Anatomy of Murder - The Car in the Ditch (Barbara Kendhammer)

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

A frantic 911 call leads police to a car in a ditch, and a woman dead inside. Her husband relays a harrowing tale. The car itself would help police unravel a perplexing mystery. For episode information and photos, please visit: anatomyofmurder.com/the-car-in-the-ditch Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Mr. Canhamer, isn't it true that you punched her and broke her nose? No. Caused bruises on her face? No. There's blood on both your knuckles, right? It's not from punching my wife. It's not from punching the windshield either? I don't know what it's from.

You're the only one there, Mr. Ken Hammer. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph. As summer comes to a close and calendars start to fill up with school events, carpool runs, work meetings, and all the things that fill the routines of everyday lives, it can be easy to forget just how much life can change in the blink of an eye. It's a little like driving on a familiar stretch of road on cruise control. For months at a time, it may seem like the view never changes. But the second you let your guard down, boom, your entire life can change in an instant. Maybe

it's a serious illness, a catastrophic injury, or a death in the family. And just maybe it's something even worse. I've been a prosecutor for 29 years, all in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. Tim Greenke is the son of a teacher and a factory worker who never thought his interest in law enforcement would lead him to being an attorney. But after getting a degree in criminal justice and then law school, he took a job as a prosecutor in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and he's been in that office ever since. La Crosse, Wisconsin is right on the Mississippi River, right across the border from Minnesota. So by Wisconsin standards, it'd be a midsize city, but most of the nation would call it a small town. So it's mostly rural area. It's kind of a place where people have grown up and stayed.

In other words, it's a tight community of people with deep roots in the area, much like 46-year-old Barbara Kendhammer and her husband Todd, who met in La Crosse when they were just 16 years old and had recently now celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Raising a family in this mostly rural community, theirs was a modest life of happy routines and small blessings like the grandchild they had just welcomed into the world. But on the morning of September 16th, 2016,

their lives would take a sudden and dramatic detour with tragic consequences. It was a blue sky morning in La Crosse with the scent of the recent harvest still in the air. But just after 8 a.m., the calm of that routine morning would be shattered by a frantic 911 call. The caller was Todd Kendhammer, and he was struggling to explain to the 911 dispatcher what had just happened. Apparently, Todd and his wife Barbara had been in some type of a car accident on a rural road a few miles from their home. I got police, an ambulance, first responders headed to Emmenburg and Cooley. I need you to tell me what happened. Slow down.

So your wife is injured? Yes. And it was in a car accident? Yes, a pipe or something came through her windshield. A pipe did. A pipe? According to Todd, his wife had been struck by a large pipe that had fallen off the back of a truck and smashed through their windshield. Okay, is she breathing? No, I can't get her to talk that first a little bit. Okay, is she breathing? No, I don't think so. No. All right, we do have help on the way. It is the stuff of nightmares. Todd's wife of 25 years bleeding and unconscious there in front of him. Emergency personnel responded to the scene while the EMS dispatcher was walking

Todd through conducting CPR on his unresponsive wife. They're coming, Todd. Keep on going. The best thing that's new for her right now is to continue with that CPR. The first responder on the scene was a volunteer paramedic from a small village of West Salem. He came across the car in a ditch. It looked like there was a windshield that had been partially shattered. The car was backwards in the ditch as if someone had tried to do like a U-turn or a Y-turn and got stuck. A visibly distressed Todd had removed his wife from the passenger seat of the car as instructed and was still performing CPR.

She was not breathing, barely a pulse. Barbara was also bleeding from what appeared to be a traumatic injury to her head. As paramedics tried performing life-saving measures, the responding officer attempted to get details from Todd. Todd's story was that he was taking his wife northbound on Highway M. It's a 55 mile an hour speed limit. As they were driving, another truck was going southbound, so passing them as they're going northbound. And as it was going past them, a pipe rolled off the top of the truck, went through the windshield and hit Barbara.

