October 15, 1989
In the waning hours of Nov. 7, 1983, 30-year-old Susan Hendricks and her three children were stabbed to death in their Bloomington, Ill., home. While he professed to have been away on a business trip when the murders occurred, the husband and father, David Hendricks, was suspected by the police almost immediately.
Making extensive use of trial transcripts (more than two-thirds of the book is devoted to grand jury and trial testimony), Steve Vogel, a Bloomington journalist, puts the reader in the courtroom, presenting evidence as if the reader were a member of the jury—while also revealing facts the jury was not allowed to know. (For instance, two weeks after the murders, Mr. Hendricks gave copies of office keys to the owner of his former business, saying he did not want police to search there. Had he concealed evidence on the site?)
We learn, from the women themselves, of Mr. Hendricks’s attempts to seduce young models who worked for him. The prosecutors theorized that Mr. Hendricks wanted to be rid of the responsibilities of his family, and they secure a controversial conviction with an argument that rested largely on analysis of the stomach contents of the victims. But the testimony of the defense experts, who stated that time of death cannot be determined by stomach contents, puts questions in our minds. In fact, in pronouncing sentence, the trial judge, while admitting that he believed Mr. Hendricks committed the murders, stated that he did not believe the prosecution had proven his guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, as the law requires.
Mr. Vogel proposes reasonable scenarios in which someone other than Mr. Hendricks could have committed the crimes. While disjointed at times, the author’s narrative is a gripping account of the murders and, especially, the investigation and trial that followed.
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