TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Crime

  • Possible mistrial for Henderson

    Henderson defense seeks mistrial:

    The defense for Richard Henderson Jr. is calling for a mistrial after one of the prosecution’s witness’ statement did not match her pretrial statement.

    The request by lead defense attorney Carolyn Schlemmer came on the third day of testimony after the prosecution’s last witness of the day testified Henderson had told her he realized that his actions were wrong on the day he allegedly murdered his 11-year-old brother, parents and grandmother.

    Witness Jennifer McCreary, who dated Henderson for a year in 2001-02, started to tell jurors Wednesday that Henderson had admitted to her what happened on the evening of the crime. She testified he told her he was playing video games with his brother, Jacob, in his room and that he killed him with a steel pipe.

    “He realized what he had done and threw his brother’s body out the window,” McCreary said.

    After killing his brother, she continued, Henderson told her he realized he had to kill his whole family. She said he went to his grandmother’s room and asked her to get something out of a nightstand, then killed her with a pipe.

    “He closed the door so his father wouldn’t see,” McCreary said.

    Henderson also hid the pipe, McCreary testified, and at one point retrieved it and wrapped a towel around it.

    At that point in McCreary’s testimony, Judge Diana Moreland dismissed the jury for their evening break.

    Out of the presence of the jury, defense attorney Carolyn Schlemmer told the judge that she was unaware the realization statement was ever made.

    “There have been no statements (that) he realized what he did until this,” Schlemmer said.

    Initially, Schlemmer said, McCreary gave a statement to the state attorney and a statement to the defense, but “at no point” did Henderson tell her he pushed his brother out the window because he realized what he did.

    Way to go prosecution. You may have just screwed up what was a slam dunk. If the judge declares a mistrial a new trial would take place at a later date.

    Today however the prosecution is trying to backtrack.

    When McCreary retook the stand this morning, prosecutor Brian Iten asked her if she was sure that Henderson told her, “he realized what he had done.”

    Said McCreary: “I’m not too confident.”

    Iten then said to her: “Then you acknowledge when you gave a statement to the state attorney’s office you never mentioned that before.”

    McCreary said, “Yes.”

    Iten then asked the court to instruct the jury to disregard the statement made to the jury that he had realized what he had done.

    Judge Moreland then instructed the jury to disregard that portion of McCreary’s testimony.

    You can’t unring the bell.

    As of the time I am posting this I have yet to hear a ruling on the mistrial request.

  • Testimony continues in Henderson trial

    Witnesses testify to Henderson’s describing people dying:

    More testimony about how Richard Henderson Jr. is not insane just fucked up.

    William Klein, a friend of Henderson’s, said the two were smoking pot and drinking alcohol three days after the murders of four Henderson family members. As they talked, he quoted Henderson as saying, “Something to the affect of how it sounds when somebody dies…bones are crunching, bodies gurgling.”

    Katie Kadisak, 17, said that she had spent time with Henderson the weekend after the killings. She said Henderson told her that it is very easy to crack someone’s skull, and that when someone is dying they twitch and gurgle.

    Also on the stand this afternoon during the third day of testimony was Henderson’s friend, Christina Depetris, who said with Henderson jailed the two exchanged letters. She read from one of the letters he wrote, saying, “I did that horrible thing – I’ll never forget the sound of the (TV-video) remote hitting the ground.”

    The defense questioned witnesses on Henderson’s thoughts of suicide…

    Henderson’s ex-girlfriend told the court today that he discussed suicide the day after the murders.

    Danielle Kervin was asked about suicide by defense lawyer Franklin Roberts.

    To Robert’s questioning, Kervin said that, yes, Henderson had talking about killing himself. She said Henderson had asked her if she would join him in taking an overdose of pills.

    While Kervin answered questions, she nervously played with her hair and occasionally looked over at Henderson, who sat at the defense table. He sat slumped down in a chair during the morning testimony, occasionally resting his chin on a hand and twirling a pencil. He was dressed in a dark sweatshirt and baggy blue jeans.

    Another witness on the stand, Eric Weger, 20, also said Henderson talked of suicide. He said, to a prosecutor’s questions, that he took it more of a joke that Henderson was talking of killing himself. Later, when asked by the defense lawyer if Henderson was laughing when he said this, Weger said Henderson was not laughing.

    Asked if Henderson seemed to be hearing voices, Weger told the state’s lawyer he didn’t think so. Asked by a defense lawyer if he had observed Henderson talking to unseen voices, Weger said no.

