David and Robert Bintz
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In the summer of 1987, a young bartender from Green Bay, Wisconsin goes missing only to turn up dead hours later.

The police interviewed dozens of people, including the customers who were at the bar with the victim the night before. Almost all of them said they noticed a strange man hanging around the bar wearing a flannel shirt, despite temperatures being above 90 degrees. It wasn't until years later that the police arrested two brothers in connection to the bartender's murder.

But without any forensic evidence linking them to the brutal crime, did the authorities have the right guys? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 271. The story of David and Robert Vince. ♪

Thank you.

August 2nd, 1987, 44-year-old Sandra Lyson worked as a bartender at the Good Times Tavern in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a place that has since shut down but used to be located at 1332 South Broadway.

On that particular night in August of 1987, Sandra worked the bar's closing shift. Like most of the other bars in Green Bay, the Good Times Bar stayed open until roughly 2 a.m., which meant she had a long night ahead of her. Sandra, who was a mother of two, worked there to take care of herself and her family.

The night of August 2nd started like any other. Sandra worked behind the bar as one of the main bartenders, and the place was pretty busy all night until closing time around 2. Most of the customers left after the final call for drinks, and Sandra was supposed to return home back to her kids. It was the end of another busy night.

Shortly before 5 o'clock a.m. on August 3rd, a man named Robert Miller arrived at the Good Times Tavern to clean up and open the bar for the incoming morning customers.

But when he opened the door and went inside, he noticed that the lights were still on. Robert knew this was strange because whoever closed the bar the night before should have turned off all the lights as part of their typical closing procedures. So there was no reason for them to be on. As Robert Miller walked deeper and deeper into the bar, he noticed something else that was off. The safe was open and it was completely empty. All of the money from the night before was missing.

At this point, Robert knew that something had to be wrong. None of his coworkers would have left the lights on from the night before, and now all of the business's cash is missing. In total, about $2,700 was missing. Back outside in the parking lot was Sandra's car. It was still parked where it usually was. She was the bartender on duty when the bar closed at 2 a.m., and now she's missing just like the cash.

Moments later, the Green Bay police received the call about the stolen money. Detectives spoke with Robert Miller, who informed investigators that his co-worker, Sandra Lyson, was also missing. So on top of a potential robbery, the Green Bay Police Department also had a missing persons case on their hands. They knew Sandra simply running off wasn't an option. She had two young kids at home waiting for her to get off work.

so it's not like she would have gone somewhere after her shift, especially since her car was still parked at the bar. They also knew the chances of her running off with the bar's money were slim to none. That's just not the kind of person that she was.

The police spent the entire next day looking for her, but the search didn't last long. The following day, Sandra's body was found in a spot about 30 miles north of where she worked in the city of Green Bay. A couple riding horses found her body more than 50 feet off the main horse trail.

The sight of Sandra's body just lying in the dirt was bad enough, but the situation only got worse after she was taken back to Green Bay for an autopsy. Sandra's death was listed as a homicide by manual strangulation. Whoever did this had choked her out with their own hands.

There was also strong evidence suggesting that she was sexually assaulted. But I want you to keep that detail in mind for later on. The authorities seem to change their mind about that.

Either way, a rape kit was prepared, and from the kit, the authorities got DNA and semen samples, something that we're going to be talking a lot more a little later in the episode. Back at the scene where the body was discovered, Green Bay detectives looked for clues, and one of the first things they noted in their reports was the ground around Sandra's body. None of the leaves or dirt in the area was disturbed, so they decided to go to the hospital.

suggesting that whoever killed Sandra killed her somewhere else and simply dumped her body there. If that was the location of where she was killed, the detectives expected to see drag marks, but there weren't any. This location had only become a dump site.

The second clue was the location itself. Her body was discovered about 50 feet off the main horse trail, over 30 miles away from the bar. So this seemed to suggest that whoever did this was desperate to hide her body and didn't want anyone to find her. It also suggested a level of being familiar with the area. It was

It was the kind of place that you had to know was there. You wouldn't just stumble upon it. The next step of the investigation for the Green Bay Police Department was to interview witnesses. So for the next several days, that's exactly what detectives did. They interviewed anyone and everyone possible, from the bar's customers to the other employees. And pretty quickly, investigators got another clue.

