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On May 7, 1985, Tim Hennis, a twenty-seven-year-old Army sergeant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, responded to a classified ad from a local woman trying to sell an English setter. The posting appeared in the Beeline Grab Bragg, a newspaper serving the military community in the area surrounding Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg. After talking it over with his wife, Angela, Hennis drove across town to see the dog. According to his later account, shortly before 9 P.M. he parked his white Chevette in front of 367 Summer Hill Road, a ranch house with a brick façade and black shutters. He walked up the driveway, holding a leash.
Hennis knocked on the door, and Katie Eastburn, the woman who had placed the ad, invited him inside. She was petite, with short dark hair, a bright smile, and a pale complexion. At six feet six, Hennis towered over her; he was sturdily handsome, with heavy eyelids, a light mustache, and thin blond hair parted on the right. Eastburn told him that she had just put her three young daughters to bed.
Her husband, Gary, an Air Force captain, was away at squadron officers' school in Alabama. The family planned to move, later that year, to England, where Gary was slated for a job as a liaison to the Royal Air Force. The couple worried that Dixie, the English setter, wouldn't tolerate quarantine; as Hennis later recalled, Eastburn told him that they were just seeking a good home for Dixie and had included a nominal price in the ad, ten dollars, to "keep the cranks away." Hennis liked the dog and wanted to take it home, to make sure that it got along with his spitz. Eastburn watched from the driveway as Hennis led Dixie into his Chevette and drove off.
Four days later, Gary Eastburn phoned his wife for their regular Saturday-morning conversation. She didn't answer. He tried again and again, without success.
Sunday was Mother's Day, and the Eastburns' neighbor, Bob Seefeldt, noticed three uncollected newspapers in their driveway, suggesting that Katie and the girls were away. But their Toyota station wagon hadn't moved in days. Seefeldt went next door and rang the doorbell several times. He heard a crying baby inside and told his wife to call the sheriff's office.
An officer arrived at the Eastburns' house. He cut a window screen and climbed into a bedroom, as Seefeldt stood by. Inside, twenty-two-month-old Jana was wailing in her crib. The officer passed Jana back through the window to Seefeldt. There was a strong odor in the house. When the officer stepped into the hallway, he saw dead bodies at the end of the hall. He radioed the homicide unit.
Robert Bittle and Jack Watts, detectives from the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department, came to the scene a few minutes after 1 P.M. Watts headed the homicide unit; Bittle had previously run a racehorse farm. They entered the house through the carport door. It was a warm spring day and the windows were shut. "Death has a smell, its own aroma," Bittle told me. "I'll never forget the smell in there." The detectives proceeded into the home, inspecting each room along the way. In the living room, they saw a pair of jeans, two buttons that had been ripped off a blouse, and a pair of torn ladies' underpants. Then they found five-year-old Kara, curled under a Star Wars blanket, stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Next, they entered the master bedroom. Erin, a three-year-old, lay on one side of the bed, bludgeoned in the chest and back. On the other side lay Katie, naked from the waist down. She had been stabbed fifteen times and had apparently been raped; semen was found inside her body. All three Eastburns' throats had been slit.
Not long afterward, at the base in Alabama, the phone rang in the hallway outside Gary Eastburn's room. "It's for you!" one of his colleagues hollered. Gary leaped up and asked who was calling. "Some detective," the colleague said.
Watts was on the line. "There's been a death in the family," he told Gary. "You need to come home." Watts refused to elaborate.
Gary flew to Fayetteville, accompanied by another officer, and went directly to the police station. The detectives pressed Gary for leads. He told them that Katie had recently given away Dixie, but said that he didn't know anything about the man who took the dog.
Later that night, Bittle and Watts returned to the house, which was cordoned off with police tape. Crime-scene technicians had found fingerprints and hair. A Luminol test, which produces a glow when the chemical reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, showed faint smears of blood on the walls and in the master bathroom, as if someone had tried to clean the place up.
Shortly after midnight, a young African-American named Patrick Cone sought out investigators. He told Bittle that on Friday morning, at around three-thirty, he had seen a tall white man, wearing jeans, a knit cap, and a black Members Only jacket, leaving the Eastburns' driveway with a garbage bag slung over his shoulder. Cone, a janitor whose shift started that day at dawn, was walking along Summer Hill Road. "Leaving a little early this morning," the man in the Members Only jacket said, as he headed in the opposite direction. When Cone stopped and turned around, he saw the tail-lights of a white Chevette glow before the car pulled away.
That Tuesday, Cone worked with an agent from North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation to create a composite sketch of the man. Across town, Gary walked through his home with Bittle and Watts, looking for any missing items. An envelope of cash, Katie's A.T.M. card, and a piece of paper with the A.T.M. password were gone.
On Wednesday, Tim Hennis was at home having lunch with Angela when they saw a special news broadcast on television. It announced investigators' interest in a man who drove a white Chevette and had picked up an English setter from 367 Summer Hill Road the previous week. "My wife and I were shocked," Hennis said later. "It was the first time we realized that the lady who had been murdered was the one that I had picked up the dog from." Hennis, Angela, and their newborn daughter, Kristina, drove to the Law Enforcement Center in downtown Fayetteville. An officer led Hennis into a room for questioning. When Watts saw Hennis, he paused: Hennis's face and the composite sketch were nearly identical. "I knew we needed to talk to this man," Watts told me.
The authorities had determined that the murders likely took place on Thursday night, as Katie had been seen by the neighbors earlier that evening and the newspapers had begun piling up on Friday morning. So Watts asked Hennis to recount his activities that night. Hennis said that he had driven his wife and daughter to his in-laws' and then returned home, after stopping for gas. He answered many questions impatiently, and Watts found him arrogant. Nonetheless, Hennis stayed for almost seven hours and provided blood, saliva, and hair samples, as well as fingerprints and palm prints. When Watts asked him about Katie Eastburn, Hennis acknowledged picking up the dog on Tuesday, but said that he never saw the woman again; he had not even got her name. Hennis claimed that Katie had called him on Thursday night to see how Dixie was getting along with the spitz. That was it.
Hennis was a challenge to interrogate. "Tim Hennis is not a dumb man," Watts told me. Indeed, Hennis had scored 128 on an Army general-aptitude test, placing him in the ninety-seventh percentile. If he was hiding something, he wasn't likely to slip up.
Watts wanted Cone, the janitor, to review a photo lineup while Hennis was still in custody. A photograph was taken of Hennis, and the image was pasted onto a manila folder, alongside five other photos of blond, mustachioed men. Bittle tracked down Cone, showed him the folder, and asked him if he recognized any of the men. "No. 5 has his nose, but it's definitely No. 2," Cone said. No. 2 was Hennis. Bittle returned to the station and told Watts. But they didn't have a warrant, so Hennis went home.
Late that evening, a warrant was obtained, and law-enforcement officials descended on Hennis's house. When Hennis came to the door, detectives and agents from the State Bureau of Investigation streamed past him, in search of clues. "I hope you guys know what you're doing," Hennis said. He was handcuffed and charged with three counts of murder and one count of rape. "Looks like I'm going to get to wear one of those little orange jumpsuits," he sneered at Watts.
Fayetteville, a city of two hundred thousand people, was once notorious for another crime. In 1979, Jeffrey MacDonald, an Army surgeon posted at Fort Bragg, was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters with an ice pick and a knife. MacDonald, who maintained his innocence, argued that drug-crazed hippies had invaded his home, saying "Acid is groovy" and "Kill the pigs" before slaughtering his family. When military police arrived at the crime scene, they found the word "pig" scrawled in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. Though the Army initially brought charges against MacDonald, they were dropped. Years later, he was arrested, charged, and convicted in federal court.
The Army, which had jurisdiction over Hennis, could have court-martialled him on murder charges, but crimes committed off base were generally prosecuted by Cumberland County. Hennis's father, a retired I.B.M. executive, hired two prominent Fayetteville lawyers, Gerald Beaver and Billy Richardson, to defend his son. They faced a tough task. Several eyewitnesses recalled seeing a white Chevette on Summer Hill Road the evening of the murders. And Hennis's alibi—that he returned home immediately after dropping off his wife and daughter at his in-laws'—was rendered dubious when Nancy Maeser, a former girlfriend, told detectives a different story.
Hennis and Maeser had met years earlier at the Dragon Club, a honky-tonk bar at Fort Bragg, and dated for a while. Even after they broke up, Hennis still occasionally stopped by her house. On May 9th, Hennis, knowing that Maeser's husband was deployed in Germany, made an unannounced visit. Maeser let him in, and they talked. She tapped Hennis's wedding band and asked him how his marriage was going. "She left me," Hennis said—a misleading reference to his wife's visit with her parents. If he was looking for romance, he got no encouragement, and he left.
Bittle began discerning a motive, based on Hennis's visit to Maeser and the fact that he lied about it to the police. "This was a boy looking for love in all the wrong places," Bittle told me. He surmised that Hennis, after being rejected by Maeser, had gone to see another attractive woman who he knew was home alone: Katie Eastburn. He met with frustration again, perhaps, and things got out of control. Investigators picked up on a potential violent streak in Hennis: they learned that he had recently stormed out of the local Bennigan's, where he worked kitchen shifts to supplement his income, after a scuffle with a fellow-employee.