The shattered windshield of the couple's Toyota Camry was a testament to the force with which the pipe had struck the car. From the blood and the scratches on his hands, it appeared that Todd had also sustained injuries from the incident. He said that he tried to block the pipe as he saw it come off, and that's where he hit the windshield, and that's how his hands got injured. But with severe wounds to her head and neck, it was clear that Barbara's injuries were life-threatening. The concern at that point obviously was Barb and her condition and trying to get her to the hospital as soon as possible because she still did have a weak pulse. Barbara was rushed to the hospital in nearby La Crosse, but sadly, her injuries proved too severe. She never regained consciousness and died approximately two days later in the hospital.

Barbara Kenthammer was a 46-year-old mother of two and a brand new grandmother who enjoyed gardening and crafting and taking care of animals. She was beloved by the students at the local school where she worked in the lunchroom, and her sudden death was a shock to everyone who knew her. But almost as difficult as learning the news of her passing were the murky details about the accident that took her life. It seemed not just unfair, but also hard to imagine. I've been to my share of road accidents, and I can tell you, when large objects like cars come in contact with each other,

lots of awful things can happen. But a runaway pipe through a windshield, that's nothing that I've ever seen or responded to before. But it was also a stark reminder of how quickly our lives can change, sometimes tragically. But as Tim tells us, there was much more to this deadly incident than first responders initially thought. One of the deputies that arrived was going through field training with an experienced sergeant. And the sergeant decided we may as well practice some things in law enforcement, like taking photographs, doing measurements, things you wouldn't always do for a traffic accident. But it was kind of like, let's practice. As that process was going on,

the sergeant noticed something unusual. There was dirt on the front seat of the car, and this area had no dirt. The shoulder was immediately swamp grass, and so he thought it was, why would there be dirt on that seat? Now, this is the kind of observation that might be made with a routine investigation of any traffic accident. But police officers are trained to always be on the lookout for any details that look out of the ordinary. And the dirt on the passenger seat was not the only thing that stood out. And also there was some blood in the rear passenger side tire. And I also thought, something here just doesn't sound right. So without that, this may have just been a traffic accident and nothing more had been done. But he thought, let's call the

investigators in. When the investigators were called in, they then started noticing some more odd things that decided, instead of just a traffic accident, we need to actually start looking into this a little bit more. Investigators took photos of the car and the surrounding scenes, documenting all the details. And at first glance, it didn't seem out of line with other traffic accidents. There was broken glass, blood inside the car, outside near where Barbara had been laid on the ground when her husband performed CPR. But when taken together, there were things that just didn't align with the version of the accident that Todd had described to police, starting with Barbara's injuries. The next thing that happened was an autopsy.

And that's not always done in traffic cases, but it was weird enough an autopsy was done. And that's when the autopsy doctor called police and said she was very confused because if a pipe came off a truck and came through a windshield, there should be some injury to the front of Barb's body and a very serious injury. A four-foot approximate pipe weighing 10 pounds going almost 100 miles an hour should do some major damage. But strangely, that isn't what they found. The autopsy doctor said the main injuries and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of her head. There were three lacerations to the back of her head, and lacerations meaning the skin was kind of ripped open and the skull was fractured underneath it.

And on the front, there was a broken nose, there were some bruises on her face, there were some scratches on her neck. Lacerations and trauma to the back of the head, and by the way, there's a reason I'm emphasizing that, a broken nose and scratches to the neck. These were not what you would expect from a massive object smashing through into the

windshield in front of you. In fact, they sound a lot more like injuries you would sustain in a physical assault. The inside of her lips were bruised, but not the outside. And so the doctor said, I just don't see how a pipe coming from the front could cause any of these injuries and certainly wouldn't cause this variety and different position of injuries. And that's when the police first decided, well, we might have something different here than a traffic accident. The autopsy revealed that Barbara had also suffered broken ribs and bruises on her arms, which the medical examiner believed could be defensive wounds.

