard the baby crying, and then he called the authorities.

>> i received a call from dispatch of a homicide on the summer hill road. when i got there, there was one deputy who had been in the building. his eyes teared up and he had his hat down and shaking his head, and he said, "i don't understand this." >> the baby was taken to safety, and detective bittle and his partner entered the house. >> as we went down the hallway, we looked this the bedroom to the left-hand side, and the daughter who was in the first grade was still in bed and had a "star wars" blanket pulled up around her neck. she was stabbed ten times. you could see the stab wounds through the blanket. we went further to the master bedroom, and the youngest child was laying there on her back. her throat had been cut. almost decapitated, and on the right-hand side, facing the bed was the mother.

the bra was up around her neck. her panties had been cut off of her, and she had 14 stab wounds. >> the victims were katy eastburn, age 32, kara, age 5, and erin age 3. >> but so long after that homicide, i could close my eyes at night and i could see those children. >> katie's husband, gary, was an air force captain. he rushed back from training in alabama. >> it's hard to explain. you just stop. the world stops. >> when you looked into his eyes, there was a void there. it tears your heart out. but you have to gather yourself, because you have a job to do. we will find out who did this. >> there was evidence all over that house. they found head hair in ms. eastburn's bed.

they found a head hair on kara's chest. and they found a pubic hair at the scene of the rape. they found fingerprints all over the house. they had bloody footprints. they had a semen sample. they were certain that physical evidence would lead them to whoever killed this family. >> after walking through the house, gary eastburn also provided a tantalizing lead. they were going to move to england when captain eastburn got done with training in alabama. the family had decided to sell the dog, so they put an ad out in the local "ft. bragg bee." katy eastburn wrote a letter to her husband saying that a nice man came out tuesday night and got the dog. >> we didn't know who it was, but anybody who had been out to that house, we wanted to talk to. >> outside of the crime scene someone approached investigators with critical information from the night of the murders. >> there was a young male named

patrick cone who had been coming from his girlfriend's house at about 2:00 in the morning. he saw a big white dude walking down the driveway. he had blond hair about 6'2" or 6'3" and he had on a members only black jacket, a stocking cap, and he had a mustache. >> they passed on the road and the person said that he he was getting an early start that morning and got into the white chevette and drove off. >> i took pat down to the sbi lab, and they did a composite. and i said, you sure he looked like this? this guy's got a black man's nose and he's got this droopy lazy eye. and he said, that's what i saw. >> six days after the murders, police put out a call for the man who adopted the eastburns' dog. the sergeant who was home for lunch with his wife and new dog heard it on the news. >> tim hennis's wife said hey, buddy, that's you.

so they immediately packed up and went to the sheriff's department. >> as i walk into the office, hennis is sitting there. i stopped right in my tracks. and i look at him, and i look at that composite, and i said oh, my goodness. this is our man right here. >> they couldn't find patrick cone, and they put together a photo lineup. he eventually settled on number two, which that was tim hennis. >> he said, are you sure? he said, i'm sure. >> he also in the parking lot picked hennis's white chevette out. he was being cooperative. they wanted samples of his hair, his blood, his saliva, which he gave. about midway through, he realized he was becoming a suspect. and he was getting madder and madder and madder. >> get that thing out of my face. >> he is the most arrogant human being i've ever seen in my life. he's, like, you can't touch me. well, yes, we will touch you.

we reached out and touched him. >> at 1:00 a.m., sheriffs arrested timothy hennis. they charged him with rape and capital murder. he would face the death penalty. the arrest of a sergeant from the nation's largest army base sent shock waves through the tight-knit community around ft. bragg. >> it's the most patriotic city in the country. if someone is murdered out of the blue, that stirs the blood in fayetteville. >> do you have any idea who would do this? >> well, she was getting some strange phone calls. >> don't be giving no ideas who did something. >> i ain't giving no ideas about -- will you -- just look. >> they get outraged. justice must be done. >> to defend their son, tim hennis's parents hired two young lawyers, jerry beaver and billy richardson. >> i thought tim was guilty as all get out. and so i didn't particularly care for tim. but the law school i went to

