The Hendricks Family Murders /// Part 2 /// 712 | Forensic Files

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talk some true [Music] crime the key to this case is going to be the timeline of events and David Hendrick's
accountability and what his family was doing on that night that Monday night in November of 1983 when we left off
yesterday we talked about David taking the three kids to Chuck-E-Cheese they got some pizza they got a vegetable
pizza the kids of course enjoyed the play area you get some tokens you have a good time the kids were running around
having a great time that evening one thing that's very strange in this timeline to me Captain and I get it it
was a different time in 1983 but you know you do your parenting I'll do mine David says that he leaves the
Chuck-E-Cheese leaving the three kids there to go gas up his vehicle remember he's he knows that he is going to be
going on this trip that night and he wants to have a full tank or close to full tank of gas ass when he's going to
be leaving so the kids are busy playing at the Chuck-E-Cheese he says I went to the gas station across the street he has
a receipt for that so we know that he went there right and he gasses up the vehicle he tells the police I was only
gone about 5 minutes okay well maybe that works for David Hendrick however I have the kids
ages listed at 57 and N to me that's too young to be leaving them at the Chuck-E-Cheese unattended by by an
actual parent of theirs and it doesn't make a lot of sense because he seems to be an overprotective parent anyways
that's and I can't make we talked about heads or tails yesterday I can't make heads or tails of of him leaving to gas
up the vehicle but maybe this is something that he's done in the past maybe he's done this because they are on
record as going to Chuck-E-Cheese a lot to frequenting the Chuck-E-Cheese a lot and maybe this was something maybe he
would leave his wife there to monitor the kids and just kind of got used to that regardless he's back at the
Chuck-E-Cheese the kids play for a while they go home now we also have everybody
accounted for 815 this is because a bookmobile was traveling through the neighborhood and he and his wife would
allow his kids to go on the bookmobile pick out some books um this is like a traveling Library setup that they used
to do they may still do this in some neighborhoods so his kids go to the bookmobile at 8:15
and then they are back at their home the bookmobile pulls up to their street Carl
drive so they walk back to the house now another thing that we have that can tell us who is alive and well and when
on that Monday night is remember Susan Hendrick his wife is at a baby shower and there's lots of people in
attendance at this baby shower several other people so she gets home according to David Hendrick he puts his children
to bed sometime between 9 and 9:30 has to get them ready for bed reads to them for a little bit they're in bed by
sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 his wife according to David Hendrick gets home sometime between 10
and 10:30 and we would be able to back that information up based off of other guests at the baby shower and roughly
her drive time from the shower back to her home right David hris depending on who you talk
to says that he left his home at 11 11:30 or midnight that night now in none of these situations
does anyone claim that he gives an exact time this is going to be something that
we will Circle back to here in just a little bit so he leaves the home and then as we
know un fortunately when he returns the next day after cause of concern finds the entire family
dead police are trying to establish the time of death for these four individuals
because they now have David on record as telling them what time he left police are going to tell us the general public
David Hendrick told us that he left his home that night around midnight and everybody was alive and well his wife
was even awake in bed covered up he kissed her goodbye the kids were asleep he may or may not have checked
the door locks and he left through the garage drove his vehicle on down the road David
Hendrick says that he shortly after leaving the home he stopped at a Perkins restaurant to pick up a Togo coffee and
then he made his way on the 6h hour or so drive to Wisconsin police tell us well were awfully
suspicious why would seems like an odd time for somebody to leave leave the home in the middle of the
night well the secretary assistant can back up David Hendrick's information by saying that was pretty
routine David Hendricks would often leave in the middle of the night to beat either Beat the Traffic or take his
plane which we know he did not take on this trip right so that he was at the location that he wanted to be first
thing in the morning okay well that explains that way the next thing that the police were
curious about they said you didn't have any scheduled appointments with any of these
stops for that Tuesday so we think you killed your family and decided you know what I better hight tail it out of here
I can go on this air quotes business trip and be gone conveniently be gone right and somebody else discover my
family dead yeah well the assistant and David Hendrick both have an answer for that as
well they say most of the time these are not scheduled appointments why because and this makes
sense we're we're talking to a guy who's very successful at making these sales he's saying one tactic that they learned
early on or that he learned early on was not to schedule appointments because if
he called practice a and practice B and practice C and practice d all in one location that he's going to have to
travel a great distance to get to and tries to set up appointments all for the same day all around the same
time so he can hit one after another he would often get people saying oh well we're too busy on that day we're
going to be too busy we can't schedule anything where he found if he just dropped in they weren't too busy that
they could talk to him for 5 10 15 20 30 minutes however long that they were not
busy for that day they would entertain and listen to David Hendrick give his Spiel so he is saying in his
assistant are saying look we would go to a location and we would purposely not arrange or make appointments if we had
an appointment it was often because they called that practice would call us and ask for an appointment which would bring
us to the area and then we would hit other practices in the area and try to make the sales or at least network with