Her fingernails were also torn, and her co-workers said she was a woman who took care of herself, always did her hair, always did her nails, would never have a torn fingernail. It would not have been there, you know, more than a couple minutes before she would fix it. So her, what we call defensive injuries to her fingers and her nails, would show that somebody that was in a fight and trying to scratch at him. So the autopsy immediately put the entire so-called accident under a cloud of suspicion and the possibility of a potential assault put Todd's injuries in a whole new light as well. He had injuries to both hands on his knuckles. They were bloody. And he said that was because when he saw this pipe come off the truck,

he tried to block the pipe and leaned over with his hands and punched the windshield from the inside. Okay, if we look at this in the heat of the moment and what appeared to be this serious car accident, I can see why a responding officer might not immediately question the credulity of that version of events. But with what they had learned from the autopsy, they now knew better. The speed that that thing is coming at, it's a blink of an eye. So for you to react and with your left hand reach over the steering wheel and your right hand and punch the windshield with force, bending forward is probably not what happened.

And by looking at the incident through a critical investigative lens, it's amazing how quickly something like this can go from the scene of an accident to the scene of a potential crime. What responding officers saw when they arrived was a distraught husband trying to save his wife's life. But armed with what they had now learned from the autopsy, that picture took on a very different shade. If you look at his picture at the scene, that looks like somebody who's just been in a fight. I mean, he's sweating, his shirt is stretched out, he's got scratches on both sides of his neck, his knuckles are,

both hands are bloodied, and she's got scratches on her neck, bruises on her face, broken nose, bruises on her arms, ripped fingernail. That looks like a domestic that we see all the time. Only this time, it may have ended in murder. Somewhere along a country road outside La Crosse, Wisconsin, violence was visited upon a 46-year-old Barbara Kenthammer. Whether it was a freak accident or something more intentional was up to police to determine. Barbara's autopsy, as well as the injuries her husband Todd displayed at the scene, left investigators questioning his story. So his first story was that the pipe came off the truck and he was heading north

because he was going to pick up a truck and put a windshield in that truck for a friend that he worked with. That's something he did on the side. And after he picked up the truck, his wife was going to go to work at West Salem Middle School as a lunch lady, and he was going to go then work on the windshield. But according to Todd, that is when tragedy struck in the form of a large metal pipe. As they were driving, another truck was going southbound, and as it was going past them, a pipe rolled off the top of the truck, went through the windshield, and hit Barbara. It was still early to label this a suspicious death, but investigators decided it was prudent

to at least check out Todd's story. It wasn't long before they discovered some glaring inconsistencies. The first thing that became weird was the time that the 911 call came in just after eight o'clock and it was a good 10-15 minutes from the school she would have been late and her co-worker said she was never late she was always there at 8 a.m in fact at 8.02 when she didn't show up one of her co-workers called her that's how precise they were about starting at eight o'clock so that was another thing that was odd why would we be driving north maybe for another 15 minutes? She wouldn't have got to the school until closer to 8.30, and she wasn't calling school saying she'd be late.

So that was another red flag that early on didn't make sense. Police also interviewed the friend that Todd claimed he was on the way to see in Holman, another town nearby. That friend said, I wasn't home. I was on vacation. I don't need a windshield. Todd's never been to my house. We had no arrangement for him to pick up a truck. And that was very suspicious.

Why would he be lying about where he was going? Detectives contacted the La Crosse prosecutor's office to let Tim know that there might be more to this story than they'd initially thought. The investigators came to me and said there was this weird accident that they were investigating and they had done an autopsy and the doctor had some concerns. And again, at first, I assumed this was a truck in front of a car where a pipe bounced off and thought, well, how could this be a homicide?

But after hearing the doctor explain it, it became pretty clear, well, there's no way that that pipe could have caused the injuries that we have. So something's off. Tim had the same gut feeling that the investigators did. Todd was lying. They decided they needed to confront Todd again about the injuries, the story he said about going to this friend's house, and also Barb's work time. And so investigators in La Crosse decided it was time to have another talk with Todd Kenthammer, this time not as victim or witness,

but as a potential suspect. They called him down to the sheriff's department, hoping he would talk to them and either clear it up or explain what did happen or just get more information. They clearly knew that he was not telling the truth. Now, whether that was due to straight-out lying or some other weird circumstance, they didn't know. But they were beginning to think that he might be lying about this,