stressed the importance of taking unpopular cases. >> in the days immediately afterwards, the news got worse for tim. he had no alibi. angela was out of town all weekend. on saturday morning, he dragged a barrel out in the middle of the backyard and started burning stuff. something his neighbors had never seen him do before. >> i don't know what it was, but it was something he burned. >> the lady who owns the cleaners called us, and she said that man that you all have arrested brought a black members only jacket into my cleaners friday. doesn't it look suspicious to you? >> katie eastburn's stolen bank card had been used twice on friday night and saturday morning, $150 each time. they found tim was late for his rent to the tune of about $300 which he paid on monday. >> we really thought he was guilty. there was a lot of physical evidence that was being tested. and if some physical evidence came back to tim, he was dead. and so we wanted to come in

ahead of time and get him to plead before that came out. >> but to richardson's surprise, hennis refused to consider a plea deal. >> tim said something that haunted me. he looked at us and he said, they can test whatever they want. i was not in that house. i did not do it. and it's just that simple. >> and when the lab reports with blood type, footprints and fingerprints came back, they corroborated hennis's account. >> the physical evidence had not matched tim. none of it had. >> inconclusive or negative, inconclusive or negative. there wasn't a shred of physical evidence. that was linking tim to the crime. >> billy's viewpoint then became he must get this man exonerated because i believe him. >> someone other than my client committed this crime. >> from that point on, i was totally convinced he was innocent. >> but even without physical evidence linking him to the crime, tim hennis was about to go on trial for his life.

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you aren't treated like a priority. we do things differently. we'll take care of it. we put members first. join the nation. thank you. ♪ nationwide is on your side before he adopted the ea eastburns' dog in 1985, sergeant tim hennis had a steady job in the military and growing daughter he was devoted to. and then hennis was arrested for the brutal murder of katy eastburn and her two little girls, aged 5 and 3. hennis' lawyer had come to believe in his innocence. >> i was totally convinced watching him interact with angela, because they do have a beautiful marriage. and watching him with his daughter, tim is extremely good with children. i remember with my children how good he was.

>> of the fingerprints, blood, semen found at the crime scene none of it linked to hennis. >> down here, we didn't have the equipment and the facilities that they have up north. we had no dna down here when this crime occurred. i would have liked to have had a fingerprint. he left a shoe or dropped something, we could tie him to it. but i thought we had enough to justify the case and the trial. >> the trial began on may 27th, 1986. >> everybody wanted in that courtroom. the bailiffs a couple of times had to break up fistfights. >> the prosecutors called it the show. they wanted to emphasize how gruesome the murder was, so they built a screen that took up the whole wall, and they took the slides of kara and erin eastburn on an autopsy table, displayed out with no clothes.

>> tim is in there going, what do i do? if he acts like it's not bothering him, he looks like he's a cold-blooded killer, and if he gets emotionally upset, he looks like he's expressing guilt. what can he do? >> this went on for two days, slide after slide after slide. >> i felt like i was in a slam dunk competition with michael jordan. >> prosecutor william van story also told the jury that hennis motive had been sex. >> tim hennis' wife was out of town, had a new baby. so he decided to make a pass at the married mother of three from whom he had gotten the dog. and that didn't go well. >> hennis thinks he is a player. so ms. eastburn said no, you read me wrong, i'm just a friendly person. and then with that temper of his, he lost it. >> billy richardson emphasized the lack of physical evidence to the jury, but prosecutors argued

the absence of blood on hennis' members only jacket was evidence of guilt. >> they kept saying there was no blood because he took his jacket to the dry cleaners. >> the jacket was a damning piece of evidence. >> richardson also undercut eyewitness pat cone who i.d.'d hennis leaving the eastburn home. and he videotaped him in a tour of the crime scene. >> when you start to listen to story, he is all over the place. >> and i brought my girlfriend some roses. >> you brought her some roses on sunday? >> no, that wasn't roses. that was some candy. that was some candy. no, it was roses. >> we kept asking, are you sure about this? >> and he said, well, you are right, now that i am out here, i probably didn't see that. >> no, no, no i can't see that. >> but on the witness stand, cone cast aside any doubts. >> he said that the lawyers have been tricking me and pressuring me. i know i've picked out the right guy. >> finally prosecutors presented a surprise witness, a woman who

