The Killing Kind (36 page)

S
tephanie Hamlin took on the state’s task of wrapping up its evidence in a bow and presenting it to jurors. While sitting and listening to Beam and Ratchford, Hamlin considered two things. Thus, she started off on a reproachful note, totally dismantling Ratchford’s and Beam’s arguments, bringing the state’s case back to ground level: “I hope at this point you’ve had a couple of minutes for the smoke to clear,” she said, standing up. “The smoke that the defense just kind of put up there and tried to confuse you. This is reality. This is not
Shawshank Redemption
or
Legal Eagles....
There are two women dead, and that man right there”—Hamlin pointed at Hembree—“killed them. Danny Hembree, who has been sitting in front of you for approximately four, five weeks of evidence, he has been manipulating the system his
entire
adult life.”

Hamlin next smartly warned jurors not to allow Hembree to manipulate them, too. Then, after some difficulty getting a PowerPoint presentation up and running, the ADA read from a statement Hembree had given the YCSO when he admitted killing both girls. The quote Hamlin focused on, of which she played a recording for jurors, came out clear and chilling: “I killed them at Momma’s. . . . I killed Heather downstairs in the laundry room, and I killed Randi in my den. You’ll find her blood all over the couch. . . .”

“I killed.... I killed.... I killed”—
.

Words of a guilty man uttered from his own mouth—now an admission that reverberated in everyone’s minds.

Hembree was an admitted killer. Didn’t matter what he said now.

Why not believe him? He was broken when he confessed. He was tired. He was finished. Given two years to come up with a way out of those confessions, here they were now, arguing whether a killer admitted to murdering two women—possibly several others—or made it all up to catch a break on a few robberies.

“Everything Danny Hembree said back on December 5, 2009,” Hamlin said, “he confessed to two capital murders to get a deal on robbery charges? That makes no sense. That makes no sense at all.”

The way the ADA put it, Hembree’s new version was so weak, so half-baked and desperate, could there be any other scenario possible besides what he had confessed to?

She went through all of the state’s evidence. She played pieces of video/audio to hammer key points home, again and again using Hembree’s own words to bury him.

Hitting her stride, Hamlin made an important observation: “First of all, Danny and Heather were not boyfriend-girlfriend.” She added how they “were not in a relationship.” She explained how Heather was sleeping with him, sure—and she was “having sex with him,” absolutely—but it was all “for crack.”

“When the crack is gone, she is gone.... She didn’t spend the night at his house to have breakfast in the morning. . . .”

So true. The way Hembree played up his relationship with Heather, it was as if they had been in a romance and he was spending the night with her as a normal course. But that wasn’t the case. By all accounts, Heather despised her sister’s boyfriend. She hated him. She could not stand to be around him.

Unless, that is, he had drugs.

For thirty more minutes, Hamlin described the differences between a cause of death and what science proves, making sure to note that the science in Heather’s case backed up her being strangled with a cut lamp cord and suffocated.

The signs were subtle, but they were there.

After talking for a time about Randi’s death and how Hembree’s autoerotic asphyxiation story could not be true, Hamlin moved on to how the jury should view the case under the law, pointing to how the state had to prove only Hembree’s “intent.” They did not have to prove how he did it, only that he intended to do it.

As Hamlin spoke, Hembree stared. He wrote something down on a scrap of paper.

Hamlin made sure jurors heard the word “manipulation” in relation to Hembree and his entire criminal career. She said there was no reasonable doubt in this case. Like a lot of things, the defense was tossing it out there, hoping it would stick.

In a concluding, passionate plea, with commitment to what she was saying, ADA Hamlin brought it all back to day one, fleshing out more of Hembree’s lies: “So he took his time, he got advice, and he tried the best he could to make his elaborate tale fit the evidence. Think back to December fifth.... When he knew nothing, when he had no legal advice—consistently, voluntarily, he told the police everything, and it was consistent with what the evidence showed.” She then pointed at Hembree, saying, “This man—and this is rare—
confessed
to murder.” She pointed out how for “hours” jurors had watched Hembree “confess to killing Heather and Randi.” But now, of course, “after . . . two years, the defense . . . put up smoke screens,” she added, saying how they had tried to confuse jurors any way they could get away with it.