them while we were there so this is starting to make sense and then on top of that we know because police go and
they talk to all these practices and say they all say yeah we spoke to David Hendricks that day yeah he came and he
talked to us about his back brace he told us how we could uh order it and that we could get it directly from him
and some of these practices had even met David Hendrick prior on a previous business trip a pre previous visit the
police say well we still think that you killed your family and just decided to hight tail it out of there in the middle
of the night the assistant says no protocol this is how it usually worked about a week before David would take a
trip to another state another city he would tell the assistant on this day I want to be in these
locations I'll probably leave and drive the night before so I can hit pavement first thing in the morning this arrange
this was the arrangement because what the assistant one of her job duties was was to find all of the practices in
those areas and give him the addresses and the phone numbers so that he could map out where he was going to go and
sometimes she would map out his route for him in advance and then once he's there he would call and say oh by the
way I'm going to be staying at this hotel I found one down the street from this practice keep in mind it's 1983
he's not hopping on the internet and logging into his IHG holiday in rewards members account to find the nearest
holiday in so all of this is playing out exactly how his typical business trips would take place with the one exception
the one big major horrific exception of his family being killed either right before he leaves or after he's left his
home well no and that's the problem I have with law enforcement on this is I don't understand why sometimes
people get so hellbent on their story oh well we think that you murdered your family then you decided to
do this impromptu trip you don't need to convince the public that that's how it happened what
you can what you simply could do is you knew that this trip was planned so that was your opportunity to kill
your family and then go on to the the trip right and I think that that's the hurdle that they were slow to get over
now eventually they would get over that Hur because you know one of the other questions they had for him was like well
why wouldn't you take your plane instead of making a a more than 6-hour drive and
he goes look the plane is great for some of these trips but for a trip like this
it doesn't make any sense yes hopping a plane would save me a bunch of time to getting to that first
destination which is more than 6 hours away however I'm going to be hitting all these stops on the way back you're not
going to f fly the plane from stop to stop to stop to stop he needed a vehicle to travel and hit all those locations on
the way back right he's hitting multiple cities I want to say it was somewhere I
I don't I can't find it in my notes at the moment Captain but I want to say he was hitting like four or maybe even as
many as six different cities and a couple of locations in each City while he was going to be on this Wisconsin
trip keep in mind he his intention was not to come home that Tuesday night he came home as he says because he's
concerned about his family and their whereabouts right so it's not out of bounds for law enforcement to be
suspicious of the husband I mean heck most of the time the husband did it right and so all all this is going to be
leading up to the fact that they're going to arrest David and charge David with the murder of his whole
family yeah and he's going to be waiting for this trial for a good period of time
he's actually not tried until the following year um and this is not to deny him the right to a speedy trial
this is going to be a complicated case a complicated trial and everybody knew that it was going to be a lengthy trial
th the problem here too Captain was this case before he was even arrested was already highly
publicized so the following year this is how publicized the case was in the state
of Illinois there were kids teenagers and even adults that were dressing up as David as
a as a fake David hendris for Halloween the following year where they would simply walk around dressed like a
regular middle class white guy with an axe and say you know put on a a name tag or
something that says I'm David Hendrick and so that's how publicized this case was which one would expect so
this is a horrific crime and unimaginable crimes that took place quadruple homicide in America's Heartland in in
1983 so they had to arrange to move the trial to another venue and they settled on Rockford Illinois there was some back
and forth for a while but they settle on Rockford Illinois the the prosecution and the defense are both and the judge
all happy with Rockford Illinois which is about 135 miles away from Bloomington and at the
trial here's what we're going to be faced with we're going to be faced with you know we talked about yesterday
how it's a coin flip heads or tails to me man I reviewed this trial at length spent
days on the examining this trial and to me everything was gray everything was gray as could be but you
look at all these situations that are in the gray and on one side you have the prosecution saying nope it's black and
the defense saying nope it's not gray it's white and both making good strong cases to sway you one way or the other
on this information that is not really anything that you can put your finger on so when the best way to describe this
this trial that that I I think is to say both the prosecution they did a and the
defense both did a good job but the prosecution's case against David Hendrick it was a
pig what are we going to do we're going to slap some lipstick and some makeup on
that pig and make it look beautiful and we're going to trot that pig around in front of you for days and weeks and
you're going to have to determine if you like this pig that we brought in here or
not cuz we made it so beautiful and appealing and then on the flip of that you have the defense that did the same
thing our defense when you get down to it it's just a pig but we dressed it up really good to try to confuse
you the pizza becomes the Crux of this whole damn trial because what happens here captain when the police could not
find any blood evidence connecting David Hendrick to the murder of his family they had pathologist who said