and we have to find out why. The following is recorded audio from shortly after the reported accident, much of which Todd repeated in his later conversation with police. I'm an investigator with the Sheriff's Department, and I get called out to a lot of scenes, so we're just trying to figure out where that might have came from. Can you kind of walk me through this? Todd proceeded to explain seeing a truck coming towards them in the opposite lane,

but he couldn't remember the color, model, or make of that truck, any of which would have made it considerably easier to find the truck in question and verify that story. You know, it was a Chevy Ford. I didn't even look, really. We were digging around, and she was drinking water, and we were screwing around, not, you know, talking and bullshitting. And I looked up, and I'd seen the thing coming.

And I don't know if I tried to stop it or what i tried to do but i reached out for it and it hit her and i didn't think it hit her at first because i hit the windshield of my hand and she started flailing really bad just so i quick turned into here and i was trying to stop the car and i was trying to pull the pipe get the pipe away from her and i i hit the damn thing in reverse and that's how i ended up in the ditch. And then I got out quick and she was bleeding out of her mouth and her nose really bad. Okay. And I tried to... Was the pipe in her at that time? No, I pulled the pipe out going down the road. Tim watched on as Todd repeated this version of the story later at the police station. I was able to watch it as it was happening,

and it became, in my mind, I'm thinking he's lying because he changed the story from, I was going north to Holman to see this friend that I've done work for before to, oh no, it was a different guy who was a friend of that friend who lives on a farm and gave a different name. So he changed that story, which I thought was odd. Todd also repeated his claim that the injuries on his hands were from striking the windshield

in a knee-jerk reaction to the pipe hurtling towards them. The way he described what happened just didn't seem to be believable. So it came straight off the truck? Just like it comes rolling off just like straight. And it looked like a bird and I don't know why I don't know I don't know why I did it. Did what? I reached out to try to grab it. Okay with both hands? Yeah okay this one more so I guess but sure um I don't know why I just so it happened so fast I couldn't to be a graphic, but was it in the windshield and Barb at the same time?

It stopped there? Yeah, it was in. Did she have to pull it out of the windshield? Yeah. It was in her chest or throat or head or something. Okay. And I don't know how long it was there. I don't think it was there very long. And she started

just profusely thrashing and spitting blood and just bleeding. His body language and his way he was answering his questions to me looked like somebody who was lying and trying to figure out ways to just kind of be vague and just tell the investigators whatever he could think of to

explain what happened. You know, Anastasia, this is one of those situations where you're speaking with the only eyewitness to the event, who is the husband of the victim, who, according to him, watched his wife die, whether by accident or by his own hands. And even though investigators' spidey senses is off the charts, so to speak, you do have to really tread carefully, which includes keeping an open mind and keeping him talking. And it really is exactly that, because while on its face, it does seem somewhat ridiculous a story, quite honestly, when you're looking at it. However, we also know that saying that truth can be stranger than fiction,

and that is absolutely true. So to keep that open mind while they look to see what the facts bear out, the evidence or lack thereof, it's certainly not enough to jump the gun, so to speak, and to go forward to make that arrest until they're absolutely sure.

And there's no evidence at all that anybody else may have been involved in this either accident or murder, right? He was with his wife in his car when the incident occurred. So outside of any other potential suspects, you know, they really can get the most bang for their buck here talking to him and getting him to really paint himself in a few corners here. And I think he's doing a pretty good job of doing that to himself. But the investigators don't have

to reveal that they think that. They really have to keep an open mind. We know he's not telling the truth, but we don't know why. And so it wasn't yet an obvious, you know, intentional homicide. It seems like a weird way to try to kill somebody. And so it just didn't seem like, we know he's lying because the DNA doesn't match, for example. It was more of a, we know this isn't true, and let's try to figure out why it might not be true. And that's one of the reasons why after this interview, it lasted three hours, the police did not arrest him because they still thought they had some work to do. And he didn't say that he did anything to her. And so even after this interview,

they decided they needed to check out his story even more. And they found out more lies. To begin with, investigators could not locate any eyewitnesses or other visual evidence of a truck carrying pipes along a country road at the time Todd claimed the accident had occurred. This was a couple miles north of West Salem. And at the main intersection where you come into that town, there's a bank and there's a gas station that have cameras. And we went up and down the road looking for the truck, anyone who might have that truck or know somebody that had that truck or any video of the truck. And also they actually blocked the road the following Friday at the same time and asked everybody coming through if they knew of anybody that drove that road at that time or if they'd been driving the previous week at that time. And we just couldn't find any evidence that this truck existed.

