THE ICE COLD PINT KILLER
Pub lockdown drove mild-mannered plumber to murder six people
NO MORE BEER: Killer faces Death Penalty
AS Tom Kendrick sat slumped at the table, his checked shirt still caked in blood, sickened detectives repeated one question...
“Why, Tom? Why did you kill them?” Kendrick looked the cops in the eye, one after the other then said quietly: “I just wanted a beer – I wanted an ice- cold pint of beer...” At that moment, quiet Tom Kendrick became the ICP Killer – the Ice Cold Pint Killer.
Just two hours earlier they’d been called out to what will almost certainly be their most extraordinary job during COVID- 19 lockdown in the usually quiet, academic city of Durham in North Carolina.
“Please, come quickly,” whispered a terrified woman’s voice to the emergency services operator. “He’s killing everyone.”
Cops rushed to Eno River State Park, a public area with 4,000 acres of hiking trails, canoe launches, picnic areas and historic structures.
And, as the police found when they arrived, the home of six fresh corpses.
Sam Meadway, a 66- year- old electrician, lay dead alongside his wife of 32 years, ex- teaching assistant Leena, 63.
Both of their throats had been cut. Nearby lay the body of Noreen Moran and her childhood friend, Ellie Pearson.
Both of them just 58 – and both lying
KILLER: How local media reported the slayings deadly still with knives sticking out from their hearts.
And, across the path, were two more. Two men left sprawled on the grass – one with a shard of glass still lodged into the side of his neck, the other with a deep gash in his stomach.
They were John Nicholson, 24, and friend Carl Stonehouse, 25, who police would later learn were have- a- go- heroes who died trying to save the others.
Eyewitness Barbara Hall, 38 – the woman who had called police – described what she had seen during her day’s exercise hour.
“People were wandering through the park minding their own business and observing social distancing,” she said.
“I was just enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine.
“Then I heard what I suppose you might call a scuffle, and a shout, and I turned around to look.
“An elderly woman was trying to stop a young man from assaulting her husband. “Everything happened so quickly. “What seemed to be a stupid argument suddenly turned horrific – I saw a flash of something, then heard a cry as a gush of blood suddenly shot out.
“The woman started to scream but then the killer twisted around and slit her throat, too.”
Barbara, who normally works in one of Durham’s libraries, then watched as the man later to be identified as Kendrick leapt on best friends Noreen and Ellie, who were cowering in horror.
“He was like a wild animal,” she added. “He pulled what looked like kitchen knives from his belt – he had loads of them – and stabbed both of them at once.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.
“As they fell to the floor the two young men tried pouncing on him, but he just took them out, too.
“Then he just walked away a little bit, sat down on the path, put the knives on the floor and his head in his hands and began to sob.
“That was when I called the police. “They arrived very quickly, and he didn’t resist arrest. But it was such a bloodbath they Tasered him anyway.
“Damn good idea if you ask me – he must be a madman.”
Even seasoned detectives were left speechless with horror when they realised the extent of Kendrick’s rampage.
One officer said: “I heard one detective
SNAPPED: Tom Kendrick told cops he missed going to the pub
– a hard guy who started his career in New York – sobbing in the toilet after he’d seen all that gore.”
Under North Carolina law, Kendrick, 64, an out- of- work plumber, now faces the death penalty after he was charged with multiple first degree murders as “the capital felony was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”
But worse was to come when Kendrick was eventually grilled by detectives in the police station interview room.
A police source said: “He shook his head, looked down at the floor, and said, ‘ I just wanted an ice cold beer. I just wanted a pint of ice cold beer’.
“And that was it. He said he was missing his boozer so much during lockdown he just snapped in the heat.
“All of that violence, bloodshed and death because he didn’t have a cold one in the palm of his hand.
“The irony is that he’ll probably never, ever have a beer again.”
Local media interviewed one of Kendrick’s drinking buddies, Bobby Johnson, 52, who told them: “I was sat at home, knocking back a few cold ones, when the TV news came on.
“There was all this commotion about some loon freaking out during lockdown and going on a killing spree up there in Eno Park.
“Bodies and blood all over the place. Well, it near enough made me spew, I can tell you.
“But then they named the suspect as my old buddy Tom from the local bar – well, I almost dropped my god damn beer!
“I’ve sat next to that guy at the bar, putting the world to rights, for near on 10 years I’d say. But I don’t never remember him saying he’d like to go slashing and stabbing folk up like that, no sir.
“Lockdown done some queer things to people, I tell you… real queer things.”
Now, instead of his much yearned- for dimly lit bar, Kendrick faces years on brightly lit Death Row before eventually receiving a lethal injection.
The police source added: “Like this lockdown isn’t bad enough – I don’t think I’ll ever forget this day.”