well wait a second we put the time at time of death at 9 to 9 to 9:30 that night by David
Hendrick's own admission to the police he was still at home at 9: to 9:30 and police act asked the EXP
experts they're experts well how do you know that well the emptying of the stomach and the stomach contents are
telling us that the children were killed approximately 2 hours after they consumed this pizza here became the
problem the for the delay in arresting David Hendricks remember he would not submit by advice from his counsel to a
second round of questioning with the police the police wanted to question him a second time because now they're armed
with this information from the air quotes experts that tell them the kids were killed roughly 2 hours after they
ate that pizza well let's just be clear the lawyer was saying you could present questions to us and we'd answer those
questions but that he wasn't going to agree to a a sit down interrogation correct you submit the
questions to us and we will answer we can pick and choose which ones we're going to answer correct if we answer any
of them at all you have the problem here of the the investigators don't want to show their hand because the information
that they need from David Hendrick as far as their case is concerned is did the kids eat again after the time you
already told us 7:15 is the time that you told us that you guys were eating the pizza at chuckecheese right did you
take any leftovers did you finish the pizza did you did they eat anything once that they got home because the police
the experts aren't saying without a doubt they were killed 2 hours after they ate the pizza they're saying
roughly they were killed 2 hours after the last time they had a meal right so if they ate again
later and let's say they ate right before they went to bed he says that I put the kids to bed between 9:00 and
9:30 what if they ate something at 9:15 well now that those experts opinions are going to put us closer to
11:00 11:30 12: :00 around the time he said he left what if they ate after that now it could be 1:00
2:00 they wanted David Hendrick to tell them no they never ate again the kids didn't eat again the rest of that night
we ate at 7:15 we were done eating the pizza at 7:15 and we went home shortly afterward they wanted to get his words
to convict him on this quadruple homicide they could never get that sit down again and so now we're in court and
we're trying to figure out and put and convince a jury of 12 of David Hendrick's peers of what time these kids
were killed the problem Captain was one expert is not going to be enough the jury sat through days and
days and days 10 air quote expert Witnesses giving their opinions these are all doctors some of them from
other states who viewed and examined the evidence some of it based off of photographs some of it based off of
vials of food contents that were taken from the bodies and for days the jury had to sit
through and listen to all of these experts give different and varying opinions on the time of death and it
wasn't so much a time on a clock 8:00 9:00 10:00 11 :00 it was how many hours after they consumed the
food until they were killed you had some of the experts saying as early as 9 9:30 which would be two two and a half
hours you know 1 and 1/2 to 2 and 1/2 hours after they consumed their last meal you have other experts saying that
well I would have put it more between the two and 4H hour window other experts saying you can't really narrow this down
it's probably more like like 3 to four maybe 3 to 5 hours another expert takes the stand and tells you it's probably in
the 4 to 6 hour range a couple of experts telling the jury that well I can tell you this with certainty they were
killed prior to 5 hours after they consumed their last meal but I don't know when they consumed their last
meal what we would end up learning is that this is a little bit of it's science but it's a little junk science when it
comes to the fact of trying to convict somebody and 100% conclusively determine a time of death but isn't that crazy 10
experts that's a lot of experts well I to me when you have 10 different experts and you have 10 different opinions
there's really no opinion at all there's no expert at all and but what we do learn from these experts and and God
bless the ones that that do tell us this because they're saying like look I I can
give you a rain I can't give you I can't pinpoint it down to an exact hour right I can give
you a range well what do you feel comfortable with telling us the court well I feel comfortable with saying
three to five hours and then there the prosecution saying well that doesn't really tell us anything or the the
defense arguing oh no it can't be to out what we end up learning is this the reason why it's not a great indicator it
can be a good indicator but you can all you also need to base that around some other evidence to narrow down that time
of death if you're going to use stomach contents what we learned through this trial is and I'll put it in its simplest
form because as said this was days and days of testimony is that there are too many variables
involved to come to a conclusive opinion on stomach contents in relation to the time of death in this specific
situation so there are things like emotions behaviors exercise yeah things of that nature that can speed up and
slow down digestion or the stomach the stomach emptying and there are also things like
with your health and how active of a person you typically are what else did you consume that day what were your
activities of that day and not only can there be variables with inside of one person to a great degree but it also
varies from person to person to person now the prosecution had a great answer for that they said well look we have
three persons here who are all related and we know their medical histories and we have their father who
is telling us when they had their last meal so doesn't that limit the variables and then the experts say not
exactly because the variables within one individual could even change dayto day so there is according to these
opinions these experts opinions at this trial there really is no conclusive opinion on when they were killed or how
many hours after con consuming that meal they were killed [Music] this show is sponsored by better help do
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Colonel cheers to you cheers to you captain and here's where I wager Franklin I will wager Franklin that the
