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Innocent Victims: The True Story of the Eastburn Family Murders
Innocent Victims: The True Story of the Eastburn Family Murders
Innocent Victims: The True Story of the Eastburn Family Murders
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Innocent Victims: The True Story of the Eastburn Family Murders

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The riveting true account of a grisly crime and the unprecedented three murder trials faced by Fort Bragg soldier Tim Hennis.

On Mother’s Day, 1985, the bodies of Kathryn Eastburn and her two young daughters were found in their Fayetteville, North Carolina, home. Katie, an air force captain’s wife, had been raped and stabbed to death. Kara and Erin’s throats had been slit. Their toddler sister, Jana, was the only survivor of a bloody killing spree that terrified a community still reeling from the conviction, six years prior, of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for the savage slayings of his pregnant wife and two daughters.
 
The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department soon focused its investigation on US Army soldier Tim Hennis. Detectives and local prosecutors built their case on circumstantial evidence and a jury convicted Hennis and sentenced him to death. But his defense team refused to give up. Piece by piece, they discredited the state’s case, exposing false testimony, concealed evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. At a second trial, Hennis was found not guilty and released from death row.
 
But an even more stunning turn of events was yet to come. Twenty-five years after the murders, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation tested a crucial piece of DNA evidence from the crime scene. The shocking results led to an unprecedented third trial to determine Tim Hennis’s guilt or innocence.
 
From the initial discovery of the horrifying scene at 367 Summer Hill Road to the controversial change of jurisdiction that allowed Hennis to be prosecuted for an astonishing third time, author Scott Whisnant chronicles every development in this intricate, disturbing, and still-evolving case. Has the mystery of who killed Katie, Kara, and Erin Eastburn been solved beyond a reasonable doubt? Read Innocent Victims and decide for yourself.
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 21, 2017
ISBN9781504039147
Author

Scott Whisnant

Scott Whisnant is a former editor and writer for the Morning Star (Wilmington, North Carolina). As a courtroom reporter he covered the case of Tim Hennis, who had previously been convicted of murder and was sentenced to death before the state supreme court awarded him a retrial. Whisnant is the author of Innocent Victims, which details the historic case.

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Rating: 4.314814814814815 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    * I received this book in exchange for my honest feedback*

    Innocent Victims follows the true story of the Eastburn family murders. The Eastburn Family Murders were made famous for many reasons in my opinion.1) the alleged killer is a military man and the family was a military family. 2) The first case that was tried 3 times on one suspect.
    This book left me with mixed emotions. I don't know if Tim Hennis did this as he didn't have a decent and fair trial. At that time labs were faking results so the prosecution could have more wins, as a result innocent people have died. I believe that if he did the crime he should be punished but if he didn't and the killer is still out there.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Iwrote about this book....


    Thanks for sharing. I wanted to read it but then at the beginning of the book I noticed they were referring to the story of Jeffrey MacDonald a lot. I knew a bit about that case but had not read Fatal Vision by Joe McGinnes about this case, so I read Fatal Vision first.

    This book has a lot of similarities with that story.
    It was a very good read but if there is one thing I cannot stand if when I read a book and then discover they never caught the killer(s).
    Afterwards I searched the Internet but it seems case is not solved.
    Very well written.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Good story .. good reporting.. would still like to know Tim's fate.

    1 person found this helpful

Book preview

Innocent Victims - Scott Whisnant

Chapter One

The phone rang early Sunday morning at an hour when nothing good ever came from a ringing phone. Bob Seefeldt groaned.

Just as he expected. One of his soldiers was in jail. An argument with his wife had gotten out of hand, greased considerably by liquor. She wasn’t about to bail him out. His sergeant would have to.

This shouldn’t take long, Seefeldt told his wife as he climbed out of bed. He trudged to the car, flipped on his headlights, and drove the half-mile to Fort Bragg, the largest military base in the nation. Seefeldt found his man sulking in the brig. God, he was sick of that look. He haggled with the MPs and shepherded the kid to daylight. Irritated and needing a shave, Seefeldt pulled into his driveway just before noon. Jennette waited in the yard.