    This little tidbit leads me to believe he damn well knew the difference between right and wrong…

    Witness Stacy Dean, 21, said that on Sunday three days after the killings she was asked by Henderson to drive to Wauchula and pick up Henderson, Kervin and another young woman, and she did. A previous witness had said Henderson dropped the family van in Wauchula and needed a ride.

    When the four in the van drove by the Henderson family’s mobile home outside Myakka City, Dean said there were sheriff’s cars there with lights flashing.

    She said Henderson ducked down in the back seat of the van. When she asked him why he had slumped out of sight, he said his parents must have called the cops on him.

    And motive…

    Earlier in court, witnesses said Henderson – on the Friday after the killings – picked up his girlfriend for a weekend date, tried to sell his family’s electronics, bought illegal drugs and passed out at the mall.

    Amy DonSalvo said she was approached by Henderson as he tried to sell a TV and a computer. He told her she would have to go pick them up at his family’s house near Myakka City. He told her he wanted cash or drugs that could be sold for cash, DonSalvo said.

    He’s not insane, he’s just a murderous drug addict.

  • More testimony in Henderson trial

    (Again this was written up yesterday but I took last night off.)

    Henderson ‘normal’ after deaths:

    More testimony in the trial of Richard Henderson Jr. This time let’s hear from his grandfather.

    Loyal Stringer told jurors their grandson said he was taking a girlfriend home. He testified he appeared “normal,” but the girlfriend appeared scared and had “little color in her face.”

    Henderson, before he drove off, told his grandparents not to go to the house because his parents were fighting “real bad.”

    Again that doesn’t sound like an insane person to me.

    Now some testimony from his friends…

    More testimony from Nicole J. Russell and Zach Anderson – two friends of Henderson Jr. – indicated they had previously seen Henderson take Xanex and smoke marijuana.

    Russell also said she had seen him the day after the killings and that he told her he was going to Mexico.

    The day before and after the killings, Anderson testified, he saw Henderson Jr. at a friend’s house. Henderson, he said, appeared normal and “in touch with reality.”

    If he appeared normal after slaughtering his entire family he must be one heartless S.O.B.

    So far it doesn’t look like the insanity defense is going really well.

  • Kip Kinkel denied retrial

    Springfield school killer denied new trial:

    Speaking of Kip Kinkel, because you know we were, he has been denied a new trial.

    Kinkel claimed he was too mentally ill to agree to a plea bargain that sent him to prison for more than 111 years. But the judge disagreed.

    Kinkel argued his original defense attorneys and the trial judge should have ordered a mental competency evaluation before going ahead with the plea bargain.

    But a lawyer for the attorney general’s office argued during a two-day hearing in June that Kinkel understood what was happening and was intelligent enough to calculate that his best chance for a reduced sentence was the plea deal.

    Thank God for a responsible judge for once.

    (Trench’s Note: I had this written up early yesterday but took the night off. Still, thanks to D.P. for thinking of me. 🙂 )

  • Henderson trial starts

    Sides come out firing on Day One of Henderson trial:

    The trial of Richard Henderson Jr. opened yesterday. Henderson is accused of killing his entire family on Thanksgiving 2005.

    The defense, of course, is pursuing an insanity defense…

    But Franklin Roberts, one of Henderson’s court-appointed attorneys, told the jury a different story as he outlined his client’s defense. He contended the slayings in the family’s Myakka City mobile home were a tragedy brought on by Henderson Jr.’s severe mental illness.

    “The horrible act of someone who was insane at the time it was committed,” Roberts said of Henderson, charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his father, Richard Sr.; mother, Jeaneane; grandmother, June; and younger brother, Jacob.

    As Henderson occasionally jotted notes, Roberts described him as a man with a troubled youth full of drug abuse, suicide attempts and self-mutilation.

    “Early in life, something was wrong,” Roberts said. “He had trouble keeping up in school . . . was disruptive in class. He is not someone who simply at one moment in time – suddenly exploded.”

    Doctors will take the stand, Roberts said, and testify Henderson was insane when he killed his family.

    But just as the prosecution asked how can Henderson be insane when he did this?

    Henderson, while playing video games with his 11-year-old brother, took a metal pipe, struck him on the head and pushed the boy out a window. Then, in separate rooms, Henderson attacked his 82-year-old grandmother, his father, 48, and his mother, 42, killing each with “lethal amount of force” to their heads.