jurors in this trial who sat through multiple days of stomach content testimony from 10 different experts and
that viewed stomach contents from four deceased murdered individuals yummy I bet you they lost some weight over the
course of those few days who wants to eat after visiting that and and and frankly when we're viewing the court
transcripts in the trial at length over the past few days not so hungry myself my friends but this case as said it's a
lot of gray area and then one side telling you something's black and the other side telling you that something's
white right and I don't know I think that both sides did a did a damn good job however I don't know that either
side was overly convincing in this case now let's talk about something else one other cause that they believe was
possible motive here in this case is the religion or the group that this family belong to and how this group really
looked down upon divorce like divorce is is one of the worst things that you could do in your lifetime and so the
prosecution wants to present this Theory that well this was David Hendrick get out of jail card kill his whole family
so he can have this better life or or or this life that he wants to have right that he he's had all this success he's
had all this money and now he doesn't want to be a husband anymore maybe he doesn't want to be a father anymore but
he can't get a divorce because he won't be able to have his good upstanding position with his religious group that
he'll be shunned and shut out they actually call it shut up and shut out in the Brethren and to me I think that that
is going to be difficult to sell that to a jury right it's like you're going to say
that for religious purposes he murdered his whole family just to avoid the divorce like I think he's probably going
to be shut up and shut out for the murder as well in this case so I think that was less than convincing to the
jury but one thing that we're going to find that is difficult for David Hendrick and his defense team a hurdle
that's going to be extremely difficult for them to get over is he was hiring models for to model his back brace and
for advertisements and pamphlets and things of that nature for his back braces and he's hiring these young
attractive women and during these sessions he would hire them and he would he would schedule AN hourlong fitting
and during the fitting process he would explain that we need this to be skin tight we need it to to uh be right up on
the person we want it to look good for the pictures so I need to actually customize and outfit you for this
specific brace so I'm going to have to take all these measurements and markings I'm going to have to draw diagrams and
create a brace that's specifically for you to wear in these advertisements right this he says requires these young
women to remove portions of their clothing and in some cases be completely nuded from the waist up yes seems a
little ridiculous not only that the device that he designed patented and is selling
to these practices when he goes out and he sells them to the practices or says hey you can order them from me he's not
these aren't customizable braces these are more of a one size fits-all situation right so why not just use a
one siiz fits-all for the models the prosecution very smartly they put they put a several of several different
businesses on the stand who have who have reoccurring orders with David Hendrick and
the the person on the stand saying look I've outfitted a number of patients with
this brace that I've purchased from David Hendrick I've never had to have anyone take off their shirt maybe maybe
if somebody's wearing a a a coat or a very bulky sweater they might need to remove it but this apparatus is designed
to wear over top of the clothing Not underneath of the clothing not skin tight in fact there are things
on this brace that would be rather uncomfortable if you walked around and did your dayto day in this brace skin on
the brace yeah it's funny though cuz it's I mean I know this goes to character but
so we got to prove that this guy I mean it proves he's a creep pervert you know old pervert
Roundup not not not hard to find this guy um but just because you're a pervert doesn't mean you're a murderer of your
wife and and your kids this was not one woman this was like like multiple women I don't remember how many but it was
seven8 n and I'm with you Captain just just if he's a if he's a weirdo he's a weirdo but it it doesn't mean that he's
killing his whole family the thing is though David hendris I'm gonna give his give him some credit
here Captain he's he is very smart and he's able to Pivot pivot based off of the information that's being presented
pivot so that he can explain things away in in a very smart believable manner so
David Hendrick does take the stand at his trial and at the trial he says no I was actually in the process of Designing
a new brace okay very very believable no he why wouldn't you believe him he's made thousands and thousands and
thousands of dollars off of this brace that that he currently is selling well I'm not believing him because a bunch of
women came forward and said he's a creep and so if you're a creep I don't put it
past you that you are willing to lie to make yourself we need to be clear about something we don't have women saying on
the stand that David Hendrick is a creep what we have is probably people in the jury that are making that assumption
based off of their testimony so these individuals are saying yeah I might have felt a little uncomfortable and other
women that are saying yeah I just it was part of the process there was nothing that was uncomfortable about it to me
right so you have varying degrees of if persons felt that they were un comfortable none of them ever saying
that they felt that they were being victimized but we here's the thing you can say I
think that he's a liar that's great you can say that you think he's a pervert but at the same time you had just said
just because he's a pervert or a weirdo that doesn't mean he killed his whole family same thing with the lying now
here's the situation there's no way for me to sit here as a juror and prove yes or no this
guy wasn't designing a new brace in fact if it were me being asked I would go well that seems somewhat likely I mean
this is how this guy's made his fortune if you want to call it that or made his success built his business and he's he's
