The Killing Kind (22 page)

F
irst things Hembree pointed out while walking Hensley and Sumner around the basement were Randi’s boots. “Some of her shit might have spilled out in there.” He pointed to a box next to the boots. “Because that’s where I had her stashed, getting ready to move her.”

As Hensley took in the basement, he understood why Hembree chose to put the girls here. The driveway went behind the house and there was a space to pull a car under the back deck and up to a door that led into the basement. Thus, there was hidden access to the basement. The closet he put the girls in was down the hall from the exit, but it was easy for him to drag the girls down the hallway, out the door, and place them into his car without being seen.

The question Hensley and Sumner asked themselves, although they never posed the theory to Hembree: “Why hadn’t anyone smelled the girls?” Both were in the Hembree house long enough for their bodies to decompose. Why hadn’t Hembree’s mother smelled the odor of rotting flesh? Why hadn’t anyone visiting the house noticed an odd smell?

Hembree had no trouble finding those areas where he hid the bodies and some of the women’s clothing and pointing out the blood left behind. By the washer and dryer, he acted out killing Heather, step by step, hand motions and all, as if auditioning for a play. There was one area where he showed Hensley a large spot of blood in the shape of Florida on the concrete floor. As he talked about murdering Heather, what made Hembree’s explanation so unsettling—and maybe ironic—was the presence of a children’s bible on a desk right above the blood spot.

As he talked, Hembree chain-smoked, sometimes lighting one with the next.

“So far, everything I’ve told you today has been the truth,” Hembree said just after discussing how he had killed Heather.

He inhaled a drag, blew it out slowly, as if taking a very deep breath.

“Thank you for that,” Hensley and Sumner said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

Sumner asked Hembree about a mark they had found on Randi’s back.

“Tramp stamp,” Hembree said.

“Huh?”

Hembree was referring to a tattoo.

“No, a red mark,” Sumner clarified.

“Probably where I done drugged her.”

“What?”

There was some confusion.

“Yeah, where I done put her over my back.”

“Drugged” was Hembree’s way of saying “dragged.”

Whenever Hembree talked about blood, clothing, or any detail other than the actual murders, he exhibited a calm, casual demeanor. He even sounded somewhat articulate (if only in his strange Southern brogue). Whenever he went into a murder narrative, however, and talked about the actual moment he took the girls’ lives, a sudden mania came over him. His eyes bulged. His speech grew faster and harder to understand. He used his hands to make points, clearly caught up in the exact moment he took their lives.

Finished in the basement, after some time in the kitchen, Hembree asked if he could warm up some tea he had found on the stove.

Hensley said sure.

“That’s about it, huh?” Hensley observed as Hembree took his tea out of the microwave.

“I guess . . . y’all are the ones—”

“Well, have you covered everything?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Hensley was confident they had enough—more than enough, actually. It doesn’t get much better for a detective than having an alleged murderer walk you through the crime scenes, pointing out what he did, when, how, and where he left evidence. Not only was Hembree confessing to these crimes, but he was giving the GCPD corroborating evidence with which to prosecute him. All of this, one had to imagine, Hembree did with some kind of deal in mind. Maybe he was betting on getting the death penalty taken off the table for his cooperation?

There had to be a catch to all of this: Serial killers don’t do anything without a payoff.

Standing near the cops’ Crown Vic, Danny Hembree continued to chain-smoke, knowing that when they locked him up, he wasn’t going to be smoking at will. He looked around at the neighbors’ homes as he leaned against the back of Matt Hensley’s unmarked cruiser. He seemed lost in the memories of the house and the neighborhood. There was a moment where it felt as if Hembree was taking it all in, realizing this would be the last time he ever saw the old place.

Michel Sumner walked over.

And here was where Sumner’s background in sales came into play.

“I believe it’s called the ‘soft sell,’ ” Sumner explained. “Once you’ve got somebody wanting to buy one thing, that’s when you try to get them to buy something else.” The add-ons. “At that time, once I knew that he had spilled so much, I walked over there with the intention of wanting to get more information out of him.”