What's more, the Friday morning after the murders, Hennis had taken a single item of clothing to the dry cleaner's: a black Members Only jacket. That Saturday, Hennis's neighbors recalled, he had poured lighter fluid into a fifty-five-gallon barrel and stoked a bonfire for at least five hours. Had he burned evidence? Hennis did go voluntarily to the police station, but Bittle told me that this was a tactic regularly employed by a certain class of criminal. "Why do people rob banks? They think that others didn't know how to do it right. That was Tim Hennis's attitude: 'You can't get me. I am smarter than you are.' "
In 1985, forensic science in the United States was inexact, and DNA technology wasn't yet being used in law enforcement. Bittle knew that Scotland Yard had begun experimenting with DNA testing, and an office mate wrote a letter to London requesting assistance on the Hennis case. Scotland Yard declined to intercede. Nevertheless, Bittle was confident that he and Watts had the right man. "My God, every corner we turned, there was Tim Hennis," he said.
A month before the trial, another eyewitness emerged. Investigators had discovered that the A.T.M. card stolen from Katie Eastburn was used on May 10th, at 10:54 P.M., and on May 11th, at 8:56 A.M. Both times, the maximum amount allowed, a hundred and fifty dollars, was withdrawn. Hennis paid a monthly rent of three hundred and ten dollars, and he was late that month. He had a history of financial problems, including three prior convictions for writing bad checks. In 1984, he was kicked out of flight school for bouncing checks and lying to an officer about it. After the murder, investigators tracked down a woman who visited the A.T.M. three minutes after Eastburn's stolen card had been used on Saturday morning. When the woman recalled seeing a tall man with blond hair wearing camouflage trousers and getting into a small, light-colored car, the case seemed close to airtight.
Before the trial, Hennis was offered a plea bargain: two counts of second-degree murder, with a likely penalty of two consecutive life sentences. He told his lawyer, "I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do."
At the trial, in the summer of 1986, the lead prosecutor, William VanStory, told the jurors, "What happened in that house was utter madness. It's one of the most tragic things that ever happened in this country." He showed dozens of gruesome photographs from the crime scene. Cone took the stand and identified Hennis as the man he saw on the morning of May 10th.
"Is there any doubt in your mind?" VanStory asked.
"No, sir."
VanStory saved his most emotional language for the closing argument. "There's your baby-killer!" he told the jury. "He's the one responsible for the deaths of these kids and their mother. . . . The man responsible for taking their lives is sitting in this courtroom, breathing the same air as you are. And, hopefully, it won't be for much longer."
The jury deliberated for ten hours before returning guilty verdicts on all counts, three of first-degree murder and one of rape. Hennis pulled off his wedding band and said to Richardson, "Give this to Angela. Tell her I love her." Hennis was led from the courtroom to a suicide-prevention cell. Three days later, he was sentenced to death.
While the defense lawyers prepared an appeal, Hennis was shifted upstate, to a prison in Raleigh. He was one of seventeen convicts on death row. Nine weeks after he arrived, an inmate was executed by lethal injection. At the facility, Hennis received a letter, postmarked July 8th, the day of his sentencing:
Dear Mr. Hennis,
I did the crime, I murdered the Eastburns. Sorry you're doin the time. I'll be safely out of North Carolina when you read this.
Thanks, Mr. X
Authorities never determined Mr. X's identity. (The sheriff's office also received a Mr. X letter.)
Gary Eastburn, meanwhile, was struggling to move on. He had met Katie twelve years earlier, at a softball game for singles, and he recalls that it was "like somebody hit me between the eyes with a ball-peen hammer. I was madly in love with her." They were married in 1975, and Katie got pregnant three years later. In 1983, the Air Force sent Gary and his family to Pope Air Force Base, where Gary was a chief of air-traffic control. When Gary proposed moving to England, Katie was initially reluctant; she worried about being away from her parents, who lived in Kansas. But she was passionate about horses, and after Gary told her that she and the girls would have ample opportunities to ride in the English countryside she agreed to go. When Katie was murdered, Gary cancelled his plans to go abroad. He did finally accept the liaison job in 1988, taking Jana to England with him.
A few months later, Bittle called Gary, saying that he needed to come back to North Carolina. Hennis's appeal had reached the state Supreme Court, where Gerald Beaver, Hennis's lawyer, argued that the many graphic photographs shown by the prosecution had unduly inflamed jurors against his client. The judges ruled, 5–2, in Hennis's favor and awarded him a retrial. The Hennis ruling is still invoked by defense attorneys seeking to limit the presentation of photographs that are redundant or that could unfairly prejudice jurors.
For almost three years, Hennis's lawyers had been preparing ways to undermine the government's case. At the retrial, in Wilmington, they focussed on discrediting Patrick Cone. In court, Beaver referred to him as "a thief and a liar." Between the first and second trials, Cone had committed several criminal offenses: attempting to use a stolen A.T.M. card, being drunk in public and obstructing an officer, driving a car with an expired registration. During the drunkenness episode, he told a cop, "You can't arrest me. I'm helping you guys out." He went on, "You need to check with your district attorney, man. They know me and I'm their witness. . . . I'm a witness in the Hennis trial." Those charges, like the others, were dismissed. Then, one night in February, 1989, Jack Watts, the detective, stopped a vehicle that Cone was driving, with a friend in the passenger seat. Cone failed a sobriety test. Instead of arresting him, Watts told Cone's friend to drive him home. The friend later informed Hennis's defense team that Cone had told him, "I can do anything I want."
Hennis's lawyers also suggested that Cone's testimony at the first trial was inaccurate. Cone had said that the weather on the night of the murders was fair, with stars out, but a meteorologist called by the defense provided records that depicted it as a cloudy night. A local helicopter pilot, who had aborted a medevac mission that morning, remembered the weather being "very, very dark overcast."
Watts told me that, despite this, he never doubted Cone's account. "Mr. Cone had some problems," he said. "He was a street kid and he drank. But he didn't have to come forward. To this day, I believe every word he told us." Enough uncertainty was cast on Cone's testimony, however, to make it largely worthless.
Before the retrial, William VanStory, the original prosecutor, had left the district attorney's office for private practice. The prosecutors assigned to the retrial, Calvin Colyer and John Dickson, seemed listless by comparison. "They just kind of mailed the case in," Gary Eastburn told me.
The defense, meanwhile, scored one point after another. On the stand, Gary confirmed that, two months before Hennis picked up the dog, Katie had received threatening phone calls in the middle of the night from a man who knew her name and said that he was coming over. The unsettling letters from "Mr. X" were read aloud in the courtroom.
The defense also emphasized that, just weeks after the murders, the woman who testified to seeing a man resembling Hennis at the A.T.M. had told an investigator, "I don't remember anything." She apparently firmed up her story on the eve of the first trial, assuring prosecutors that she had seen a tall blond man getting into a compact white car. Beaver called this version of events "highly suspect."
A pair of new witnesses testified on Hennis's behalf. A woman who delivered the Raleigh News & Observer each morning revealed that, at 1:45 A.M., she had seen, in front of the Eastburn home, a long-haired man driving a light-colored van. The defense then called to the stand a tall, blond teen-age boy from the Eastburns' neighborhood; he habitually walked along Summer Hill Road late at night and admitted doing so at around 3 A.M. on May 10, 1985. Maybe this was the person Cone saw? When the boy appeared in court, the room fell silent. "That guy was a spitting image of Hennis—they could have been brothers," Charles Leighton, one of the jurors, said. "That was more or less the icing on the cake for me."
The defense had still more. Footprints found outside the house were three sizes smaller than Hennis's shoes. A spot of blood discovered on a bathroom towel did not match Hennis's blood. Investigators had found in the Eastburns' house several hairs—including a pubic hair—that belonged to neither Hennis nor the victims. The house was a rental, and the pubic hair had been found near a couch in the living room, not on Katie Eastburn's body, but the prosecution did little to contest the defense's presentation. As for the fire that Hennis set in his back yard after the murder, the defense asserted that nothing in the charred remains had been traced to the Eastburn home. And not only did Hennis's Members Only jacket lack bloodstains: an analyst from the International Fabric Care Institute testified that Varsol, the chemical used in dry cleaning, could not remove all traces of blood.
On April 10, 1989, Hennis took the stand. Beaver and Richardson reasoned that their client had nothing to hide. Hennis had been rehearsing for weeks. He appeared in court wearing a dark suit. Even with courtroom sentiments leaning his way, Hennis responded brusquely to questioning. Answering a question from Dickson, the prosecutor, about dog breeds, he said, "A German short-haired pointer, sir, has very close-cropped hair, something like your beard. A long-haired spitz would have something of hair like your head hair, very long."
At one point, Dickson asked him, "Kathryn Eastburn was an attractive woman, wasn't she?"
"It depends on what you find attractive," Hennis retorted.
"Did you think she was an attractive woman?"
Hennis admitted that he did.
