9-Year-Old Hid with Baby Sister After Watching Parents Be Murdered | Andrew Hockensmith

Now part of the Dark Cast Network. Welcome to Indie Podcasts with a dark side. At 9:17am on September 20, 2013, a uh, 911 dispatcher in Danville, Kentucky answered a call from a terrified nine year old boy whispering from inside his parents pawn shop. 911, where’s your emergency? Come here. I’ll work with you because I’m afraid. Please. Hurt. Okay, they’re coming. Okay. His name was Andrew Hockensmith and he was hiding in the back office with his 13 month old sister Naomi while a killer was somewhere inside the building. Where’s the robber? Where is he right now? Come here quickly because I’m afraid. Please. Hurt. Okay, they’re coming. Okay. The dispatcher could hear Naomi crying in the background as Andrew tried to stay quiet and begged for help. Police arrived just six minutes later. When they got there, the front door was locked so officers had to break the glass to get inside. What they found was three bodies lying in a pool of blood. Welcome lambs. Welcome to Love and Heartbreak. To Homicide, your weekly true crime podcast telling you cases of relationships that turn to murder. I am your host Ky and in today’s episode I’m telling you a case of greed and utter jealousy. But before you get back to the case, let me remind you to go ahead and subscribe to Love and Murder on whatever platform you’re on. You can also subscribe on the patreon for free Patreon.com/loveandmurder as a free part of the LaM Patreon fam, you do get some bonuses but if you want more, if you want to be a voice of the victim, if you want to help keep Love and Murder listener funded and if you want bonus episode case files and the after show, then go ahead and join the lam fam at one of our bonus tiers starting at only $3 a month and above. Patreon.com/loveandmurder now let’s get back to this case of love and murder. Before that morning, the Hockensmith family had what people around them described as a happy, faith filled life. Michael Hockensmith and Angela Hockensmith, who most people called her Angie, had been married since December 2000. They two children, Andrew and Naomi and were deeply involved in their church. And Michael served as a part time youth pastor to better support them financially. Michael worked at a pawn shop called ABC Gold Games and more a uh, business he eventually became co owner of with a man they said was named Steven Devine. The family was so close that Michael and Angie even homeschooled Andrew right there inside the shop. To him, the pawn shop wasn’t just where his dad worked. It was part of his childhood. Quote, the pawn shop that was basically my home. It was basically a playground. I absolutely loved it. The man who first connected them to the pawn shop was named Kenneth Allen Keith, known to most people as Allen. He was a well known pastor in Pulaski county, someone people trusted. Someone who stood in pulpits on Sundays preaching to families in the same community where he also ran a side business buying precious metals. Andrew even looked at him like family and thought of him as almost like an uncle. But Alan was living a very different life behind that image. Before ABC Gold became Michael and Steve’s business, Alan had been tied to the pawn shop when it operated under the name of King’s Corner. In the summer of 2013, that’s when the ownership changed. Steve revealed that Alan had originally supposed to have been his partner in the new business. But that partnership never happened. Instead, Steve chose Michael and Angie. Allen believed that they had taken that business from him. That resentment only got worse because of another man, Daniel Smith, known as Dan. Dan was a regular customer, a 60 year old gold buyer who traveled a specific route to pawn shops carrying a briefcase full of cash. Michael and Angie had started doing business with Dan instead of Allen because Dan gave them better financial deals. To Allen, it felt personal. He believed they had cost him money, business and status. On the morning of September 20th, Dan arrived at the shop around 9am to do business with Michael like he normally did. Michael, Angie, Andrew and Naomi were already there. Not long after, Allen walked in wearing a camouflage jacket and a fake beard. Even as a child, Andrew immediately noticed something was off. He remembered thinking the man looked, quote, weird. Then the man pulled a gun and said, get on the ground. Allen had come prepared. He was using a makeshift silencer, uh, on a.22 caliber weapon. So when he started firing, Andrew said he thought the noises sounded like darts. Instead of gunshots. Allen fired eight times. Andrew watched his father beg him to stop. He actually remembered Michael’s final words. Quote, dad was like, please stop. In those final moments, Angie focused on her children. Quote, my mom, she told me to go in the back with my sister. He grabbed Naomi and took her to the back office, trying to keep her quiet while they hid. As they sat there terrified, Andrew heard four more shots and then everything went silent. That’s when Andrew made the 911 call. When officers arrived, they had no idea if they were walking into an active shooter situation. One officer later said, quote, as I made my entry, all I Was thinking about was, is the shooter still here? Another said, quote, I don’t care how many times you’ve done it or seen it, there’s nothing that truly prepares you for this. Inside, they found Michael, Angie, and Dan all dead, each shot multiple times. But something about the seam didn’t immediately make sense. The register had not been touched with $1,000 still in it. Their wallets were all still there. Now, if this was a robbery, why leave all of that behind? The only thing missing was Dan’s briefcase, which investigators believed contained nearly $40,000. That made detectives stop and ask if a, uh, robbery was. Was really the motive at all. One investigator later said, quote, it made me start to think that the victims had been