said that two days after the murder, she had seen the killer using katy eastburn's stolen bank card. >> all of a sudden, the state introduced lucille cook, a little old lady who used her card on saturday morning after the killer did. >> she had told us she couldn't remember. >> she said i didn't tell you the truth the first time. there was a big, tall white man, mustache, blond-headed guy. and he got in that little tiny white car. >> that's the man that used the card right before i did. he pointed at him and the jury is sitting there looking at him. after she testified, i went into the bathroom and just threw up. >> the jury deliberated for three days. >> it was quarter of 5:00 on friday afternoon when the jury knocked. he was guilty on three counts. he would get the death penalty times three. tim hennis could hear his father

sobbing in the courtroom. he had never heard that before. >> when that jury said he's guilty, you still had faith that he was telling the truth? >> always. never once. >> not a doubt in your mind? >> no, never. >> that time i felt like i did, we got our man, and it just felt good. this was the one case that truly screamed out for the death penalty. >> tim hennis had spent his entire career serving the military, and now he was serving time on death row. but not long after his arrival hennis received a mysterious letter. it said, mr. hennis, i did the crime, and you're doing the time. mr. x. >> the letter provided no concrete leads, only adding to hennis' torment.

>> he got visits from his family, and his daughter is now 2 1/2 years old. and she would bang her hands on the plexiglas and say, open it, daddy. open it. why won't it open? >> billy richardson felt responsible for the client's predicament. >> we did not do as good of a job as we were capable of doing. i made up my mind right then and there, i was going to become the lawyer i'm supposed to be. i got off my butt and went to work. >> richardson and his partner quickly filed an appeal to the north carolina supreme court. they had to decide what to emphasize from mishandling evidence to possible perjury. >> they quickly settled on the photographs. >> that presentation was said to have riled up the jury and pointed at him over and over, and you see this picture, and he did it. and you see this picture, he did it. >> our state supreme court

didn't just read the appeal briefs. they got a slide projector and saw the show for themselves. and within 22 days, they said, let's give him another trial. >> it broke all of our hearts, because we had to call gary and say, you have to go through it one more time. >> billy richardson reinvestigated every aspect of the case. >> we were so much better prepared for the second trial. when i started digging, we found how many things that we didn't know at the first trial. >> richardson began with hennis' alibi for the night after the murder when someone used katy eastburn's bank card. >> tim hennis had 24-hour duty at ft. bragg with his unit. he couldn't leave. the people in his division remember him gluing shingles on a dollhouse for the infant daughter. >> but army paperwork that would have confirmed hennis' whereabouts had gone missing before the first trial. >> the army paperworks everything, paperwork for paperwork. we looked for that thing and looked for it, and there was a

checkout sheet for every day but that day. so the prosecutor had a field day. >> but before the second trial, richardson discovered why the paperwork had gone missing. >> the reason they couldn't find it is because the prosecutors had it. they didn't make a copy of it and leave it. they just took it. and so this piece of evidence that probably would have exonerated him in 1986 was kept in the prosecutor's custody all that time. >> richardson also uncovered information that would undermine eyewitness pat cone. >> palt cot cone helped them ou between trials. he was arrested using a stolen bank card. on another occasion, he was drinking and disruptive, and the state dropped the case. he was known to tell people that the state couldn't touch him because he was a prime witness. >> pat is not a strong-willed person. nice guy, don't misunderstand me, but i got in a little trouble. but they were just minor things. >> still, richardson wasn't sure

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as defense attorney billy richardson prepared for the retrial of tim hennis, new evidence turned up on a fayetteville sidewalk. >> the deputy who picked up the wallet noted that it had a letter in it. and we kept hearing that the letter said tim didn't do it. you kept hearing rumors like that. >> billy goes to the sheriff's department and has to pretend he's investigating another case

because if he let on he was investigating this case, that would have set off all kinds of bells and whistles. >> and sure enough, the lost wallet belonged to a fellow named shawn bucknor. >> shawn buck nor was a close friend of pat cone. the prosecutor's star witness. the letter in bucknor's lost wallet called cone's testimony into question. >> that letter talks about pat's doubts. pat cone had told shawn bucknor and his fiancee about his doubts to the point where they wrote each other a letter about it. >> richardson flew to louisiana where bucknor was in training with the air force. but when he got there, bucknor closed the door in his face. >> he didn't want to get involved. >> shawn bucknor had a dilemma of whether to betray his friend and help free someone who may be wrongly accused of triple murder. and that was a tough one. shawn bucknor had no reason to help tim hennis. >> richardson came home empty-handed, hoping bucknor would eventually change his mind.