But suspicion about Todd's role about what had happened to Barbara came to a head just days after her death, when reports about Todd's behavior around friends and family started to make their way back to investigators. It seems that in the aftermath of his wife Barbara's death, witnesses noted that Todd seemed unusually calm and even happy, even while planning his wife's funeral. That, of course, triggered now a deeper dive into Todd and Barbara's relationship

and their 25-year marriage. Like in any case of potential domestic violence or spousal abuse, you have to ask, was there a history of abuse, of infidelity, other problems that might metastasize into a motive for murder? Everybody said that there was a perfect marriage, there were no problems. Most people that knew them best and were closer to them said that they were in love and happy with life and no issues. Todd had recently lost his job and understandably, money was always tight with Barbara as the primary breadwinner.

Nobody thought that there was anything going on in the marriage or any strife or any arguments. Everyone just kind of said they were the typical small town family. So that leaves the question of why. If Todd was lying about the accident and he was somehow responsible for his wife's fatal injuries, then what was his motive for hurting her? We did look, of course, at financial documents. We talked to friends and relatives and co-workers. There wasn't any incidents of infidelity or talk of divorce or violence. We didn't find anything that was strong that would indicate what happened that day in

terms of motive. Which could mean that police were barking up the wrong tree, or that Todd and Barbara, the picture of domestic bliss for over 25 years, had done a good job of hiding any issues in their marriage from everyone around them, including their own kids. But of course, you don't need motive to prove murder. You just need the evidence. And a forensic analysis of Ken Hammer's car provided the first solid set of clues. The crime lab analysts did two things that were pretty huge to us. One was blood spatter analysis and one was analysis of the windshield. Blood spatter, not to be confused with blood splatter, is a scattering of tiny drops of blood which can be spread from everything from blunt force trauma to a gunshot wound.

But it's where it appears that tells the story. As far as the blood spatter, he very clearly found that there was blood spatter inside the windshield and on the steering wheel and on the dash, but there wasn't any on the passenger's window on the inside. So if Barb had been hit by a pipe and flailing around, you'd suspect it all to be equally dispersed, and it wasn't. There was pooling of blood on the floor mat and on the center console, which indicates she was bleeding for some period of time to make that pooling and have the blood drip into it. So again, longer than just a couple seconds that it would take after a pipe injury. Todd had told police that he had removed his wife from the car to perform CPR, but that wouldn't explain what forensic analysts found next. He also found

that there was blood on that rear tire and there was blood next to that rear tire, which indicated spatter, meaning some force was used to make that blood fly in those drops on the rear tire. We conclude that something happened near that rear tire to make her head bleed the way it did. Further examination of the windshield and glass fragments found inside the car was just as damning. The glass was maybe the biggest piece. Once we looked at the shattered windshield, it was pretty clear that there were some indentations in the windshield from the inside and the center of the windshield where Todd said he used his fists. But there was more than one strike there. And then where the pipe actually went through the windshield, there was a tiny flap

that was made when the pipe went through the windshield. But right next to that, there was another strike that it would have happened first. And you can tell that by looking when the pipe went through the windshield. But right next to that, there was another strike that would have happened first. And you can tell that by looking at the concentric circles that are made like a spiderweb when you strike a piece of glass and it spiderwebs. So it was obviously struck twice. So if that pipe hit that windshield twice, there's no way it came off a truck. That was kind of the clincher for us. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

