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Murder of Lynn Henneman

According to Justia, Lynn Henneman was a United Airlines flight attendant from New York who had a layover in Boise, Idaho, on September 24, 2000. She and the rest of the crew had a hotel near the Boise River. That evening, Henneman went for a walk. She stopped at an art museum and had dinner at a local restaurant. After leaving the restaurant, she disappeared.

Her husband tried to reach her that night, but she didn’t answer. When Henneman didn’t meet her colleagues the next morning, police got involved. According to KTVB, her parents flew into town to search for her. At first, answers were few and far between, but days after she went missing, her wallet was found eight miles away from the hotel where she was staying.

According to Justia, two weeks later, on October 7th, 2000, she was found dead and floating in the Boise River about a mile away from her hotel. It was immediately obvious that she had met with foul play. Some of her clothing was tied around her neck and one of her wrists. Her death was ruled to be from strangulation, and DNA collected from her body indicated she had been sexually assaulted.

KTVB reported that detectives spent 5,000 hours on the case, followed over 600 tips and tested 156 men’s DNA, but none of this led them to the culprit.

Murder of Cheryl Ann Hanlon

KTVBreported that a 16-year-old boy was walking his dog on March 1st, 2003, when he saw a woman on the ground partially covered with brush and debris. The woman was identified as 42-year old Cheryl Ann Hanlon, and she died a brutal death, she was beaten, raped, and strangled with her own clothing. The way she was killed instantly brought back memories of Lynn Henneman’s murder.

As the investigation progressed, authorities learned that Hanlon was hanging out at a bar in downtown Boise the night before she was found dead. Witnesses said they saw her talking to a man, and they helped make a composite sketch. The break in the case came when a woman called investigators and pointed the finger at her boyfriend Erick Virgil Hall.

She said he had been acting strange and was obsessively reading. about Hanlon’s murder. Five days after the murder, he was questioned for hours and finally gave in, telling detectives he killed Hanlon.

His DNA was collected, and to no one’s surprise, it matched the DNA found on Henneman’s body three years earlier.

Legal Proceedings

According to KTVB, Hall faced trial for the murder of Henneman in 2004. The DNA evidence could not be refuted, and a jury convicted him of first-degree kidnapping, rape, and murder. A jury had his fate in their hands, and they sentenced him to death. He also received two life without parole sentences for kidnapping and rape charges.

He returned to court in 2007 and received another death sentence for Hanlon’s murder.

Death Behind Bars

After capital punishment was reinstated in the US, Idaho rarely used it. Between 1976 and 2010, they only executed one person, 31-year old Keith Eugene Wells in 1994. They got more active when they executed two men in a seven-month period between November 2011 and June 2012, but after that, they stopped doing them.

Hall was able to relax on death row for more than two decades with little to no fear that the punishment would be carried out. According to KTVB, the 54-year-old died of natural causes at a hospital on February 9th, 2026.