The Hendricks Family: Axed in Their Sleep
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In the quiet suburbs of Bloomington, Illinois, November 1983 felt like any other crisp fall weekend—until it didn’t.
David Hendricks, a successful inventor and devoted family man, kissed his wife Susan goodbye and drove off into the night for a routine business trip to Wisconsin. He left behind his loving wife and their three young children: 9-year-old Rebekah, 7-year-old Grace, and 5-year-old Benjamin. A picture-perfect family. Or so it seemed.
When frantic phone calls went unanswered all weekend, David alerted authorities. Police arrived at the home on Carl Drive expecting a simple welfare check. What they found instead shattered a community: Susan and the children brutally hacked to death in their beds with an axe and a butcher knife from their own kitchen. The weapons lay cleaned and placed neatly at the foot of the master bed. No forced entry. No signs of struggle beyond the horror in those bedrooms.
Suspicion fell on David almost immediately. Why had he left so late on a Friday night? Why did the children’s undigested pizza from dinner point to a time of death hours before he claimed to have departed? Prosecutors painted a chilling picture: a man trapped in an unhappy marriage, forbidden by his strict religious beliefs from divorce, who allegedly hired young models for his back-brace business and crossed lines in ways that suggested hidden desires. Was this the motive? Kill the family to start over—then use the “business trip” as the ultimate alibi?
David was arrested, tried, and convicted of four counts of murder in 1984, sentenced to life without parole. But the case refused to die. Appeals dragged on. In 1990, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction, citing flaws in the evidence and questions of reasonable doubt. A retrial in 1991 ended in acquittal. David walked free after seven years behind bars.
The murders remain officially unsolved to this day. No one else has ever been charged.
Did David Hendricks orchestrate the unthinkable, only to slip through justice’s fingers? Or was an innocent man railroaded by circumstantial evidence and a town desperate for answers? The stomach contents, the late-night departure, the cleaned weapons… every detail whispers doubt.
Will Mark & Amy get to the bottom of all of the evidence presented?
Listen as we dissect the timeline, the forensic battles, the courtroom twists, and the lingering questions that still haunt Bloomington four decades later. One thing is certain: in this case, the truth is buried deeper than anyone wants to admit.
Be sure to look for Amy & Mark’s other brand new companion podcast, The Wife Is Guilty!!
https://thewifeisguilty.com