30 years old he's got 29 years old it's not like he's going to retire tomorrow but here's where people start to call
this into question and this is where I think you're going with it Captain if you're designing a new
brace are you designing a brace that is only for young physically fit women right uh
what about men what about a person who may be overweight what about a large man what
about a child but also if this is for people with back problems I would assume that more men at this time period have
back problems than women do and you have no male models yeah if to me I I'm thinking like if you're designing a
brace unless it's specifically for this body type which doesn't seem like a good
business model to me that you would be hiring all different types of shapes and sizes of people to take all these
measurements the markings and diagrams and everything that you're doing to help you design this new brace now what's
what's interesting though he does admit on the stand that he was only designing that new brace after he had already
hired a few of these models so his his interaction with these earlier models just now seems
inappropriate because he doesn't seem to be doing anything professional with that
information after it's proven that he didn't need any of that information that he was trying to get based off of those
fittings yeah he just comes off to me as a little douchy well you're not the only
one that would state that because ultimately David Hendrick would be found guilty on the four
homicides now one thing that happens in this case that doesn't happen and I've seen it one or two other times but this
is very a very rare occurrence the judge after the jury gives their verdict the judge then says
look my personal opinion based off of the EV evidence presented in this courtroom and my courtroom is
that I would not have found David Hendrick guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and I think that in some ways I
agree with the judge I think this guy's guilty but I agree with what the judge was saying after having
reviewed that trial at length now we're going to have to speed some things up here Captain because yeah
but let's let's stay on a point for a second because like you said the Crux of this becomes really this pizza and when
the kids ate last yeah but by his own Omission he's saying well I left I don't know 11:30 12:00 and a lot of these
experts if you take the majority of these 10 experts they're saying well I think uh they were killed within
2 hours of eating some say well within three some say maybe within five well five still puts it some are saying four
to six and others are saying that they cannot give a definite range at all right but what I'm saying is like even
if you go well maybe within four to six it still puts it in that time range of him still being at the house that's why
I go back to the some of the problems with this investigation and it's not the police's fault it's just the time period
and we'll get into some things that I think that need to be done or should have been done in this case that could
have firmed up guilt or innocence because I can't I cannot sit here and say to you or anyone that I believe
Beyond uh shadow of a doubt that this guy killed his whole family I cannot s sit
here and feel good about saying that I can say if you if you need me to give you a 90% answer I feel very good
telling you that David Hendrick is responsible for the murders of his family but what you have here is when
you have 10 different experts almost giving you completely different answers you have really no opinion at all and
then on top of that go back to the idea that the interview with him at the police station was not recorded it just
wasn't back in 1983 the police on the stand are telling the jury look he told us he left the
house around midnight those kids according to him ate their dinner at 7:15 well when David Hendricks is on the
stand he's telling the jury I left my home at 11:00 well there's it's a it's a now it's his word against his word
there's no proof that he ever told police that I left at midnight because had we had proof now we can have the
prosecutor saying David Hendrick okay are you were you lying then at the police station or are you lying now on
the stand because again he was able to Pivot or he's giving the truth as he sees it or
recalls it on the stand we don't have any way to verify that and simply that one hour could mean
a big difference in this case especially when you're really having 10 different people giving an opinion on maybe the
time of death for these individuals but here's one thing that I I thought was a big
Miss and maybe they attempted to get this information and just could not but I we also don't see the
defense visiting this aspect of the case either remember David Hendrick said that
after leaving his house shortly afterwards he stopped at a Perkins to pick up a tog go coffee yeah where's
that receipt where's the eyewitnesses could we get a receipt or an eyewitness are both to
dispute that time right we we can easily go all right I traveled the speed limit
from David Hendrick's home to this Perkins it took me 10 minutes to get there if David Hendrick left his home at
11:00 he should have been at that Perkins at 11:10 if he didn't leave his home until 12:30 or 1 a.m. well then if
he went to that Perkins like he said he would be there at 12:4 or 1:10 a.m. right so that I think was a
big misstep and one and I wonder this is what I wonder about if they were not able to obtain that information or know
good eyewitnesses because that part of the case is not presented by either side now it could mean that they did the due
diligence and they did track down that information and it wasn't advantageous to their case and so they purposely left
out and that could work both ways for both the defense and the prosecution but that information never came up in any of
the trial records and so I think that that's a bit of a Miss if you're trying to prove guilt or even innocence the
other thing that I think is a big miss too and this is one thing where I think the the judge was not completely sold
on Hendrick's guilt Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and why he made that statement right what we do know we find no blood
evidence that traces us back to David Hendrick being involved what does the physical evidence
at that house tell us the physical evidence that we find at the home is that they
found identifiable but unidentified fingerprints inside the home they found identifiable but unidentified Footprints