When Hennis was asked about his initially undisclosed visit with Maeser, he said, "I forgot about it, sir. I just didn't place that much emphasis on it. It is something that slipped my mind." Some of the jurors took note of his irreverence. "Frankly, he looked like he could have been the kind of asshole who could have done it," Ken Wells, another juror, told me. But he added that looks can be misleading: "The black guy who wears a bunch of gold chains and a do-rag—that doesn't necessarily make him a thug."
Both sides rested a week later. Richardson, one of the defense lawyers, had told the jury, "You have physical evidence crying to you, just absolutely crying to you, that he's not the man. You've got a pubic hair in there that ain't him. . . . They are putting a doggone square peg in a round hole, and it doesn't fit, and it stinks."
Two days later, the jury reached a verdict: not guilty on all counts. "I don't see how we could have done anything different," Charles Leighton told me. After more than eight hundred days on death row, Hennis left the courtroom a free man, raising Kristina, who was now four years old, into the air. Several jurors shook his hand.
Leaving the proceedings, Gary Eastburn told a juror that he still believed Hennis was guilty. He climbed into the passenger seat of Bittle's Toyota and headed back to Fayetteville. Bittle told me, "That was the longest drive I have ever been on in my life. I felt sick, like someone had sucked the air out of me. . . . I felt like I let Gary down, like I let Jana down." He wasn't ready to give up, he said. "Somebody has to speak for the dead."
Scott Whisnant, a twenty-seven-year-old reporter, covered the Hennis retrial for the Wilmington Morning Star. Tall and bespectacled, he had a baritone voice and the unassuming look of a grade-school principal. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he had written about sports for years, but his girlfriend persuaded him to get a beat with better hours, and he landed at the courthouse. Watching the Hennis proceedings, Whisnant realized that he was witnessing something historic: a death-row defendant on the verge of winning a jury trial. "I went from 'I don't think a jury is going to convict this guy' to 'I don't even think he did it,' " Whisnant told me. "I have never seen a government case get so thoroughly dismantled. That was a rout, that second trial."
Whisnant took a leave from the Morning Star to write a book. He originally set out to find the Eastburns' killer, though the prospect of an investigation made him apprehensive. "I was afraid that there was something out there that I didn't want to find out," he said. "I lived in fear of it." What if he found evidence that Hennis had killed Katie, Kara, and Erin? "I did not want to have exonerated somebody who did this murder."
Whisnant, accepting that he "had no subpoena power" and couldn't compel people to talk, settled for writing a story of vindication. "Innocent Victims," as the book was called, was published in 1993, and sold about a hundred and seventy-five thousand copies. Three years later, a television miniseries based on the book appeared on ABC. Robert Bittle, the detective, boasts of not having read the book or seen the movie. "I don't read fiction," he told me.
Hennis's case eventually attracted the attention of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission. Troubled by a "very disturbing" string of wrongful convictions, and citing Hennis, North Carolina's chief justice, I. Beverly Lake, established a commission to scrutinize law-enforcement and prosecutorial procedures. "We obviously had a problem in the North Carolina criminal-justice system," Lake told me. New standards were adopted, for example, for eyewitness identification, creating, according to Lake, a "much more reliable process."
After the acquittal, Hennis had to decide whether or not to reënlist in the Army. A 1987 Supreme Court decision had granted the military greater jurisdiction over civilian crimes, making it possible that he could be court-martialled. But Hennis reënlisted anyway, receiving three years of back pay, a good-conduct medal, and a promotion to staff sergeant. In September, 1990, he shipped off to Saudi Arabia, for Operation Desert Shield; according to Whisnant's book, a thorough account of the first two trials, Hennis referred to the deployment as his "camping trip in Iraq." He returned to the U.S. the following spring and then, a year later, went to Somalia; he flew home after the Black Hawk Down debacle.
Hennis received awards and accolades for his service. One superior described him as a "sterling example for all," and a colleague called him an outstanding soldier. Jeff Schartiger, who served with Hennis at Fort Drum, in New York, told me, "Tim was a gentle giant. I would trust the guy with my family."
In 1998, Hennis, along with Angela, Kristina, and Andrew, his six-year-old son, moved to Fort Lewis, Washington. That year, Gary Eastburn happened to move to a city fifteen miles away from Fort Lewis. "I had no idea," Gary said. Following the second trial, Gary had returned to England, met and married a British nurse, left the Air Force, and remained abroad another few years before moving back. Despite the proximity of their new homes, the men never ran into each other.
By the time Hennis moved to Washington, he had lost his wiry physique and most of his hair. He became the scoutmaster of Andrew's troop, leading the boys on a hiking trip to Mt. St. Helens and on a snow-caving expedition to Mt. Rainier. Kim Gorder, the assistant scoutmaster, remembers that Hennis exerted a "good influence." She told me that she had "no inkling about anything in his past" and was shocked to learn about the trials: "That's not something you expect to find out about somebody you camped with on a regular basis."
Hennis retired from the Army in July, 2004, after twenty-three years of service, with the rank of master sergeant. He then took a job at a waste-treatment facility. Whisnant, who interviewed Hennis several times for his book, told me that he considered Hennis's conduct after acquittal "compelling evidence" that he could not have committed the murders.
On May 12, 2005, twenty years after the Eastburn murders, Whisnant met with a group of North Carolina detectives who were discussing the case. A crime analyst who had worked with the Fayetteville Police Department, Billy Crawford, was teaching a seminar for homicide detectives on advanced criminal-intelligence techniques, and he was presenting the unsolved Eastburn murders as a case study. Crawford had used Whisnant's book to help develop the course.
Whisnant was impressed when he entered the classroom. "They had big whiteboards up with time lines and other theories," he told me. "They had really outdone themselves." The people in the class treated Whisnant like a hero. "I posed for pictures and signed books," he said. "It was quite the head rush."
As Whisnant was preparing to leave, Crawford told him that Larry Trotter, a homicide detective from Cumberland County, wished to speak with him privately. Trotter, a retired Army staff sergeant, is short ("five foot six on a good leg"), with a bald head and a bushy red mustache. He values his instinct for seeing the world "in black and white." Trotter followed Whisnant into the parking lot and introduced himself. "Is the government going to solve this case?" Whisnant asked him.
Whisnant told Trotter that at least one important investigative path had gone unexplored. Two sperm samples were taken from Katie Eastburn's body with a vaginal swab. Although DNA testing had been unsophisticated in the late eighties, this was 2005, and Trotter could surely send the samples off for analysis. "This is a lab case now," Whisnant said. That remark, he told me, is "something that haunts me to this day."
Trotter discovered that the sperm samples were being kept by the Cumberland County sheriff's office. He retrieved them and sent them off to the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab, in Raleigh. (Trotter told me that he had been planning to test the swabs all along, and that the seminar merely reminded him to "get off my butt and do something.") The amount of sperm left on the swabs was sufficient to run a DNA test.
A year later, Trotter received the results. The DNA profile belonged to Tim Hennis.
According to the forensic biologist who conducted the test, the sample was 1.2 quadrillion times more likely to be from Hennis than from any other white person in North Carolina. "It's hard for me to visualize numbers that large in my head," the biologist later testified. For Trotter, the DNA result was unassailable proof that Hennis was guilty. "You have Hennis's sperm in the vaginal vault of a dead woman," he told me. "That kinda speaks volumes."
Forensic DNA technology, increasingly used since the early nineties, has sparked a revolution in the criminal-justice system. A single drop of blood or semen can often upend even the most impressive cast of witnesses; since 1989, more than two hundred prisoners, including seventeen on death row, have been freed based on DNA evidence alone. "DNA testing has an unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty," U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts declared, in 2009. Years after Hennis had been acquitted on circumstantial evidence—Patrick Cone's shaky credibility; the Mr. X letters; the "spitting image" of Hennis who roamed the Eastburns' neighborhood; the newspaper-delivery woman who recalled seeing someone with a different car and physical appearance from Hennis's—the government now held a trump card.
Trotter shared the lab results with Edward Grannis, the Cumberland County district attorney, and Robert Bittle, who had become Grannis's lead investigator. Bittle immediately phoned Gary Eastburn. They hadn't spoken in years. "Are you sitting down?" Bittle said. "We got a hit on the DNA."
Gary fell silent. "You kind of think you got over it and all, but it's just lying right below the surface," Gary told me. Bittle explained that he wasn't sure if anything could be done to bring Hennis to justice, but he wanted Gary to know that the government "had the right man all along."
Trotter, Bittle, and Grannis understood that, as Trotter put it, "the State of North Carolina couldn't do nothing to him." The Fifth Amendment insures that no citizen can be "twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" for "the same offence." But double jeopardy pertains only to a specific judicial realm. State courts and federal courts represent distinct sovereigns. Under the "dual sovereignty" doctrine, stipulated in the Constitution, a defendant can be tried and acquitted in state court—and then be tried again for the same crime in a federal court. Justice Department policy nevertheless recommends restraint when pursuing individuals after state judgments. Exceptions have tended to involve civil rights. In 1991, after four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of beating Rodney King were acquitted of criminal charges in state courts, U.S. attorneys charged them for the same offense in federal court. Two of them were convicted.