So that, combined with the blood spatter, just see it, you can't unsee it. So that combined with the blood spatter just made it clear that this was a staged event. The physical evidence seemed to suggest that Barbara had been struck repeatedly inside and outside of the car. Further proof that the windshield damage was not caused by a flying pipe from an oncoming truck came courtesy of an eyewitness. We came across a very important witness who was a drywaller that was doing work on that road. It turns out that this particular stretch of road was on this worker's regular morning commute. So we contact the drywaller and he said, oh yeah, I was there that day. I was driving down the road and I saw a car in the ditch. And when I saw the car in the ditch,

I just thought it was some drunk person who got stuck or maybe a kid doing a Y turn and got stuck because I didn't see any people and I didn't see any damage to the windshield. So the Kent Hammer's car was there in the ditch, but there was no damage yet to the windshield. That revelation would prove to be the final piece of the puzzle. That means that the windshield was fine when he drove by.

Todd was doing something to Barb, keeping her hidden. And the only conclusion is he staged this accident. And he's the one who put the pipe through the windshield. On December 6, 2016, Todd Kenhammer was arrested and charged with first-degree intentional homicide. He was arrested without incident. He was cooperative. He declined to speak. He had a lawyer. It was pretty uneventful. But the aftermath of one of La Crosse's own citizens being charged with murder was anything but. The trial of Todd Kenthammer would draw national attention, with many in the community coming to the accused killer's defense. This was the man who many people knew and had grown up with.

No one could believe that Kenthammer was capable of murdering the woman he loved and had been with since they were teenagers. It would be prosecutor Tim Grinke's job to convince a jury otherwise. I did not run the trunk with the pipe. You went in the trunk for some other reason? I didn't say I went in the trunk. I don't recall if I went in the trunk. Authorities in La Crosse, Wisconsin, had charged Todd Kendhammer with the intentional homicide of his wife of 25 years, Barbara Kendhammer. Investigators had gathered substantial evidence that the freak accident that Todd claimed killed his wife had been staged, proving it would fall on the shoulders of another Wisconsin native,

Prosecutor Tim Grinke. The two biggest challenges we had were, first of all, we still did not have any motive. We had no idea if he did this, why he would do this. And the second biggest challenge is we still didn't know exactly what happened. We knew that what he said happened couldn't have happened. We felt pretty confident in that. But the next step of saying what did happen was still a little bit of a mystery to us. In other words, the prosecution had plenty of evidence to prove that Todd was lying about how Barbara was killed. But that did not mean they had the evidence that Todd was her killer. And even if he's lying about the truck, maybe there's something else that happened that he's covering for somebody else or something he didn't want to tell people.

So those were our concerns before trial. As for Kent Hammer himself, he was sticking to his story. He was consistent throughout that he is innocent and there was no talk of any plea agreements. He would not entertain anything. Mr. Kent Hammer, isn't it true that you punched her and broke her nose? No. Caused bruises on her face?

No. There's blood on both your knuckles, right? It's not from punching my wife. He was betting that his story would stand up to scientific scrutiny. It was a costly miscalculation. A forensic pathologist testified that Barbara's injuries were consistent with being struck multiple times, not with a single blow from a falling pipe. She also noted bruising on Barbara's scalp, lips, and neck that could indicate manual strangulation.

There was also the issue where these injuries occurred. Blood spatter on the back tire of the car suggested Barbara was assaulted outside of the car, not struck once in the passenger seat. The head injuries bleed a lot, and the biggest injuries were to the back of her head, and that's what caused her death, and there was no blood in the headrest. So if she had been hit while she was in the car, there should be a lot of blood, the most blood, in the back of the seat, the headrest area, and there was none. There was also the issue of Todd's minor injuries to his hands, specifically his bloody knuckles. He claimed he had tried to block the flying pipe, but just some simple physics tells you that his story just really defies common sense.