the retrial of timothy hennis began on february 27th, 1989. almost four years after the brutal murders of gary eastburn's wife and daughters. >> the state went into thinking it would be a replay of trial one. meanwhile, the defense had an entirely different case. >> this time hennis would testify. >> we just really drill him, and film him and let him watch it. >> did you kill these three people? >> no, i did not kill these people. i have a daughter of my own, and i could not hurt any children at all. >> did you do this crime? >> no, i did not. >> we felt if tim showed rage or emotion, the jury would say, look, there you see he can get to that point. >> how does all this make you feel? >> extremely upset. and angry. >> on cross-examination, the prosecutor confronted hennis with the alleged motive for the murder. >> the prosecutor said, you lost your cool and went in there and

tried to have sex with her. and when she refused, you snapped and killed her. >> they were trying to provoke him on the stand. and he had to calmly say no, i did not. no, i did not. >> he said, i never had sex with that woman. that never happened. >> and when it was over, they had not gotten the reaction they wanted to. to see him in a different light than the first jury had seen him made a huge difference. >> at the first trial, the absence of blood on hennis's jacket had helped convict him as the state's expert insisted dry cleaning had removed any blood stains. but richardson saw it differently. >> i talked to the dry cleaner. he said you have to use a special cleaner to remove blood. i said, did you use it in this case? no, i just used ordinary dry cleaner. >> when the prosecutor challenged the dry cleaner's knowledge, richardson was ready with his own expert. >> this chemist got a members only jacket, put some blood on it and took the jacket to a dry cleaner and ran a luminol test on the jacket.

and it just glowed as bright as could be. there's the blood still there. >> hennis's members only jacket, on the other hand, had no signs of blood. richardson had turned the state's evidence against them. richardson was also prepared for lucille cook who swore she saw hennis at an atm two days after the murder. >> lucille cook had made dozens and dozens of atm transactions around the time of this one. we asked her, could she remember any of those? she could not. >> it also showed a 3:30 gap between hennis's card being used and lucille cook's transaction. >> that doesn't seem a long time until you sit there and time it. we had the jury sit there to see how long it was. >> it was the longest 3 1/2 minutes. why would the killer wait 3 1/2 minutes till someone sees him?

one of the jurors said they got in the jury room and laughed at her. >> now it was time for richardson to go after the state's star witness, pat cone. after some soul searching, shawn buckner agreed to testify against his old friend. >> he testified that pat cone was extremely drunk that night. that in addition to that, he had doubts about what he saw. >> patrick had told shawn buckner, i feel like i'm sending an innocent man to prison. >> but richardson knew he had to answer one last question. >> in the back of their mind, the jury's still saying well, the kid saw something. if it wasn't your client, who was it? >> so richardson called his next witness. >> the back doors burst open. and everyone in the courtroom turned and looked around. the prosecutor says, "who is that?" >> that was as close to a perry mason moment as i've ever had. >> the lead detective said, "we're in trouble."

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defense attorney billy richardson had always wondered if it wasn't tim hennis, who did eyewitness pat cone see near the eastburn home on the night of the murders? >> billy was going door to door, interviewing every neighbor. and he found one couple that said, why don't you talk to that kid who walks the street? i see that fella all the time. he walks the neighborhood all the time.