    Sandy Stringer, Henderson’s other grandmother, called the home for her daughter, Jeaneane, on the night of the killings.

    But Henderson Jr. answered instead.

    Lying, he said that his mom was in the shower and would soon go to bed.

    The day after the killings, Iten said, Henderson took his parents’ van, picked up his girlfriend and her friend and the three spent the next two nights in an Ellenton hotel. There, he told his girlfriend that he had killed people. But he lied about who, Iten said. He said he had killed his ex-wife, Brittany Wilde, and then killed his grandmother after she walked in on the attack.

    He also later told friends he planned to head for Mexico, Iten said.

    If he was insane he would have told his girlfriend that he killed Snap, Crackle, and Pop and was running away to Crunchland. (If he did kill Snap, Crackle, and Pop wouldn’t that make him a cereal killer?)

    Henderson isn’t insane he’s just a cold-blooded killer.

  • Chanthabouly fit to stand trial

    Teen declared fit for trial in Foss shooting:

    The last we heard anything about the shooting at Foss High in Washington State gunman Douglas S. Chanthabouly was ordered to undergo a psych exam.

    A psychiatrist there reported last month that the teen suffers from psychosis, and prescribed a battery of drugs to treat it, according to court documents.

    So a judge has ruled that Chanthabouly is fit to stand trial.

    Of course, his defense team will still more than likely be pursuing an insanity defense.

    A psychiatrist hired by the defense has diagnosed Chanthabouly with a “major mental disorder,” John McNeish, one of the two public defenders assigned to represent the teenager, told Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper during a hearing.

    McNeish did not say from what mental disease his client suffers or what the possible mental defense would be.

    They haven’t picked out their mental disease yet.

    To successfully argue insanity, his lawyers would have to convince a judge that Chanthabouly didn’t know the difference between right or wrong or couldn’t perceive the nature and quality of what he was doing when Kok was shot.

    Good luck with that.

  • Hainstock sentenced

    Hainstock Sentenced To Life In Prison But With Parole Possibilities:

    Eric Hainstock has been sentenced to life behind bars with the possibility of parole in 30 years for the shooting death of Weston Schools principal John Klang.

    Judge Patrick Taggart said that he considered Hainstock’s age and background before sentencing. He said that he believes the teen can be rehabilitated, WISC-TV reported.

    Defense attorneys had requested parole eligibility after 20 years while the state had requested 49 years with the date of eligibility being Sept.29, 2056 — or 50 years after the shooting at Weston Schools, WISC-TV reported.

    The jurors who convicted Hainstock said that they focused on the guns and ammunition that he brought to school and the number of shots fired in determining his intent to murder.

    Juror Brian Ludolph, of Prairie du Sac, said on Friday the fact numerous shots were fired by Hainstock convinced them the student intended to kill Klang. Ludolph said that Hainstock bringing the guns and ammunition to school also played into their finding of intent.

    Juror Diana Mielke, of North Freedom, said that the jury was initially split on whether Hainstock intended to kill Klang.

    Mielke said that she was initially among the six who thought Hainstock didn’t have intent to kill, but changed her mind after recalling Hainstock’s lack of emotion during the trial.

    Thankfully there was a jury with common sense who recognized Hainstock’s intent and weren’t fooled by his lies.

    Justice has been served.

    While you’re at WISC’s website take the poll and let them know how you feel about the verdict and sentence. You can probably guess how I voted.

  • Hainstock guilty

    Wisconsin Teen Guilty in Principal’s Death:

    Not only was Eric Hainstock found guilty in the shooting death of principal John Klang he was also convicted on the first-degree intentional homicide charge. He’s looking at life in prison.

    Sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow.

  • Breaking out the violin for Hainstock

    violin
    Wis. teen who shot principal testifies he was bullied at school:

    Here we go. Now we get to see how rough poor widdle Eric Hainstock had it.

    On the morning of the shooting, Hainstock testified, he awoke feeling tired of being picked on at school and said to himself, “I have to get all of this to stop.”

    At school, he was stuffed into lockers, had his head dunked into toilets and was called a “fag” by his classmates, he said. As a result of the bullying, he attempted suicide three times.

    His classmates’ comments “cut a little deeper,” he said, because at the age of 6, he was sexually molested by his 12-year-old stepbrother. He kept the alleged assaults a secret, he said.

    Hainstock’s father, Shawn Hainstock, cried as his son testified.

    Wait a minute. I thought his father was an abusive ogre who didn’t care about his son.

