Todd Kendhammer | Case of the Killer Pipe?

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the case of todd kendhammer just a reminder not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background in this case it's fairly brief i'll move to the timeline of the crime and then i'll offer my analysis this case takes place in la crosse county wisconsin it primarily involves two people todd kendhammer and his wife barbara both of them were born in march of 1970 the couple would marry in 1991. this takes us to the timeline of the crime we start at september 16 2016. the police responded to a call by kendhammer the call was placed at 806 a.m the police arrived at 809 am so just three minutes later kendhammer said he had left his home between 7 30 and 7 45 on his way to the town of holmen he was traveling northbound on county road m in his 2009 toyota camry with his wife in the passenger seat as he was driving a flatbed truck traveling southbound lost a metal pipe from its bed so the truck was coming toward them and this pipe fell out the pipe penetrated the front windshield of the passenger side of his vehicle so the camry and struck his wife barbara he turned onto another road then accidentally put the car in reverse and ended up in a ditch kendhammer had cuts on his hands and knuckles he tried to explain the cuts by saying he attempted to block the pipe as it was coming through the windshield an ambulance transported barbara to the hospital the police gave kendamer a ride to the hospital as well so he could see his wife on that drive kandhammer told the police that he was driving to a house to pick up a truck so he could replace the windshield in it he said the truck that was carrying the pipe looked like it had a makeshift steel flatbed on it it was dark blue or dark green it may have been black he did not see any markings on it and he didn't see the driver after the pipe struck his wife and he went into the ditch he went to the outside the vehicle and pulled the pipe out so he didn't push it out from the inside he walked around to the front of the car grabbed the pipe and pulled it out he then pulled barbara from the vehicle and attempted cpr for a few minutes before calling the police barbara died the next day at the hospital after identifying a number of inconsistencies which i will review in my analysis the police decided to charge kendhammer with murder on december 6 2016 he was arrested and charged with first degree intentional homicide he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years he could be released as early as 2048 now moving to my analysis the chances of a pipe flying through a window and killing somebody are pretty low but then again murder is relatively rare as well although it's more common than these magic flying pipes it is possible that todd kendhammer was actually innocent interestingly many of the friends and family members on both sides on his side and barbara's side do believe the story about the killer pipe let's take a look at the evidence both for and against the idea that todd kendhammer is guilty looking at the evidence for the case for his guilt is essentially based on the idea that kendhammer's explanation for how barbara died could not be true or is probably not true it is inconsistent with the evidence let's take a look at some of these inconsistencies the medical examiner said that barbara died from blunt force trauma but the pattern of injuries was inconsistent with being struck by a pipe for example among other damage she had injuries on the back of her head it appeared as though her neck had been compressed there were bruises on her biceps she had torn fingernails on two fingers and she had scratches on her neck also there was no glass on her body one would expect there to be glass because this pipe was supposed to come through the windshield when she was sitting in the seat and those glass fragments can be fairly small they tend to stay on clothing so this was a bit surprising kendhammer also had injuries including scratches on his neck and chest he explained them by saying that he works with glass all the time and he gets scratched up i guess he was working with glass without wearing a shirt the damage to his hands was hard to explain as i mentioned he said he tried to block the pipe that seems incredibly difficult to believe if an accent like that actually happened that pipe would be moving at an incredibly fast speed so he was driving along out of nowhere this pipe comes through and he has the reflexes to reach over and try to intercept the pipe as it comes through the passenger side of the windshield and strikes his wife those reflexes would be beyond even what an athlete would possess now we also talked about trying to push the pipe back out from the inside again ultimately he pulled the pipe out from the outside but he talked about trying to push it out like that could have damaged his knuckles maybe that's more believable than trying to block the pipe but still the damage on his knuckles looks a lot like he struck something with him perhaps like his wife like he was attacking another person as opposed to having contact with a pipe or the windshield normally when people push things with their hands they don't use their knuckles right so again just very hard to believe ken hammer's whole story about picking up the truck didn't check out either he said that he was going to pick up a truck from a guy named justin but the truck actually belonged to one of justin's friends named ben justin told the police that he had a discussion with kendhammer about replacing the windshield in ben's truck so this part was true but no arrangements were made to actually do the work ben used the truck on his farm and he decided not to get the windshield repaired legally he didn't need to get it repaired because it didn't go on public roads the last time that justin and kendhammer talked about the work was on august 23 2016 and again no commitment was made to complete the work ben the owner of the truck never talked to ken hammer so justin was the only one who ever talked to kent hammer and that discussion had concluded a few weeks before the next problem with kendhammer's story was this time frame would have made barbara late for work she started work at 8am he did not call the police until 806 am as i mentioned her co-worker said she was always on time barbara also failed to call her mother before 8 am that morning when she normally would have so she missed a call she usually would have made during a time when according to kendhammer she was still alive another motorist drove by kendhammer's camry around 802 or 804 am as the car was sitting in the ditch he remembered this because he thought that was a strange place for a person to leave a car that makes sense you see this car in the stitch most people wouldn't park a car there so that's going to stand out in somebody's memory now he said that when he passed the vehicle the passenger door was open and there was no damage to the windshield in addition nobody was around so he didn't see kendhammer he didn't see barbara nolan was there video surveillance captured kendhammer's vehicle on the road but no mysterious flatbed truck so the police went around to private residences one of those residences had a video surveillance system you could see kendhammer's vehicle the mysterious flatbed truck should have been captured by that same camera at some point but it was not this brings us to the reconstruction of the damage caused by the pipe the section of pipe that ostensibly struck barbara was 53 inches long and it weighed over 10 pounds in theory it killed her yet there was no blood on it experts concluded that the pipe traveled through the windshield when the passenger door was open they didn't find the glass in the door storage compartment and there was glass all over the passenger seat as if no one was sitting in the seat when the glass hit it this of course is also consistent with the finding that no glass was on barbara's