Evidence Blundered
OFF THE HOOK | After a North Carolina woman was stabbed to death, blood evidence pointed to her husband, but miscommunication between prosecutors and the crime lab doomed the case.
Hickory, N.C. – Ray Hensley drives by Francisco LaBoy’s house at least once a week.
“Every time we go to church. Every time we come home. Every time we go to Conover. Every time we go to the interstate,” he said.
Whenever he passes, Hensley looks in the driveway for the white Nissan pickup police say bore his daughter’s blood.
Kimberly LaBoy was 32 when she was stabbed 51 times in her rural North Carolina double-wide mobile home. She died two days after filing to divorce her husband.
Catawba County sheriff’s deputies later found blood on the driver’s armrest of Francisco LaBoy’s pickup. A DNA analysis concluded the blood matched Kim’s genetic profile.
It didn’t help his defense, his own lawyer said, that his first wife was stabbed to death and that his brother died mysteriously after family members say his brother and Kim became intimate.
It also didn’t help that he told investigators “shit happens” when asked about Kim’s death.
LaBoy faced the death penalty in connection with her 2002 murder.
He now is free. He walked last year because of North Carolina’s blunders in handling the DNA evidence.
Nationwide, The Denver Post has identified 108 homicide cases, including Kimberly LaBoy’s, in which authorities lost or destroyed biological evidence. Cold cases languish and suspected killers walk free, leaving survivors scorned by the justice system and questioning why it doesn’t do a better job of managing DNA.
“My dad killed my mom. He stabbed her to death and killed her, and now she’s gone,” said 15-year-old Frankie LaBoy Jr., whose father refused to comment for this story. “People should know that they screwed up the evidence. They screwed it up real bad. People should know that. And that my dad needs to be put away.”
Troubling signs
“Kim’s dead.”
So read the sticky note Hensley left for his family on
April 21, 2002, the day police found his daughter’s shredded body sprawled across her waterbed.Kimberly was the only child born to Hensley, a high school shop teacher, and Priscilla Whisnant, a store clerk. Hensley and Whisnant later split in a bitter divorce.
Hensley remembers his little girl hosting tea parties with her baby dolls. He remembers how she became a follower in high school. And he remembers the tension between them when he would ask, far into her marriage, about the bruises on her face.
Whisnant remembers her daily phone conversations during her daughter’s workdays processing medical records at a local hospital. She remembers the day, two weeks before her death, Kim told her that “she hadn’t slept because Frankie had been calling all night long.”
Justen Lewis, Kim’s 18-year-old son from an earlier marriage, remembers his stepfather sending flowers to his mom’s office. He remembers LaBoy “showing up at movies, restaurants,” yelling at her, hitting her sometimes, “and saying he was going to hurt her if she wasn’t with him.”
“It was like wherever she went, he would be there,” he said.
Frankie LaBoy Jr., Kim’s younger son, remembers sitting on his mom’s lap, stroking her strawberry blond hair.
By all accounts, Kim’s relationship with “Big Frankie” was sometimes violent and far more off than on. The couple had been intermittently separated for more than a year by April 2002, when she filed for divorce.
In an earlier case, a woman LaBoy’s lawyer describes as LaBoy’s common-law wife was stabbed to death in New York in 1985. Another man was convicted of her murder.
LaBoy’s brother, Augustin, died of a blunt head trauma in 2000. Augustin LaBoy’s death certificate said the cause was an accidental fall and listed his alcoholism as a contributing factor.
Several members of Kim’s family say he and Kim had become close in the months before his death.
Francisco LaBoy repeatedly refused to comment for this story. In February, his relatives ordered The Post off the family’s property.
LaBoy’s lawyer, Mark Rabil, notes that Kimberly LaBoy’s first husband also was considered a suspect in the case but later was ruled out because sheriff’s deputies say no DNA evidence tied him to the murder scene.
According to sheriff’s office records, LaBoy, 50, does maintenance work for a manufactured-home builder. He was spending the weekend with Frankie Jr. the night of Kim’s death. Father and son were up late watching TV when LaBoy left after 11:30 p.m. to buy gas and snacks, LaBoy told police. Frankie says he fell asleep before his dad returned late that night. LaBoy later said he got a flat tire on the way back home.
LaBoy became a suspect the next day, after Kim’s ex-husband – with whom she had reunited – called police, worried that she wasn’t answering her phone. Among the factors police cited for identifying LaBoy as a suspect: the timing of Kim’s death, so soon after she filed for divorce, and his nonchalant comment upon learning she had been murdered.
Ray Hensley heard about LaBoy’s arrest on the 11 o’clock news. It wasn’t until two years later that he learned in court that his daughter had been raped and stabbed 51 times.
While interrogating LaBoy, records show, investigators observed that his “hands were bleeding from an unknown type injury on the tips of his fingers.”
Preservation order
Three days after LaBoy’s arrest, his defense lawyer won a court order to preserve all evidence and notes from the case. The order prohibited the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation from consuming DNA samples by testing them; the defense wanted them tested by an independent lab.
The bureau’s crime lab said prosecutors never notified it of the court order. And so it went ahead and analyzed the traces of blood on the armrest of LaBoy’s pickup, which police records say he drove the night of her killing. Analysts found the stain consistent with Kim’s genetic fingerprint.
The sample was consumed in the testing process, as is common in DNA analysis. Still, a “very small sample of DNA extract” – approximately 10 microliters – remained in glass vials.
LaBoy’s defense team won another court order in 2004 for the crime lab to cease testing on all remaining evidence, including the vials, whose contents later evaporated, records show.
Still, the SBI went ahead and tested a swab from Kim’s rape kit, again destroying the sample in the process.
And, again, SBI officials say prosecutors hadn’t notified them of the second court order, which they “only learned of … after the tests were already completed.”
