According to The Charley Project, Robert Hearin mailed $1 million to the 12 franchise owners listed in the ransom note, including Winn. After Hearin’s disappearance was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” an anonymous caller told investigators to keep looking into Winn. Per Missingsipi, he was arrested in March of 1989. It was found that Winn had purchased a van that matched the description of the one seen in Hearin’s neighborhood the day she disappeared only weeks earlier. Moreover, two witnesses reported seeing him near the Hearin home shortly before the kidnapping (via Unsolved Mysteries Wiki).
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WLBT states that Winn had also asked his paralegal to make up an alibi for him for the day of the kidnapping. Perhaps even more damning, he allegedly asked an ex-girlfriend to fly from Florida to Atlanta to mail a letter she later said was the one Mr. Hearin had received from his wife. In 1990, Winn was convicted of “conspiracy to commit kidnapping, extortion, and perjury.” He was sentenced to 19 years.
Despite this, he maintained his innocence and was released from prison in 2006. Per The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Hearin died two years after his wife’s disappearance. Hearin’s body has never been found and she was declared legally dead in 1991. No one has officially been charged with her kidnapping. A prosecutor later stated that although they clearly had their guy, they didn’t “solve the mystery” of what happened to Annie Laurie Hearin.
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