Sergeant Charged in Slaying of Captain’s Family
An Army sergeant who answered a family’s ad offering to give away an English setter was charged Thursday with stabbing to death the mother and two of her children two days later, authorities said.
Sgt. Timothy Bailey Hennis, 27, was being held without bail in the Cumberland County Jail and was to be arraigned today.
Hennis is charged with three counts of murder in the May 9 knife slayings of Kathryn Eastburn, 32, wife of Air Force Capt. Gary Eastburn, and two of their three children, Kara, 5, and Erin, 3. He was also charged with sexual assault on Mrs. Eastburn. Capt. Eastburn was out of town.
Hennis, a parachute rigger at Ft. Bragg, had gone to the sheriff’s department Wednesday after seeing a television report that police were searching for a man who had picked up the Eastburns’ dog two days before the slayings, Sheriff Ottis Jones said.
Officials said that the Eastburns had decided to give up the dog because they were being transferred to England.
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