I
t was 3:30
A.M.
Matt Hensley was sound asleep when a ringing cell phone woke him.
Hensley opened his eyes and stared at the caller ID.
York County?
“You talk about waking up quick,” Hensley said later.
Indeed. There would be only one reason why the YCSO was waking him up in the middle of the night.
A break in the case.
YCSO detective Eddie Strait was on the other end. He had some news about a suspect Hensley would be interested in. “Eddie Strait here. We have Danny Hembree in custody at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD for armed robbery. And he’s confessed to both murders.”
“What?” Hensley responded.
This was certainly not a fist-pumping moment. It was much too early in the morning for that. But what Strait told Hensley next made Hensley sit up and take immediate notice.
“Hembree said he wanted someone to come speak to him about the murders before he said anything about the armed robberies.”
Hembree was so schooled in the law, having been arrested and jailed for so long, he knew a Gastonia investigator would ultimately need to hear his confession before the legal ball rolled.
“Russ Yeager and myself have just finished speaking with Mr. Hembree and he’s confessed to killing Heather Catterton and Randi Saldana.”
Hensley couldn’t believe it. The guy wouldn’t talk about an armed robbery, but he had confessed to killing two women?
“Said he killed both at his mother’s house and dumped their bodies in York County.”
“He say how?”
“He claimed to have suffocated Heather, strangled Randi.”
Strait gave Hensley a few additional details and said they were on their way to a restaurant in York County where Hembree said he tossed some evidence in a Dumpster.
The case was unofficially in the hands of the GCPD. Hensley needed to secure murder warrants for Hembree on both girls so he could make the trek over to Charlotte and get Hembree picked up. The last thing they needed now was for Hembree to go before the magistrate in another county. If that happened, it’d be a legal battle, which could take days or weeks, before they’d be able to get him back to Gaston County to answer for the murders. By then, Hembree would be lawyered up and likely not want to talk anymore.
“I need a few hours,” Hensley told Strait.
Strait spoke to his superior. When he came back on the line, he said they’d wait.
T
he Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD is a whitewashed, stone-and-marble building, with perfectly groomed maple trees, red bark mulch at the trunk base, greeting visitors as they take the four steps up in through the front doors. The state flag stands proud and nearly as high as the building to the right of an old-school noir-style streetlamp. A block away, heading northwest on East Trade Street, is the Time Warner Cable Arena, the glitz and fine hospitality of the Ritz-Carlton hotel just beyond that.
With his partner, Michel Sumner, Matt Hensley parked his Crown Vic and headed into the building to meet Yeager and Strait. It was shortly after five in the morning. Hensley had obtained the two murder warrants he needed. As Hensley did that, a colleague, 0GCPD CSI detective Chris McAuley, secured a search warrant for Hembree’s mother’s house.
After Hensley and Sumner sat down with Yeager and Strait, they explained what Hembree had admitted to. It became obvious there was certain to be more evidence at Hembree’s mother’s house than just a shoe and some blood.
“He said he kept Heather in the closet for a week,” Strait explained.
“Damn, a week.”
“Randi he kept for ‘a few days.’ ”
Hembree said he dumped Heather’s clothing off Crowders Creek Road by the bridge, her shoes down the road. He placed Randi’s clothes in that Dumpster.
“He say why he killed them?” This bothered Hensley. What was Hembree’s motive?
“He said he killed Heather because he wanted to ‘free her from her lifestyle.’ ”
“Randi?”
“Said he didn’t like her.”
It was more than that. During the initial interview Hembree gave on December 5, when he first admitted killing both girls, he said (without being asked), “Randi was just a whore who fucked niggers, and I just didn’t like her.”
As Hembree had said during that initial interview, he helped Randi sneak into Momma’s house through a window. They hung out in his bedroom. “I went in there.... She was in there about ten minutes. She thought I was going to give her some crack, but I didn’t. I just killed her.”
Hembree said that while he was at someone’s apartment the night before his recent arrest, December 4, “Shorty was supposed to come over there . . . and I was gonna kill him, too.... Heather hated Randi. They fought over the same nigger, Shorty. . . . He fucks all them young white girls, and he’s fiftysomething. He gave them crack.”
Taking his deep-seated racist commitment a step further, part of his hatred for Randi, he clarified, was centered on “when she was around a nigger, she tried to talk like a nigger. . . .”
Hembree despised this about Randi. It disgusted him.
After he murdered Heather, Hembree put her in the closet. His comment was chilling: “I then went upstairs, watched me some TV, and made me something to eat.”