or shoe prints inside the home okay this crime scene based off of the injuries that we discussed to put it
as short as I can is a damn bloody mess the individual that that committed these crimes or individuals that
committed these crimes should have been a bloody mess themselves they would have
left bloody shoe prints in the home they would have likely left bloody fingerprints
now the ax handle wiped clean butcher knife wiped clean left right there on the floor in the girl's bedroom the
prosecution would tell us that the lack of evidence in this case is suggestive that David Hendrick committed the
crime the defense is going to tell you the same thing the lack of physical evidence in this case is suggestive that
David Hendricks did not commit this crime there's no way to sort that out there's no way to sit here and come up
with a great feeling about your conclusion based off of the lack of physical evidence well it must have been David
because he cleaned everything up well no they checked the drains and they checked
the traps and they checked his car they took his car apart they checked his hotel room they found no blood right
what they did find is identifiable but unidentified fingerprints identifiable but unidentified
shoeprints okay why is that so important the routine of the Hendrix family home remember Susan Hendrick
stay-at-home housewife the routine was that when the kids would go off to school on Monday
she would clean that house they were killed either late Monday night or early Tuesday
morning we can make an assumption that the house would have been relatively clean by the time that they were
killed reducing the number of fingerprints and shoe prints that would be found inside the home right so where
one could could make an argument that maybe those shoeprints or fingerprints what one thing that that is not
discussed at the trial is were those shoeprints or fingerprints found with blood because if they were found with
blood we know that they were they were left there during or shortly after the commission of these murders all we are
told is that they are identifiable but unidentified fingerprints I would love man here we
sit 40 years later could you tell me please has anybody bothered or did they secure that physical evidence and
continually check those against aphys yeah because what if you check those one day and you're like
oh this comes back to some guy that's murdered six other people right well now you're going what the hell was he doing
in that home you're saying Bingo dingo yeah Bango Jango Bango Jango or whatever Bingo Jingo but so there's never any
talk about that check those against aphis that's another misstep now the other thing we want to talk about expert
opinions you had crime scene experts on the stand take the stand at the trial where David Hendrick is found guilty
that said look most of the time when more than one weapon is used to kill an individual it's more than one
perpetrator there is blood evidence inside the house that is suggestive that possibly two killers were inside the
home there were things at the crime scene that you had crime scene experts telling the
jurors there are parts of this robbery burglary that looked to me like a sophisticated criminal committed these
so like let's talk about this for a second when you view a crime scene if you look at a dress or drawers right
oftentimes it's three four sometimes five or six drawers when you have an unsophisticated
ated person who who's not used to coming in and committing these types of crimes
that's looking for valuables rans ransacking the house they will come in and you will
usually only find the bottom drawer open why is that because they are not efficient they don't know what they're
doing when you see a crime scene where all of the drawers are open you have an efficient experienced
criminal why because because when you one opens the top drawer if you are going to look at
something in the next drawer you have to close that top drawer and then open the
next one then close it then NE open the next one then close it then open the next one and so on so often times not
all the time often times you will only find the bottom drawer left open here at the Hendrick home we find
all of the drawers open suggestive that the criminal knew what they were doing and they were
efficiently ransacking the house so you start at the bottom and work your way up
because now you don't have to close any drawers after the fact you open the bottom then the next one then the next
one the next one all the way to the top could you have something that's completely happened stance where
somebody comes in there and stages a crime scene and gets lucky and opens up all the drawers yes that's not out of
the realm of possibility but expert crime scene uh experts on crime scenes will tell you that fact with the dresser
drawers the other thing that's weird about this situation Captain is was anything missing from the home
David Hendrick says at a conference to news people well they said that some cash was missing from the house right
and police say well now he's planting something in the heads of the public and and in the news that oh he must be
innocent because someone stole cash from the home um the problem with with cash being
the only thing missing how verifiable is it that it was ever even in the house to
begin with but we don't ever have police ever saying no nothing was missing from
the home they've never gone on record and said no nothing was missing from this house I don't understand why David
hasn't pushed for them to identify these fingerprints so he does fight this conviction on appeal right and in fact
he ends up getting a a retrial trial seven seven or so years later he gets non-guilty verdict at the
second trial and he's released right and he actually goes back into business he got married while he was in
prison I guess there was nobody else available for this woman but poor lady gets married while he's in prison and
they get a divorce shortly afterward um he lost his religion a little bit he says while he was in
prison that he came out a bit of a changed man you'll be uh R said their hit song was written about David well
you will be happy to know that he moved to and lived in Sania Ohio for a good period of time and had a very successful
medical supply business here in Ohio for years and then he eventually moved down
to Florida where he still resides to this day he had a practice or or business in Florida in the greater