According to the customers who were at the Good Times Tavern right up until the 2 o'clock closing time, there was a strange man hanging around the place. The reason they said that this guy was strange was because of how he was dressed. They all said this guy was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt despite it being over 90 degrees that day. He definitely wasn't wearing the most appropriate outfit given the weather, so he stood out.

So the investigators made a note about the guy and then moved on from it. Dozens of other people were interviewed, including two brothers, 32-year-old David Bence and 31-year-old Robert Bence, who were at the bar that night. Green Bay Police Detective Lawrence Pamperin was the one assigned to interview David, and this was part of his statement. According to the statement,

According to David Bence, he and his brother Robert and a friend of theirs, a guy named Vincent Andres, were all at David's house on the night of August 2nd and early August 3rd. He said the three of them were drinking beer, but at some point during the night, they ran out.

So they got into a car and drove to the Good Times Tavern where Sandra sold them four six-packs for about $3.50 each. But according to David, only Robert and their friend Vincent went inside the bar. He says he waited in the car until they came out with the beers that Sandra sold them. Once they had the drinks, the three men headed back to David's place, but when they got there, David became upset.

Now, before we talk about why, David Bence is described as someone who is intellectually disabled. That's something I want you to keep in the back of your mind throughout the rest of this episode.

So when the men get back into David's place with the beer, David became upset and agitated. He thought Sandra overcharged them for the beer. She should have charged them for a case, which would have made it cheaper. So he called up the bar and chewed Sandra out. He was really upset about what he thought was being overcharged. And in his mind, all of that was Sandra's fault.

At one point during this phone call, some of the other people who were inside of the bar said that he even threatened to blow up the place. That's how angry he was. Another reason why I want you to keep David's mental state at the top of your mind here. This was someone with a severe mental and intellectual disability.

So that might explain why he got so mad and upset about the situation. To anyone else, it might not have been a big deal. But to David Bintz, it was. Sometime after David called the bar and spoke with Sandra, he told the police that he fell asleep and that was the end of his night. He initially denied any involvement in what happened.

After this conversation with David Vince, the Green Bay detectives went to go speak with his brother and their friend. They got similar statements from them, and none of them were arrested or brought back in for more questioning. All three of them said that they had nothing to do with this. And that seemed to be the end of it, at least for now.

Following these interviews, Sandra's murder case started to slow down. There were no witnesses beyond the people who were at the bar that night, and none of them seemed to have any real information. None of them knew where the money went either. It's also 1987, so whatever DNA evidence was collected during Sandra's autopsy, there wasn't much the police could do with it.

So pretty much the entire investigation relied on good old-fashioned police work, boots on the ground. But that's an uphill battle. So eventually, the case goes cold for the next four years.

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It's now 1991, four years later. The Green Bay Police Department received a tip about the discovery of some of Sandra's personal items. Her purse had been found in a rural wooded lot in the town of Glenmore, Wisconsin, a place about 40 miles south of where her body had been found and about 10 miles south of Green Bay. Like the location of her body, this particular location was also very unique.

The police didn't think the purse could have gotten there by simply being thrown from a car. It was too far back into the woods. So this meant that someone most likely walked it out there and dumped it. They couldn't have just thrown it from a car on the nearby road. This also meant that whoever dumped it was very deliberate. They didn't want anyone to find that purse, just like how they didn't want anyone to find her body.

Here's something else Green Bay detectives considered. This person was likely very familiar with the area. They had to have known it was there, just like the area where Sandra's body was found. Both locations were so remote, so off the beaten path, so this seemed to suggest at least some prior knowledge of the area. So many people thought that they were looking for someone very specific.

Finding the purse was a huge step forward in the investigation, but it didn't say who her killer was. It just meant that someone went to great lengths to try and hide it. So after the discovery of the purse, the case went cold again. This time, five more years pass, and it's now 1996, nine years after the murder.

