In a scary show called “The Pawn Shop Murders,” Final Moments on Oxygen looks into what happened to three people in a pawn shop in Danville in September 2013. It tells the story of pawn shop owners Mike and Angie Hockensmith and customer Dan Smith, who were both victims of a terrible crime. Andrew, the Hockensmiths’ 9-year-old son, was the only person who saw this horrible event. To solve the case, police had to look into the personal lives of speakers and find out what was going on with their grudges. tvacute looks at what happened after the tragedy and where is Suspect Kenneth Allen Keith Now.
What happened to Mike and Angela Hockensmith?
Mike and Angela Hockensmith were from Kentucky and they got married in December 2000.. They also owned the pawnshop ABC Gold, Games, and More together. They were deeply religious, and Mike was the youth minister at their neighborhood church. They were at their store with their two children, Andrew and Naomi, on the morning of September 20, 2013, when tragedy struck.
Daniel Smith, a regular customer, was also in the shop when someone broke in and started a horrible chain of events. Mike, Angela, and Daniel were all killed by the attacker. Andrew and Naomi, the kids, miraculously got away without getting hurt. Andrew, who is 9 years old, showed a lot of guts by taking his younger sister to the store office before calling 911 to protect her.
At the crime scene, they found Daniel Smith’s stolen briefcase, which had almost $40,000 in it. At first, cops thought it was a one-off incident. They described the suspect as a big man between the ages of 40 and 50 who might have been wearing a camouflage jacket and a fake beard. They got away in a gray or silver van, leaving the police to figure out what happened.
About four days after the horrible killings, Pastor Tracy Herald from Michigan called the police. Tracy said that his friend Kenneth Keith had a strange answer when asked about what he did that fateful morning. He knew the Hockensmiths and had read about the case online. The cops looked into Kenneth Allen Keith after getting this call, which raised suspicions.
Who killed Mike and Angela Hockensmith?
The pawnshop where the murders happened used to be run by Kenneth, a 48-year-old man with ties to the victims. Mike Hockensmith had been running the store for him, but later, the couple bought a share of the business with another man. The cops searched Keith’s home, workplace, and the church where he was pastor to find disturbing information.
Keith used more than one identity, and the searches showed that he made a fake DEA ID badge with a different name on it. His search history showed that he was looking for fake beards, background checks on the victims, and even ways to hide money with GPS coordinates. At home, maps showed the exact path of his silver van, which had been caught on security video.
As the cops looked more closely at Keith’s story that he had been to the Veterans Affairs hospital, they found problems. His claim that he had a meeting was shown to be false, and he had left his store a lot earlier than he had said. When asked if it was a theft, Keith shockingly said, “No, the Hockensmiths were not good people; they were evil people. They got what they deserved, and they cost me a lot of money.”
Where Is Suspect Kenneth Allen Keith Now?
Kenneth Allen Keith pleaded not guilty at first when he was charged with three counts of murder, burglary, and robbery. But a few months before his trial in August 2017, he changed his plea and agreed to a deal that put him in jail for life without the chance of parole for the murders. The robbery and theft charges each came with an extra 20 years in prison. Kenneth Allen Keith is currently serving his sentence at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. This brings an end to a very sad part of Danville’s past.