What’s going on over there? Seefeldt asked his wife.

No one stirred next door at the Eastburns’ house. Their Toyota station wagon hadn’t budged for three days. Katie Eastburn hadn’t taken her three girls to church or even bothered to pick up the Fayetteville Times that morning. The Sunday paper lay rolled up in the front yard beside two others.

Seefeldt thought that was strange. A day didn’t go by without him watching those girls romp on their backyard jungle gym. Katie would watch from the back steps, waving at Seefeldt as he came home from work. Hey, Bob, Erin would holler, look what I can do.

Seefeldt would look up and find the three-year-old, a persistent climber, perched high in the backyard dogwood tree. Jana, her toddler sister, would stand by the fence that separated the two yards and hold out her arms until Seefeldt picked her up and hugged her.

Want a cookie? he’d ask. Katie would nod that it was all right and he’d take the girls inside, where he and Jennette would let them pick their favorite kind.

He thought back to Thursday, the last time he’d seen Katie. She’d come over just after dark to borrow milk, bringing Erin and Jana and leaving Kara asleep in bed. Bob offered the girls some popcorn, and Katie wound up staying 30 minutes before checking Kara. He remembered how she sat in the corner rocking chair, talking about missing her husband the last two months. The girls finished their popcorn and Katie got up to leave, Jana in one arm and a glass of milk in her free hand. That was the last he’d heard from her.

By Saturday, Seefeldt mentioned it to Jennette, but they let it drop. Katie had talked about taking the girls to see their father, Captain Gary Eastburn, at Air Force officers’ school in Montgomery, Alabama. She must have put them on the bus, Jennette said.

That night, Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy Brenda Price shook Seefeldt awake as he dozed on his couch. Had he noticed anything unusual next door? Seefeldt, too groggy to ask why, said no. Nothing was the matter. The deputy left and a weary Seefeldt turned off the light and went to bed.

But by Sunday morning, he was worried about those newspapers piled up, the car in the same place, and the stroller next to the side door, where it had been for three days.

I’m going over there to see if anyone’s home, he told his wife.

He picked up the Sunday paper, dated May 12, 1985, and tossed it and the others into the carport. He sidestepped the baby’s stroller and knocked on the side door. No answer. Then he rang the front doorbell a few times. Nothing.

He rang it again. A baby cried. Seefeldt thought it sounded like Jana, twenty-one months old. He rang the doorbell again. Another cry.

Katie Eastburn couldn’t possibly have left her toddler alone in the house. Seefeldt wondered if he heard right. But what else sounds like a baby crying? He called Jennette over to see if she could hear the cry. He rang again.

That’s the baby, Jennette said.

Call somebody, Seefeldt instructed with more confidence than he felt.

Jennette fumbled through the phone book, but the pages shook in her hands. She found a listing for Julie Czerniak, the Eastburns’ baby-sitter who lived a few houses away.

Julie, I think something terrible has happened, she said.

Julie gave her the Eastburns’ number and Jennette called. The phone rang and rang. Please let her answer, Jennette whispered. She let it ring some more. She next tried the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department. At 12:53 P.M., the dispatcher relayed a child-neglect call.

Deputy William Toman was patrolling nearby on Sante Fe Drive, checking stores along Bragg Boulevard until his shift ended. He heard the call and figured he was closer to Summer Hill than anyone. Toman told the dispatcher he’d handle it and arrived four minutes later at 367 Summer Hill Road.

Julie beat Toman to the house. Jana’s standing there in her crib, she told Seefeldt. Why wasn’t someone going in to get her? Julie ran to the back of the house and tried to open a bedroom window.

Don’t touch nothing, Seefeldt hollered.

Just go on, Julie told him. I want to get in and find out.

Deputy Toman showed up in no mood for nonsense. The sheriff’s department had procedures to follow on child-neglect calls, and Toman was not one to stray from procedures. He tried to make sense of what Julie was saying, then dismissed her as loud and irrational. Something about a child in a crib. Seefeldt was still irritated that Julie was trying to break into the house. All right. I’ll handle it from here, Toman said before they could worry him further.