In 1996, David Bence, one of the brothers that we talked about earlier who was at the bar, was arrested and pled no contest to a charge of sexual assault of a child under the age of 16. He was eventually sentenced to prison.

But at this point, he's not arrested for anything having to do with this case. He was arrested on completely unrelated charges involving a minor. So David spends the next two years in prison. But while he's locked up, he starts talking to one of his cellmates, a guy named Gary Swendby, who will eventually become a key person in this story.

In February 1998, David was incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. So was Gary Swendby.

Now, here's where things get moving in Sandra's case again. While sharing a cell together, Gary Swenby starts to tell the prison authorities that David Bintz has been talking in his sleep and having nightmares in which he would scream about killing someone. He would also shout out things like, make sure she's dead. So after one of these nightmares, Gary said he asked David about it.

And that's when he said that David eventually admitted about being involved in Sandra's murder. This is Gary's story.

He said David told him he and his brother, Robert Bence, decided to rob the bar after being overcharged for the beer. That explains why the money was missing from the safe. But they knew they had a problem. They knew Sandra would be able to recognize them once the police came around. So that's when they decided they needed to kill her. They couldn't have any witnesses to the robbery.

David kept telling his brother to make sure that she was dead. Then after that, he and his brother put her in a trunk of their car and, quote, drove somewhere up north and got rid of her body.

Right after David told his cellmate this story, Gary went to the prison officials and told them everything. Then prison officials turned around and contacted the Green Bay Police Department. According to the cellmate, he had more than a dozen conversations with David about the murder, so there was no question in his mind about whether he was telling the truth or not.

It wasn't just David talking in his sleep about the murder. Gary Swenby swore to the prison guards that he also had real life, while he was awake, conversations with David, and these weren't just sleep talking and this wasn't just nightmares.

So a few of the Green Bay detectives were sent to the prison to go interview both David and Gary to get their individual statements. These interviews happened in April of 1998.

They first spoke to Gary and a handful of other inmates about David's alleged nightmares and statements about his involvement in the crime. They all had the same story. David said he and his brother were guilty. Then after that, they went directly to David himself. But instead of denying what his former cellmate said, he admitted to almost everything.

He said he and his brother Robert and a friend of theirs drove to the Good Times bar to pick up a case of beer. Robert and the friend went inside to buy it while he waited in the car. After they returned home, he got mad after finding out how much they spent. He called up the bar and chewed Sander out.

That's when they got back into the car, drove to the bar, and robbed it. They knew Sandra would be able to identify them, so that's when they decided they needed to kill her.

His confession almost perfectly lined up with what the other inmates said. He even provided details that his cellmate didn't know, like how his brother Robert was actually the one who killed Sandra by hitting and strangling her. Now, it's worth mentioning here that during these interviews, David provided the authorities with conflicting statements. On one hand, he said he and his brother both participated in the murder,

But in another statement, he said he wasn't there and he was at home while his brother did everything. So at this point, we aren't really sure where the truth is.

Immediately following this confession, both brothers were arrested and charged with Sandra's murder on July 30, 1999. This was now a full 12 years later. And despite any other evidence besides David's jailhouse confession, they were tried separately and given two criminal trials in the Brown County Circuit Court.

Before the start of either trial, both sets of defense lawyers tried a handful of motions to get their cases thrown out. David's attorneys filed motions saying that none of David's alleged sleep talking should be allowed as evidence. How reliable can sleep talking actually be? We all have crazy dreams, so does that mean some of our dreams are real life?

The second thing they brought up was David's intellectual disability, the one that we talked about earlier. His lawyers introduced expert testimony about his disability, trying to disprove the accuracy of his statements.

They argued that because of his intellectual disability, none of what he allegedly confessed to could be trusted. He made everything up. He was just telling the police what they wanted to hear. It was all a coerced confession.

His brother, Robert, also filed motions before the start of the trial, saying that there was virtually no evidence of his involvement in the murder. The only piece of evidence that the prosecution had was his own brother's statements. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the murder. And unlike David, his brother, he never confessed anything.