“This is not ‘The Danny Hembree Show,’ ” Hamlin said. “This is not some bad episode of
CSI.
This is real life! We’ve got two women dead—and he killed them.”

She then asked that jurors find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Catterton. Then ADA Hamlin thanked them and sat down.

The judge read his instructions and recessed until the following morning.

A deputy called Stephanie Hamlin over as the day wound down and the attorneys gathered their things to leave.

“I found this,” the deputy said, handing the prosecutor a piece of paper.

Hamlin took it. “Thanks.”

Hembree had written it while Hamlin was giving her closing and handed it to one of his defense attorneys. It must have gotten dropped on the floor.

The paper said:
I wish this bitch would shut up.

T
he next morning, the jury began deliberating and returned a verdict after lunch, likely taking that much time to make it look good.

On the way into court, Hembree spoke to one of the deputies. “If I get the death penalty,” he said, nodding toward ADA Hamlin, who was just then walking in, “it’s because of
that
bitch.”

The judge addressed the jury foreperson. “Ma’am . . . has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?”

“Yes, sir.”

The judge took the envelope and handed it to the clerk. “Members of the jury . . . you have found . . . Danny Hembree guilty of first-degree murder. Is this your verdict, so say you all?”

There was some noise in the courtroom. The gallery buzzed. People whispered and talked loudly. Some left, running to go make calls to editors and producers.

“Quiet,” Judge Beal said.

“Yes,” the jury said in unison.

ADA Hamlin, who had spent a year preparing for this case, dropped her head and took a deep breath. The trial had been exhausting—emotionally and physically. Part of it had to do with a family member of Hembree’s subtly alerting her that they knew more about Stephanie Hamlin’s personal life than the prosecutor felt comfortable with.

“It always scared me that [this person] knew a lot about me,” Hamlin said later. “About my family, my husband, where he went to school, where he used to work.”

Hembree smiled a cocky smirk after the verdict.

Tears came for the families of his victims.

Hembree’s mother and sister sat unsurprised, but in obvious shock.

The trial was far from over, however. Now it would shift to the penalty phase as Hembree’s team argued to save his life. They’d present testimony and evidence they believed could help get Hembree a life sentence. It was going to be emotional and tense. There were lots of people in the courtroom thirsty for Hembree’s blood. And with the jury coming back so quick on first-degree murder—essentially saying Hembree was a double murderer and maybe even a serial killer—it was going to be a war.

The judge asked everyone to be ready for the penalty phase. It was set to begin on the following morning, November 8.

A
s they got started the following day, the judge asked Danny Hembree to stand.

“I understood that there is some recommendation that you have a psychiatric evaluation. What’s your approach to that?” Beal asked.

Hembree responded with his signature swagger: “You want to do the mental thing, that’s fine. But like I said, I just want to be left alone. Let these people go ahead and have their show, sign the paper, and get me the hell back up to Raleigh, and I’ll be calm, cool, and cooperative.”

The judge said he wanted to be sure the process was fair.

The rest of that day was taken up by motions and mechanics.

When they returned after a weekend break, Hembree spoke again. This time, he lashed out at his defense team: “My attorneys have advised the state . . . [and] court numerous times that they couldn’t adequately prepare a defense for me. They have told me point-blank they have been ineffective in assisting me. Now . . . for the last six weeks . . . I have assisted constantly in my defense. I have been called upon to make decisions, competent decisions, or I should say they should be competent decisions based on information that I get. Now I found out yesterday there’s documents I haven’t gotten.... I may need [more time] in defense of my life.... I ask you to set aside the verdict based on ineffective assistance of counsel, and let’s start this thing over and do it right! That’s all I have.”