Toman checked all the doors and windows. No forced entry. He found a note jammed inside the storm door. Mrs. Eastburn, get in touch with your husband by phone. Deputy Price.

Toman shrugged and rang the doorbell. No one stirred. No baby cried. Seefeldt felt a little foolish.

Neighbors began to gather in the street.

Toman’s sergeant drove up and was talking to the young deputy on the front porch. What do you think we should do? the sergeant asked. Toman wasn’t sure.

Then he heard the crying. He leaned over the porch railing, pressed his nose to the bedroom window and cupped his hands at his temples. Little Jana Eastburn stood in her crib, her arms outstretched to anyone. I’ve got no choice, Toman told his sergeant. I’ve got to go in.

Toman stepped over the railing, sliced the screen, and lifted the window. He poked his head in and smelled death.

Jana wanted out of that room. Her white pajamas with blue and yellow flowers reeked. She was pale and gaunt, her eyes puffy from so much crying. A slew of stuffed animals and toys had been placed in her crib, as if someone expected Jana to need entertaining for a while. She had tossed them onto the floor.

Jana wrapped both arms around Toman’s neck, digging her tiny fingers into his back. It’s all right, he told her. It’ll be all right.

He passed Jana out the window to Seefeldt and found a neatly stacked pile of Pampers next to the crib, along with a bottle. He handed the diapers and bottle to Seefeldt and turned to face the rest of the house.

The smell was getting stronger. He steeled himself for a grisly body count. It didn’t matter how many bodies I found, he would say later. I was more worried about what I was going to find alive.

Toman drew his gun and opened the door. He looked to his right, toward the master bedroom.

Three-year-old Erin Eastburn lay beside her parents’ bed, the bottom half of her body protruding from under a white nightgown with delicate lavender stripes and bows. A pillow leaned against her face. The nightstand beside the bed had been knocked over.

The knife had nearly severed the child’s head.

Toman walked around the edge of the bed. A hand reached from behind it, grasping at nothing. He looked over the bed and saw Kathryn Eastburn—nude, stabbed, and dead.

A pillow covered her face. Toman lifted it and saw the thirty-one-year-old mother’s throat had been slashed in the same manner as her daughter’s, her chest wounds an angry afterthought.

Toman backed out of the room and into Jana’s bedroom, where no one had died, a room he could trust. He leaned out the window, a handkerchief over his face, and called for an ambulance.

The stench had filtered outside the window. Is it what I think it is? Seefeldt asked.

He recognized Jana’s pajamas as the ones she’d been wearing in his living room Thursday night. Has that baby been alone three nights? he wondered.

I’m not going to discuss it until the detectives come, Toman told Seefeldt.

The deputy walked through the living room, where a laundry basket filled with folded clothes had been overturned. Some newspapers were scattered about. Kathryn Eastburn’s sneakers, still tied, were in the middle of the floor. Her pink blouse was crumpled on the floor. There had been a struggle, Toman thought, but not much of one. The furniture was still in place, and even toys on the floor had not been disturbed.

Three miles away, a group of paramedics and firemen huddled around a television at the Yadkin Road Volunteer Fire Department to watch a Celtic-’76er playoff game. The call came just before tipoff. One DOA, the dispatcher said solemnly.

Some ol’ boy had a heart attack, William Huggins, chief paramedic on duty, told his partner. But there was more. Now the dispatcher was saying two DOA. That’s not good, Huggins thought. Two people don’t usually die in the same house at the same time.

Huggins’s ambulance pulled in the Eastburn driveway without sirens blaring or tires screeching. An ashen Toman greeted him by the side door. The senior paramedic, Toman announced, would have to go inside. Huggins realized that would be him.

Huggins followed Toman inside to the back bedroom, where he saw the lifeless body of Erin Eastburn. It was his job to officially declare the obvious.