Detective Michel Sumner and Matt Hensley worked cases together. Sumner, nearly a decade older than Hensley, had joined the DU a few months after Hensley. Sumner’s background was in sales; he had aspirations once of becoming a pharmaceutical-sales rep. But after interviewing with several major companies, he realized he lacked the core component of the job: sales experience. Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Sumner moved around the state as a child and landed in the Gastonia region as a teen, attending high school and subsequently Belmont Abbey College in Charlotte. Within his path of choosing a career, Sumner later said, “Not once, ever, did I consider law enforcement.” But 9/11 happened. Sumner wanted to make a difference. He was determined to become a federal agent. “And in order to become a federal agent,” he said, “I thought local law enforcement would be the right direction or the right step to go into that field.”
What Sumner didn’t realize until Hembree became part of his life was how much he would rely on that background in sales in order to get suspects to talk, and keep talking.
The plan was to pick Hembree up and get him down to the GCPD and allow him to say whatever he needed to say. As a cop, if you have a suspect talking, you let him ramble for as long as he’ll continue. There’s no telling what tomorrow will bring—especially when dealing with such an unpredictable, volatile guy like Danny Hembree.
One of the last things Hembree told the YCSO before they handed him over to Hensley and Sumner was “Y’all would have never figured it out.” Hembree took pride in the fact that he had gotten away with the murders; it was important to him that he admitted to killing the girls—and that cops didn’t figure out he was the killing kind.
Even as he went down in flames, Danny Hembree maintained that balance of power.
He liked playing the role of the serial killer,
a family member of Hembree’s later wrote to me in an e-mail.
I believe Danny wants [the publicity]. It scratches [an] itch. No, you should not believe him. If anything was true . . . [it’s] that he is a liar.
“We deal with bad guys on a daily basis,” Hensley commented. “Mr. Hembree proved to be a different breed altogether.”
Law enforcement was spot-on with its assessment of Danny Hembree. Because what no investigator knew then was that Hembree wasn’t finished giving up bodies.
There would be more.
D
anny Hembree was sleeping when Hensley and Sumner woke him at 6:39
A.M.
on December 5.
Ryan Whetzel met them outside the door. “He’s been sleeping for several hours. I recorded the interview. I’ll get you a copy as soon as I can. The tech guy, who does that, only comes in one day a week.”
“Thanks. You can’t get me that right now?”
“No.”
Thus, Hensley and Sumner were not going to be able to have a look at Hembree’s confession before they interviewed him. And they had no time to wait for the DVD.
This made Hensley a bit uncomfortable.
“I would have liked to have known what he had told them exactly,” Hensley said. “So I could design my questioning around what he’d already said. But sometimes you don’t have all the luxuries you want and you have to make do with what you have.”
“He’s fine with y’all coming to get him—he knows,” Whetzel said.
Quite contrary to what some close to Hembree later said about him lapping up the media attention that becoming known as a serial killer would yield, one of the first things Hembree said to Hensley upon greeting him was “I’ll tell y’all everything, but no media. Y’all keep the media away.”
“He was firm about this,” Hensley remembered. “He did not want a camera in his face.”
After Hembree used the restroom, he asked Hensley to loosen his handcuffs. “They’s hurting me.”
Hensley didn’t see a problem. Hembree realized he controlled the what, where, when, why, and how. As long as he talked, everything was going to be done on his terms.
“He started making demands,” Hensley said. “We had to give him what he wanted. We had no reason not to make him comfortable, because we’re anticipating that he’s going to tell us he killed these girls, but, more importantly, maybe give us corroborating information.”
Hensley had heard Hembree only wanted to discuss the murders with Gaston County. Hensley wanted to know if this was true. Had Hembree actually felt that way?
“Yup,” he confirmed. They walked out of the building. “It was never theirs in the first place.”
Hembree rode by himself behind a cage in a patrol car, while Hensley and Sumner followed. The game plan they discussed along the way was simple: Allow Hembree the comforts he desired, as long as he talked.
They arrived at 7:39
A.M.
, according to Hensley’s report. The next few days would be well documented by videotape, audio recordings, and written reports detailing every move Danny Hembree made, along with everything he said.
“Can I have some coffee?” Hembree asked. He sat down in what was now a familiar chair inside the box at the GCPD.
“You want us to get you something to eat?” Hensley asked.
Hembree wanted to wait on the food.
By 7:50
A.M.
, Hembree was Mirandized.
Hensley sat back, relaxed. “Well, man, what do you want to tell us? Is there something in particular?”