Locke Bell stood and defended Rick Beam, noting, “Mr. Beam and I were first involved in a capital murder case in 1993. . . . Beam was with the district attorney’s office.... Since 1993, Mr. Beam and I have continued to try murder cases all over the western part of North Carolina. Mr. Beam, I know, has tried them in numerous counties and has done very well with them.... Mr. Beam, after leaving the DA’s office, defended many, many, many people charged with first-degree murder, capital cases. He has worked in federal court . . . [and] has always done a very professional job, as he has done here today.”

Hembree expressed how unimpressed he was, adding, “I’m only concerned about this case!” He said he wanted more time and there were documents he said he had not seen. “Like I said, I don’t care nothing about what Mr. Bell has done with Mr. Beam in the past. I only care about what is done in my case. I don’t care if he has to work every night for the rest of the year, but I want to be treated fairly. And that’s what I’m asking the court to do, and I respectfully request that you set this verdict aside.”

The judge said no.

As the penalty phase moved forward, the state presented evidence first, putting up witness after witness describing how violent Hembree had been throughout his life. Each had his or her own story to tell regarding being beaten up or robbed by Hembree. The guy was ruthless and uncaring—a true sociopath, with no feeling or remorse. Over the years, he had robbed and beaten people, forced himself on females, raped and pillaged. There didn’t seem to be a time in his life when he had done anything good for anyone. He had no redeeming qualities. He had no sense of compassion for anyone. The burden on the state was to prove aggravating circumstances—and if there was ever a life modeling the epitome of that burden, Hembree’s was it. Witness after witness talked about being victimized by this man. He’d hurt people when he didn’t have to. He’d hurt people for fun. He’d hurt people for money and drugs and sex. Over two days, the state presented witnesses bolstering its claim that Danny Hembree was a repeat offender who committed the act of murder maliciously and deserved death. There was no doubt when the state finished that Hembree, if the death penalty is to be a punishment the state doled out for capital murder, was its poster child.

On November 14, Hembree’s defense began presenting witnesses to the contrary, many of whom came in and talked about how Hembree was mentally unstable, had issues all his life with depression and perhaps even brain damage. They testified to how he had been on a host of psychiatric medications throughout his life and was addicted to booze and drugs and should not be held responsible for his actions. He was a bad boy—very bad, indeed—but he did not deserve to die for impulses he had no control over. And no witness brought this home more than Hembree’s mother, Jacqueline Hembree.

Momma.

To maybe everyone else in the courtroom, Danny Hembree was a killer, a bastard, a rapist, a violent offender, a crack addict, and a drunkard. But to this woman, who had raised him, he was her son. No matter what he did, whom he killed, whom he hurt, despite his guilt or innocence, Danny Hembree was Momma’s boy. Nothing anybody said could take away the love she felt for her Danny Boy. She had given him life—and here she was now, trying to give him life once again.

Jurors got a firsthand account of Hembree’s father. Momma said they had lived in California and even Berlin, Germany, near the time of “the wall and everything.” It was chaotic. She was pregnant with Danny. Their lives revolved around where Mr. Hembree was stationed. Hembree’s father had been trained in infantry, but he worked in a tank unit.

All of this led up to a problem Momma had with her pregnancy. She was three months pregnant. Before they left South Carolina to embark on a new tour, she was told her “uterus was too low for the baby to develop and that I was going to lose him either with or without [an] operation.”

So Momma went into surgery while three months pregnant.

No one explained there could be side effects, because it was thought there would be no child.

Hembree survived, obviously, and the first year of his life was incredibly rough for Momma as she dealt with the boy’s issues: “Well, I’d say the first three months of his life, he cried all the time, and they just said it was colic.”