Erin had been yanked off her parents’ bed and onto her back, her knees up in the air so that, as Huggins said later, it looked like sex. She’d been there a long time. In ten years as a paramedic, Huggins had gotten used to gruesome sights, but this child—angelic face, sparkling brown eyes, and throat hacked to pieces—was something he’d never forget.

Huggins put the back of his hand against Erin’s mouth. Then he picked up her pale, cool arm and checked for a pulse. He finally found a place between wounds on her chest for the stethoscope.

He nodded to Toman and went through the same routine with her mother. Then he turned, got out of the house, dropped to his knees, and gagged. Has everybody in there been accounted for? he asked no one in particular, still on his knees.

There’s three children and the mother, Seefeldt said.

I’ve only seen two.

Then there’s another one that’s been kidnapped or something, Seefeldt said.

Toman ran back inside the house and came back seconds later. I’ve found another one.

Huggins went inside, this time to the bedroom across from Jana’s. He sidestepped a plastic buggy full of toys, a copy of Raggedy Ann lying on top, and a toy piano. He moved past Erin’s bed, empty except for Big Bird tucked under a sheet, and approached the bed against the far wall.

Underneath a Star Wars bedspread, Kara Eastburn stared blankly at the ceiling, her throat cut.

Everyone was accounted for.

The somber news spread quickly outside the house, more with nods and sighs than words. Toman helped another deputy roll crime-scene ribbon around the Eastburns’ lawn. Detectives called away from Sunday dinners with their families met in the driveway.

The nondescript three-bedroom house, red brick with black shutters and ornamental iron railing, was now a curiosity. Neighbors walked over, children stopped in the street on their bicycles and leaned on one foot. Television crews started filming. Most of the neighbors knew the Eastburns lived there, but not much else. In this tranquil, tree-lined military neighborhood, just off a main road into Fort Bragg, families transferred in and out at the whim of the federal government.

Some knew the Eastburns as that nice young family. The mother was quiet and reserved, always tending to her blond, brown-eyed daughters. They never harmed anyone.

The Fayetteville-Fort Bragg part of North Carolina has always had a high murder rate. The area teems with teenage boys away from home for the first time. They go to bars and get in trouble. They commit violent crimes. The residents are almost used to it. But not in Summer Hill, an upper middle-class neighborhood usually reserved for higher-ranking officers. And not this kind of crime. Nobody gets used to that anywhere.

Cumberland County Sheriff’s detectives met and discussed what they had: a military captain’s wife and two young daughters stabbed to death in their home.

Fort Bragg has been the site of the same kind of family slayings, four and a half miles down the road, 15 years earlier. Onlookers began to buzz before the stretchers had taken the bodies out of the house.

Oh my God, this is just like the MacDonald killings all over again, one said to another.

Just two months earlier, Jeffrey MacDonald had attempted another appeal for a new trial, still claiming drug-crazed hippies had killed his pregnant wife and two daughters. But a federal judge had disagreed and ruled that the Green Beret doctor was right where he needed to be—in prison for three counts of murder.

Interest in the MacDonald killings had peaked in the mid-1980s with the release of the movie Fatal Vision, based on the book of the same name. For millions of television viewers, the slayings had represented a debate of whether a man who appeared so good could be so evil. But for people living in the Fort Bragg area, the slayings had meant locked windows, bolted doors, and raw fear.

As neighbors watched the ambulances arrive at the Eastburn home, they looked at each other and wondered. How could the same barbarous act happen again in this town? What if the killer lives in the neighborhood? What if he’s among us now?

Chapter Two

Detective Jack Watts knew his assignment—find the killer and find him quickly. Sheriff Ottis Jones, in the midst of a reelection bid, didn’t need an unsolved triple-murder case to drag around the campaign trail. He put Watts and three other detectives on the Eastburn case full time, and asked his 29 other detectives to start checking their sources. Seven agents from the State Bureau of Investigation were called to help.

Sheriff Jones wanted the answer to have nothing to do with Jeffrey MacDonald. The sooner his detectives made an arrest, the less likely rumors of a MacDonald copycat murder would turn to full-scale hysteria.