Hembree broke into the same story of seeing and talking to Heather that night while she was in the bathtub. He explained what happened on October 17 in detail, same as he had to the YCSO, backing up, pretty much, what Sommer Heffner and her boyfriend had told police. But it was that time period after Hembree dropped Sommer off at her boyfriend’s house and he took off with Heather alone that Hensley and Sumner were interested in. What took place between the time Hembree was alone with Heather and ten days later, when Heather’s body was found in that South Carolina ditch? That was the question.
Hensley and Sumner waited.
Hembree took a breath and explained in detail how he killed Heather Marie Catterton.
H
embree pulled up to his mother’s house around 4:30
A.M.
on October 18. He had already decided Heather was going to die. He wasn’t “mad at her,” he claimed. Nor was he angry. He wasn’t in some sort of violent rage, pissed off that Heather would not do what he said. He wasn’t obsessed with Heather. Nor did he have some secret fantasy focused on her—at least, none that he admitted. Hembree said he loved Nicole. Heather’s death had nothing to do with any sexual gratification or sexual fantasy. Instead, Hembree decided, he was going to save Heather from a life of hell that he knew was ahead. It was a life on the streets, Hembree claimed, that had started back when Heather was twelve years old.
Hembree’s extreme racist slant on life in general was evident as he talked about how, because Heather was “never going to stop fucking niggers,” he needed to swoop in and rescue her. He could not allow her to continue with the lifestyle she had chosen for herself. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t what she wanted deep down inside.
Hembree believed he was doing Heather and her family a favor.
Inside the house, they hung out in Hembree’s den, a part of the house near his bedroom that Hembree and his mother had designated for him alone. Hembree had sex with Heather, he claimed. When they finished, he thought:
She’s too heavy to carry down the stairs—how am I going to get her into the basement?
He didn’t want to kill Heather in his bedroom or in the den. He decided the best place was downstairs in the basement. He had planned on storing Heather downstairs after he killed her, anyway, but never said why.
“Hey, Heather,” Hembree said after sex, “we’ve got us some lighters downstairs in a cabinet inside the washroom. Can you go and fetch me one?”
Heather got up and walked down into the basement. All she had on, Hembree said, was that Hollister hoodie and toe socks. The rest of her clothes were on the floor in his bedroom.
Hembree’s mother was not home. She had gone away for a few days.
With Heather downstairs, Hembree got up. Without saying anything, he approached Heather from behind. She had a flashlight in her hand and was searching a dusty shelf in the basement, looking for a lighter.
With “some kind of cord” (he could not recall what it was exactly), Hembree walked up behind Heather without speaking and, placing the cord around her neck, pulled it tight, choking her.
Heather reacted by thrashing her arms and swinging the flashlight and smashing Hembree in the head. (“It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, though,” Hembree felt the need to add as he told this story.)
Heather tried pulling at the cord with her hands as she struggled for air.
Hembree wrestled her down to the concrete floor.
Within a few moments, Heather stopped fighting.
But she was not dead.
Hembree let go of the cord and placed both his hands on her nose and mouth and pushed down tightly. He was simultaneously trying to cut off her air and hold her down.
As one final reaction, Heather’s legs kicked and her body convulsed. She was fighting for her life, instinctively. The way Hembree talked about this moment, he described it as calm and not at all violent. As he talked about it, with his hands handcuffed, Hembree acted out the “process”—the perfect word choice—of murdering Heather, saying coldly that it wasn’t “easy.”
“She just wouldn’t die. . . .”
Cutting off Heather’s air supply—effectively suffocating her to death—took “ten to fifteen minutes,” Hembree explained. He even placed his bare foot on her neck at one point to hold her down. “And she still wouldn’t die. . . . I mean, I didn’t want to hurt her or nothing—I just wanted her to go to sleep.”
If Hembree’s description of the murder is true, Heather suffered horribly—all while staring into the eyes of the man taking her life.
Because it was so difficult to suffocate Heather with his bare hands, Hembree grabbed a plastic shopping bag nearby and placed it over her head, pulling it tightly around her neck as he held her down.
This method seemed to work better; but, still, Heather wouldn’t die.
So as he struggled to suffocate Heather with that plastic bag, her legs and arms still flailing wildly, Hembree hauled off and slammed the middle of Heather’s chest with a hammer fist, hoping to stop her heart.
According to Hembree’s recollection, this worked.
Heather, just a child, was now dead.
Confident his victim had breathed her last, Hembree walked upstairs. He sat down in front of the television and watched TV.
Feeling famished, he then made himself a sandwich.