S
ome states use a magistrate system. In North Carolina, magistrates are viewed as judges. They are not elected, however. Magistrates are appointed by the court clerk and are not required to have law degrees. Magistrates swear officers to both search and arrest warrants. But they also set bond after police serve those arrest warrants. Magistrates are set up in the local jails and there is generally no attorney present when a suspect is brought before them. Magistrates, it could be said, take some of the burden off judges.
There was not going to be a bond set in Danny Hembree’s case. Whether he realized it or not, Hembree faced the most serious charges the state had on its books. There was no chance of Hembree enjoying freedom while he awaited the iron fist of the justice system.
That being said, if a defendant cannot make bond or, in Hembree’s case, is not given the opportunity to bond out, he must be brought in front of a district court judge on the following day, where he is then given the opportunity to apply for appointed counsel.
Hembree was slated to go in front of a superior court judge, but Hensley and Sumner had to first get him in to see a magistrate. The magistrate was the first step along what would be, if Hembree chose that route, a tedious legal process toward justice. Of course, Hembree could plead his cases, if a deal was later offered.
“No media, right?” Hembree said as they made their way to the magistrate’s office.
“Yeah, Danny.”
Word had spread that Hembree had been brought in for the murders and was being questioned. The town was bustling with rumor and allegation. The local media was salivating at the prospect of covering a story with such broad implications and the potential for a nationwide media feeding frenzy.
Television media loved the words “serial killer.”
As they escorted Hembree to the magistrate’s office, coming around a corner in the building, Matt Hensley was shocked to see them all waiting: reporters whom Danny Hembree had purposely said he did not want to face.
“We had no idea,” Hensley said to Hembree.
There were cameras rolling, reporters waiting. A photograph would emerge in the days to come displaying the sheer shock on Hensley’s face when they came around that corner and were surprised by the media.
“I’m done. Finished talking,” Hembree said.
“Danny, come on. We had no idea.”
“Get them out of here now or I will recant everything I said to you,” Hembree announced. His demeanor had changed. He became someone else.
All Hensley could think about now was the idea of approaching Hembree again in the future as they began to investigate all the crimes he had admitted to. If Hembree shut them down, they were on their own. If they had him to bounce facts off, it would make the cases go much smoother.
Hensley pulled the magistrate aside and explained what was going on, relaying the promises they’d made to their suspect, adding, “Can you see Mr. Hembree without the media breathing down our backs?”
The magistrate thought about it.
“Yes.”
The media was shut out.
It’s funny how some people react to the sudden notion that a neighbor or friend could possibly be a vicious serial killer there in front of them, right under their nose the entire time. Perhaps it’s denial. Maybe we don’t want to admit we’ve missed a sign. Or possibly it’s just that realizing a psychopath committed murder and hid corpses within a stone’s throw of your house would unnerve us so much, we block out the reality of the situation.
Whatever the case, it’s inevitable that the neighbor ends up on the nightly news, that deer-in-the-headlights gaze, uttering those pedestrian comments we always hear in such a situation.
Thus, “He just didn’t strike me as that type of guy,” one of Hembree’s neighbors said when reporters caught up to the case and went trolling for quotes in Hembree’s neighborhood after being shut out by the magistrate.
O
n December 7, Monday, a pair of detectives from Brevard County, Florida, arrived to speak with Danny Hembree about murders he had supposedly committed in Florida. Hembree had family in Brevard County. He had spent copious amounts of time there. The opportunity existed for Hembree to have committed murders in Florida and, for that matter, at any point along the way, to and fro.
Brevard County is north of Fort Pierce, in the middle of the state, on the east coast. Two Brevard County Sheriff’s Department (BCSD) detectives sat down with Hembree, who was being held at the jail across the street from the Gastonia Police Department, downtown. Hembree had made it clear he wanted to be transferred to Raleigh; he wasn’t going to be saying much of anything specific to Florida until that demand was met. Hensley had contacted the DA’s office to ask about the request and was informed that some sort of arrangement would be made—not necessarily what Hembree wanted, but he was soon going to be transported to the DOC and out of the Gastonia local jail.
Hembree explained to Brevard County detectives, without going into detail, that he and Bobby Johnson had killed two women back in the early 1990s while in Florida. They showed Hembree a mug shot of Johnson, who was serving life for a 2003 first-degree burglary in South Carolina. Johnson was the same age as Hembree, forty-eight.