body the location of the glass fragments on the gear shifter housing of the camry was consistent with the vehicle being in park instead of being in drive at the time when the glass spread throughout the cabin this is one of those things that kendhammer simply forgot when he was staging the scene he didn't think to put the parking brake on and put the vehicle in drive the pipe also hit the windshield at least one time prior to penetrating so the pipe comes off of the truck it hits the windshield it backs up and hits the windshield again it's very hard to imagine a pipe could ever do that according to the laws of physics the police could not recreate the accident they tried several times so they had a truck they pushed a pipe off of it it just didn't behave in the way that kendhammer was describing outside the inconsistencies with the story the prosecution also believed that kendhammer was controlling like in terms of his personality and his relationship with barbara he frequently communicated with barbara using his phone including voice and text he wanted to know where she was he wanted to know when she was going to meet him he seemed a little bit intense let's look at the evidence against the idea that kendhammer was guilty it would seem that everyone who knew kendhammer believed that he had a good relationship with barbara people didn't seem to think that he was controlling rather just loving and caring there wasn't really any motive for murder there were no reasons he would have been better off in any dimension with barbara dead so all of a sudden somebody who's happy in their marriage just kills their spouse that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense usually juries like to see a motive before convicting but of course they don't always need that kenhammer did not have a history of violence or a criminal record so again we see kind of an out of the blue theory of the crime usually in cases where a man ultimately kills his wife we see a pattern of escalating violence and other clues like the wife is telling friends that she is afraid of her husband the relationship is not in good shape she's worried nothing like that occurred in this situation the wife might make an effort to hide bruises and cuts caused by the husband perhaps there's a trip to the emergency room that's difficult to explain outside of domestic violence no reports of anything like that here the wife's mood might be depressed there might be feelings of hopelessness barbara was described as being cheerful and positive if kendhammer had beaten barbara to death where did the crime occur in theory it would have been at his residence but that didn't appear to be a crime scene it's hard to resolve this idea that he was intelligent enough to perfectly clean up the actual crime scene yet not intelligent enough to know that everybody would see through the deception involving the pipe story so in weighing all the evidence in this case what do i think happened here was he actually guilty i believe he was guilty by the legal standard that is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and i think he was actually guilty like in real life i think the only way to believe in his innocence would be to believe that he staged this accent to cover up for someone else who killed barbara that's how convinced i am that he in fact staged that accident this doesn't make a lot of sense though why would somebody stage an accident to protect another killer did he damage his hands trying to protect her from this assailant if this was the case why not just say what really happened why not just tell the police hey look there was this killer and i tried to protect barbara but i wasn't able to i guess the other theory could be suicide but it's really unclear how barbara could have self-inflicted those injuries and again why would he be covering up those actions why would that be so important to do he'd rather keep that secret and spend life in prison that doesn't make a lot of sense either so with all this again i do think he was guilty the damage to his body and her body was consistent with him beating her to death and attempting to strangle her maybe she attacked him first it's hard to know claiming that would have been a much better defensive strategy for him than creating the whole fantasy about the pipe he could have said that she hit him maybe even with some type of object or a weapon and he defended himself and he went too far he probably would have still been convicted of something but it may have been less serious than the crime he was convicted of moving on to the next question could his controlling behavior be consistent with homicide or a homicide that does not have warning signs again we see this crime was committed out of the blue at least that's the theory could somebody who's demanding and controlling behave in that way the answer to this question is maybe let's take a closer look kendhammer may have been demanding and controlling as far as his relationship with barbara but able to recognize how his behavior would be frowned upon by others therefore he was careful to control his image to make sure that no signs of abuse were detected it may have also been that his controlling nature created this environment where he would not be violent but once he passed beyond a certain point he could be extremely violent like he could control himself up until he couldn't his violent behavior didn't really run on a continuum it was all or nothing like a catastrophic failure of a balloon as opposed to a balloon leaking air slowly in a manner of speaking some people appear good until they are bad and when they appear bad they're really bad what is my theory of the crime in light of this idea that kendhammer was controlling the couple has some type of argument one that pushed kendhammer over the edge this was a typical again normally he can control his physical aggression he impulsively beat her and attempted to strangle her he sustained damage in the attack he was unwilling to accept any responsibility again he could have said that she attacked him first he could have made a much more believable story maybe he got the whole situation down to something like manslaughter but his all-or-nothing nature made it so that he wanted to be completely free of punishment this is consistent with his expression of controlling behavior the same demanding attitude that led to the murder also led to the cover-up so with all this in mind we see that kendhammer panics because he doesn't know how to completely escape the consequences he considers his options he then comes up with this far-fetched idea about the pipe he loads barbara into the car and takes the pipe with him maybe at this point he was still leaving his options open like thinking about simply dumping her body and claiming that she disappeared he places the car partially off the road in a place where he doesn't think there will be a whole lot of traffic and begins to stage the accident scene in his haste it never occurs to him to put barbara in the seat before punching the pipe through the window and it doesn't occur to him as i mentioned to put the car in drive with the parking brake applied he follows through with his ridiculous plan and never changes the story i doubt he ever will change his story moving to the last question why were so many family members behind him why do so many people believe that he's actually innocent probably because losing barbara was difficult and losing both of them would be unbearable it can also be that they simply cannot reconcile how somebody could appear nice and helpful yet commit this heinous crime maybe believing that would introduce an uncertainty and a lack of safety into their lives which could not be tolerated so those are my thoughts on the case of todd kendhammer please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 90,676

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Id: 5zHTkb6H6v4

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 06 2021