>> they didn't know who he was. and so billy did a vigil. it became this quest for this mythical figure of the walker. >> you cannot win your case sitting in your office. so i sat out there for six weeks. >> richardson even hoped he might find the real perpetrator, but he came up empty-handed. then before the second trial, richardson hired an investigator to renew the search. and finally they found their mystery man. no murderer, but a high school senior who worked at the local supermarket. >> a kid by the name of john ropa lived down the street from the eastburns. he was an uneasy sleeper and he had the habit of walking the neighborhood on summer hill road at 3:00 in the morning. he was a big blond kid with a blond mustache. >> it just fit like a glove. >> during the retrial, richardson kept his discovery from the prosecution. timing the mystery walker's entrance for maximum impact.

>> the back doors burst open. defense calls john ropa. and at 3:30 in the morning, you couldn't help but think, now, could that have been who patrick cone saw on the road? >> he was another tall white guy, blond, walking down the street. that's effective. >> it was just one of those magical moments in the courtroom. the walker gave that jury a reason to have reasonable doubt. he gave them a reason to say it wasn't tim. >> when the walker took the stand, richardson asked what he wore on his nightly walks down summer hill road. >> he often wore a beanie hat, and he had a members only jacket. black members only jacket. >> after the walker's testimony, the defense moved to have the case thrown out. >> the defense accused the prosecution of outright cheating. it turned out that the prosecutors knew exactly who ropa was. >> they basically hid him from

us. >> as the jury began deliberating, richardson told the judge what he discovered about the prosecution's conduct. >> the deputy sheriff went to john ropa, and they brought him in. they had him bring his jacket and his hat. and they took it from him and put it into the trunk of one of the detective's cars. and they returned it to john ropa after tim hennis was on death row. that's exactly the kind of evidence in a close case that could have tilted it in the first trial. >> we just got plain mad at that point. get slapped enough where you say all right, i've had enough of this. >> it just got more incredible to sit in that courtroom and watch this thing unfold. and i went from thinking he's guilty to i'm not sure a jury is going to be able to find him guilty to he didn't do it. and they have to let him go. and then the jury knocked. >> after deliberating less than three hours, the jury announced its verdict. not guilty on all counts.

>> i just broke down and started crying because i knew what they had been through. next to marrying my wife, next to the birth of my children, that was probably the happiest day of my life. >> we lived with the family and felt what they've been through, and it's just a tremendous, tremendous load taken off our shoulders. >> the jurors came out and they hugged tim hennis. they were adamant that they needed to reinvestigate this case and quit picking on this guy. >> somebody said, why are they bothering this poor man? hasn't he suffered enough? why are they bothering this poor man? has he not suffered enough? t how much did gary suffer? the rest of his life. >> whether you like it or not, tim is our client.

and if he dies, we live with it. >> in the years that followed, the hennis case became a textbook example of wrongful prosecution. scott's book about the case was even adapted into a tv movie. >> this case put people on notice that not everybody sitting in prison is guilty. in north carolina, they now have a commission that has released a number of innocent people. >> despite all the attention to hennis' acquittal, the eastburn murders would go uninvolved for another 16 years when 2005 when scott spoke about the case at a criminology seminar. fayetteville detective larry trotter was in the audience. >> the premise was that there were all these other unknowns that were out there. people that potentially maybe had not been interviewed, other forms of evidence. >> if he's innocent, then who's guilty? the state of north carolina didn't pursue this for 17 years. why isn't somebody trying to find who's guilty?

>> somebody was stalking that woman for weeks. ms. eastburn was writing her husband saying there is a fool out there following me. i don't like it. what do i do about it? why is that being looked at? who does it lead to? >> after scott discussed the evidence, detective trotter approached him privately. >> he said, i just want you to know that the way they investigated this case 20 years ago, we're not like that anymore. i said, somebody should reinvestigate this case. i think it can be solved now. the technology has improved. and that's how we left it. >> in fact, trotter had been assigned by the sheriff's office to review cold cases. >> we had well over 100 unsolved cases at that time. i went through the docket, i realized that they had a vaginal swab that was taken from ms. eastburn during the autopsy. it had never been sent off for testing. when the murder happened, dna was inity its infancy.

the obviously thing was to was to send it off for testing. >> for over two decades, gary eastburn had lived without closure for the devastating murder of his wife and two daughters. >> we had done a great injustice to this man. how he stood up or withstood, i don't know. we want to make sure that you get this solved. >> in may 2006, the state crime lab contacted the sheriff's department. they had found a positive match for the dna. detective biddle called gary eastburn to tell him the news. >> i said, "are you sitting down?" he said, "yeah, why?" i said, "take a deep seat. i've got something to tell you."