targeted for a reason other than robbery. Another admitted, quote, we’re like, what if it was a hit? Was it on Dan Smith? We really were kind of baffled at this point who was even the target. At first, all police had was a description of a heavyset man in a camouflage jacket with possibly between 40 and 50 years old, wearing a fake beard, and possibly driving a gray or silver van. That wasn’t really much to go on. Then about four days later, there was a break in the case. A pastor in Michigan named Tracy Harold contacted authorities after having a strange phone call with Allen. Tracy had read about the murders online and had reached out to Allen because he knew that he was local and Allen knew the Hockensmiths. But when Allen got on the phone before Tracy even asked any questions, Allen started giving him a detailed explanation of where he had been that morning. So basically, the call was like, hello? Hey, yeah, Allen, it’s Tracy. Oh, yeah, guess what? So, quote, I was in Danville to pick up my wife’s prescriptions, and Tracy’s like, okay, I’m okay. That’s not what I even called for. Tracy later said, when I called Allen, it just kept getting weirder and weirder. Security footage did show him at a pharmacy in Danville at 9:24am M. Just eight minutes after Andrew’s 911 call. At first, um, that looked like it might clear him. But detectives checked the timeline and realized that the drive from the pawn shop to the pharmacy was. Was absolutely possible. Basically, they did their job. They didn’t just say, oh, yeah, okay, well, it looks like he had an alibi, Unlike that one episode I did when police came to the house, um, because people were calling about a smell, about a horrible smell. They went to the house, and they asked a woman what that smell was. And she was like, oh, yeah, there’s A, uh, dead raccoon under the porch. And they were like, oh, okay. Well, bye. Allen had also tried using a VA Hospital appointment as part of his alibi. But investigators quickly found he never actually had an appointment there and had left his own store much earlier than he originally claimed. That, combined with this strange phone call, made him the center of the investigation. Search warrants were executed at his house, his church, and his own business in Somerset. What they found connected everything. There was a homemade silencer kit. There were.22 caliber shell cases that matched the ones at the crime scene. There was a target he had been practicing on. Investigators found maps showing the exact route his silver van had taken, matching surveillance footage. They found a fake DEA identification badge with his photo under a different name. His search history on his computer included, quote, fake beards, background checks on the victims, and, quote, how to bury money with GPS coordinates. The only thing he was literally missing was a neon sign pointing to him saying, I did it. I, uh, did it. I did it. Like, what the frick? He had everything. Like, if you commit a crime, which I’m not telling you to do, but if you commit a crime, make sure you have every single piece of evidence on and around your person as m much of it as possible. Tell everyone you know and everyone you don’t. They also discovered just how much of a double life he had been living. At least three different groups of people knew him by different names. Some people who had known him for years didn’t even know he was a pastor, and others didn’t know he was married. Then there was his own words while talking to Tracy when she’d asked if maybe Mike and Angie was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Allen said, no, The Hockensmiths were not good people. They were evil people. They got what they deserved. They cost me a lot of money. At the same time, publicly, he was pretending to grieve on social media. After the murders, he posted, quote, no sleep at all. I am in shock right now over the loss of three great people. I also knew the third man. He was a business client and a good friend. On October 9, 2013, Allen was arrested at his business in Somerset. He was charged with three counts of murder, along with robbery and burglary. Wait, aren’t robbery and burglary the same thing? I could look it up, but if you know the difference, uh, let me know the difference between robbery and burglary in the comments below. For the community, finally having a name brought some relief. Pastor Brett Benton said, quote, we haven’t went to Trial or anything like that. But just to have a name is defin definitely relieving. But at the same time, others struggled with the idea that a man who preached on Sundays could commit something like this. One person said, quote, but to be able to commit murders on Friday and then get up on the pulpit Sunday morning and preach, you’re going, wait a minute, that’s not a real pastor. Now, even after the arrest, the case didn’t move quickly. Allen initially pleaded. What do you think he pleaded? Lambs. Let me hear it. Exactly. Not guilty. Even though he had every piece of evidence you could ever imagine that somebody could have pointing directly at him. What do police call it? An orgy of evidence to the point where some people are like this. This can’t even be real. That’s how much evidence was there. And he still had the audacity to plead not guilty. And, uh, because prosecutors were seeking the death penalty and everyone knew this was going to be a major trial, the state was building a strong case around the forensic evidence. The.22 caliber shell cases, the homemade silencer, the maps, the fake Baird searches, the route his silver van took, and the digital evidence showing planning and premeditation, basically everything. They even used his own words, including what he told Tracey and what he later admitted privately, which we’ll get into. Basically, he wasn’t done spewing evidence. The legal process hit delays, especially in 2014 when Allen’s first attorney died. Uh, that pushed things back even further, leaving Michael and Angie’s family, and especially