But in the end, all of the defense motions were denied. The court said David's mental capacity didn't negate his confession, and despite the lack of forensic evidence, both brothers would still go forward to trial. David's confession alone was enough. Plus, both men admitted to being at the bar that night, essentially placing them at the primary crime scene.

So, it was a complete loss for both sides of the defense. The first brother to go to trial was David Bence. In May 2000, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and being a party to a crime. Now, this probably won't come as too much of a surprise, but the star witness at trial was Gary Swendby, the former cellmate.

Without his statements, there really wasn't much of a case against either one of these brothers. According to his testimony, David told him that he and Robert, quote, killed her and put her in the trunk of a car. They took her body up in the woods somewhere up north and they dumped her.

He also testified that David said they took their car to Illinois and that it was crushed. David, quote, kept telling Bob to make sure that she was dead, end quote. Detective Robert Haglug from the Green Bay Police Department was the one who testified about David's statement to the police.

He testified that he took a statement from David where he admitted that everything his former cellmate was true. Detective Haglung said he and David went through Gary Swenby's statements line by line, and David said he didn't need to offer up a statement because everything his former cellmate testified to and everything in his statement was, quote, in black and white.

Beyond the police and the cellmate, several other inmates testified that David made various statements to them about his involvement. They all testified that he confessed. Two of them even claimed to have heard him sleep talking about it, just like the cellmate. When it came time to talk about the autopsy, Dr. Darrell Scarple was the one who testified because he was the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.

He testified that she died of manual strangulation, but there was no evidence of a sexual assault, which seems to contradict earlier reports that she had in fact been raped before being killed.

Here's exactly what the medical examiner testified. According to him, there was a 90% probability that she had sex within 48 hours of her death and a 75% probability that she had sex within 24 hours of her death.

but because there were no visible injuries to her body, he didn't think that she had been raped. Again, this testimony seems to contradict what was reported earlier, and you'll see why in just a moment. Dr. Scarple also testified that a rape kit was performed and they had DNA. Let's talk about that now.

Curtis Knox, a DNA analyst at the Wisconsin State Crime Lab, testified that he was the person who conducted DNA testing on the vaginal swabs as well as some of the victim's clothing. According to him, semen was found on her dress, and from that semen sample, he generated a male DNA profile.

But here's the interesting part. That male DNA profile didn't belong to either David or Robert Benz. The sample seemed to exclude both of them as contributors. So maybe that could explain why the medical examiner seemed to backtrack on his statements about whether or not the victim had been raped.

Since the DNA didn't belong to either of the Bintz brothers, the prosecution changed their story. The victim hadn't been sexually assaulted as a part of her murder. Instead, she had consensual intercourse within 24 to 72 hours before she was killed. Again, we'll talk more about that in just a minute.

Curtis Knox, the DNA expert, also testified that the same male DNA profile was found on vaginal swabs. So it's the same profile on the victim's dress and the vaginal swabs from the rape kit. But neither one of them belong to the brothers.

So now the question becomes, how long could semen or DNA remain on a person's clothing or inside of their body? Because if the victim hadn't been raped like the prosecution seems to be suggesting, then how long is it likely to be found on clothing? That's the key question here.

When Curtis Knox was asked about how long sperm could be found in the body after intercourse, Knox said, quote, the rule of thumb that is put out in literature, as well as what we've seen in the lab, is outside the window that we would expect to find semen still in the vaginal vault is approximately 72 hours, end quote.

So this expert supported the prosecution's story that the victim could have had intercourse with someone up to three days before her murder. And that could explain why an unknown male DNA profile was found in this case, but the DNA profile has nothing to do with the two defendants, the brothers.

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When it became the defense's turn, they called several other inmates who had been housed with David, saying that they never heard him sleep talking or confessing to the murder. The other key piece of evidence for the defense? David's intellectual disability.

Dr. Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist, testified that he administered several tests on him and he concluded that he was in fact mentally disabled. He said David's IQ was less than 70. He was in the bottom 2% of the population. He read at a fourth grade level and was highly susceptible to manipulation. Here's part of that testimony.