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after tim hennis was freed from death row in 1989, he didn't know where to turn. >> you feel very diminished, very worn out, dragged down. i don't have the self-confidence and reliability you once had. >> his lawyers told him get out of the army. it's just a bad place to be. but you've been on death row. there weren't a lot of employers who would take that on. the army had to take him back. so he stayed in.

>> after readjusting to army life, tim hennis built a successful 25-year career in the military. >> tim hennis served in somalia, he served in "desert storm." tim supervising colonel told him he was without a doubt the best nco he ever worked with. >> he retired in 2004. he was good at being a husband and father. they had a son. >> but tim hennis had no idea the eastburn case was about to break wide open. in 2006, a 21-year-old rape kit yielded new dna results. detective robert biddle called the victim's husband and father, gary eastburn, to give him the news. >> i said they got a hit on that dna. well, who is it? i said, hennis. >> you could have knocked me over with a feather when i got that call.

just hit with this wave of emotion. i don't believe it. >> i was so happy. i mean, i was walking on cloud nine. >> defense lawyer billy richardson was driving through mississippi when he heard the news. >> i said, stop the car. and it was just like somebody had taken a two-by-four and hit me upside the head with it. >> i was convinced that if anybody could ever run an actual dna on that sample, they would find someone other than tim hennis. i believe that every fiber of my being. >> but the shocking dna results led to a pragmatic question. >> what the heck do you do now? >> hennis had been adjudicated not guilty. therefore, the state of north carolina was not going to try him again. >> we fought a revolutionary war because the king of england could try somebody over and over for the same offense. our founders put in the

constitution that there will be no double jeopardy in this country. >> i understand that, but i think there might be certain cases like this, we've got this dna now, that says he was the man who raped this woman and killed her, i think you should be able to. i think somehow the judicial system is going to have to work around that. >> i was at the d.a.'s office. we asked the army if they were interested in bringing him out of retirement and trying him for the murders. >> a team helped evaluate the case for the army. >> my personal opinion about why this is important to the military is the military sent gary eastburn for duty in alabama. and his family was left behind. and they were murdered. >> i'm sure there was debate within the military. it's high profile, it's controversial, but you had an enlisted person killing an officer's wife. how do you let that go? >> two years after he retired,

timothy hennis was re-called to active duty. as soon as he returned to ft. bragg, hennis was charged with three counts of murder. >> tim hennis is the only person in united states history who's been tried for his life three times after guilty and not guilty verdicts. >> i can't comment as to why it has not happened before. however, the legal analysis of it actually was pretty simple. >> it is honestly well-settled law. nothing the state does affects what the federal government can do. >> they can claim it's under a different jurisdiction all they want. this was the state of north carolina using the army to get to what they wanted to do. plain and simple. >> with billy richardson now on the sidelines, the court-martial of timothy hennis commenced on march 17th, 2010. the prosecutor's case hinged on the dna results. >> the sperm found in the vagina

of ms. katherine eastburn raped her and slaughtered her children. >> but when a scandal erupted at the state lab, the dna evidence against hennis would be thrown into question. >> they were mixing up dna samples and almost put an innocent guy in prison. you want i fix this mess? a mess? i don't think -- what's that? snapshot from progressive. plug it in, and you can save on car insurance based on your good driving. you sell to me? no, it's free. you want to try? i try this if you try... not this. okay. da! ready for another reason to switch to t-mobile. get 2 lines of unlimited 4g lte data for just $100 bucks a month. it's america's best unlimited family plan. and it's only at t-mobile.