Army regulations state that a person subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice who has been tried in a civilian court "may, but ordinarily will not" be tried by court-martial. In 1987, a soldier named Ronald Gray appeared in a North Carolina court and pleaded guilty to two murders and multiple rapes, among other crimes. Despite the fact that he received consecutive life sentences, the Army court-martialled Gray, charging him with two additional murders and several rapes, and secured a death sentence. Colonel Mike Mulligan, the head of the Army's appellate division, told me, "In the Army, justice does not have a price."
Some legal scholars contend that the Army violates the spirit of the Constitution's prohibition on double jeopardy. Critics say that it is particularly problematic when the U.C.M.J. is used to prosecute members of the military for crimes allegedly committed in the civilian world. "The Framers were clearly opposed to the idea," David Glazier, an expert on military law and a professor at Loyola Law School, in Los Angeles, told me. "The Articles of War, which were adopted during the Revolution and continued for half our history, said that when a soldier committed an offense against the local civilian population it was an offense for the commanding officer to fail to turn over a soldier to the civilian authorities."
Things began to change during the nineteenth century. After American troops invaded Mexico in 1846, General Winfield Scott expanded the military's jurisdiction over its soldiers into the civilian world, in order to hold them accountable for alleged crimes in Mexican towns and villages. The military maintained this authority well into the twentieth century. Then, in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that military jurisdiction must be confined to "service-connected" crimes. The precedent lasted just eighteen years. In 1987, the Court, newly under the leadership of William Rehnquist, expanded U.C.M.J.'s reach, restoring the military's authority to prosecute all sorts of crimes committed by its personnel.
Grannis invited three Fort Bragg attorneys to his office, in downtown Fayetteville. At the meeting, Grannis, Bittle, and Trotter presented the DNA evidence. The military attorneys took the file to John Vines, the commanding general of Fort Bragg, who didn't deliberate long. He asked the Secretary of the Army to approve recalling Hennis to active duty—as any retired soldier can be—and charging him with three counts of murder. (The U.C.M.J. statute of limitations had expired on the rape charge.) Within weeks, the request had been granted.
On the evening of September 26, 2006, a military lawyer and an agent from Fort Bragg's Criminal Investigative Division, accompanied by two local policemen, drove up to Hennis's home; he now lived in Lakewood, Washington. Heather Hilton, the C.I.D. agent, handed Hennis a letter with orders to report to Fort Bragg within thirty days. "This is bullshit," Hennis exclaimed. He yelled inside to his wife, "Call Beaver!," and ordered the visitors off his property.
Hennis reported for duty the next month, under unusual circumstances. Despite being charged with three counts of murder and facing the death penalty, he resumed collecting full military pay and benefits. He was not confined or restricted, and after working half days at a desk he was allowed to meet with his attorneys and a private investigator nearly every afternoon at Billy Richardson's law office.
Whisnant, for his part, reacted to the DNA evidence with dismay. "I went into a tailspin," he said. "I don't want to have any part in exonerating somebody who has killed five- and three-year-old children and leaves a twenty-two-month-old in the crib to die." Nevertheless, the military's decision to take over the case struck Whisnant as "fundamentally wrong." He wondered how the Army could allow itself "to be a pawn of the Cumberland County sheriff's department." He said, "I can't believe that, in the United States of America, you can do a best-two-out-of-three for your life."
Colonel Mulligan, of the military's appellate division, emphasized to me that the Army's decision wasn't made lightly. "The Hennis case was unique," he said—an outrageous injustice that required a special response. He added, "I'm pretty sure we haven't gone to trial on something like Hennis before." The Hennis case may well not be the last of its kind, however: the Army has filed charges against a soldier in Kentucky, accusing him of murdering his wife and her former mother-in-law, after state proceedings ended in hung juries and mistrials.
David Glazier, the law professor, believes that Hennis's case raises "very, very critical" questions. "The Framers clearly intended that the military would not have authority to try soldiers for civilian offenses," he says. "Even if it's true that it doesn't violate our current understanding of double jeopardy, it certainly violates the understanding of the Framers. And that is legally dubious." Glazier said that there was also an issue of fairness: "Why does someone who dedicates their life to defending this country have less rights for a nonmilitary offense as compared to a run-of-the-mill civilian? The fact that he has completed his service and been recalled seems morally reprehensible."
The Fort Bragg courthouse, which has an ochre façade, four white columns, and a pitched white roof, sits atop a sloping hill. Inside is a gallery with wood-panelled walls and butterscotch trim; three rows of benches offer seating for fifty or sixty people. The court-martial of Tim Hennis began on March 17, 2010, and the gallery was soon regularly full.
A stern-faced colonel named Patrick Parrish, who previously adjudicated military commissions in Guantánamo Bay, presided. Fourteen uniformed men and women took their seats in the jury box. The jurors, known in a court-martial as "members," were equal to or greater in rank than Hennis. For a conviction, two-thirds of them would have to agree on Hennis's guilt; a death sentence would require that the jurors be unanimous about both the conviction and the punishment.
Hennis hired a top military defense lawyer, Frank Spinner, to lead his team, which included two uniformed attorneys. Spinner, a short, partly bald sixty-two-year-old with a sharp nose, had defended many controversial figures, including Sabrina Harman, one of the soldiers convicted of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, in Iraq, and Jeremy Morlock, a soldier found guilty for his participation in the murder of civilians in Afghanistan. "I want to do the most difficult, challenging cases that are in the military system—the facts of the case don't have any impact on me," Spinner said. At the trial, he declared, "We're not going to slink up and go home because there is DNA evidence in this case. We will meet it head on with reason and logic and critical analysis."
The government assigned a twenty-nine-year-old, Captain Matt Scott, to the case. Scott, a stocky, muscular North Carolinian, had joined the Army straight out of law school; after spending a year in Iraq, he returned, in 2005, to Fort Bragg, near where he grew up. He was handed the Hennis file less than two years after his arrival. It was to be his first murder trial.
The court-martial began twenty-one years after Hennis had been declared innocent in the Wilmington courthouse. Captain Nathan Huff, one of the prosecutors, noted, "The only difference between this trial and the previous trials is the discovery of this new DNA evidence." Of course, the people involved in the case were at very different places in their lives. Hennis's daughter, Kristina, was pregnant with her second child; on the stand, she recalled deer hunting and reading "James and the Giant Peach" with her father. His son, Andrew, was now an Eagle Scout. Hennis's parents were dead.
For Gary Eastburn, being back in a courtroom brought a wave of unanticipated emotion. "I thought, third time, this would be easy," he said. "It wasn't." The anger he felt toward Hennis rushed back, especially when, at one point, the defendant fell asleep at the table. "I thought, Rotten bastard—look at that," Gary said.
Jana, Eastburn's surviving daughter with Katie, was now twenty-six. She had her mother's strong chin and expressive eyes. Her mother's and sisters' deaths had marked her life, but she didn't remember them. "I don't have that deep-rooted sadness that everyone else has," she testified. "And it just makes me feel guilty and like a bad person that I don't have that feeling for them." She described visiting their graves and, while others cried, feeling nothing. "It makes me feel bad that I don't remember."
At the court-martial, Spinner and his team repeated many points made by the defense during the second trial. The shoe prints found outside the house didn't match Hennis's shoe size; the small spot of blood on the bathroom towel wasn't his; the hairs and fingerprints weren't his. Scott, the prosecutor, countered that Hennis could easily have had the foresight to clean the house that night, erasing his presence there. But, Scott went on, "in 1985, what he could not have known, what would come back to haunt him, is the evolution of science . . . DNA. He left one thing at that crime scene that he couldn't have known to clean up: that's his sperm."
Spinner questioned the handling of the samples. "Where's any document?" he asked. "Where's any witness who saw or touched or handled or packaged or unpackaged that evidence, removed it, or repackaged it?" He informed jurors that the evidence custodian in Cumberland County from 1993 to 1994 was convicted of stealing guns from the evidence locker. Furthermore, Spinner contended, the crime scene at 367 Summer Hill Road had been "trampled" after the murders—technicians at the scene did not wear gloves. Had the evidence been contaminated? Scott characterized this argument as a conspiracy theory, adding, "It's on par with those that believe that walking on the moon happened in a desert in Arizona."
Spinner had one card left to play: the suggestion that Hennis and Katie Eastburn had consensual sex. Spinner declared in court that the DNA evidence "could support an argument of adultery." But did it "take you beyond adultery to murder?" What if Hennis and Katie slept together on Tuesday night, when he picked up the dog? Or at some point between their first meeting and the murders? Spinner said, "One of the ways of the world and one of the things that we know about human nature is that things can occur spontaneously and for no significant reason. A young soldier whose wife just had a baby recently. A captain's wife while the captain has been away for a long time. All I'm asking is: is it possible that something occurred independent of the murders?"
The argument didn't go over well. The jurors themselves were often deployed far from home, and were unlikely to embrace the implication that Army spouses regularly fool around when their loved ones are away. (Though there was no evidence that Katie was forcibly raped, two studies have found that seven out of ten rape victims suffer no physical injury.) Moreover, John Butts, the medical examiner who received the bodies, had determined that "abundant, intact" sperm had been deposited in Katie "shortly before her death." Butts told me recently that he could not specify an exact time frame, but noted that, "after a day or two," sperm diminish, lose their tails, and disintegrate. Unlike the fingerprints, blood, and hair found at the scene, another prosecutor contended, Hennis's semen was "the only piece of evidence that . . . was found at that house that has a time stamp."