Orlando area for a good deal of time and so here we sit here today Captain 40 years later and he is out he's a free
man he's an older man at this point he's 69 years old and as far as the police and the
prosecution's concerned David Hendrick killed his family as far as David Hendricks and many others are concerned
he's an innocent man who did a few years did seven years in prison plus a year waiting for the trial in jail and the
real killer or Killers is still out there I still want to know who these fingerprints belong to that's exactly
correct because they don't belong to David Hendrick and the shoeprints don't belong to David Hendricks as well and
here's the thing though is the people that think he's guilty even if they were able to identify these fingerprints and
say well it's of this known killer or this known thief or whatever I think a lot of people that think he's guilty
will just be like well then he was in cahoots with somebody yeah but that's the difficult thing right like there's
also ways that you could say that the fingerprints do not help David or that he wasn't in cahoots with
somebody what if the fingerprints came back to someone you check them today and you say oh yeah we we've now identified
who those fingerprints belong to it it's a a a man who lived down the street from
them and he is 47 years old meaning he was s years old when they were killed it's not likely that a seven-year-old
went in there with an axe killed four family members and wiped down the place and left so you're right I think that I
just don't like when there are things that are out there that could be tested and they're not tested or in this
situation where you have something that is identifiable you've just not identified it right it it leaves too
much it does it leaves that room for Reasonable Doubt and in in this case um the
Reasonable Doubt is the unknown killer or killers right you have those crime scene experts that are saying there are
some things suggestive that there's more than one perpetrator here but they also
said at the same time that you cannot conclusively determine that there was more than one
perpetrator you also cannot conclusively determine that it was a sophisticated robber or or somebody that is used to
and has experience burglarizing homes so again it's all unfortunately the case against David Hendrick is all
gray very little black and white in this case now we do have a rare situation here where a man is convicted and then
later he's retried and found not guilty he gets out of prison he does write he wrote a book and not about his case he
wrote about a a book about an individual that he knew while he was serving time it's called a confession of a killer I
think it's called John Henry Confessions of a killer and this was a man that he became friends with and that he's just
chronicling his story he's not saying this guy's innocent he's not taking up a fight for this John Henry person in fact
he's just chronicling the story as it was told to him with this man's permission this individual that he wrote
the book about is now out of prison I don't know if they've stayed in touch or what have you but what the unique
situation is is that David Hendrick started a website to help sell and promote this book remember he's what is
he at his core what made him so successful he's a good salesman so on his website he opened it
up to a Blog in a Q&A and so people very rightfully so wanted to ask him some questions about
his case forget about John Henry's case we want to know about your case David Hendrick are you guilty did you kill
your family and so one of the questions that is featured on this website is is who do you suspect of murdering your
family if you are innocent and you didn't kill them who killed them right this is a very interesting answer he
says while I was in prison Susie's younger sister made a shocking Revelation she said that shortly after
the murders her then husband had given her surgical scrubs to wash they were splattered and covered in blood she
washed them saying nothing she said that he was angry and jealous of our family and that he knew where she kept her key
to the home so that's one thing that I failed to mention captain and this is something the police were aware of and
it was an angle that they pursued the Hendrick family kept a spare key outside of the home on their
property right so you could one could use that and get into the home so when you find the house unlocked no signs of
a struggle and they're killed in the middle of the night that's also more reasonable out did somebody know about
that key mhm nobody could prove one way or the other if the key was used to enter the house that night David
Hendricks in his answer here to this question is saying well my brother-in-law he goes on to say that
Susie's younger sister told him that shortly before the murders that her husband her then husband took the
5-year-old Benjamin or Benji as he went by to a walk through a cemetery and asked him if he was prepared to die so
so David says on this website that that person is his number one suspect he says
that the problem with applying that to his case that information to his case is that she did not say a word about any of
that until uh or report this evidence until their divorce which means she then covered up
evidence relating to the murders of her sister nieces and nephew for years and he goes on to say I know that's hard for
people to believe um there are plenty of there there are statements out there I don't
know that they came directly from the police but what we do know is the police are on record saying we believe David
Hendricks killed his family so that would imply that they don't believe that this other in individual is
responsible what's weird here too is that divorce word they're all the same family they're
all the same religion and how horrible and how difficult shut up and shut out you could be for getting a divorce
inside of that Community he says she did not say until after the divorce about this information
mhm does she have a dog in the fight to throw this guy under the bus maybe she doesn't want to be excommunicated from
her community and said well look this is a good reason to get rid of this guy this
is why it didn't work out he's a monster he probably killed some my family members the people that say that David
Hendrick is innocent they they point to the fact that the Palmers Susan's family