“While the analysts are responsible for the accuracy of the work they do, they must rely on state prosecutors to keep them informed of judicial rulings, which in this case they were not,” said state crime lab supervisor Jerry Richardson.
Angered by the disregard of the two court orders, a Superior Court judge penalized prosecutors by not allowing them to present results from DNA testing of the bloodstain at trial. North Carolina’s Supreme Court upheld that ruling, and the state reluctantly dismissed charges against LaBoy last August.
“The SBI tested the samples, and in my opinion the jury should have been allowed to see that evidence,” said Catawba County District Attorney James Gaither. “While I have the highest degree of respect for our Superior Court judges, there are times when I disagree with their decisions. This is one of those times.”
“It was not handled properly,” added Catawba County Sheriff L. David Huffman. “If we had had that evidence to use in court, I’m thinking this guy LaBoy would have done some pretty hard time.”
Kim’s son Justen struggles with authorities’ sloppiness in prosecuting his mom’s murder.
“They’re the state. They’re supposed to be, like, good at stuff,” he said. “So when a judge says don’t use all the blood evidence, why do they use all the blood evidence?”
After LaBoy’s release, Kim’s family researched whether Catawba County and the state were liable for the blunders.
“We found out they have total protection and immunity,” said her stepmother, Pat Hensley. “They can screw up anything and everything they want to screw up as badly as they want.”
While Francisco LaBoy awaited trial in connection with Kim’s murder, Ray Hensley fantasized about making the trip to Raleigh to watch his execution.
But now that his son-in-law is free, Hensley is haunted by LaBoy’s comment to police.
“Shit happens. I really believe that’s what the justice system thinks of it. It’s like, ‘Oops, we destroyed the evidence. Shit happens,”‘ he said. “My girl is dead. She’s dead. And all they did was just pat this guy on the back and give him a little more courage to do it again.”
Five years after Kim’s murder, her dad can’t help but slow down on each trip past LaBoy’s red brick ranch home.
“Is that car there? Is it not there? It always catches your eye,” Hensley said. “I think about stopping. I think about what I would do to him. But I’ve just never taken it any further.”
Staff writer Susan Greene can be reached at 303-954-1589 or sgreene@denverpost.com.
Staff researcher Monnie Nilsson contributed to this report.
this is not the only case he has screwed up look at the Caldwell Co case where the husband shoot and killed his wife.
Look at the hunsucker case where he held the case over 4 years until hunsucker died
Look at the Vondreyl boy who gets out of ever thing he does cases dropped or dissimissed because he gives money to Gaither.
Look at Wayne’o wilis’s brother he has never been charged with shooting those guys with a stolen gun. Willis another big time bar owner who gives Gaither and Reid money to run on.
Look at the case where the guy hit and killed another guy at the Bar owned by Willis no charges.
What about your friend and drinking partner the surgern who hit the guy on I 40 why were his charges pleaed down to Reckless driven he was drunk.
People of Catawba County please help us rid this county of this Guy and elect a good DA who will not let friendship or money decide if you get charged or not. Thanks for letting me vent.
Not only has he ruined cases for prosecution with his ineptness, but he has also stooped to threatening the people he views as his political enemies. I saw him rant and rave at several people at a public event once at the Catawba Science Center (fall 2007). Next to the sheriffs in our counties he is the chief law enforcement official in our court district. His behavior is shameful if not downright criminal.
He doesn’t know how to preserve evidence because he’s tooo busy drinking. Before Christmas I saw him at a party, he drank for nealry 2 hours then jumpted in his SUV with license tag DA-25 and drove away. That seems criminla to me.
Jay is not a stable person as he has a bad temper and a bad drinking problem. He has always thought that he is better than everybody else. He can not do the job as DA and is mad that someone is running against him. How many people have walked because this guy is not doing his job?
I can tell you some stories about Mr.Gaither’s drinking as I have been a bartender in Hickory for a number of years and I can not start to tell you how many times that I have seen our DA leave drunk! And most people would love to see some of the people that I and others have seen him leave with!
VOTE GAITHER OUT!!!
i agree and can relate. I have run across jay on several occasions committing transgression. On one specific occasion he was bespelling a young lady well into the morning, while he was engaged to a pepsi heiress.
kelly, I think you mean “engaged to a beer heiress.” Jays father in law, Dean Proctor, is over united beverages which supplies our community with all these fine alcoholiic beverages –
Labatt’s Blue, Modelo Especial, Newcastle Brown Ale, Pilsner Urquel, Stella Artois, Trumer Pils, Beck’s Light, Bass Ale, Beck’s, Beck’s Octoberfest, Corona, Coronita, Dos Equis Beer, Foster’s, Grolsch, Guinness Stout, Harp, Kronenbourg, Molson Canadian, Molson Golden, Molson Ice, Molson XXX, Moosehead, Pacific, Clara, Red Stripe, Sapporo, St. Pauli Girl, Tecate, Warsteiner, Coors Light, High Life Light, Keystone Light, Lite, Miller Genuin, Draft Light, Milwaukee Best Light, Old Milwaukee Light , Pabst Light, Rock Green Light, Schaefer Light, Southpaw Light, Stroh Light, Yuengling Light
AND MANY, MANY MORE… no wonder jay has a drinking problem.
Did may marry his wife because he loved her or because of the free beer?
my guess would be for the free beer.
Is Gayther just to dumb or is he just to lazy to do his job?
How many other cases are there like this? If we had a real newspaper here in Hickory that would do some work we would see a lot more cases like this is my guess. I have heard so much talk about Gaither the last couple of years not doing his job. I WILL VOTE FOR ANYBODY BUT GAITHER!!
I don’t usually reply to posts but I will in this case, great info…I will add a backlink and bookmark your site. Keep up the good work!