Had Hennis admitted to a romantic interest in Katie, Spinner's pitch might have been more persuasive. But Hennis had consistently denied it. During the second trial, Beaver had asked him, "After the conversation with Mrs. Eastburn, did you ever hear from or see Mrs. Eastburn again?" "No, sir," Hennis had replied. He did not testify during the court-martial. A psychologist who was retained by the prosecution told me that he found Hennis "an enigma" and a "reticent individual in general." The psychologist, who left the case before conducting a formal evaluation, said, "I think that he knew more about this young woman"—Katie Eastburn—"than he was saying, but not necessarily more about this crime."
On April 8th, after three hours of deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict: guilty. Now came the question of the death penalty. The matter was complicated by the life Hennis had led in the twenty-one years since his exoneration. Though his good conduct could hardly confirm his innocence, it did demonstrate his ability to become a productive member of society. Was the point of a death sentence to provide an extreme punishment for an extreme crime? Or to remove from society criminals who had no potential for reform?
During the sentencing phase, Gary Eastburn took the stand once more. Scott asked him what he missed most about Katie, Kara, and Erin. "Them. I miss being with them," Gary replied. He looked to the front row, where Liz, his wife, was sitting. "I'm sorry," he said. " I don't know if there's two better wives in the world that a person could have had. How, how she can sit there and listen to me talk about a woman I once loved and still do and not hold that against me . . ." His voice trailed off. He told me later, "I realized that was going to be a conundrum. You almost feel like you're betraying your wife, like you're unfaithful."
A week later, the panel delivered its verdict to Hennis: "All of the members concur and sentence you to be reduced to the grade of E-1, to forfeit all pay and allowances, to be dishonorably discharged from the service, and to be put to death."
Hennis met briefly in private with his lawyers and his family. Then he was handcuffed and placed in a van. He eventually arrived at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he joined five other men awaiting death. The last military execution took place in 1961.
"I still think Tim Hennis is innocent," Scott Whisnant told me over lunch recently, in Wilmington. "I'm not as convinced as I was in 2005, when I was running my mouth about forensic testing. But something doesn't add up. How does it happen that they got exactly the lab result they needed when all the physical evidence pointed elsewhere?"
Four months after the court-martial verdict, Whisnant noted, two former F.B.I. assistant directors released a report exposing problems at the serology unit of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation between 1987 and 2003. The report concluded that the unit had overstated, misreported, or withheld blood evidence in dozens of cases, including three that ended in executions. The investigation did not extend to the DNA unit, but it cast doubt upon the entire lab. Whisnant said, "They had to throw out cases and cases because the results were either doctored, wrong, or covered up. The S.B.I. lab was shown to be a total tool for the state's prosecutors."
Nevertheless, arguing for Hennis's innocence is difficult. Some of the evidence presented by the defense at the second trial looks shaky: even Whisnant thinks that the Mr. X letters could be a hoax, and the newspaper-delivery woman who claimed to have seen someone other than Hennis outside the Eastburn home withered under cross-examination by a military prosecutor. The court-martial did not solve every mystery. The defense did not release the results of further forensic work that was done on the hair and blood samples, though it's hard to see how such evidence could be deemed more crucial than the sperm found inside a victim of rape and murder.
Hennis has appealed his conviction, and his fate is not expected to be decided for years. Legal scholars consider the case extraordinary. Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told me, "Certainly, no one has been exonerated and then returned to death row for the same crime except Hennis." Hennis's days at Fort Leavenworth are spent in strict confinement; his room has only a "small portal" for sunlight, and he goes outside for about an hour a day, usually alone, to a recreation area the size of a handball court. The Army denied my request to interview Hennis, and he did not respond to four letters sent to him at Fort Leavenworth.
Hennis's wife, Angela, did not testify at the court-martial. She also deflected several attempts to reach her for comment. Last month, I arrived, unannounced, at her home, in a town in North Carolina. Angela's mother answered the door. She said that she would call Angela on the phone, and went inside. Two minutes later, she returned and said, "You'll have to talk to the attorneys."
On October 26th, at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, Eric Allen, an attorney working for Hennis, argued that at the time of the court-martial the military's jurisdiction over Hennis had expired, thus voiding the outcome. The appeal rests on a 1949 Supreme Court decision, United States ex rel. Hirshberg v. Cooke. In that case, the Court determined that the Navy possessed no jurisdiction over a sailor who was charged with mistreating prisoners of war, because the alleged crimes occurred during the sailor's previous enlistment. Similarly, Hennis was honorably discharged in 1989, upon his acquittal, after which he promptly reënlisted. His attorneys claim that this "break in service" renders any alleged crimes from his first term of service immune from prosecution. "The law is so clear on jurisdiction that Tim should not have to go through five or ten years of the military appellate process to be set free," Spinner told me. "Federal court can set him free today." Whichever side loses will likely appeal to the Supreme Court. If the Court reviews the case based on this appeal, it will probably focus narrowly on the "break in service" question and not address whether court-martialling someone exonerated in civilian court is tantamount to double jeopardy.
In May, 2011, a little more than a year after the trial ended, Gary and Liz Eastburn sold their house in Washington, with the intention of going back to England. Before moving out of the house, Gary and his daughter, Jana, spent days sifting through boxes full of mementos. Jana kept pieces of her mother's jewelry, including a charm bracelet. Gary held on to Katie's silk nightgown and one of Erin's dresses.
A couple of weeks later, I met Gary, in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. Before heading off to England, he was staying in the house of an old friend. The place was on a sprawling lot an hour southeast of Kansas City. Gary is now sixty-two, with square, chalky cheeks and thinning golden-blond hair. We sat on barstools around the kitchen counter, while lightning flashed outside and heavy rain soaked the overgrown fields out back. I asked him about the appellate process and how closely he planned to follow developments from abroad. He told me that, though he had almost put the murders behind him, he sensed that things weren't over yet. "I would just like to see him rot away in jail," he said of Hennis. "I don't feel any burning desire to have him hanged or shot or whatever they do. I just want him in jail without a possibility of parole." He paused. "If his appeal is granted, they might have to drag me back. I think three trials is probably enough for me. If there's a fourth, I wouldn't have much extra left." ♦


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Science Friday® is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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|Earlier this month, Henry Gustav Molaison, better known in the scientific literature as HM, passed away a the age of 82. Molaison suffered from major seizures, possibly due to a bicycle accident as a child. In 1953, in an effort to treat the seizures, doctors removed portions of HM's medial temporal lobes. Following the surgery, Molaison was unable to form new memories. For the remainder of his life, he participated in many scientific studies of memory and learning, teaching researchers much about the inner workings of the human brain. Following his death, Molaison's brain was removed and will be sent to the Brain Observatory at UCSD to be imaged, dissected, and preserved for future study. In this segment, we'll talk about the next chapter in HM's story, and what the study of his brain after his death might be able to teach future researchers.


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Missing the Point
The Bush administration's self‐delusion about the state of the federal budget continues. At a speech at AEI yesterday, Karl Rove claimed that the growth rate in the nondefense, non‐security portion of the budget had fallen. Fiscal conservatives who complain about spending are "missing the facts" Rove says.
Yes "growth rates" are down in this small portion of the budget from the massive growth rates of earlier in the decade. But here, from the most recent federal budget, are the more important facts on Bush's first five years. Data for fiscal 2006 are Bush estimates (actual 2006 spending is likely to be higher) in billions of dollars.
2001 federal outlays
Total: $1,863
Department of Defense: $290
Department of Homeland Security: $15
Total outlays less defense and homeland security: $1,558
2006 federal outlays
Total: $2,709
Department of Defense: $512
Department of Homeland Security: $44**
Total outlays less defense and homeland security: $2,153
(**Homeland Security spending spikes in fiscal 2006 due to Katrina. To roughly take out this effect, I used the 2007 figure of $44 billion).
What we have then over Bush's 5 years is a 45 percent increase in federal spending and a 38 percent increase in spending excluding defense and homeland security.
Of course, the Bush administration shouldn't get a free ride for its massive increase in defense and security spending. Pentagon spending is notoriously wasteful, and much "homeland security" spending is either wasteful or properly the responsibility of state governments or the private sector. All added spending sucks more resources out the private economy and the average American's wallet.


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Today, we have a special Halloween edition. For me, Halloween and computer geek go quite well together. And thinking about it, I wanted to try to better understand if there was a correlation. As a DBA, have you wondered the same thing?
Well, I have a short list of five things that may help you to correlate your affinity for Halloween with your love for Databases.
Did you know that a tombstone is a legitimate thing in SQL Server?
Tombstones are replica related. They are deleted items in the replica and are used to make sure the deleted item doesn't get put back in the replica inadvertently.
You can read a lot more about tombstones from the msdn article here.
Tombstones are not unique to SQL Server. These are commonplace in Active Directory as well.
Not all rows that are deleted move on to the afterlife quickly like they should. Some like to hang around due to unfinished business.