“That’s him,” Hembree said, pointing to the photo.
With Hembree not willing to tell much more before he was transferred to a prison of his liking, the next stop for the Florida detectives, they explained to Hensley and Sumner on their way out, was South Carolina and a visit to Bobby Johnson.
“Right now, we have no record of any homicides in the areas Hembree explained during those periods he talked about,” one of the detectives told Hensley.
H
embree made his first official appearance in the Gaston County Courthouse on North Marietta Street late in the day, December 7. The DA, Locke Bell, was ready to prosecute Danny Hembree to the full extent, and already was talking about exploring the death penalty.
For a true narcissist, there can be no better stage on which to perform than the structured atmosphere of a United States courtroom, with the media, judge, lawyers, and cops all watching. He is given the opportunity to run the show, so to speak, and control some of what happens from day to day. Hembree would waste no time in exploiting this part of his character to the fullest extent.
When DA Bell announced that his office would seek the death penalty, the alleged killer responded in kind. As proceedings got under way, Hembree indicated he was going to be representing himself for the duration of his case. And since his incarceration inside the local Gaston County Jail, he said, “I’m receiving death threats. I haven’t been tried. I haven’t been convicted.”
Bell stated that security was not an issue inside the jail and Hembree would be staying put. He would not be moved or placed in a safer space. He was fine where he was, until charges had been worked out and a new court date set.
During the short appearance, Hembree was charged with the two murders: Heather Catterton’s and Randi Saldana’s. Bell implied that Hembree would be charged within a day or two with a third murder, Deb Ratchford’s.
As the session ended, Hembree made eye contact with Heather’s and Randi’s family members who were present in the courtroom, making them aware he was going to be an open wound as the cases went forward. Stella’s sister showed up to represent Heather. As Hembree, dressed in a pumpkin-colored jumper, got up to be removed from the courtroom, he smiled at Stella’s sister, no doubt thinking back to the accusations he’d made against her, Stella, and Shorty.
Stella’s sister stared back at him. It was a gesture, she later told reporters, with the message: Not “all of Heather’s family members are . . . going to be your friends and lovers.”
Another important factor coming from the day’s events became that while Danny Hembree had been incarcerated for lengthier periods of time twice in his lifetime, he had escaped from prison on two occasions. Within his near forty-page criminal record, it was made public that Hembree scaled a wall in 1998 while serving eleven years for burglary, escaped, and was on the run for three days before he was caught. Then a second time, just two years prior, in 2007, Hembree was on work release duty when he took off. He had been working off a five-year bid for robbery. He was caught not long after that escape.
T
wenty-three-year-old Nicole Catterton took off after her boyfriend Danny Hembree’s arrest. Word on the street was that Nicole was missing. The family was, of course, worried about her. Why take off? Was Nicole concerned enough about Hembree’s arrest and her possible role in the crimes? Had she been involved—willingly or not—in covering up for Hembree?
It turned out Nicole was upset with herself for not realizing she had been sleeping with a monster. The guilt became overwhelming. It was not easy to deal with the pain. Nicole was worried that she had inadvertently and unknowingly been a party to Hembree’s crimes. That thought alone made her sick: She could have participated, without realizing it, in her own sister’s demise.
Nicole had not run off, as it turned out. She was staying at a friend’s house, and Nick knew where she was the entire time.
Hensley went to see Nick. He wanted to know what was going on. The rumor mill was churning with word that Nicole had left town. Hensley wanted to know why she would do this. For Hensley, he’d always had a feeling that Nicole, out of all the other players, knew a lot more than she was letting on.
“No,” Nick said. “She wasn’t reported missing.” He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“I’m fine,” Nicole explained to Hensley. “I just cannot be home right now.”
Hensley said there was going to come a time when he needed to sit down with her and talk about things.
Nicole said she understood. Just say when.
A
s they worked to try and back up—or tear apart—what Hembree had admitted to during his interviews, Sumner and Hensley found the store where Hembree claimed to have purchased the gasoline. It wasn’t the same store, however, that Hembree had pointed out during that tour of the town while exploring his murder memories. It was another gas station/convenience store down the block.
This was where Hembree and his tales diminished in integrity: the details.