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in 2010, timothy hennis went on trial for a third time for the murders of katy eastburn and her daughters. but a scandal rocked the state lab that identified hennis' dna. the lab had been skewing results to help prosecutors. >> the woman who handled the sample back in the '80s got in trouble for mixing up some dna samples in another case. and almost put an innocent guy in prison. >> they didn't do a good job of preserving the evidence. three people had been arrested for evidence tampering. >> hennis' lawyers asked for a postponement to investigate the lab. the judge refused. meanwhile, military prosecutors found a second smear from the rape kit. they sent it to a gnnew lab, an the results also pointed to

hennis. >> the medical examiner's slide came back on every marker to the defendant tested by army, the crime lab. you had two chains of custody. the defense could not attack the slide. >> the prosecutor, the dna results swept away all previous doubts. >> they went back and replayed the first two trials, some of the old discredited inferences. >> patrick cone seeing timothy hughes coming down that driveway. the fact that he took a members only jacket to the dry cleaners, using the atm card. you had numerous pieces of evidence that tied him to this crime. >> for hennis' defenders, the prosecution's case had serious flaws. and their top priority was getting their own evidence in front of the jury. >> there's a ton of physical evidence in that house that they still can't explain. they found a head hair in ms. eastburn's head. it's not tim hennis. there's a pubic hair right where

the rape took place. >> what is male dna doing underneath ms. eastburn's fingernails that's not tim's. there's male dna under the daughter's fingernail, and it's not tim's. >> the prosecution and defense agreed on that. nothing else came back to timothy hennis. underneath the fingernails, that's not timothy hennis. but what is is that vaginal swab. >> to me, male dna evidence under a fingernail of a woman who's raped is pretty damaging evidence. who is it? >> the fingernail scrapings weren't enough for a full dna profile. so the defense asked to test all the crime scene evidence that might point to a different perpetrator. including a blood-soaked towel. >> now, whoever had sex with her didn't necessarily kill her. but you can't argue that whoever cleaned up the blood didn't have something to do with it. let's find out what happened. >> in the military, if you need a test done, you have to ask the judge to make the army do it for you. >> the judge, though, denied the

defense's request to test other items. >> i can't imagine a judge in a civilian court not allowing that. you had the evidence. why not test it? >> without dna results pointing to a different suspect, hennis' lawyers decided to offer an alternate explanation for the incriminating sperm. >> at the very end, they threw out their -- the theory that tim hennis had consensual sex with mrs. eastburn within a day or so of the homicides. >> when he said that, you could feel the love leaving that room. i mean, everybody went, i don't believe he said that. >> i mean, there are certain things you can do in front of a jury, and there are certain things you can't. it would not have been how i would have done it. >> the 14-person court-martial jury declared unanimously that timothy hennis was guilty of murdering katy eastburn and her children. their next task would be to

decide whether hennis deserved the death penalty. >> when you've got a man that for 25 years after this occurred did nothing but raise his family, serve in two wars, honorably discharged and still married to the same woman, why are you just going to look and say that's the monster? >> he leads the pres church, delivers cookies to kids, it doesn't make any difference. >> we're not there to say why did he do it. we're there to say he did it. >> the prosecution ended their presentation with another slide show. >> gary eastburn counted out the birthdays he's missed with his daughters, anniversaries, baptism. >> one of my trial partners asked gary, what do you miss the most? and he just, from his heart,

with tears in his eyes, just said i just miss them. >> on april 15th, 2010, the jury sentenced timothy hennis to death. >> do i feel vindicated when you get a not guilty, the smiles and smirks you see from different people, you're damn right, i do. i feel vindicated. >> tim hennis now sits in solitary confinement at fort leavenworth, kansas. his appeals both in the military and federal courts could take decades. >> i still think tim's innocent. but i'm not his lawyer now, and it would be totally improper for me to sit down and say all right, tim, did you or didn't you? i'm dying to have that conversation with him. but how can you put a man to death based solely on one piece of evidence? our country was formed on the premise that one person

wrongfully convicted is a grave injustice. >> i don't know what the outcome of this is going to be. but this is a good case. >> i knew we were right. >> i think it's a good system. on this episode of "death row stories" a millionaire is accused of brutal murders in a downtown miami hotel. >> the crime scene was a bloody, bloody mess. >> but after a death sentence, one man fights to save his life. >> you go into federal court and say my guy is innocent, and they say well, too bad, mate, that has nothing to do with it. >> and what he discovers will turn the case upside down. >> anybody in the world would say, what? that's not allowed. >> there were a series of questions that should have been asked. >> this case has more evidence that was covered up than any