David's defense attorney, Neela Robinson, asked this psychologist, No, Dr. Kaplan replied.

"'Based on your knowledge of research and literature, can you tell me whether there is any basis for the notion that dreams bear some type of symbolic representation of waking life?' Robinson asked. "'No, there is no consistent evidence of that,' Dr. Kaplan said."

So the prosecution's case was this. David Bence, alongside his brother Robert, killed the victim because they were mad about overpaying for beer. They robbed the bar and they had to kill her so that they wouldn't leave any witnesses. They initially said the victim had been raped, but now they say she could have had consensual intercourse up to 72 hours before she was killed.

This theory explains the motive. The brothers were mad about being overcharged. It explains why their DNA and the semen doesn't match. The victim could have had consensual intercourse with someone else. That's the prosecution's case.

Then the defense's side was this. David Bence suffers from a severe intellectual disability that causes him to be highly susceptible to manipulation. So who knows if his alleged statements can be trusted because of his low IQ, he could have been easily coerced and confessing to the police about a crime he didn't do.

There's no evidence supporting that nightmares have anything to do with the truth, and the only DNA evidence in the case doesn't match. The male DNA profile collected from the victim's rape kit and her clothing belongs to someone else.

Well, like I mentioned, a jury found David guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Despite the mental capacity, despite the lack of forensic evidence, that confession alone was enough.

Two months later, Robert Bence was put on trial, but this time, the prosecution was missing something. They didn't have their star witness, Gary Swendby. Just days before the trial was set to begin, Gary was tragically killed in a head-on car accident, which meant he wouldn't be able to testify.

Instead of having a jury decide his fate, Robert opted for a bench trial, meaning that only a judge would decide. But just because the prosecution didn't have Gary anymore, they still had a handful of other witnesses who testified at his brother's trial. And on top of the jailhouse witnesses, the prosecution also had a woman by the name of Joan Andrews.

Joan Andrews testified that in the summer of 1999, before Robert was arrested, she drove him to visit his mother in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just north of Green Bay.

And while they were driving back home, Joan Andrews testified that they talked about Sandra's murder. I was kind of asking him because I wanted to know, Andrews said. He said he felt her move in the back and that's when they brought her to the forest and dumped her off. He didn't think she was dead, so he strangled her.

So now that seems to be yet another person claiming that Robert and his brother confessed and that this person wasn't a former cellmate either. But could this witness be trusted? The defense called Thomas Bintz, a brother of both David and Robert's.

He testified that their mother lived in Bancroft, Wisconsin, which was about 90 miles south and west of Green Bay, not in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, like Joan Andrews said. So was that an innocent mistake? Could Joan Andrews, the prosecution witness, be mistaken about where she said she drove Robert Bence while having this very incriminating conversation?

Or was she lying like the defense alluded to? And if she could lie about that, what else could she lie about? Robert Bence did something that most criminal defendants choose not to. He testified. And when he took the stand, he completely denied any involvement in the murder, despite what his brother said.

This was his story about the night in question. He said his brother David had given him money to go buy more beer. He said that he and his friend Vincent walked to the bar, bought a case of beer for $14, and walked back to his brother's place. This was different than what David said to the police right after the murder. He said they drove to the bar. But now Robert's testimony is that they walked.

He said that his brother, quote, got a little wild over the amount of money they were charged for the beer. He said, Robert testified, Robert said,

His attorney, Daniel Fay, then asked, So that was it. His brother, David, made a false confession because of his limited intellectual abilities. There are major discrepancies in his story, and of course, the DNA and semen. It doesn't match Robert either. But not even Robert's testimony was enough to convince the judge.

On July 26, 2000, the Brown County Circuit Court judge convicted Robert Bence of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison without parole, just like his brother.

Both brothers went on to appeal their separate convictions, but all of their initial appeals were denied and their convictions were upheld. But that didn't mean they stopped fighting their cases. They were determined to get out of prison for a murder they said they didn't commit. By 2006, the Wisconsin Innocence Project joined David's case. By this point, he had already spent six years in prison.

