Military murder is an independent project and is not endorsed by the Department of Defense or any military component.

The views expressed are those of the host.

The content of this podcast is not meant to be legal or medical advice.

Warning, this episode contains graphic details of murder and is not suitable for young listeners.

Listener discretion is advised.

True Crime Army, welcome to Military Murder.

I am your host Margo and today I bring to you an unprecedented case that began in the 80s but was not technically solved until 2010.

In 1985, the wife of an Air Force captain and two of their three daughters were brutally murdered in their home.

A suspect was quickly identified and brought to trial by North Carolina in sentence to death.

But the presentation of the case had its flaws and the case of the Eastburn murders would fill courtrooms, newspaper articles, blogs and now podcasts for the following 30 years.

Join me today as I discuss the case against Army Sergeant Timothy Henness, the only man in history to be on death row after being acquitted of the same crime 20 years earlier.

Now let's dig in.

So let me just start out with listing some of my sources for this episode.

I used the 1988 North Carolina Supreme Court opinion, the 2017 Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces opinion, an amazing book by Scott Wiesnitt titled Innocent Victim, a CNN article by Tom Patterson and some clips from WTVD News from the New York Times.

In 1985, I was told to talk to you a little bit about military moves.

If you know anyone in the military, you know that military families move often.

And the spring and the fall in the military is filled with wonder and excitement. Where are they going to be assigned next?

People don't move every year but they move every few years. And service members have a dream sheet. It's basically something that they use to inform their superiors of the next locations that they want to go to.

Either they're the next location or the next position that they want to hold. And some people may focus on just job opportunities and leadership potential, something that's going to help them obtain more rank.

But sometimes people focus on location. They may want to go to Hawaii so they can go to the beach after work or they may want to go to Germany to go to as many beer festivals as they want.

The spring of 85 was no different for Air Force Captain Gary Eastburn. During this time, he was stationed at Pope Air Force Base North Carolina.

He just found out that he was assigned his dream job as an Air Liaison officer with the British Air Force in England.

...