The unfinished business in this case is the server running a cleanup thread. This has to be done when the server is not too busy and has enough free resources to help these records move on to the afterlife.
You can see the evidence of these ghosts with specialized equipment. By the use of a DMO, we can see the ghost record count on a per index basis. The DMO is sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats. Take a look at the ghost_record_count column in the returned record set.
With more specialized equipment, the engine takes care of the cleanup and removal of these ghosts. Here is an in-depth foray into the world of SQL ghost hunting. Whatever you do, don't cross the streams.
No, I killed it!!
It can't be…How is it still alive?
The transaction will not commit and may get rolled back. The zombie has reared its' ugly head. A transaction that cannot commit but keeps going (or rolls back) due to an unrecoverable error is a zombie transaction.
From MSDN, here is a more specific definition of a zombie.
Rowsets can become zombies if the internal resource on which they depend goes away because a transaction aborts.
The spawn of SQL server is not so much like the Spawn character of the comics. Nor is it much like the spawn shown to the right.
That is unless it is not managed very well. SQL can spawn multiple threads if the optimizer deems it necessary for a query. This is also known as parallelism.
Parallelism can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. Understanding it can help keep it on the good side. You might want to check out some of Paul White's articles on the topic.
Children of the Corn
Well, this one is not really something in SQL server. That said, every time I think of orphaned users in SQL server – children of the corn comes to mind.
An orphaned user is one in which the login SID does not match for one reason or another. This makes it so that the user can no longer log in to SQL server.
If you don't know about these kids, they can really make for a frustrating day. Read more here.
I have just covered five things in SQL server that correlate quite closely to Halloween. But this by no means is an exhaustive list. For instance, an obvious correlation is the "KILL" command. Another good one is the monster known as the Blob (read more about that monster here and here).
With the opportunity to have Halloween every day, it's no wonder I like being a DBA.
Happy Halloween


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|"Nienna" by Aerankai
|Biographical Information
|Other names
|Nyenna, Heskil, Núri, Qalmë-Tári, Fui
|Lady of pity and mourning
|Halls of Nienna
|Close to Olórin
|Mandos, Irmo
|Physical Description
|Images of Nienna
Nienna was a Queen of the Valar, the sister of Mandos and Irmo, acquainted with grief and sorrow but also pity and courage.
[edit] Attributes
The sister of the Fëanturi, she is ranked as one of the eight Aratar, the most powerful of the Valar. Her element is grief and she is ever mourning for the wounds of the world by evil. Those who listen to her learn wisdom and endurance in grief.[1]
Her halls are in the distant west, close to the Halls of Mandos, but on the western borders of the World, and her windows look outward from the Walls of the World. She dwells alone and rarely travels to the joyful city of Valmar. She goes more often to the halls of her brother Mandos to comfort and counsel those in the Halls of Waiting who cry to her.[1]
All that is known about her appearance is that she wears a grey hood.[2]
[edit] History
Her part in the Music of the Ainur was one of deep sadness, and from this grief entered the world in its beginning.[1]
The Maia Olórin, who was later to travel to Middle-earth as Gandalf, learned much from her.[3]
Nienna played a part in the making of the Two Trees of Valinor; she wept on the mound of Ezellohar, watering it with her tears.[4] After the destruction of the Trees by Melkor, she once again wept on their wounded remains, cleansing the filth of Ungoliant, and helping to bring forth the last fruit and flower that were to become the Sun and the Moon.[2]
The pity of Nienna is most clearly seen in her support for Melkor when he sued for the pardon of the Valar. Though she spent her time in the world mourning for the destruction he wrought in Arda, when he sued for release after his three ages of Captivity, Nienna spoke on his part.[5]
[edit] Etymology
Nienna is a Quenya name which contains the word nie "tear".[6]
[edit] Genealogy
[edit] Other versions of the legendarium
In The Annals of Aman, Nienna is referred to as the sister of Manwë and Melkor.
In the Book of Lost Tales, other names of Nienna recorded were:
- Nyenna [ˈɲenːa][7]
- Fui (Q: "Night", [fuɪ]), though this is more correctly the name of her dwelling.
- Heskil (Qenya: "Winter One", [ˈheskil])[8]
- Núri (Qenya: "Sighing One", [ˈnuːri])[8]
- Qalmë-Tári (Qenya: "Mistress of Death", [ˌkʷalmeˈtaːri])[8]
[edit] See also
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Valaquenta: Of the Valar"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Flight of the Noldor": "cast back her grey hood"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Valaquenta: Of the Maiar"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Beginning of Days"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor"
- ↑ , entry NEI
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Book of Lost Tales Part One, Appendix: Names in the Lost Tales – Part One
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Book of Lost Tales Part One, "The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor", p. 66
| Manwë · Ulmo · Aulë · Oromë · Mandos · Irmo · Tulkas ·
|Varda · Yavanna · Nienna · Estë · Vairë · Vána · Nessa
|Arien · Eönwë · Ilmarë · Melian · Ossë · Salmar · Tilion · Uinen
|Saruman · Gandalf · Radagast · Blue Wizards
|Sauron · Balrogs (Gothmog · Durin's Bane) · Boldogs
|Music · Valarin · Almaren · Valinor · Valmar · Second Music • italics indicates Aratar


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For a category $\mathcal{C}$, let $\mathcal{C}-Set$ denote the category of functors $\mathcal{C}\to{\bf Set}$. Recall that given a functor $F\colon\mathcal{B}\to\mathcal{C}$, the ``composition with $F$" functor is denoted $F^*\colon\mathcal{C}-Set\to\mathcal{B}-Set.$ It has a left and a right adjoint, $F_!$ and $F_*$. I call these functors the pullback, the left pushforward, and the right pushforward.
Let $p\colon A\to B$ be a function of sets, thought of as a functor $P\colon[1]\to{\bf Set}$, where $[1]$ is the "free-arrow category," $[1]="\bullet\to\bullet$." Suppose one wants to find the image of $p$, but he or she can only use pull-backs, left pushforwards, and right pushforwards to manufacture it. In other words, suppose one wants to find a zigzag of functors $[1]=:C_0\leftarrow C_1\rightarrow C_2\leftarrow C_3\rightarrow\cdots\rightarrow C_n=[0]$ such that if we perform a pullback along all leftward functors and either a left pushforward or a right pushforward along rightward functors, then the end result will be the image set $im(p)$ of $p$ (considered as a functor $[0]\to{\bf Set}$).
This can be done. To do it, I used a sequence of the form $$[1]\leftarrow C_1\rightarrow C_2\rightarrow [0].$$ If the functors are denoted (left to right) by $F,G,$ and $H$, I found that $H_! \circ G_*\circ F^\ast (P)=im(P)$.
I'm not going to bore you with the details of $C_1, C_2$ and $F,G,H$.
Here's the question. I've seen things like $H_! \circ G_*\circ F^\ast$ before in the context of polynomial functors. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about them to know if there's a connection. Is there?
I also don't know if I can get the whole epi-mono factorization somehow. I haven't worked that long at it, but suppose I want not to end up with the set $im(p)$ but instead the maps $A\to im(f)\to B$. Can I achieve that by use of pullbacks and pushforwards as above (with $C_n=[2]$ now)? Is there any rhyme or reason to such constructions?


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Leading Scottish property consultants CKD Galbraith's Ayr Office is offering for sale The Old Granary, by Symington, Ayrshire, an exceptional barn conversion completed to the highest standard in a tranquil location.
The Old Granary is a spectacular barn conversion standing in a delightful rural situation close to the popular village of Symington, South Ayrshire, which is available at offers over £550,000.
Beautifully appointed, this exceptional country house was designed by the vendors to provide a wonderful 4 bedroom home.
An immaculate and spacious house, The Old Granary has beautiful landscaped gardens with some mature wooded grounds.
The Old Granary comprises a substantial country house built on two storeys converted from a traditional stone barn in 2004 comprising some 3200 sq ft.
There is a fabulous galleried kitchen, sitting room and study area, lovely drawing room, 4 bedrooms (all with access to en suite accommodation), utility, boot room and WC.
The particularly fine drawing room, has a wonderful vaulted ceiling with exposed pine roof trusses and a superb floor to ceiling window and a beautiful Yorkshire brick inglenook fireplace with a multi-fuel stove and French doors open out on to the private gardens.
The house centres around a superb galleried kitchen/dining with a stunning solid oak bespoke kitchen by Allan Hume, including a central island unit and feature brick wall with built-in Special Edition 4-oven Aga.
There are 3 charming bedrooms on the ground floor, one en suite and two further bedrooms with a Jack and Jill shower room.
On the first floor, there is a superb galleried living area providing a sitting room and study/office, and a stunning master suite with walk-in dressing room and luxury en suite shower room.
The Old Granary has been constructed to the highest specification and the owners have taken great care sourcing materials with top quality fittings including oak flooring, Scottish bespoke oak doors and architraves and cast iron electric sockets.
The house is energy efficient, with underfloor heating on the ground floor and is fully double glazed.
In all, there is 0.77 acres with sheltered gardens which are mainly laid to lawn with some mixed woodland. There is also planning permission for a three car carport and studio.