believe David was innocent all along forever and as far as I could tell still to this
day that to me it does mean something I don't know that they're right maybe they're just too
trusting I worry here captain that this guy just got lucky right how the hell is
he leaving his house at such close of a time to when they were killed regardless
of how you want to argue the stomach contents of the victims it seems very much of a
coincidence that he would be leaving the house at such a close proximity to when the killer would have arrived and
then killed the whole family yeah I think that's why this is a case that gets talked about a lot because like you
said the whole trial has gray area so you can make an argument either way and I could be persuaded either way I mean
if you give me enough drinks and you make a good enough argument I probably could be saded either way in this one if
anybody wants to do some further investigating on their own the Susie sister's name is Martha Neils um so he
the ex-husband was I believe an orderly at a hospital that's why he's turning in
these scrubs as her story goes or at least as David Hendrick story goes but a couple of things that really
rub me the wrong way about David hris and one fact that I cannot get over is at no point in 40 years not when
he's interviewed that night not when he was denying an interview later not when he was on the stand at his trial not
while he was in prison and not when he was released from prison and not today on his website this has never happened
he has never said go find the killer of my family right when he was asked by the
police within 24 hours after finding his family dead they said what do you think
should happen to the person that killed your family he said well I'm a very religious
man I hope that they would be forgiven I hope that they would be saved and I hope
that they will go to heaven that's a weird that sounds what that sounds like what a killer asks for for their family
to forgive them I know that I strive to be a better more evolved individual a more peaceful individual
sure there's no way I'm saying that man and in part I wonder if he if that's him
saying in a hopeful manner well that's how I would treat the killer it's because I sympathize with
the killer I'm hoping that one day I will be forgiven right and I will be saved and that I could go to heaven even
though I killed my entire family at no point does he ever say find the killer of my family and I love there
was an article that came out on the 20th anniversary of the slangs remember David
Hendricks is now out of prison at this point 20 years after the slangs and the headline was still no new
suspects the only suspect that they ever had right or wrong was David Hendricks 40 years later there's no new
suspects that night the next day the next week the next month at his trial after he's released from prison while
he's in prison and to this stay 40 years later on that website I have never witnessed him say in
print verbally or otherwise go find the person or persons that killed my family he didn't even pull the OJ move
where once I get out of prison you know once we clear this up I can I can look for and help and assist and find the
killer of my loved one and that seems very odd to [Music] me you could be anywhere and you join us
here in the garage that's cuz you're awesome and we love you for it colonel do we have any recommended reading for
the beautiful listeners yes we we do Captain this week we are recommending Reasonable Doubt a shocking story of
lust and murder in the American Heartland by Steve vogle David Hendrick is the husband and father to suie and
the three slain children who was away on a business trip accused and later charged and convicted of the killings
police believe he methodically murdered his wife and children before he left but
why David Hendrick has the total support of his extended family but police paint
a darker picture check out this New York Times bestseller and True Crime classic
Reasonable Doubt Reasonable Doubt is a testament to the fact that truth is Stranger Than Fiction the book has also
been used in college level criminal justice courses to explain and illustrate the legal concept of
reasonable doubt you can find Reasonable Doubt in many other great true crime books TV shows documentaries and podcast
on our recommended Page by going to True Crim garage.com make sure you're following us on all social media
platforms Facebook Twitter Instagram at True Crime garage until next week be good be kind and don't
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The Hendricks Family Murders /// Part 2 /// 712

Part 2 of 2

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In 1983 in the state of Illinois there were few stories bigger than that of the Hendricks Family Murders. The Hendricks family of five were very religious folks. The kids were young, and mom and dad were as well. Susie Hendricks was a stay at home mom who took care of the families big nice house, and even read the Bible to her two daughters and young son at breakfast time. David Hendricks was a successful businessman. He was both an inventor and great salesperson for his invention, a medical device, a very popular back brace that was selling quite well in the midwest. While away in the state of Wisconsin on a sales trip David’s family was killed in their beds. This case remains unsolved to this day. Join us in the Garage for the true chilling tale of a family killed in the night and the aftermath that followed.

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Brief Summary

David Hendrick was convicted of murdering his family but later retried and found not guilty, leaving questions about the true killer.

Key points

The Timeline of Events. Exploring the critical timeline leading to a tragic event.
The Unusual Parenting Decision. David leaves his kids at Chuck-E-Cheese to gas up his vehicle.
The Suspicion of Murder. Law enforcement's growing suspicion towards David Hendrick.
The Public's Fascination. The case's notoriety leads to Halloween costumes based on David Hendrick.
The Challenge of Time of Death. Experts struggle to pinpoint the time of death due to numerous variables.
A Pervert or a Murderer?. The defense argues that being a creep doesn't equate to murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's good to be seen and good to see you.

A warm greeting that sets a friendly tone.

1:53WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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