    When he came home from school, Hainstock said, his parents forced him to do most of the housework. When he failed to do so, he was disciplined.

    Hainstock testified that his father often kicked him and also used a wooden board called “the board of education” to spank him.

    He said his father also refused to provide him with medication to help curb his attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

    Yeah, like that. If they were as poor as everyone is making them out to be they more than likely would have been eligible for government assistance where the medication would have cost them next to nothing. Not to mention the fact that ADD and ADHD is probably the most misdiagnosed and over-diagnosed condition of the modern medical age in my opinion. And which one is it that makes the kids go crazy? Is it being on meds or not being on meds. I forget since I’ve seen both used as criminal defenses.

    After loading his father’s 20-gauge shotgun and .22-caliber revolver, he drove to school, hoping he could force Klang to listen to his problems, he said.

    Again, no reason to load the guns if his intent was to scare, which it wasn’t. Not only that but what made him think that taking two guns to school to threaten people with wasn’t going to land him in jail. Did he think that miraculously all his problems would disappear and there would be no repercussions to his actions? What a dumbass.

    When he entered the school, he screamed, “Everyone get in the office. I’m not f—ing kidding!”

    He said he didn’t get flustered when the school’s maintenance man, David Thompson, was able to grab the shotgun out of his hand. Hainstock said he reacted by pulling the handgun out of his pants.

    That sounds strangely like the characteristics of a cold-blooded killer to me. He’s lucky that Mr. Thompson didn’t blow him away right then and there.

    When Klang turned the corner, Hainstock testified, he pointed the gun at him and said, “I ain’t going to do nothing … let’s go to the office, I want to talk.”

    Hainstock said Klang agreed to talk to him in his office, but as they walked there, Klang grabbed him and the gun went off accidentally.

    “The gun was caught in the clothing of my arm and when he pulled my arm it went off,” Hainstock testified.

    He said he then aimed the gun at Klang’s arm and fired “so he would let go of him.”

    After an accidental third shot fired, Hainstock said he was in shock.

    “I didn’t think Mr. Klang was going to die … I hoped not,” Hainstock said. “I didn’t plan to hurt nobody.”

    “The gun was caught in the clothing of my arm and when he pulled my arm it went off,” How in the hell would he have to be holding the gun for that to possibly happen?

    Closing arguments are scheduled for today.

  • Defense testimony in Hainstock trial

    Defense rests in Hainstock trial:

    First, let’s hear from Hainstock’s grandmother…

    The last witness to testify was Hainstock?s grandmother, Irene Hainstock, who said Eric called her from jail after his arrest.

    “What have you done,” she recalled asking her grandson. “I don’t know, grandma. Something snapped in my head,” was the response.

    Some more students…

    Other defense witnesses included five students at Weston who saw Eric enter the school with a shotgun and saw it taken away from him. None remembered hearing him say, “I’m here to (expletive) kill somebody,” as one witness recalled.

    On cross-examination, however, most said they weren’t sure they could hear everything that was being said that day.

    Now let’s hear from Hainstock himself…

    In his own testimony, Hainstock said he brought the shotgun and pistol to the school to make people listen to him and did not intend to kill Klang.

    Hainstock said he needed the weapons — a 20-gauge shotgun and a .22-caliber revolver — “because they would be scared,” he said, referring to people at the school. “If they were scared they’d listen, hopefully.”

    Hainstock, 16, testified unemotionally as the first witness in the defense case after prosecutors rested their case Wednesday morning.

    Mounting frustration with his home life and with persistent taunting at school led him to the desperate action, he said, which he said was not intended to hurt anyone.

    But after Klang grabbed him from behind at the school, Hainstock testified, the gun went off.

    “It was accidental,” he said. He heard a grunt from Klang, he said, who continued to hold him. Hainstock said a second shot, which struck Klang on the side of the head but did not penetrate his skull, was intended for Klang’s arm, to get Klang to let go of him.

    Hainstock said he underestimated the lethal power of the .22.

    “I didn’t think it would hurt nobody that bad because it was so little,” he said.

    I don’t buy any of it. According to this article when asked by his attorney why Hainstock loaded the weapons he said it was “just a reaction.” Loading two separate weapons is not a reaction. That’s intent. And what did he think the .22 would do? Just bounce off people? And what if the shotgun was not taken from him. Did he think that a shotgun “wouldn’t hurt nobody?”

    Anything less than a conviction of first-degree murder is a travesty of justice.