The Killing Kind

by M. William Phelps

  “Uh, Momma, just a bloody nose I done got. Nothing to be worried about.”

  Hembree spent the night of November 14 at his friend’s trailer (the trailer next door to the abandoned one) with Nicole. He had decided to dispose of Randi’s body in a way that law enforcement would not find her. His objective with leaving Heather outside in that ditch was to allow law enforcement to find her. He didn’t want Heather’s family to wonder. The way he made it sound was as if he was doing a good deed by not burying Heather somewhere where she would never be recovered.

  Wide-awake on the morning of November 15 by “seven or eight,” Hembree rustled Nicole up and told her he was going out. Nicole mumbled something and went back to sleep.

  Hembree’s friend was already up. “I’m gonna go get some cigarettes,” Hembree told him as he walked out the door. “I’ll be back.”

  By himself, he drove to his mother’s house with a plan: He would take Randi out into the woods and set her on fire.

  Arriving at Momma’s house, Hembree walked out to the mailbox and retrieved the mail. He saw a neighbor as he walked back toward the house.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Hembree gestured as if it was any other day.

  The neighbor said hello.

  Hembree put the mail on the kitchen counter and went downstairs. There were several old lamps hanging around. He cut the cords off several and used them to tie the blanket around Randi’s body. In the closet, where he’d hidden Randi, there were copious amounts of coagulated blood in the corner by the wall—thick, tacky, and saturated into the carpet.

  After securing the blanket, Hembree hoisted Randi up over his shoulder—“Her body was still dripping,” he claimed—and placed Randi in the backseat of his car, which he had driven around and backed up to the basement door. On the night he killed Randi, after stripping her clothes off, Hembree had taken all of her jewelry and put it in a bag. He kept one bracelet and hid it inside the glove compartment of his car.

  A serial killer’s trophy, no doubt.

  Hembree said he purchased a gallon of gasoline from the Creek-side Store on Chapel Grove School Road, not far from that trailer park, at some point that morning.

  It was a lie.

  “And I already knew where I was gonna take her,” he said.

  When he arrived with Randi’s corpse in the backseat of his vehicle on Apple Road inside Kings Mountain State Park, however, Hembree ran into a problem. It was midmorning. There were several horse trainers and riders out and about. People were coming and going. It was too busy. How was he going to ignite a corpse with all of these people around? Burning human flesh had a distinctive smell—not to mention the smoke and fire itself.

  CHAPTER 59

  Hensley and Sumner listened as the man in front of them described murdering two young women and then disposing of their bodies as if he was talking about a football game he had seen the night before on television. To Hembree, the act of murder and getting rid of the bodies was so mundane, so easy to talk about, that at one point during the interview Hembree sounded as though he was bored with it all.

  As he first assessed Hembree, Michel Sumner couldn’t help but think, “Here was a guy who wanted to make sure we knew he was in charge. This was his idea [to talk], and he wanted to let us know that we would not have caught him if it were not for him! . . . I remember taking a look at the characteristics of a sociopath—and Danny Hembree was dead on.”

  “Oh yeah,” Hembree said as an afterthought about an hour into the interview, just as he took a sip from a large coffee in front of him, “her blood (Randi’s) is also going to be found on my boots in the closet, where I put her.” He greedily slurped a sip of coffee. “But all the DNA you’ll need is on the couch in the den and down in that closet.”

  The arrogance and pure narcissism Hembree exuded as he admitted to killing the girls was not something Hensley necessarily noticed or took note of while the moment was happening in front of him. He and Sumner were there to get all they could out of Hembree and allow him the comfort and space to talk through it.

  Be his buddy. Tell him what he wanted to hear: “Sure, Danny, no problem. More coffee, Danny? Wanna smoke? Need a light?”

  Part of this strategy, Sumner explained, was to allow Hembree to think they were country bumpkin cops who didn’t know what they were doing.