Detective Watts ran his fingers through his graying hair and looked around the Eastburn crime scene. In 14 years with the sheriff’s department, he’d seen the military youth of this town do some strange things. By day, they were nothing more than walking wallets to merchants, the lifeblood of the economy of Fayetteville, a city of 60,000. At night, many of those dollars went to beer joints and topless bars. For these young boys taught to fight by the military, many of them away from home the first time, the combination could have shattering results. Watts had seen one awful murder after another. But slitting a three-year-old child’s throat was beyond their drunken brawls. Watts had something different this time.

A group of detectives and ID techs huddled in the Eastburns’ front yard. Watts knew the killer was already days ahead of them, so their search of the house would be crucial. It’s bad in there, fellas, he said, trying to brace them for the grueling task ahead.

ID technicians usually practice dark humor at the murder scene, stopping at times to speculate whether the body had fooled around once too often or tried to fleece his drug dealer again. But no one would joke inside 367 Summerhill Road this Mother’s Day.

They got on their hands and knees and picked over the house. For four hours, they worked over and around the bodies, collecting pieces of the family’s final night together—Katie’s sock, Erin’s pillow, Kara’s bedspread. Conrad Rensch was the photographer of the group. He took pictures of the girls from several angles, then of Katie’s nude body. He grimaced when it came time to move their bodies and look underneath. Perhaps he’d uncover some part of the killer—a strand of hair or a piece of skin.

Disturbing five-year-old Kara was bad enough. The killer had found white quilt batting and placed it on her chest. ID tech Bruce Daws lifted it, getting cotton fibers on his hands. He couldn’t touch it without fibers coming loose. Then Daws looked down and noticed Kara had been stabbed until her organs broke through her skin.

Moving Erin was worse. Daws picked her up so Rensch could take another picture and watched in horror as her head slumped over and nearly rolled off. Slashing her throat had not been enough. The killer had gone to the trouble to cut nearly all the way around.

For three throat-slashing murders, the house had surprisingly little blood. There were obvious stains under the bodies, but almost no blood had splattered onto the walls.

They continued their tour of the scene, finding evidence in odd places. A tieback from a living room curtain was found in Kara’s room. A piece of white rope was found in the middle of Summer Hill Road, back toward Yadkin Road. Someone had been in the utility room, leaving an empty Glad bag box on top of the dryer.

They put about two dozen pieces of evidence into bags, among them head hairs from both bedrooms. They vacuumed the house and collected the bags. From the master bedroom, they took a sheet and bedspread with bloody, ribbed impressions, as if someone’s corduroy pants had brushed against it.

Fingerprint examiner John Trogden found prints on door frames almost seven feet from the floor. A palm print next to a bloody smear was found above the living room door. That night, the State Bureau of Investigation sent its lab experts to spray the house with Luminol. Brenda Dew and Pam Tully pulled a blanket over them and created a walking tent, spraying Luminol and waiting for a reaction from the chemical, which causes blood and some metallic objects, such as straight pins, to glow.

The Luminol explained why the house hadn’t been covered in blood. The killer had spent considerable time covering his tracks. Luminol reactions suggested he had wiped a bathroom sink, doorknobs, and light switches. A towel and washcloth, soaked in blood, had been dropped near the master bathroom door.

The Luminol further revealed a path of bloody left footprints leading into the master bedroom. Perhaps the killer had carelessly stepped one foot in blood as he cleaned up. There were more Luminol footprints on the front porch and others leading from the carport down the driveway. How had they survived rain on Saturday and Sunday?

Some of those hairs and prints should match the killer, Watts thought. The department later released a statement saying, If the killer left so much as a hair, we’re going to find it. It’s hard to do that much damage without leaving a part of yourself.

But the killer had left behind one piece of evidence that had already confounded Watts. Rensch had found a rubber glove tip in a doorway between the living room and hallway, a tip that obviously hadn’t come from a dishwashing glove or a technician’s glove. It matched nothing in the house and had no reason to be there, unless someone left it there on purpose to mock investigators.

