Shawn Henning Case: Wrongful Conviction, Forensics, and $7.6M Payout

Shawn Henning’s wrongful conviction is one of Connecticut’s most consequential exoneration cases: arrested at seventeen for the 1985 stabbing death of Everett Carr in New Milford, he served roughly 29 years in prison before the Connecticut Supreme Court threw out his conviction in 2019 after finding that celebrity forensic scientist Henry Lee had given false testimony at trial. Charges were dismissed in July 2020, and Henning ultimately received about $15.1 million in combined settlements from the state and the town.¹

How Henning Became a Suspect

Everett Carr, 65, was found stabbed 27 times inside his New Milford home on December 2, 1985.² The scene was heavy with physical evidence: more than 40 fingerprints, hair samples, bloody footprints, and DNA on items directly tied to the attack, including a piece of the murder weapon under the body.³

On the day the body was discovered, detectives interviewed Douglas Stanley, a Danbury fence who bought stolen goods from local burglars. Stanley steered them toward Henning, then seventeen, and Ralph “Ricky” Birch, then eighteen. The pair had been breaking into homes in the area and living out of a stolen 1973 Buick Regal with a bad muffler — neighbors had reported a loud car near Carr’s home around the time of the killing.⁴

The physical evidence pointed the other way. Searches of the two teenagers, their clothes, and the car produced no blood, hair, or DNA linked to the scene. None of the fingerprints matched. None of the hair matched. The bloody footprints ran between roughly a size 7½ and 9; Henning wore an 11½, Birch a 10½ to 11.⁴ Even so, Henning was arrested on November 18, 1988, and charged with felony murder.²

The Trial: Informants and Henry Lee

With no physical evidence tying Henning to the killing, the prosecution leaned on two things: jailhouse informants and forensic testimony from Dr. Henry Lee, then the head of Connecticut’s Division of Scientific Services and one of the best-known forensic scientists in the country.

Informants Robert Perugini and Todd Cocchia said Birch had confessed to the murder in custody. Prosecutors also used statements attributed to Henning’s grandmother and a friend, who said Henning had mentioned being present at a burglary where a man was killed.²

Lee’s testimony was meant to answer the obvious question the jury would have: how could two people commit such a bloody murder and walk away clean? Lee told the jury that towels from Carr’s bathroom had tested positive for blood, evidence prosecutors used to argue the attackers had cleaned themselves up. He also described the blood spatter at the scene as “uninterrupted,” suggesting the killers could have avoided getting blood on themselves.²

Henning was convicted on April 19, 1989, and sentenced to 50 years. Birch was convicted separately and sentenced to 55.²

How the Forensic Case Collapsed

The case fell apart when the physical evidence was tested with modern methods and Lee’s work was re-examined. Later testing of the towel Lee had called blood-stained found no blood on it at all.⁵ No written notes or photographs showed that Lee had ever actually performed the blood test he described.⁶

Advanced DNA testing on more than 100 items from the scene excluded both Henning and Birch from every piece of evidence. The testing also identified an unknown woman’s DNA on multiple items closely tied to the attack, including a piece of the knife found beneath the body, Carr’s clothing, a cigar box, and the wood floor where he died.⁷

In 2013, the New Jersey innocence organization Centurion took Henning’s case after the Connecticut Innocence Project stepped aside over a conflict of interest. Centurion’s Jim Cousins, together with Craig Raabe for Henning and Andrew O’Shea for Birch, filed a combined habeas action challenging both convictions.⁸

Reversal and Dismissal

On June 14, 2019, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously overturned both convictions, ruling that the state had obtained them on the basis of false testimony from Lee. The court found that his testimony about the towel was not harmless and that the state had failed to exercise due diligence in presenting accurate forensic evidence.² The case was sent back for a new trial.