  “I noticed he was giving us tidbits, just bits and pieces,” Sumner said. “And when I would ask him for more information, he would only give us so much. We were afraid of losing him. And he knew this. So we kind of had to play the part and act like the dumb detectives he thought we were.”

  The information Sumner mentioned that Hembree was holding back was in reference to the Deb Ratchford case and a few Florida murders he had supposedly committed. Hembree had been giving them a point-by-point narrative of the murders of Randi and Heather, where they could locate evidence, and why he had done certain things. But with Florida and with Ratchford, he held back.

  Bargaining chips.

  “He wanted something in exchange,” Sumner observed. “He wasn’t going to tell us about the others until we were able to get him what he wanted.”

  When Hensley looked at tapes of the interview later, the obvious enjoyment Hembree displayed while talking about such horrifying moments was overwhelmingly clear. Yet, something else became evident to Hensley: “Even when Mr. Hembree is going down, he thinks he has control of his destiny.”

  This comment would never be more evident than in the coming weeks, months, and years as Hembree slithered his way through the legal system—all the while thinking he could manipulate, control, and make a mockery of justice.

  CHAPTER 60

  As Hembree waited in the woods on November 15, with Randi’s corpse in the backseat of his vehicle, he smoked a cigarette. His eyes darted from one area to another as horseback riders strode around him.

  Impatient and scared of being caught in the act, Danny drove a “mile or two” away from there and found a secluded area.

  Many who have tried think that lighting a human body on fire is as easy as pouring gasoline over the flesh and flicking a match, vis-à-vis a scene from a Hollywood movie. Yet, if they hang around the scene long enough, most realize quickly that the human body, as complex and durable as it is, does not burn easily. To ignite a human body (which is basically 85 percent water) takes long periods of sustained temperatures in the range of 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the need crematoriums have for a furnace.

  Hembree parked and grabbed Randi’s body. He placed her on the ground about fifty yards away from his vehicle. He did a complete three-sixty with his eyes to make certain he was alone.

  He then poured gasoline all over Randi.

  Confident no one would see the fire, he lit “a piece of paper or tissue” and watched as a ball of flames engulfed Randi’s body and made a black puff up into the forest sky.

  Hembree, however, did not wait around to watch her body burn: “I went to [my friend’s trailer] and got back into bed with Nicole.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Hensley and Sumner were curious about the conspiracy Hembree had mentioned. “Basically,” Hensley asked Hembree, “Randi was set up?”

  “I killed her for money, or dope, whatever you want to call it,” he claimed.

  As Hembree talked about the alleged conspiracy involving Shorty, Stella, and Stella’s sister, it became clear that he was trying to bring down those he hated. He offered no evidence other than his word and a motive that Stella and her sister believed Randi had had something to do with Heather’s murder.

  Hensley and Sumner listened, but they had a tough time with this story.

  “I didn’t believe him,” Hensley said. (And later, as Hensley investigated this allegation Hembree had made, the detective spoke to all three and proved it was nothing more than Hembree having a little fun. Furthermore, as law enforcement asked Hembree to give up details regarding the time, place, and when the first conversation about a conspiracy occurred, Danny could no
t do it.)

  Hembree got back on track, talking about the facts of Randi’s murder and where they could find evidence. Randi’s blood, he said, would be all over the inside basement closet, where he had placed her body. He had “covered [the blood] with plastic and . . . stuffed a teddy bear in the corner to keep Momma from finding [it]. And Randi’s boots are downstairs. . . .”

  To Sumner and Hensley, it was obvious Danny Hembree didn’t want to disappoint his mother in any way. He’d mentioned this several times. It was strange, seeing that he’d killed two women and stored their corpses inside Momma’s house. Yet as Hembree talked through his crimes, Sumner believed there was something deeper there between Danny and his mother.