Anyone familiar with Fatal Vision knew Army investigators had found the finger of a surgeon’s glove in the MacDonalds’ bedroom, still fresh with Colette MacDonald’s blood. The glove had been used to write the word PIG on the headboard of the bed, just above where she had been stabbed and clubbed to death.

Watts needed a witness to explain this away. He turned the investigation outside the house to anyone who could tell him about Kathryn Eastburn’s final days. He started with Julie Czerniak, the 15-year-old baby-sitter still sobbing on the Seefeldts’ porch.

Julie, did anything unusual happen while you baby-sat? Watts asked.

I got these weird calls just about every time, she said.

Ever since Gary Eastburn left for officer’s school, the calls kept coming, she said. Mrs. Eastburn had even warned her about how to handle them. Julie told Watts that the last time she baby-sat was Tuesday. Somebody called and asked How is the most gorgeous girl on Summer Hill Road?

Did you know who it was? Watts asked.

Well, I can’t remember, but he left a message. I took another message, too. Somebody named Angela wanted to buy their dog.

Julie explained that the family had planned to move to England and feared their dog, Dixie, wouldn’t survive the trip.

What did you do with those messages? Watts asked.

She kept all her messages on the bulletin board over the phone. I guess that’s where I put them.

Watts sent his men back inside the house to find the notes, but they came back empty-handed.

You sure you don’t remember what they said, he asked Julie again.

No, sir, I wish I could, but I just can’t.

Watts turned to leave. Better try again when she’s not so distraught, he thought.

It freaks me out, Julie said. It’s just like Dr. MacDonald.

Watts stopped and listened as the Eastburns’ babysitter explained her friendship with Jeffrey MacDonald, a martyred hero in her eyes. Julie was a charter member of Jeffrey MacDonald’s international fan club.

This isn’t good, Watts thought. First a strange glove tip, then a baby-sitter who idolizes MacDonald.

The friendship started in eighth grade after she chose Fatal Vision for a book report. She had absorbed all 663 pages, reading some parts over and over. Jeffrey MacDonald—the Princeton graduate, Green Beret doctor, and All-American boy—couldn’t have killed his wife and kids. She didn’t understand how they could have so easily dismissed Helena Stoeckley, a drug-addled informant who confessed several times to witnessing the murders.

I don’t think she’d confess to something like that for nothing, Julie said.

Julie’s fascination with MacDonald didn’t end with her book report. She wanted to know more about him, the book, and the case. She wanted to hear from him, find out for herself what he was like. Julie wrote to MacDonald at his Bastrop, Texas, prison.

I’ll understand if you don’t write me back, she wrote.

A few days later, the first of more than a dozen letters from MacDonald arrived, punctuated throughout with smiley faces. It was good to hear from her, he wrote. He was working out with weights, trying to stay in shape, and reading medical journals. He said his chances for a new trial were good.

Hope you’re doing well in school, MacDonald wrote in another letter. When I get out, I’ll have to come see you. Julie said she wanted to be MacDonald’s third daughter. MacDonald agreed if he ever had another daughter, he’d want her to be like Julie.

She espoused his innocence to anyone who asked, saying Doctor MacDonald was not that type of person. She’d read Fatal Vision seven times and decided it was filled with lies.

I don’t think you can really understand what I mean because you haven’t talked to him and you haven’t written him, you know, she said. And it’s just the way he is … Joe McGinniss lied extensively through that book as far as I know, what Dr. MacDonald has told me. And Dr. MacDonald is a very caring, sensitive person, and unless he was just totally freaked out somehow, he couldn’t have done that in a normal state of mind.

Ten weeks before the murders, Dr. MacDonald called collect to wish Julie a happy fifteenth birthday. Julie told him she’d been kicked out of junior high school for getting caught with marijuana in her purse.

Yeah, they handcuffed me like a murderer, she said. Oh my God, I mean, uh …

Watts moved on to other witnesses, ones who cared less about Jeffrey MacDonald. But none could shed any light on why someone butchered the Eastburn family. He left for home around midnight, resigned that he would spend time investigating a MacDonald copycat murder. He wished he had a better lead.