If both these vehicles are traveling 50 miles an hour, give them a benefit of the doubt. That's 100 mile an hour, 10 pound pipe. That's an enormous amount of force. And it's also an enormous amount of speed. And 100 miles an hour would be like a major league fastball. And hitters can't hit a ball when they know it's coming. And so if you're just driving around and have something that short distance come out 100 miles an hour, I don't think that your brain and your eyes could process fast enough to see it, react, bend forward, take your left hand, your weaker hand awkwardly hard enough to damage both hands. It just seems impossible to do it that fast. You punched the windshield with enough force that quick because you thought you saw a pipe coming at the windshield yes and you didn't react in front of you or reach out for barb you punched the windshield yes with both hands with one hand for sure well how the injuries got on the other

hand i don't know i don't remember from punching barb no Not from punching the windshield? It's not from punching Barb. It's not from punching the windshield either? I don't know what it's from. You're the only one there, Mr. Candy Hammer. So what did the prosecution really think happened? With the facts and evidence collected by investigators, Tim presented the most likely timeline of events of September 16, 2016.

From their phones, we were able to document where they were that morning, where their phones were. And both of their phones showed that they were home that morning together. So we think what happened is that there was some incident that morning, something that made them get into a fight about something. They drove then around a little bit down a back road and then up on Highway M. And I think as they're driving, she's obviously bleeding because the blood pooling in the floor on the center console show that she was bleeding for some period of time. I'm thinking from a broken nose, which tend to bleed a lot. At some point, the car ended up reversed into a ditch,

which could have come from some quick defensive thinking on Barbara's part. You know, if you just envisioned that for a moment, that she could easily have tried to jerk the wheel of the car herself just to try to get it to stop and maybe to try to get away. I think shows a sign of a struggle. You don't go in at that angle unless the wheel is turned really hard. Once they're in the ditch, she gets out of the car. With the car stalled in the ditch and Barbara already bleeding from a broken nose, Tim believes that her enraged husband finally passed the place of no return. And at that point in the ditch, Todd has got his hand over her mouth trying to keep her quiet because that would cause

the injuries to the inside of her lips. We think that the injuries in the back of her head match pretty well. The rim of the tire is bashing her head against that tire, which causes severe injuries to the back of her head. With his wife of 25 years clinging to life, Todd Kenthammer then made the decision that proved to be additional evidence that this was no accidental death, but rather an act of intentional homicide. Rather than trying to save her life, he went about trying to cover up her murder. And at that point, he panics and decides he needs to try to cover this up.

And the only thing he can think of is this pipe in the trunk. He then tries to hit the windshield, but it doesn't break the first time because it's a kind of spider web. He then tries harder and then it goes through. He then takes the pipe out and throws it behind the car. And that's when he calls 911 to report the incident and tries to say this came off a truck.

But as convincing as this retelling of the crime is, there is one thing the prosecution leaves out of their case, a motive. We didn't try to present the motive because we decided most people will understand that there's plenty of marriages that are a surprise when someone, you find out they cheated or you find out somebody's sick and you just say, I didn't know that. I'm their close friend. They never told me. And there's plenty of examples famously where people have been shocked by some information that you didn't know before. And so we decided we don't have to prove motive and we're not going to try to pretend that we

know what the motive is. Kent Hammer's defense maintained his innocence, arguing that the incident was a tragic accident and that it happened exactly as Todd had described to police. They also presented character witnesses who described him as a loving and devoted husband and harped on the sincerity of his emotional 911 call in which you can hear Todd attempting CPR on his dying wife. To back up their story, the defense was also ready to call a surprise witness, Kent Hammer himself. Calling a defendant in a murder trial can be a risky proposition and is not that common since the burden of proof is on the prosecutors. But given the overwhelming evidence, Tim thinks they really had no choice.