  “At some level,” Sumner said later, “he and his mom definitely had a relationship that was not like a normal mother/son relationship. But it also seemed like he had some type of respect for her, because he would say things like, ‘I didn’t want to wake up Momma.’ Yet here he was killing these girls—at least one of them—while she read in [her] bedroom down the hall.”

  Sumner asked Hembree if he could explain where the scratches Heather had on her side came from. They believed she had been dragged through the wooded area, where she was found.

  Hembree got excited, actually, wasting little time: “Yeah, that’s from the tacks in front of where the closet’s at there. There’s . . . some of those old rug tacks. . . .”

  Hembree had dragged Heather over the tacks as he stuffed her into the closet. She sustained the injuries, Hembree thought, after she was dead. He added as an insult, “You see, I had to drag Heather because she was so heavy.”

  “We had heard,” Sumner stated, “that you had wanted to kill Stella. Is that true?”

  “Yup,” Hembree said, nodding his head in agreement. “I was gonna kill Stella.”

  “Why is that? Is it because of who she is?”

  “Well, that, yes, and she’s been running her mouth.”

  “How so?”

  “Just getting into mine and Nicole’s business and shit.”

  “What about [Shorty]?” Hensley asked. “Did you have plans on killing him a certain way?”

  “I was gonna kill him today.”

  Getting more into the specifics surrounding Heather’s murder and why he did it, Hembree said, “Look, I didn’t plan on killing Heather.” Then, quite coldly, he offered: “It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  Imagine, taking a seventeen-year-old girl’s life—so young, she had decades to rebuild and start over, to love and be loved, to have children, to find a husband, to get a job and live a healthy life—was boiled down for Danny Hembree into eleven words:

  “It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  He explained how hard it was to kill Heather. He said she went unconscious while he suffocated her with that plastic bag, but her body “wouldn’t stop breathing.” Then he added how he had to place his bare foot over her neck.

  As Hembree talked through it, he had trouble explaining how he’d accomplished certain tasks. So he made a suggestion: “I can take you there and walk you through the whole thing. . . .”

  Hensley nodded.

  “But I don’t want my mother there. I’ll show you where the blood’s at. I’ll show you where everything’s at.”

  This was not a hard call to make. Break out that video camera and make sure the battery was fully charged. And yet one had to wonder: What was Hembree planning? What was his motivation for bringing these two cops into his mother’s house to show them where he had committed two murders? Glorification? The sheer comfort of knowing he was in control of this interview?

  Before they could promise a car ride and walk-through, Sumner brought up something Hembree had told the YCSO.

  “You mentioned to York County that there were some murders in Florida?”

  Hembree paused. His demeanor changed. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “That took place earlier this year . . . ,” Hembree added without being asked. “And then there’s also that [African-American girl, Deb Ratchford] , who was found murdered in that-there cemetery in Gastonia in 1992.”

  If true, that brought his total to five . . .

  . . . that they knew of.

  CHAPTER 62

  Shellie Nations was suffering greatly from the loss of her sister. As she went about her days after Randi’s murder, waiting and wondering when an arrest would be made, hearing rumors that someone named Danny Hembree was a person of interest, all Shellie could do to lessen the impact of her sister’s death was think back about Randi and the good times. Stay focused on those memories that made Shellie smile—the days when they were two innocent kids having fun.

  There was one of those times, Shellie recalled, when Randi had a sleepover. At some point during the night, Randi made up her mind that she was going to do one of the girls’ hair. You know, fix it up. Comb it out. Break out the hair spray and tease it up. Sleepover stuff.

  As nothing more than a practical joke, Randi decided to switch the bottle of shampoo for a bottle of Nair hair remover. She thought it would be hilarious. She was so naïve then that Randi had no idea what a bottle of Nair would do to a head of hair. She thought maybe the girl would lose a few hairs and they’d all have a laugh.

  The girl never lost any of her hair, but Randi and her friends had that laugh at how strangely dark and sinister Randi’s sense of humor was.