Not long after Watts left the neighborhood, twenty-year-old Patrick Cone walked to the top of Summer Hill Road and waited. Cone knew when he saw those ambulances he was going to have to tell what he saw. Three nights earlier he thought it was kind of funny. He told his dad. He told co-workers. He played it for laughs, never telling it the same way twice.

That was before the bodies were found. Patrick Cone now had to think this through. He wasn’t sure he wanted to expose his private life to policemen. He always stayed out too late and drank too much. He was afraid his friends would think he’d turned fed.

But he knew right from wrong. And he knew somebody might remember seeing him on the street that night. So Patrick Cone did something he never thought he’d do. He started waving his arms as a sheriff’s deputy turned into Summer Hill.

Deputy Eddie Hollingsworth pulled over.

Man, I saw somebody leaving the house that night, Cone told him.

Hollingsworth summoned the detectives before the young black man lost his nerve.

Watts had just gotten home when he and Detective Robert Bittle were called back out to Summer Hill. Mr. Cone, Watts began, could you tell us what you saw Thursday night?

I was walking home from my girlfriend’s house, about 3:30, Cone said, describing a walk home that took him past the Eastburns’ home and around the corner where he lived with his parents and sisters.

As I was walking, I saw a white Chevette parked on the road. Then I saw this white dude walking down the lady’s driveway. I passed right by him. He said, ‘I’m getting an early start this morning,’ or something like that. Then I watched him get in his white Chevette and drive off.

Cone said he could remember the man’s face, his hair and mustache. He described a black jacket, a black hat, a white shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. He remembered how the guy carried a garbage bag over his shoulder all the way to his car, 200 yards down from the Eastburns’.

Watts couldn’t believe his good fortune. He didn’t know much about Patrick Cone, but he liked his story. He told Cone he’d be in touch.

Chapter Three

Air Force Captain Gary Eastburn stared at the phone. It should be ringing by now, he thought. He paced up and down the dormitory hallway. Then he sat down and stared some more.

Eight o’clock in the morning. He and Katie had an arrangement—while he was gone eight and a half weeks at squadron officers’ school in Montgomery, Alabama, they would try to limit the phone calls to one a week. It was cheaper for Katie to call than for him to call collect. If she called early on Saturday, he could guard the hall phone next to his room and answer before it rang twice.

Gary didn’t like being separated any more than she did, but he had to do it. The Air Force had offered him the chance to go to squadron officers’ school for three months and learn about great leaders in military history. If an officer wanted to get promoted, he attended these schools.

Gary had considered taking his wife and daughters with him, pulling Kara out of school and jamming them all into a trailer just off Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, but he just couldn’t do that to them. Besides, when he got back they’d be just a few weeks from moving to England, a longtime fantasy of his. The Air Force was sending an officer to act as liaison with the British Air Force, a job Gary Eastburn had lobbied long and hard to get. So he could bear the eight and a half weeks of separation, by far the longest he and Katie had been apart in ten years of marriage.

From what Gary could tell, they had held up well. Katie called at 8 A.M. every Saturday and wrote during the week. The kids took turns on the phone when she called. When Katie put Jana on the phone, she thought her father was inside the telephone, sometimes pointing at it and saying Da-da.

He’d even stopped worrying about the phone call she’d gotten about a week after he left.

About 4 A.M., someone had awoken Katie.

What are ya doin’ tonight?

Who’s this?

Mrs. Eastburn, I live around the corner. I’m coming to see you, the caller said.

Katie slammed down the phone and stared at her bedroom walls until it was time to get Kara up for school.

Gary hadn’t thought about that call for a while. His mind was on the hall phone in his dormitory. As soon as it rang, Gary would tell Katie he’d be home by this time next week. I’ll miss you tomorrow on Mother’s Day, he’d say.

Katie must be getting Kara ready for one of the gymnastic shows her class staged. Gary’s oldest daughter could do somersaults and handstands and, her dad was proud to find, knock the heck out of a baseball.

Gary grew impatient. One collect call wouldn’t hurt, so at a quarter past 8 he dialed.