Every trial is a little bit different, but going into it, I thought he kind of had to because if he didn't, all the jury would hear would be the statement he gave to police and all the lies that we proved that he said during that interview. Here is an excerpt of Kent Hammer's testimony at trial in which you can hear him answering questions by his defense attorney. When you were questioned at the sheriff's office on the day before Barb's funeral, how were you feeling emotionally? I was very emotional. I hadn't had any sleep. What was it like to sit there and be asked

questions that were suggesting that you had killed your wife? I honestly left there and was thinking about my wife. I didn't, I mean, I don't think it sunk into me right there. And it did several times, but when I left there, my goal was Barb again. And here in court today, when you were asked repeatedly whether and how you struck Barb, how does that feel? It hurts. Did you ever strike Barbara Kendhammer? No. On the stand, Kendhammerer repeated his version of events

and continued to deny any involvement in his wife's, quote, accidental death. But on cross, Tim used the evidence they collected to pick apart his answers. You told the police from the very start that Barb worked at 830, right? I did tell them that, yes. You lied about that too, right? I didn't lie. Her work called at 802 You lied about that too, right? I didn't lie. Her work called at 8.02. You heard that testimony, right?

Yes. They knew she had to be at work at 8, right? Yes. And at about five minutes to 8, the two of you were driving north on County M, right? Correct. And she didn't call in to work, did she? Not at all. She would have been late, and she knew it.

Yes. She wasn't able to call because she wasn't physically able to call, correct? She would have been able to call, yes. Well, you'd already heard her at that time, hadn't you? No. I did not hear her. Our theory is, even though we didn't know what happened, we knew that his story was a lie.

And I had a Sherlock Holmes quote ready that I was going to use that said that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. When the police noted scratches on your neck, you first said that that was from working with glass, correct? I said that, yes. You don't work with glass at Crown, do you? No. So I knew that if we just eliminated all of these lies, even if we couldn't say what did happen, and even though it was confusing, the jury would hopefully just find that he would be guilty. Is it possible you're making this entire story up? No.

Not possible? No. Ultimately, it would be up to the jury to decide who to believe. There isn't like one smoking gun. A lot of these factors that I list alone might just be weird or unexplained. But when you add them all up, it just becomes unbelievable to think that all of these things could happen. The two strikes in the windshield, the blood spatter, the truck that doesn't exist. At some point, you just have to say, that's enough evidence to convince me that it's a lie.

It could not have happened that way. And the only thing left is an intentional homicide. After deliberating for nine hours over two days on December 15, 2017, the jury found Todd Kenthammer guilty of first-degree intentional homicide. I think the jury just found him to be making it up as he went along, obviously lying, and even though we don't know the motive, they were satisfied that that was enough to prove that he had beaten her to death. Kenthammer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Following the verdict, Kenthammer's defense team immediately filed an appeal, citing mishandling of forensic evidence and errors in the investigation. Multiple court rulings have upheld his conviction. To this day, Todd Kent Hamer continues to maintain his innocence, insisting that Barbara's death was a tragic accident. His son and daughter supported him, and I believe still do. They did not believe that he would be capable of doing this. I think that they remain convinced that he is innocent. I think just psychologically, a lot of people find themselves having to believe somebody because the alternative is just too painful.

What causes someone to snap or to do the unthinkable to another human being? It's a question I've often pondered and continue to think about after having worked in the field of homicide for so many years. Barbara was living her life one day and then the next, she wasn't, gone from the world forever. No more laughing with friends, no more dinners with her family, or hearing what's going on in her children's lives. Undoubtedly, they continued to grieve and continued to grapple with their thoughts about what happened. Our thoughts today are with them for healing and peace as they continue to forever miss Barbara, their mom. So many elements in this case played perfectly into the hands of the investigators. Think about this.

The first officer on scene was training someone that day, which pushed him to go that extra mile, showing steps that might have otherwise been skipped. Once the case hit Tim's desk, he expertly navigated every possible lead until the evidence itself began to speak. This is a prime example of how having the latest forensic tools can completely change the game. Experience matters, but when you combine that with cutting-edge technology like advanced DNA analysis or blood spatter analysis, you're operating on a whole new level.

What used to involve a lot of guesswork now allows us to pinpoint details with surgical precision, and that is a true game changer. The partnership between a detective's instincts and the newest technology in solving cases that may have gone cold just a few years ago, or as in this case, potentially overlook a murder as just a freak accident, doing a tremendous disservice to the victim. Killers are finding it harder and harder to hide. And that is a real shift.

Technology and experience working together, reshaping investigations in ways we couldn't have imagined. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?