Once a suspect gives up the “big stuff,” admitting to the “smaller stuff,” lesser crimes, can come easy. Throughout the entire interview process, in the back of their minds, Sumner and Hensley had unsolved rapes and robberies and violent attacks they liked Hembree for. Now was the time, Sumner knew, to move in stealthily and get Hembree to talk about those crimes.

Sumner first mentioned a recent rape case Hembree had been fingered for, but had never been convicted. The case was still open. It involved a girl, Ashley Campfield (pseudonym), who had been brutalized in a wooded area not far from Momma’s house. There was no doubt Hembree was involved on some level.

Hensley stood nearby, listening.

The girl had reported that Hembree—she knew him—forced her, using a knife, from that familiar abandoned trailer and then drove her to Crowders Creek Road, not far from where he’d tossed Heather’s clothing. He then walked her deep into the woods.

The report of the rape was graphic and violent. Hembree had allegedly threatened to kill her by placing a plastic bag over her head. Scared for her life while under Hembree’s control, she allowed him to rape her brutally.

“Part of that’s true . . . ,” Hembree said as he took pull after pull from a cigarette, again using his hands to articulate his points. “I used a knife to force her out of the trailer, but I done never raped her. She got out there, where we agreed to go in the woods, and she done agreed to have sex with me. We had made a deal and she wanted to back out of it. I couldn’t let her back out of no deal she done made.”

Interesting way to spin what was a savage, sexually motivated assault.

“Again,” Sumner commented later, “he was very flat, the way he explained this.”

By 10:06
A.M.
, Hensley said it was time to go. There was still one more task ahead.

Hensley and Sumner drove Hembree to each location so he could point out for them where he had placed Heather’s clothing after dumping her body. Sumner documented the trip on video from the backseat. Hembree sat in the front. Hensley drove.

By now, Hembree was showing signs of fatigue: His five o’clock shadow had turned into a gray stubble; his hair was disheveled; he smelled foul; his shoulders drooped more than they had all night.

Hembree confirmed where he had thrown Heather’s clothes by the bridge, her sneakers down the street. Hensley pulled up and stopped. It was a hasty dump-and-run situation, Hembree explained. He never got out of the vehicle. He did it all from the window while driving by.

From Crowders Creek Road, Hembree took them to several additional locations: where he picked Randi up and where they partied that night at Shorty’s. Along the way, he pointed out a known drug dealer’s house, to whom, Hembree said, he had sold some stolen property on the night before his arrest. Then he took them to the gas station, where he claimed to have purchased the fuel to burn Randi’s body. He pointed to a house where he bought most of his dope. As he admitted to murder, Hembree was giving up as many people as he could from the circle in which he ran.

“I mean, I got me no reason to be lying,” Hembree said after being asked to go into more detail about the alleged conspiracy to murder Randi, which he said Stella, her sister, and Shorty had dreamt up. “I done told y’all the truth.... It was Stella that had asked me, mainly. I mean, she’d sell her soul. . . .”

After Sumner asked what Shorty said exactly, Hembree backtracked, offering, “I don’t know.... ‘Kill the bitch. Kill the whore.’ Whatever. Shorty was just the payout man—not the mastermind. . . . Hell, I was killing two birds with one stone.”

“How’s that again? You were helping the family out, you said, right?” Hensley asked as they drove by the house where he picked Randi up as she walked down the block.

“Shit, I was helping them out and paying Randi back for what she done did to Heather.”

Hensley wanted to know what he was talking about.

“Pimping her out,” Hembree had the audacity to claim. He was saying that Randi had been acting as one of Heather’s pimps. It was a preposterous accusation.

As they headed back to the GCPD, Hensley asked about the girl in the cemetery from the early 1990s, whom Hembree had mentioned back in the box.

Deb Ratchford.

He didn’t say much about it, giving them only enough to want more.