After hearing about his story, they decided to help him. One of the first things the Wisconsin Innocence Project did was turn to the forensic evidence, the DNA. They took the unknown male DNA that was collected from Sandra's clothing and her body and submitted it for additional testing. And here's the results.

The additional DNA testing confirmed that the blood found on Sandra's dress came from the same male whose sperm was found in the rape kit, end quote.

But none of that was really new or groundbreaking information. They knew that from the start of the trial. But the Wisconsin Innocence Project took this information and went to the court seeking a new trial for David. Their argument was, hey, if this DNA was found on the victim's clothing, it would be a

It's the same profile that was found in the semen. None of this matches David Bence. That should essentially prove that the victim had been sexually assaulted. And if that's true, whoever's DNA that is, well, that's the actual person that killed Sandra.

But the court rejected this, saying, quote, there is no evidence of sexual assault. There has never been any evidence of sexual assault.

So, David wasn't granted a new trial based on this new DNA testing, and that ruling was also upheld by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2009. Another nine years went by, and by 2018, another Innocence Project organization got involved. This time, it was the Great North Innocence Project who took over Robert's case, and

Just like the Wisconsin organization, they also wanted more DNA testing. But by this point, a lot more time had passed, and DNA testing was even better than it was just nine years ago. So by 2018, they were able to create a SNP profile for the unknown sample, a single nucleotide polymorphism.

The SNP was created by Bode Cellmark Laboratories, a private special lab that offers very high-level DNA testing. So in Robert's case, the Great North Innocence Project sent the remaining DNA from the rape kit to this private lab, and they were able to create a SNP, a sample that could be used to trace ancestry.

This was a massive step forward for Robert Bince's defense. Up until this point, that DNA remained unknown. All they knew was that it didn't match either brother. But now, with a SNP, they could use it to trace ancestry and identify potential relatives of the source. And if you could do that...

Well, maybe the defense could use that information to find the real killer and prove that these two Bins brothers were actually innocent. But there's a saying that we've probably all heard before. The wheels of justice don't always move fast.

Robert's defense had a SNP profile for the unknown DNA, but finding a match or even a relative wasn't easy. It would be another five years before we really got any answers.

In 2023, the Great North Innocence Project was finally able to move forward in the case again. They contacted the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center, or IGG, for help. The IGG provides pro bono casework for these types of cases. Their job was simple, but not at all easy.

take the SNP, upload it to as many DNA databases as possible, and look for a relative of the source. In many cases, this process can take weeks, even months, to finish. Even before the Innocence Project reached out to the IGG for help, local genealogists were unable to find any relatives of the DNA source. But the IGG Center had better luck.

Within two days, the Innocence Project received word that the IGG had found something. A team of six students led by IGG Center staff had found the person that they believed was the source of the DNA and the semen found on Sandra's body. Once the students uploaded the DNA, they got a hit on three male children from the Green Bay area.

They were three brothers who all came from the same parents. Two of the brothers were able to be ruled out pretty quickly. They didn't fit the suspect profile, but one of them stood out. William Joseph Hendricks. Ready for your next adventure? KLM Royal Dutch Airlines brings you Real Deal Days. Your chance to uncover real adventures and create real memories.

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ProlonLife.com slash Forensic Tales. One of the reasons why William Hendricks stood out was his criminal record. To put it simply, he had a long history of violent sexual attacks. In 1981, he broke into the home of a Green Bay woman and sexually assaulted her. Then just one month later, he was at it again. He threatened to kill a woman by choking her to death.

So it didn't take the police long to find out who their culprit was. And William Hendricks was arrested and sent to prison. But his time behind bars didn't last. He was released on December 30th, 1986, just seven months before Sandra was killed. So he wasn't locked up when she was murdered. He's a violent person who attacks women and he lives in the Green Bay area.

Another clue that pointed towards Hendricks was the location of Sandra's body. She was found halfway between the bar where she worked and where Hendricks lived right before being sent away to prison. So that's another piece to the puzzle. Detectives had long suspected the killer was in fact familiar with the area, and Hendricks knew that this would be a good place to dump a body.