Andrew and Naomi, stuck waiting for years while the case dragged on. By that point, Andrew was only 10 years old and trying to figure out how to live with what he had seen. That same year, he started finding his own way to process it. And in September 2014, Andrew published a book called My Hero. He wrote it and illustrated it himself, using drawings to work through the trauma of that day and the loss of his parents. One of the drawings showed a crying stick figure representing the moment he looked out from the office and saw his parents lying on the ground. So I do have. I’m going to post just like one picture from the book, uh, and I will cite it with the website I got it from, but that is going to be in the Patreon, um, which is part of, like the case extras that you do get at the $3 a month tier and above. So if you want to see any of the case extras, I usually have pictures in there, videos in there, and stuff like this. Then just join the patreon at the $3 a month, tier or above Patreon.com/loveandmurder the book opens with the words, once upon a time, there was a kid in his family. This is only the beginning. He also organized and hosted a vigil to honor Michael and Angie and bring the community together. When he talked about his father, he said, quote, my dad, he made things look so easy. He was truly an amazing person. As the years passed, Allen eventually admitted the truth. But not publicly. Well, not at first, anyway. He confessed the murders to his wife and to his attorney. Facing the reality of the evidence against him and the possibility of a death sentence, he changed course. Prosecutors also wanted to spare the family, especially Andrew and Naomi, from having to sit through a long capital murder trial and relive everything again in court. So they offered Allen a plea deal. In exchange for his guilty plea, the death penalty would be removed from the table, and Allen accepted it. In May 2017, he changed his plea to guilty, and that ended the idea of a trial. Then on May 26, 2017, which happened to be Andrew’s 13th birthday, Allen was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the three murders. On top of that, he received two additional 20 year sentences for robbery and burglary. Allen was sent to the Easton, Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty, Kentucky, where he remains today serving those sentences. For Andrew, none of that changed what he had lived through. He had watched his parents die and then had to grow up carrying that memory while also protecting Naomi. His grandmother, Barbara Lewis, said, uh, what so many people were thinking, what had they done so bad that they deserve to die. I could not comprehend why anyone in their right mind would want to hurt either one of them. Now, as an adult and recently engaged as of 2021 when I last saw this, Andrew talks about finding comfort in the fact that he and Naomi carry their parents with them. People tell him all the time that he looks just like Michael. He said, quote, I’ve been told you’re a spitting image of your dad. Naomi, she looks just like my mom. My parents will always live on within me. And that is the case of someone who just couldn’t figure out any other business ways to get money. So he decided that he was going to kill his former client instead of trying to entice him back over steal $40,000, which would last, what, a month, and kill a mother and a father in front of their children. And I don’t know what his plan was after that. Like, you weren’t going to have the business. Now the client is gone, you’re not going to make money from that client. Like what was your plan? You would still. Even if you got away with it, you would still be back at square one, which is not making the money that you thought you were going to be making. What was your plan? Greed and jealousy. You just let it consume you and now you have nothing. Now you’re in prison and your money that you were going after is just. Where is it? Where is it? Your wife? Your family? You left these two kids without parents. What was the frickin plan? And I could tell you’re a, ah, moron because I mean, I guess you thought you had some plan figured out what your plan was was to leave an orgy of evidence, like I said before, for the police to find. So good job. I guess your plan worked. Idiot. I feel really bad for Andrew and Naomi and that Andrew had to go through this. I couldn’t even imagine. I’ll try and look up uh, uh, the book, see if I could find anything on it. If I do, then you could find that in the show notes below. Also, if I don’t find where you could purchase it, then obviously the link won’t be below. But what did you think about this case? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. You already heard my thoughts. This Allen guy was just the ultimate piece of trash with no plan, no forethought, no no nothing. All he saw was as far as his nose. And I don’t even think he saw that far. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. And that is all that I have for you today. We don’t have an after show today, but you will have a week of episodes this week. I did say normally I’ll put out a Monday episode and you know, here and there I’ll put out episodes on Wednesdays and Fridays. Well, this week you have a, uh, slew of episodes coming to you. So stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your support. And as I end each full episode, I want to remind you that it’s. Say it with me now. Ah, all love and no murder, y’. All. Thank you for the support and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.

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Sources: (what the sources say)

https://youtu.be/ecPaHxx7Nzk?si=YFsXEXkjgKcciXwi (911 sound clips)
https://www.wave3.com/story/23650476/minister-arrested-in-connection-to-triple-murder/
https://www.wave3.com/story/26562372/son-of-murdered-danville-store-owners-shares-his-story-in-new-book/
https://thecinemaholic.com/mike-and-angela-hockensmith-murders-where-is-kenneth-keith-now/