Then Sumner asked about the Florida girls Hembree claimed to have murdered.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Hembree said at first. Then: “I want a deal.” He described the situation with his car again and the money he had and where he wanted it sent, concluding, “Raleigh. I want to go to safekeeping in Raleigh. And then we’s can talk about them girls in Florida.”

As Hensley pulled into the GCPD parking lot, Hembree said, “Is that the media or something?”

“No, no, no . . . ,” both Hensley and Sumner answered simultaneously. “That’s a fire truck.”

Hensley parked. They sat in the car and continued to talk.

“Anything else you want to tell us about, Danny?”

“Yup, there’s some old stuff.”

Hensley and Sumner got out. Hembree was escorted by a uniformed officer.

Hembree stopped and asked if he could have a smoke before they went in.

Hensley leaned against a railing outside the door into the DU as Hembree rested against a redbrick wall.

“Y’all need to go and lock Stella up!” Hembree said angrily. He hated this woman. It was obvious he had a vendetta against Stella and wanted to see her go down in flames. “There’s already a warrant out for her.”

Sumner was behind the camera, still rolling. He asked the question both he and Hensley had been holding off on until now, the end of the interview: “Let me ask you, Danny, what made you come clean at this point?”

Hembree stared straight ahead. He tipped back on his feet, rocked on his heels. “Well, I’m gonna be honest with y’all. . . . I wanted to kill Shorty today.... And then on Monday, I was going to do a bank robbery and shoot it out with the cops—with a plastic gun. And when they caught me last night, I just took it as a sign it wasn’t supposed [to] come out like that.”

Hensley asked Hembree about that “old stuff” he had made reference to inside the car.

There were crimes, Hembree explained, he had committed in the late 1970s with a partner, a guy named Bobby Johnson (pseudonym). There were several major crimes for which he and Bobby had never been caught. These were brutal, vicious offenses. Hembree gave scant details, but enough to make Hensley wonder, as he listened, if he could investigate and find out more.

“We’s robbed a store together in Bessemer City back in 1979,” Hembree explained. “Bobby kidnapped the clerk at knifepoint.”

They took the woman out to Lincoln Academy Road, raped and beat her, leaving her for dead somewhere inside Crowders Mountain State Park.

“But she didn’t die,” Hembree added. “We saw it the next day in the papers.”

Hensley knew they would approach these topics again. But Gastonia Police detectives were waiting for Hembree downstairs in the box to talk to him about another murder. Hensley and Sumner escorted Hembree into the building.

The GCPD wanted Hembree’s account of killing Deborah Ratchford in 1992. He’d talked about it a few times. Now was the time to get this murder on record. The idea was to get as much as they could out of Hembree. Once he went before a magistrate, was arraigned, and then locked up, questioning him was over.

Deb Ratchford, an African American from Gastonia, was thirty years old when her brutally assaulted and sexually violated body was found in a densely wooded area on August 4, 1992, near the Oakland Street Cemetery, on North Oakland Street, a twenty-minute drive from Momma’s house. She’d been stabbed and slashed multiple times in the upper chest and neck.

Inside the box, Hembree told Gastonia detectives that he, along with a cohort, James Swanson, murdered Ratchford. He didn’t say much more than that.

When Gastonia PD took Swanson into custody some time later (the same day they served Hembree with a murder warrant for the Ratchford case), Swanson denied taking part in Ratchford’s murder. He protested, “That man is telling a bare-faced lie about me. I’m innocent.”

N
ow twelve hours into his confession, Hembree had stirred up talk around Gastonia as he fingered old friends and crime associates, people he hated, drug buddies, and dealers. He was seemingly on a quest to close cold cases for law enforcement from as far back as 1979, as far away as Florida. The guy would not stop talking and, in the process, burying himself deeper and deeper—that is, if all of what Danny Hembree spouted off turned out to be true.

As Hembree spoke to Gastonia Police investigators, Hensley worked at getting Hembree’s car impounded. It was parked at Nick’s. Yet, before they towed the vehicle away, Hensley wanted to check on something to see how honest Hembree had been.