  “She didn’t mean no harm,” Shellie said. “It was all in good fun, and nothing happened to the girl.”

  Thinking back on that moment made Shellie smile; she felt warm inside. There was so much information going around town, Shellie was beside herself with unanswered questions and thoughts about what had happened. When she heard it later, Shellie was sick to her stomach that Danny Hembree had murdered Heather, and not only slept in Heather’s bed at Nick’s house afterward, but offered to be a pallbearer at Heather’s funeral, too.

  At Randi’s funeral, Shellie watched as people passed by her sister’s closed casket, pondering those she had never seen before and did not know.

  Is it you? Are you the person who took my sister’s life?

  Law enforcement, a presence at Randi’s wake and funeral, explained to Shellie that the type of person who murdered Randi was perhaps the same type to show up at his victim’s funeral and take pleasure in watching the suffering of Randi’s friends and family.

  “That scared us,” Shellie said.

  Along with the idea that Randi’s killer was still at large—an additional fear Shellie suffered from, and one that tears victims’ families down as they go through the grieving process—were those memories that came on without warning. You could be walking down the street and a recollection of a bridal shower or a party came over you unexpectedly, like a hot flash. In Shellie’s case, it might be just a snapshot of an image: Randi and her unforgettable smile. Randi sleeping. Randi walking out the door saying, “Bye, I love you, Shell.” Or maybe a song on the radio and Shellie was back to a day when she and Randi sang along together in the car, giggling, enjoying life. Those were the toughest moments—the simple ones, the times most everyone else takes for granted.

  At home, Shellie was trying to cope with the sting of losing her sister, waiting for that call to tell her Randi’s killer was behind bars. On edge, Shellie had no idea that Danny Hembree, at that very moment, three weeks before Christmas, was describing how he had planned, plotted, and carried out Randi’s murder methodically, maliciously, and evilly because he believed Randi, in his language, was a “whore,” who needed redemption and—oh yeah—he just didn’t like her.

  CHAPTER 63

  “We’re ready to go, Danny,” Hensley said.

  “Where?”

  “Momma’s house.”

  While Hensley and Sumner interviewed Hembree inside the box, several investigators served a search warrant at Hembree’s mother’s house and were already digging around, looking for those items that
Hembree had discussed during his confession. They were having some difficulty locating some of the items Hembree had mentioned. It was important for the GCPD to corroborate as much as it could with regard to what Hembree had admitted. Investigators didn’t want Hembree jerking them around, telling them one thing, wasting time, while the facts lined up differently. There had been enough evidence never released publicly to check against Hembree’s story. Every law enforcement agency held back details of crimes for this very reason. Most of it seemed to line up with Hembree’s revelations. But inside Danny Hembree’s mother’s house, according to Hembree, that was where they’d find the evidence that could end Hembree’s life by lethal injection—and maybe Hembree didn’t realize that as he sat and discussed how he murdered two women in cold blood. The information Hembree was sharing, especially in a state like North Carolina, was enough to place him on death row if convicted.

  “I want some things from y’all, too,” Hembree said after Hensley brought him a fresh coffee. After brushing his hands off, as if they were dusty, he said, “I want all my property released to my mom— my cell phone, a little bit amount of cash.” He slapped his hands together as if to say, “Hey, pay attention now.” It was just Hembree and Sumner. Hensley had gone off to check on the status of them taking a trip out to Hembree’s mother’s house. “I want you to impound that car. . . . I used it during the murder.” He talked about the outrageous financing he was being charged after having to put a new motor in the car recently. “And I want you guys to auction it off and let them all fight for it.” The way Hembree spoke so straightforwardly and confidently about his personal issues, it seemed he had thought about all of this beforehand and had a plan going into the confession.

  No sooner was he making demands than Hembree began rambling on about not having any sleep for the past five days, having been “smoking dope constantly.”

  Hensley came back into the room. He had his jacket on. “Let’s go.”