So now, that's means, motive, and opportunity. By August of 2023, the Great North Innocence Project contacted the prosecution with their findings. But before any conviction could be overturned, everyone needed to be sure, 100% sure, that William Hendricks was actually Sandra's killer, not the Bintz brothers.

So between September and November 2023, the Green Bay police collected DNA samples from both of Hendricks' brothers. They couldn't go directly to William Hendricks because he was already dead by this point. He died on April 18, 2000, just weeks before David and Robert were convicted.

So they went to his two surviving brothers instead and got DNA samples for comparison. And when the results came back, both of those brothers were excluded, leaving William Hendricks the likely source. Six months later, something else happened.

On May 30, 2024, Hendricks' body was exhumed from the Fort Howard Memorial Park in Green Bay. This was the final step in proving that he was the actual killer. Once his body was removed from the ground, DNA samples were collected from his remains and sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab. And on August 15, 2024, the results were available.

The state crime lab reported that after comparing Hendricks' DNA profile with the DNA profile from the crime, the chances were 1 in 329 trillion that the source of the crime scene DNA was someone other than Hendricks.

Immediately following this discovery, the Great North Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate Robert Vince's conviction. They specifically cited the work of the police, prosecution, and the crime lab. In part, the motion read, "...through these joint efforts, a nearly four decades-old murder case has finally been solved."

It went on to say, End quote.

And that's not the only piece of forensic evidence tying Hendricks to the crime. The defense's motion also noted that in September 2024, the Wisconsin State Crime Lab concluded that three fingerprints found at the bar had been left by Hendricks. So his fingerprints were found at the bar and his DNA through semen was found on the murder victim.

On September 25th, 2024, David Bence, alongside his attorneys, his brother Robert Bence, with his attorneys, appeared in a Brown County Circuit Court where the prosecution agreed that their convictions should be vacated. There was overwhelming forensic evidence suggesting that they were innocent and the real killer was William Joseph Hendricks.

Following that appearance, all charges against the two brothers were dismissed on September 27th. Before this decision was made, they had spent over 24 years in prison for a crime that they didn't commit, a crime that, through forensic evidence, was committed by William Hendricks, a convicted sex offender.

In the judge's ruling, he told NBC26 News, Today, Sandra Lyson will rest in peace because her true murderer is now known.

Asked how the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison despite the physical evidence, District Attorney David Lassie told NBC26 News, "...the prosecutors and the law enforcement officers were handling this case at the outset, followed the evidence that they had at the time, and that conviction was sound."

After spending nearly a quarter of a century in prison, these two Wisconsin brothers have finally been exonerated, all thanks to genetic genealogy.

In February 2025, the Bintz brothers filed claims with the Wisconsin State Claims Board seeking $2,159,328.45 for David Bintz and $2,153,698.20 for Robert Bintz.

But as of the time I'm recording this, a decision hasn't been reached on just how much money these brothers should receive for being wrongfully convicted. Although Sandra's murder has finally been solved and two innocent men are now set free, there are still so many questions that linger. Why were there such conflicting reports about whether the victim had been sexually assaulted or not?

Did the prosecution change their mind so that the forensic evidence would fit their narrative? Did they really think that she had intercourse with Hendricks just hours before her death, but was then murdered by the Bintz brothers? Or was that simply an oversight? Very early on, the media reported that she had been sexually assaulted. So why did the story change when it came time for the trials?

Another question, who was that flannel-wearing guy seen at the bar that night? Was that William Hendricks? And if so, what was his motive for the robbery, assault, and murder? How did he do it? Did he wait for everyone else to leave the bar at closing time, and that's when he made his move? Or was robbery just an afterthought?

Why didn't the police look into David Bintz's alleged confession a lot sooner? Based on their statements, we know that he told conflicting stories about what supposedly happened. In one version, he said he and his brother committed the murder together. But in another, he said that his brother did everything and he was at home. And how much weight can we put on someone's sleep talking?

Finally, how can we prevent something like this from happening in the future? How can we prevent sending innocent people to prison for potentially the rest of their lives?

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE. That's 1-800-656-4673. To share your thoughts on this week's episode, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

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