The Old Granary provides an excellent base for exploring this tranquil area in South Ayrshire, yet is only 35 minutes from Glasgow city centre.
CKD Galbraith
7 Killoch Place
Ayr KA7 2EA
Ayrshire, Scotland
Contact: R A Cherry BSc MRICS
Tel: 01292 268181
Fax: 01292 292300
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Web: http://www.ckdgalbraith.co.uk
CKD Galbraith's Ayr Office is a Founder Member of the Elite Ayrshire Business Circle.


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Support us
Giving tax FAQs
How can a donation to the National Gallery of Australia be made?
- A donation to the National Gallery of Australia may take the form of cash, or property, such as shares and securities or a work of art, which meet the Gallery's acquisition policy. Gifts of cash or property may be made to the National Gallery of Australia ("the Gallery") or cash, shares and securities, to the National Gallery of Australia Foundation ("the Foundation").
I understand the tax treatment of donations has been made more attractive?
- Yes they have. Since 1 July 1999, the tax treatment of donations and gifts of property has improved. Specifically, tax deductions for donations of cash and property have been enhanced and the impact of capital gains tax has been diminished.
- The Gallery welcomes these measures and the increased benefits they deliver for donors of property or works of art.
If I make a donation of cash to the Gallery or the Foundation is it tax deductible?
- Yes it is, provided your donation or 'gift' is over $2. The Gallery and the Foundation are registered as a deductible gift recipient with the Australian Taxation Office. The amount of the cash donated is available as a tax deduction over a period of up to 5 years.
- A deduction for a gift cannot add to or create a tax loss.
- You should also be aware that any 'gift' must be freely given and cannot be made with conditions attached which could provide you with any benefits of a material nature.
What is the position if I make a donation of property?
- A donation of property, such as shares and securities, which does not qualify under the Cultural Gifts Program (see later) will be tax deductible provided that the property is either valued at over $5,000 or was made within 12 months of the date that you acquired it.
- The deduction available in each case varies. If the property was acquired less than 12 months ago you may claim a deduction for the lower of the cost of the property or its market value on the day the gift is made. However, if the property is worth more than $5,000 and has been held for more than 12 months your deduction is based on the valuation determined by the Australian Taxation Office.
- Once again where the property is worth more than $5,000 the deduction can be spread over a period of up to 5 years
If I donate property is this treated as a disposal for capital gains tax purposes?
- No, if the property donated is not real estate or an interest in real estate. Ordinarily, a gift of property to a gift deductible entity would be treated as a disposal of an asset for capital gains tax purposes. However, as a public art gallery, gifts of property, other than real estate or an interest in real estate, to the Gallery are disregarded.
What is the position if I donate real estate?
- In the case of a donation of real estate whether capital gains tax is payable will depend on when the property 'gifted' was acquired, the nature of the property and how long you have owned the property. Very generally any capital gain would be the difference between the market value of the property and what you paid for it. Where the property has been held for twelve months or more an individual can reduce the gain by one half.
- Generally, the amount of the donation that can be claimed as a tax deduction will exceed the amount of any capital gain. However, if the property was acquired less than twelve months ago this may not necessarily be the case because the tax deduction is limited to the lower of the cost and market value.
I would like to donate a painting to the Gallery can this be tax deductible under the Cultural Gifts Program?
- Yes, the Cultural Gifts Program, effective from 1 July 1999, now encourages gifts of significant cultural items to public art galleries, museums and libraries by offering donors a tax deduction for the market value of their gifts.
- You may claim an income tax deduction equivalent to the market value of the works of art and can spread your tax deduction over five tax years.
- The general rule is that the amount you can deduct is the average of the market values specified in two formal valuations received from independent valuers. The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has issued guidelines to assist valuers in making valuations of certain property.
- The Australian Taxation Office has accepted the Gallery as an eligible recipient under the Program. As an eligible recipient the Gallery is required to assess the property's cultural importance relative to the collection. Gifts of real estate or interest in real estate are not eligible to be donated under the Cultural Gifts Program.
When should I have valuations carried out?
- Valuations must be done within 90 days before or after the date of formal acceptance of the gift, to reflect the current market value.
Do I have to use particular valuers?
- You should approach the Gallery to help you choose suitable valuers approved, for the purposes of the Cultural Gifts Program, to value your gift.
Can I claim a tax deduction for the cost of valuations?
- Yes, if the valuations are obtained specifically for the Cultural Gifts Program they are deductible as a tax-related expense.
- The Gallery may consider alternative arrangements in relation to costs of valuation, if appropriate.
How does the '5 year spreading' of the deduction work?
- You may spread the deduction over up to five years by making a written election in the approved form before you lodge your income tax return for the year in which the 'gift' is made. In the case of a gift under the Cultural Gifts Program the election is sent to the Secretary, Committee on Taxation Incentives for the Arts, of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Otherwise you must keep the election with your tax records.
- In the election you must specify the percentage of the deduction you wish to claim for that year and the subsequent four tax years. You do not have to 'spread' the deduction over five years - for example, you may choose to apply the deduction over only two years or in the first year alone - and can elect not to claim a deduction in one or more of the years.
- If your circumstances change you may vary your election for all years for which a deduction has not yet been claimed. This election provides you with the flexibility to plan your financial affairs.
Will a donation of works of art to the Gallery be subject to Capital Gains Tax?
- No, a donation of works of art under the Cultural Gifts Program is exempt from capital gains tax.
Will I be liable for Capital Gains Tax on a bequest of a cultural gift or other property to the Gallery?
- No – since 1 July 1999 the gift of property to the Gallery by way of Will has been exempt from Capital Gains Tax. However, testamentary gifts are not tax deductible to you or the executor of your estate.
How can I make a longer term financial contribution to the Gallery without contributing every year?
- You could consider establishing a prescribed private fund or contributing to a public foundation such as The Perpetual Foundation with the specified beneficiary being the Gallery in either case.
Download tax treatments guide (218KB pdf)
Nature of the donation or gift
|Is the donation or gift tax deductable?
|Can any excess deduction be claimed in a subsequent year?
|Is the donation or gift subject to Capital Gains Tax?
|Yes (a)
|Yes (b)
|Yes (c)
|Works of art
|Yes (e)
|Bequest via your Will (f)
- The amount of the deduction is limited to your assessable income after deduction of other tax-deductible expenditure except tax losses brought forward in the year in which the donation is made.
- Deduction depends upon when the property was acquired and is limited as in (a) above.
- A tax deduction for a gift of property valued by the Tax Office at more than $5,000 may be spread over five years.
- Whether a donation of property is subject to capital gains tax or not depends upon whether the property is real estate or an interest in real estate. In the case of real estate several other factors including when the property was acquired are also important. The area of capital gains tax is complicated and you should seek independent professional advice of its impact on your own position.
- The deduction may be spread over 5 years at the option of the donor.
- The beneficiary must be a deductible gift recipient.
The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the assistance of Perpetual Trustees Australia Limited in developing this brochure.


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Microsoft's latest quarterly financial report has been issued and it includes drastically contrasting news for the company. On the one hand, the Xbox 360 division has reached an impressive sales milestone, while on the other Xbox 360 sales have seen a significant decline in the recent past.
First, the good news: According to Microsoft, the company has sold over 70 million Xbox 360 consoles since the machine's debut in November of 2005. That's enough to put it in the number eight position, just behind the PlayStation Portable, on the all-time list of best-selling video game machines. Not too shabby, though it should be pointed out that the Xbox 360 has enjoyed a longer relevant lifespan than the vast majority of earlier video game consoles. Historically it has been rare for any one machine to survive more than five years without being replaced by a newer version, but here we are almost seven years after the Xbox 360 launch and Microsoft has yet to announce a successor.
And that brings us to the bad news: Those same financial reports also point out that Microsoft's Xbox 360 division hasn't been doing so well lately. Over the last financial quarter, the company sold only 1.7 million Xbox 360s. That seems like an impressive number, but it's actually a 29-percent decline over the same time period last year. Further, the Xbox 360 division posted total revenues of $1.95 billion, which again would be impressive if it wasn't a one-percent decline from 2011.
The reasons for this revenue dip are myriad, but chiefly the console has been suffering from a lack of blockbuster titles in recent months. Here in October, where we just witnessed the release of both Dishonored and XCOM: Enemy Unknown in a single day, it seems like the console is overflowing with promising, lucrative games, but if you'll recall this summer you'll likely remember that it was something of a relatively dead period for the machine. Microsoft can't really be faulted for this, as it seems the result of developers and publishers holding back their best titles until they might reap those big holiday shopping season dollars, but it does seem to have a solution. The November 6 release of Halo 4 is likely to change these numbers quite a bit, and while we don't see it directly causing as many Xbox 360 sales as Halo 3 did way back in 2007, we imagine Microsoft is looking forward to the month of November with cartoonish money signs in its eyes.
Editors' Recommendations
- Xbox Series X vs. Nintendo Switch
- Check out the best Xbox One deals and bundles for January 2020
- Xbox One vs. PS4: Which premium console is king in 2020?
- The best Xbox One games (January 2020)
- 5 big Xbox Series X questions we still have after The Game Awards


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News from the world of Maths
February 9, 2015
If you thought that billiards was a harmless game to play in the pub, think again. It's a breeding ground for chaos!