Henning had already been paroled in July 2018 after about 29 years in prison, partly because of his age at the time of the crime.² On remand, the state tried to build a retrial. It produced nothing. On July 10, 2020, Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban formally dismissed all murder and burglary charges. Litchfield State’s Attorney Dawn Gallo told the court the state would not retry the men, citing the death of key witnesses, the recantation of two significant prosecution witnesses, and the failure of forensic evidence to link either man to the crime. Shaban wrote that “further investigation of this matter would be unnecessary.”⁹

The Civil Case and What Henning Received

In December 2020, Henning and Birch sued Henry Lee, the town of New Milford, and several police officers in federal court under civil rights law.¹⁰

On July 21, 2023, U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden issued an 84-page ruling granting summary judgment against Lee, finding him liable for fabricating evidence. Bolden wrote that Lee “did not create any written documents memorializing any testing or analysis” performed on the towel and that the record showed the tests he described had not actually indicated blood.⁶ The Connecticut Attorney General’s office announced it would appeal and would continue to indemnify Lee, saying his actions did not meet the threshold of being “wanton, reckless, or malicious.”¹¹ Lee publicly defended his work.¹²

Two months later, the Attorney General’s office reached an agreement in principle to settle the state’s portion of the lawsuit for $25.2 million, split evenly between Henning and Birch at $12.6 million each. The Connecticut House Committee on Judiciary approved the settlement unanimously in March 2024.¹⁰

Henning settled his claims against the town of New Milford separately for $2.5 million in October 2024.¹³ Between the state settlement and the town settlement, he received roughly $15.1 million.¹

Who Actually Killed Everett Carr

The Carr murder is still officially unsolved. The unknown female DNA found on the knife fragment, Carr’s clothing, the cigar box, and the floorboards has never been publicly matched to anyone.⁷

The defense investigation flagged people who were never fully pursued. Carr’s daughter, Diana Columbo, who found the body, gave conflicting statements about where she had been that night and initially lied about being out until 4:30 a.m. When she first called for help, she reportedly said the victim had a knife in his hand, a detail she later denied.² In 1990, Columbo allegedly threatened a man named John Andrews with a knife, saying she would “kill him like she killed her father.”⁴ Columbo’s boss and paramour, Richard Burkhart, told his son to clean up the scene before police arrived. Burkhart died without providing a DNA sample.

After the dismissal, Henning and Birch asked law enforcement to “use the forensic evidence that has been gathered, and more sound law enforcement tactics, to identify Mr. Carr’s actual killer or killers.”² As of 2025, no one else has been charged.

Henning Today

Henning now lives outside Connecticut. In a May 2025 interview with NBC Connecticut, his first sit-down since his exoneration, he described the lasting cost of losing three decades. “I get really upset when I think I’m not a father,” he said, and he called the idea of justice hollow, saying there is “no compensation” for the birthdays, Christmases, and years he missed.¹

He has spent time helping other wrongfully convicted people, and in March 2025 he testified at Birch’s federal civil trial in the case against New Milford.¹

1
NBC Connecticut. 30 Years Lost: Man Free After Decades in Prison Shares Exoneration Story
2
National Registry of Exonerations. Shawn Henning
3
The Guardian. Connecticut Settles Wrongful Conviction Case for $25 Million
4
CT Mirror. Bloody Murder: Were Teens Wrongly Convicted?
5
CT Public. Connecticut Agrees to a $25 Million Settlement in the Henry Lee Evidence Fabrication Case
6
CT Public. Judge Finds Forensic Scientist Henry Lee Liable for Fabricating Evidence in a Murder Case
7
Cybergenetics. TrueAllele Cigar Box DNA Helps Free Ralph Birch
8
Centurion. Shawn Henning
9
Hartford Courant. Judge Dismisses Murder Charges Against Men Imprisoned for Three Decades
10
Prison Legal News. $25.2 Million Settlement for Two Connecticut Prisoners Exonerated After 35 Years
11
CT Mirror. CT Murder Case: Henry Lee Found Liable for Fabricating Evidence
12
Spectrum News. Forensic Scientist Lee Defends Work After Being Found Liable for Falsifying Evidence
13
CT Insider. Shawn Henning and Ralph Birch New Milford Murder Case