The young detective snapped on a pair of latex gloves and opened Hembree’s car as it sat in Nick’s driveway. Hensley thought back to Hembree telling him how he had hidden “a few beaded bracelets or necklaces” of Randi’s inside the glove compartment for the purpose of proving he killed Randi if ever questioned.

After opening the glove compartment and conducting a cursory search, Hensley came up with five “multicolored beaded bracelets.”

Hembree was telling the truth.

When Hensley got back from Nick’s on the afternoon of December 5, 2009, he asked Hembree if he’d like to have a smoke. Hensley’s offer was by design. Hembree’s car had been impounded and towed back to the GCPD, and there it was, on the bed of a tow truck, as Hembree and Hensley came out the back door.

“I wanted him to see that we were listening to him, trying to take care of all the demands he was making. This was important.”

Power and control. Hembree had to think he continually maintained it.

As far as those cases in Florida were concerned, Hensley wasn’t telling anyone at the moment, but he questioned whether Hembree committed any of them. In Hensley’s mind, he believed Hembree was stacking the deck to have more to barter with down the road.

“You kill a few people and you are going to remember that,” Hensley said later. What concerned Hensley was the lack of detail Hembree offered. Yes, he said he didn’t want to talk about it until he got a deal, but he wasn’t clear on anything regarding Florida. All of the information he gave was vague; whereas, when he discussed Randi and Heather, he pinpointed specific details about each murder, without having to think about it.

“Guy like Hembree,” Hensley continued, “he’d remember details because of the high or thrill he is getting from the crime at the time.”

Sumner felt a bit different about Florida. He said, “We have no evidence to believe he committed the murders he mentioned in Florida. But I have no reason to underestimate his intelligence and his ability to manipulate and conning nature—because Danny Hembree is not going to tell you until it benefits him.”

At the time Hembree confessed to Randi and Heather, making slight mention of Florida and Deb Ratchford, he was, Sumner pointed out, “coming off of a crack cocaine binge. That’s why we wanted to keep him talking. Hembree was down, depressed.... I recall him saying again and again, ‘I’m just ready to die, man. I’m just ready to die. Let’s just get this over with.’ So those two confessions benefited him because he was ready to die. He was tired, physically exhausted. God knows how long he had been on a crack binge. But all that other stuff, Florida and Deb Ratchford, he wanted something for it.”

Thus far, Hembree hadn’t displayed much in the form of comprehensive facts surrounding Florida. And even a quick call down to the areas Hembree had mentioned led Hensley to consider it all as just a ruse. The county had no record of any murders near the time Hembree had said.

After the GCPD finished interviewing Hembree about the Ratchford case, Sumner and Hensley sat with him inside the box again.

“We need you to look at a statement we’ve compiled for you,” Hensley explained, sliding the pages across the table. The statement detailed everything they had talked about the previous night.

By 3:00
P.M.
, Hembree had a statement detailing his crimes in front of him. Hembree took his time listening as Hensley read through the statement, word for word. And after making a few corrections, Hembree said he was happy with it, placing his John Hancock in the appropriate spaces.

Hensley asked Hembree if it was okay for them to fetch him the following day or the day after to “talk about some other things.”

“Yeah . . . yeah,” Hembree said. “Sure.”

After signing the statement, Hembree rubbed his hands together for warmth; then he asked if they had done everything he had requested.

Hensley said they were working on it.

Hembree seemed satisfied.

Back in 1997, when Hembree was questioned again about the murder of Deb Ratchford, he admitted to it. But then shortly afterward, Hembree did something he had done his entire criminal career: recant the confession.

“Somewhere in the back of his mind,” Sumner explained, “as we finished up with him and he had given [us] . . . Heather and Randi’s murders, he knew he could always recant those confessions if he needed to. He is a pathological liar. And to underestimate his abilities in this regard would be foolish.”