No answer. Soon, his unit took off on a warrior run, where soldiers would go as far as they could, just to see if they could do it. At least the run occupied Gary’s mind. He finished, then he talked with some friends. Even laughed a little.

Back to the phone around 11. No answer. That gymnastic show must be running late, he thought.

At 2:30, Gary Eastburn began to worry in earnest. Jana was supposed to be taking a nap this time of day. Whenever Gary was late getting Jana home for her afternoon nap, Katie lectured him. She was religious about the afternoon nap.

By 6 o’clock, Gary thought of calling the next-door neighbors, but could not for the life of him remember the Seefeldts’ name. He considered calling the police, but said no, nothing bad had happened. He called Dale Johnson, a sergeant who worked for him at Pope Air Force Base, and asked Dale to take a look around the house. He called back to say no one was home.

Well, call the sheriff’s department and get them to leave a message, Gary said.

Deputy Brenda Price woke up Robert Seefeldt. Have you seen anything unusual next door?

Seefeldt groused, trying to shake off sleep. He squinted into the deputy’s headlights as he looked into his driveway.

No, I haven’t noticed, he said.

Gary’s roommate at the air base came over to console him. Hey, look, there’s some telephone problems or something, he said. Don’t worry about it and go to sleep.

Gary took that advice. Maybe Katie and the kids spent the night at a friend’s. The next day, he’d find his family, and he and Katie would laugh about this.

Gary spent most of the morning chasing cadets off the phone. The call came that afternoon. He couldn’t wait to hear Katie’s explanation.

Gary, it’s for you, someone said.

There she is, Gary said as he moved toward the phone.

It’s some detective.

Gary knew then. If it’d been just a car wreck, a detective wouldn’t be the one to call. He grabbed the receiver, his life as he knew it crashing to an end.

Are any of them alive? he asked.

The greeting startled Detective Jack Watts. Suddenly the man on the other end was a suspect. There’s been a death in the family, Watts said. You need to come home.

Can you tell me who?

I just can’t tell you. There’s been a death in the family and you need to get home right away.

Gary put the phone on the hook and staggered down the hall.

What’s wrong? a voice said.

Gary collapsed into a ball. My wife and kids are dead.

His friends threw some of his things into a suitcase. The school’s vice commander, who’d spent seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, came by and wept harder than Gary. The chaplain, just off the phone with Detective Watts, offered the only comfort he could.

The baby’s still alive, he told Gary.

Gary and his roommate packed up and drove to the Montgomery airport. They bought the last two seats on the last flight out. Gary sank into his seat, surrounded by a plane full of sons and daughters flying home after Mother’s Day visits. The flight landed in Atlanta, where Gary waited two hours to change planes. Passersby tried not to stare, but Captain Gary Eastburn was making quite a scene, sipping beer between long, loud sobs.

He remembered how she was that day on a softball field 11 years ago.

Kathryn Furnish, twenty years old and engaged to her college boyfriend, had to be talked into going to the singles club softball game in Westwood, Kansas—a tiny town among the suburbs of Kansas City. Katie hadn’t tried softball Little League, but a high school friend told her it’d be something to do on another slow night.

Gary Eastburn, twenty-five years old and tired of selling shoes at Montgomery Ward, never passed up a softball game. He’d never been to a singles club either, but a friend talked him into it. If they played softball, he figured, it couldn’t be all bad.

He sought out the girl in a ponytail and cutoff jeans during post-game beers. She let him take her home. A week later, they arranged to meet at another soft-ball game. This time Katie sat and watched him hit two homers and a triple and drive in seven runs. Gary Eastburn never played better. He was in love.

On one trip around the bases, he glanced into the stands. He was sure he had impressed her now. But she looked bored.

Later, Gary leaned over to kiss her good night.

There’s something I need to tell you, Katie said.

Yeah, what’s that?

I’m kinda engaged to this guy.

She and her boyfriend had been shopping for rings while at Kansas State University. He had gone home for the summer and promised to call every week.

A deflated Gary Eastburn drove home, at first resigned that he met her too late. But then he pounded the steering wheel. I’m

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