The white Florida man found guilty Saturday after shooting dead a “thuggish” black teenager in a dispute over loud rap music was a raging bully who beat and terrorized his ex-wives – even holding a gun to the head of one and forcing her to have sex with strangers in a swingers club just hours after they were married – a former neighbor told investigators.
Two former wives of Michael Dunn, 47, routinely sought refuge in the home of Port St. Lucie next-door-neighbor Charles Hendrix after allegedly being physically and verbally abused, Hendrix revealed in a series of taped interviews with police and the defense lawyer for 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who was gunned down by Dunn at a Jacksonville gas station in 2012.
“They would come to my house crying, claiming they are scared to death of this individual,” Hendrix said of Dunn’s first wife, Sara, from Mexico, and the second, Clara, from Colombia.
Hendrix said he saw the abuse first-hand, and recounted one incident in which Sara showed up at his home with a bruised face and swollen lip. “She had come to me crying that they had a real bad row about drugs and that he threatened to blow her brains out,” Hendrix said.
And Clara – who wed Dunn in a civil ceremony at a UPS store – told Hendrix that her dastardly husband forced her to have sex with strangers at a Fort Lauderdale swingers’ joint the night after they married.
“She told me she did not want to but was too afraid [to say no,]” Hendrix said on the tape, a copy of which was obtained from a member of Davis’s legal team by MailOnline.com.
“She said the night after she got married, ‘he [Dunn] took me to a switch club.’’’
Hendrix’s wife, who was also interviewed, added. “When I asked what that was, she said it was a place where couples switch partners. She said it was disgusting.”
The chilling testimony, declared inadmissible by a judge, was not presented to jurors at Dunn’s racially-tinged murder trial.
Dunn was convicted Saturday on three counts of attempted murder.
But the Jacksonville jury deadlocked on whether Dunn was guilty of first degree murder of the unarmed Davis, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial on that count.
Davis and three friends were playing loud music in Davis’s SUV when they crossed paths with Dunn, a software engineer, and his newest girlfriend at a gas station in November 2012. Dunn asked the kids to turn the music down – and then opened fire on the group, ripping off 10 shots into the car and in what he claimed was self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” law.
Davis was hit once and died later at a hospital. Cops said he had been unarmed, and no gun was ever found in his car.
Dunn drove away from the scene after the deadly ambush.
The shooting was compared to the slaying of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old slain by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.
In jailhouse letters between Dunn and his daughter Rebecca — given to the jury and publicly released by prosecutors in October — Dunn comes off as a raging racist, railing against blacks.
Hendrix said Dunn often ranted against minorities, saying they were taking over the country.
“He believed blacks and Hispanics were below white people,” Hendrix told investigators.
In one jailhouse letter, written last July, Dunn fumed: “The jail is full of blacks and they ALL act like thugs …This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these f—king idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”
“The more time I am exposed to these [black] people the more prejudiced against them I become,” he said in another missive.
Dunn also compared himself to Zimmerman, and said he had “a much stronger case of self-defense’’ than Martin’s killer.
According to Hendrix, Dunn used the threat of deportation to try and control wives Sara, who had a son, and Clara, who had two daughters. Both women were permanent residents but didn’t have US citizenship.
Hendrix told investigators that the kids were “terrified of their step-dad and avoided him” by staying at Hendrix’s home, according to MailOnline.
Hendrix and his wife now live in Georgia, but said they were not surprised when they learned Dunn had been charged with murder.
“I knew this was going to happen sooner or later,” Hendrix said. “I had an inkling what he was capable off. I knew sooner or later this guy was going to kill someone. He thought the gun made him safe — that is the attitude he had.”
“The gun was his best friend.”