February 2, 2015
How to make people levitate.
January 28, 2015
Two mathematicians' visit to the desert sheds new light on avalanches.
January 28, 2015
The telescope discovers the oldest solar system to date.
January 21, 2015
The London Mathematical Society starts its 150th anniversary year with a bang.
January 8, 2015
Our image of the week may look like a bird in flight, but it's actually a subset of the plane defined by a mathematical formula.
January 2, 2015
Charlie Stripp, Chief Executive of Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), has been awarded an MBE.
December 24, 2014
Happy Christmas! Here's the perfect toy to help you celebrate.


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Bullying is a tough issue. Studies have revealed that victims of chronic bullying end up being consistently less healthy over the long term. However, people's response to victims of bullying range from dismissive (harden up already) to acting as bullies themselves (show me who teased you, Timmy, and I'll give them what-for). It gets even more complex when one considers that children are devious, and bullying doesn't always result in physical scars.
Now, as a result of my history as a victim of bullying and now having a daughter who is exiting her third year as the victim of bullying, I am not a dispassionate observer in this. I want solutions. Specifically, I either want the bullying to stop—not realistic—or I want ways to help my daughter cope with and escape from bullies.
So, it was timely that the EU's science funding agency chose to highlight the Victec program, led by Ruth Aylett at Hariet-Watt University. The aim of the Victec program is to develop game-like environments that allow victims of bullying to try to develop strategies for escaping from it by experimenting with different responses. After a bit of searching, I managed to locate a recent publication from the collaboration, and the results are what I would classify as tentatively useful.
Building a virtual playground
First, let's start with the technology, called FearNot! (Fun with Empathic Agents to Reach Novel Outcomes in Teaching—science and acronyms, UR TRYING TOO HARD). The researchers created a virtual school environment and populated it with children who fell into three classes: bully, bystander, and victim. The environment and models were made realistic enough to engage the children and allow them to identify with the characters.
The characters themselves were endowed with artificial intelligence that allowed them to modify their behavior in response to the success or failure of previous stratagems. This also added a random element to the environment, so the children using the software encountered a variety of situations and didn't end up simply replaying the same set of scenarios.
To make it as realistic as possible, the researchers used literature studies of bully-victim interactions to build up a basic repertoire of behavior for all classes of characters. The characters could then choose which behaviors to initiate and when. In addition, the characters showed their emotions, so the users could, in some sense, see inside their minds.
The FearNot! software could be used in two ways: passive observation, or playing the role of an invisible friend by suggesting different strategies to victims. The basic idea is two-fold. First, victims get to look down on the situation to see how it plays out in a broader context, getting a better understanding of where events are heading. Hopefully, they can then apply this knowledge. The second is that they can suggest that the characters test different responses to being victimized, seeing which are successful and lead to the bully giving up without having to actually risk experimenting in real life.
Real world testing
It sounds kind of cool, but how did it go? The researchers put it to test in a set of state primary schools in the UK and Germany. The kids enrolled in the study were aged between seven and ten, and selected either for a control group or a group that was allowed to use the FearNot! software. The schools were visited by the researchers, who provided an in-class lesson on bullying so that everyone had a common understanding of what counts as bullying. The children were then asked to self-report on bullying before, and at intervals during, their time using the FearNot! software.
The results were a qualified success. The researchers found that the first tests after using FearNot! showed a statistically significant group of children had escaped from their bullies. However, later tests showed no further improvement. On closer inspection, the researchers found that there was a significant difference between the responses of German and UK children. When analyzed separately, they found that the follow-up tests showed that more UK children continued to escape their bullies, but this was not the case for German children.
The overall success was not especially good, coming in at around one in five kids escaping victimization compared to the control group. But there are some caveats—that one in five is from groups of children that were already classified as being (or at risk of being) bullied. Furthermore, the results were taken over a very short reporting period, so there is no data on sustained success.
Adding to the caveats are other, smaller problems: the researchers could not use a completely randomized selection between the control and non-control groups because not all schools had access to computers adequate to run the software. Every school reported problems with the software at some point (e.g., crashes), so the children had less time with the software than planned.
Another interesting finding was that UK school children and teachers have far more experience using computers, experienced fewer problems, and had higher expectations for success than their German counterparts. Surprisingly enough, the final results of the study bear this out, with UK children having better experiences, and UK teachers rating the software's usefulness higher.
On a more basic level, the approach seems to assume that bullies are irredeemably evil and that it is more effective to teach the victim to avoid being victimized than it is to try and inject empathy into the life of a bully. I have some sympathy with the practicalities of this approach because, frankly, current victims are more important than future potential victims. But, at the same time, it has the potential to turn into a game of "blame the victim," which worries me a lot.
In general though, I suspect that most child bullies stop being bullies at some point, while those who don't go on to be crappy managers. So maybe this is the right direction.
Finally, there will be those who shout "Improve the teachers! Where are the parents?" and other such generalities. The key thing to remember is that bullies don't perform on demand. It is a lucky parent that catches a bully in the act, allowing them to take direct action. Teachers have more power, particularly over the more subtle forms of bullying, but even then, the teacher is not everywhere. So, yeah, parents and teachers can usually only take action after the fact, or try to prepare children. FearNot! seems to provide a bit of extra support for teachers and parents in preparing children, and I suspect that, used consistently, it might even be helpful.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2010, DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02137.x


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Brick Bardo is an alien the size of a child's doll. Ginger is a normal woman who was shrunk by aliens. Together, they make sweet, sweet love on a kitchen counter... until Tracy Scoggins walks in on them.
This amazing scene comes from Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys, a film so fantastic it's actually a sequel to three different movies. Eat your heart out, X-Men 3. Brick Bardo, aka Dollman (Tim Thomerson), is the hero of Dollman, the story of an alien cop who just happens to be a few inches tall and winds up on Earth fighting crime from a unique perspective. Ginger is one of the women who got shrunk by the evil radio-station monsters in Bad Channels, which we featured a while back. And the demonic toys are from Demonic Toys, a movie about possessed playthings trying to raise Satan. Nobody will believe Tracy Scoggins that the toys are evil, which is why she's been suspended as a cop.
Poor Ginger thinks she's doomed to loneliness as the only doll-sized human, until Dollman comes into her life. But he's not the only one who's excited to have a tiny woman around — the demonic toys want to impregnate her with their miniature Satanic baby, who will grow up to be a doll-sized Antichrist. Here's a great scene where the toys attempt to kill Brick Bardo by pulling him apart with toy trucks, while promising Ginger that soon enough, "We're going to bump and grind."
Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys is only an hour long, and at least ten minutes of that is flashbacks to the three movies it's a sequel to. But somehow, it manages to pack in as much WTFery as three regular films.


text: Home / This is True Books / This is True [v6]: Platform Shoes Claim Another Life Sale! This is True [v6]: Platform Shoes Claim Another Life$17.00 $5.00 Available in both ebook format (for immediate download), or get the ebook free when you buy a printed copy. Premium subscribers are eligible for a 20% discount: enter coupon code premiumbooks upon checkout. See below for more product details. Shipping * Ebook Only or USA: Free Shipping Canada Airmail book add (+$14.00) Overseas Airmail book add (+$21.00) Add Printed Copy? None Ebook only Paperback copy (+$12.00) This is True [v6]: Platform Shoes Claim Another Life quantity Add to cart Category: This is True Books Description Description The sixth book in the This is True series contains more than 500 True stories and headlines from July 1999 through June 2000. 168 pages, 5.5×8.5″. This is the new design of the series, with updates throughout and the new cover. Ebook Details The Ebook Files Come in both Mobi and ePub versions, which you can download from the shopping cart immediately after your purchase. For details on what to do with those files, see How Do I Read True's Ebooks? You don't have to have an "ebook reader" (let alone the Kindle brand) to read them: you can read ebooks on your computer (Windows or Mac), tablet (iPad or Android), or smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows, and many Blackberrys). See the linked page for details. Your purchase gets you the ebook files, or you can "upgrade" your order to get them and the paperback. The files are not "copy protected" — we trust you to be fair with us and not share the files with others. Book Details Each volume of the This is True collection contains a full year's worth of columns from This is True, plus many extra stories that didn't make it into the column — newspapers have a strict space budget which Randy had to adhere to, but sometimes there are just too many fun stories he can't help but write about. You haven't seen them all even if you've read every column online or in the newspaper. There are more than 500 True stories and headlines in each! The printed versions are no cheap pulp paperbacks. They're "trade" (high-quality) paperbacks with stay-flat, laminated, color covers. This is True books make a great gift. Our attention to quality makes your gifts all that more appreciated. The quality is so high, we've never had one returned under our better-than-risk-free satisfaction guaranteed policy! Also, don't forget that Premium subscribers get a 20% discount on books — no limit! Your discount could pay for your Premium subscription. You may order discounted books at the same time you order a Premium subscription. Free shipping is by media mail to USA. Also Available Via Amazon in paperback or value priced on Kindle. Related products Sale! This is True [v5]: Cost of Being Poor Rising $17.00 $5.00 Select options Premium Upgrade $32.00 Select options