Idaho death row inmate Erick Hall dies of natural causes
BOISE, Idaho (KIFI) — Erick Hall, the convicted murderer behind two of Idaho’s most notorious cold cases, will not face the state’s execution chamber. The Idaho Department of Correction announced Tuesday that Hall passed away from natural causes at a local hospital on Feb. 9, 2026, at 9:58 p.m.
At the time of his death, Hall was serving two death sentences for the first-degree murders of Lynn Henneman and Cheryl Ann Hanlon in Ada County.
The Crimes that Haunted Boise
In 2000, Hall raped and murdered flight attendant Lynn Henneman, originally from Bozeman, Montana. Adding to the tragedy, the murder took place less than a month after the young flight attendant had married Walter Us.
According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Henneman was in Boise on a layover for United Airlines when she went missing for two weeks before her body was discovered in the river on Oct. 7, 2000.
It unfortunately took yet another tragedy to solve the case. In March 2003, a teenager found the body of Cheryl Ann Hanlon of Boise along a trail in the foothills. According to reports by the Spokesman Review, Hanlon had been raped and beaten so severely that she looked like the victim of a traffic accident.
The breakthrough came after a witness reported seeing Hanlon walking with a man in downtown Boise the night before her death. The resulting composite sketch led to Hall’s arrest. Once in custody, investigators used DNA evidence to definitively link the then-transient Hall to the 2000 murder of Henneman.
Hall spent decades fighting the sentences. In 2018, he appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, claiming he had received an unfair trial. However, the justices upheld the death sentence in a majority ruling, stating Hall had been provided with adequate representation and a fair legal process.