As he grew, Danny’s problems, Momma said, also grew: “He was [a] nervous child, and once he started school, we were told he was very intelligent, but he would disrupt the class sometimes, not by being mean or doing bad things, just he would get bored.... And then when he was about twelve, we took him to his pediatrician because he was very nervous and he would chew the skin around his fingernails, and we were very concerned about that. And we were told by his pediatrician to leave him alone—that he was going through this depression because he was the smallest child in his class and he hadn’t grown enough and caught up with the rest of the kids.”

Momma said that as Danny got older, the shaking and nervousness spun out of control.

“He could sit somewhere and his leg would shake and it would just constantly tremble. And we didn’t know why that was. And I had a doctor later to tell me that his insides shook like that—even his tongue.”

Hembree was fourteen when his behavioral problems started. Part of it was based on the hard life he and his brother had been put through with a military dad ruling the house with an iron fist.

“Well . . . my husband, he was very hard on those boys because that’s the way he was raised. He was raised in a family of seven children, and his father was a very strict disciplinarian. And had he known about Danny and [his brother’s] problems mentally at the time, I don’t think he would’ve reacted the way he did all the time.”

Momma said Danny and his brother developed severe mental issues based on how much their daddy drank and how badly he treated them. But there was also, she claimed, a strange dynamic between Danny and his sibling she had a hard time coming to terms with.

“[Danny’s brother] had a complete mental breakdown a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday. And . . . we had noticed . . . he had always followed Danny. He had never quite developed his own personality and Danny was his idol. He looked up to Danny. And it was after Danny got into trouble the first time is when [his brother] had the mental breakdown months later. And we found out that he—well, at first, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and it was a misdiagnosis. Once we changed doctors and . . . they changed it to the fact that he was a manic-depressive, with a bipolar disorder.”

It was after the diagnosis that Danny met with doctors, Momma testified, and they said he had a chemical imbalance. All of it was the result of the operation she’d had while Danny was three months in her womb.

“[His doctor] told us that not only did Danny have a chemical imbalance in the brain, that he also had brain damage. And then he started asking me about his medical background. And then I told him about the surgery I had when I was three months pregnant. And he seemed to think that the anesthesia at the time could possibly have caused the brain damage.”

She talked about the medications Hembree was put on after the diagnosis, how he became an introvert, staying home a lot, afraid to go outside. Soon Danny stopped taking his meds, because he didn’t like how they made him feel.

One of the things Hembree enjoyed as he grew into a young adult was going to jail. He thrived in that environment, because it was structured and decisions were made for him, Momma explained. He was told what to do and when to do it. He needed that. When Momma visited him, she noticed Danny was “quieter, calmer, more caring for our feelings, more interested in his family and what we felt, and how we were getting along, versus when he was out. [Then] it was like we became secondary to him versus his pleasures. When he was incarcerated, he cared deeply about his children.”

When Hembree was released in January 2009, Momma recalled, he got out of jail and lived with her, but his life had changed.

“He came home to be with me because, you know, I’m by myself now. And he stayed there with me a couple of months constantly. And then he started meeting up with these people that were into drugs and alcohol and sex. And he more or less moved out.... I think it was in like August, or the latter part of July, he went to stay with the Cattertons.”

Momma said that she could tell he was not taking his medication during this period. This led her to tell a story about little Danny, as a baby, getting a diaper stuck to his face. He couldn’t breathe for a period of time. Momma believed the lack of oxygen to his brain exacerbated his problems further.

In the end, calling Momma was a good play by the defense to try and humanize a man who had been looked at and seen as a monster.

The next day, Hembree’s son and sister testified, reinforcing Momma’s claims that Hembree was severely incapacitated and inhibited by his mental difficulties and had taken medications all his life for psychiatric issues. It was solid, serious testimony from people who knew Hembree personally, aside from his street life of drugs.

Did any of this testimony negate the fact that Hembree knew what he was doing when he killed both women?

The jury was going to have to decide.

Closing arguments came and went, and the judge gave his instructions.