For example, earlier that same day, Hensley had found that girl whom Hembree said he had picked up after leaving Shorty’s (the one he said he had gotten oral sex from). However, it turned out Hembree had a few facts wrong. The girl said he’d picked her up, all right, but she had not given him oral sex, not on that day. It was a month prior when she had done it; she remembered distinctly because Hembree had taken her to the abandoned trailer. As they were driving later, “Danny wanted me to go out and make some money (prostitute herself), but I didn’t want to.” So Hembree pulled over and told her to get out.
Hensley and Sumner walked into the gas station under the impression that all of the surveillance tape from that time period was gone by now, because those types of establishments don’t hold on to tapes that long. But maybe, they hoped, there was a receipt. Hembree said he purchased the fuel on that Sunday morning when he burned Randi’s body: November 15, 2009. Yet, after discussing the situation with the manager, she pulled out a receipt from the prior day, Saturday, November 14.
“I remember the purchase,” one of the clerks told Hensley over the phone after the manager called. She remembered because the purchase was for a single dollar.
Hensley asked her to explain.
“Nicole Catterton came in to purchase the gas—one dollar’s worth.”
The receipt matched the story.
They searched the tapes to see if the cameras picked Nicole up inside the store. But that day, for some reason, had been erased.
Hensley wondered how the clerk was so certain she had spoken to Nicole. Hensley couldn’t get the thought out of his mind:
How could Nicole buy a gallon of gas, Randi’s body show up burned in the woods, and Nicole not know what was going on? Or, at least, put two and two together?
“I do remember that day,” the clerk explained. “She came in and purchased one dollar of gas. While she was in the store paying, she started talking about her sister’s death.”
“You see the car she came in?” Hensley asked.
“I looked out at the pump and saw the car, but I cannot recall what it was. I didn’t see [anyone else], because I didn’t really pay much attention.”
“We will contact you at a later period,” Hensley said.
“No problem.”
Nicole!
Hensley thought, shaking his head as they drove away from the station.
Did she know? Did she willingly participate in covering up Randi’s murder?
I
t was the “demons” that “finally got control,” Hembree wrote to his mother, Jacqueline Hembree, and sister, Kathy Ledbetter. The dark side, apparently, had taken him down such an immoral path that he’d finally succumbed to its evil forces. Yet, none of that mattered to Hembree now, he explained, because he “hated this life” and all of “its injustice.” While sitting in front of Hensley and Sumner on December 9, Hembree penned a letter, warning his mother and sister that it would likely be the last time the three of them communicated in this manner. He was “sorry for the shame” he had cast upon the Hembree family name. He said he hoped that when he saw God on the other side, he could “find peace.” In fact, Hembree offered, he had “confessed to God and the police” and hoped that it was enough for God to forgive him and allow him a place in the Kingdom.
In this same letter, Danny Robbie Hembree wanted to “explain” why he had killed the girls. He needed his family to appreciate his mind-set. He wasn’t so sure his mother “would understand” his sordid rationale, but he needed to give her some sort of justification—he believed she deserved it—in knowing that the girls were murdered for a
purpose.
He wasn’t some nut out in the world killing for no good reason.
Here was Hembree bashing his victims. Undermining their lives and playing the role of God. Hembree was saying that because he had made the decision that their lives weren’t worth anything, it was okay to kill them, and take them away from their families, thus never giving them the opportunity to take control of their lives. Hembree claimed Heather needed to be released “from the torture” that she “endured daily,” while desperately feeding her drug addiction. He said Heather was sleeping with men as much as twenty times a day for dope. He said as “crazy” as it might sound, he “loved” Heather and “felt sorry for her.”
Such a bizarre comment. In his missive, which read as a self-serving script, Hembree wanted people to believe he cared about Heather so much that he strangled and asphyxiated the seventeen-year-old, stomped his bare foot into her throat, tossed her dead body into a closet after dragging it over inverted rug nails, went upstairs, watched TV, made a sandwich, and then days later pitched her body into a culvert between three sewer pipes so it could be eaten up by maggots and wildlife.
As for Randi, Hembree explained in his letter, he had killed her for the things that “she done to Heather.” He then broke into the old story of Shorty, Stella, and her sister putting him up to the murder and paying him to do it.
Hembree said he was ready to “stand before” God.
Flip-flopping, he said he didn’t kill Deb Ratchford, but he knew who did and was trying to “straighten that out” best he could.
He claimed his life was the “end result of drugs.”
He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes “spread on the family plot.”
He signed the letter as Danny Boy.