Brothers Convicted Of Killing Father
Two teenage brothers, who have quickly became objects of national fixation, were convicted yesterday by a jury in Pensacola, Fla., of murdering their sleeping father with an aluminum baseball bat and setting fire to his home to cover up the crime.
The cases of Derek King, 14, and Alex King, 13, were remarkable both because of the grisly nature of the crime and because prosecutors used a different theory of the killing in a separate trial held last week. The verdict in the first trial was sealed until after the end of the boys' cases, when a Florida state judge revealed that jurors had cleared Ricky Chavis, 40, of murder and arson charges. Alex King has said Chavis, a convicted child molester, is his lover.
Alex King, wearing a dress shirt and tie that seemed out of sorts with his baby face, leaned affectionately against the shoulder of his attorney as he waited for the verdicts in his case to be read. He stared straight ahead without showing emotion as a court clerk announced that he had been found guilty of second-degree murder. His brother, also wearing a tie, lowered his head, then sat down and wiped his eyes.
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In the packed courtroom, the boys' mother -- Kelly Marino, who had not lived with them for seven years -- sobbed. The scene played out live on national television because cameras are allowed inside Escambia County court.
The dual trials traced a chilling arc of violence and child abuse in Cantonment, a Florida Panhandle town north of Pensacola.
The boys lived there with their father, a frequently unemployed print-shop worker named Terry Lee King. King, 40, reported them missing in late November and even called the local newspaper to complain that sheriff's deputies weren't doing enough to find them.
Later, investigators learned the boys had run away from home and were staying with Chavis. Alex King, who was 12 when his father was killed last November, told sheriff's deputies that he loved Ricky Chavis and wanted to live at Chavis's Pensacola home because he could smoke marijuana there and stay up late.
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"Before I met Rick I was straight but now I'm gay," Alex King wrote in a note found by attorneys.
Chavis drove the boys to turn themselves in one day after Terry King's body was found in his smoldering home. They confessed, unspooling harrowing details.
"I hit him once and then I heard him moan and then I was afraid that he might wake up and see us so I just kept on hitting him," Derek King told investigators, according to a transcript.
The bludgeoning made "sounds like wood cracking or hitting concrete," Alex King said.
The boys were placed in a high-rise jail on the outskirts of Pensacola to await trial. But their confession did little to end the mystery of their case; in some ways their remarks added to the intrigue. The boys had mentioned only occasional spankings -- nothing to suggest that they would want to kill their father -- and friends of Terry King said he had treated the children well.
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In jail, the boys shared a cell, where they played games and watched television. At one point, according to the Pensacola News Journal, jailers found a note from Chavis to Alex that read: "I L U forever. Be strong and patient. I'm still with you. Watch who you talk to. I will always be there for you, nothing changed, everything is still the same, even in court."
The case turned sharply in April when the boys appeared before a grand jury and changed their account, saying they hid in Chavis's car trunk while Chavis killed their father. Relatives speculated that the boys had been trying to cover up for Chavis all along.
"They found out they wouldn't get away with it," their grandmother, Linda Walker, said. "We knew they were hiding something."
The change in the boys' story led to the indictment of Chavis and to his separate trial. The rare legal maneuver by prosecutors -- separate trials in the same case based on contradictory theories -- drew criticism from legal experts.
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Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor, said prosecutors should have taken to trial only the cases of those they thought were guilty.
"It's on the verge of being unethical that they would pursue contradictory theories when they are relatively sure that the evidence points to one as opposed to another defendant," Slobogin told the Associated Press.
The ghastly saga is far from over. Chavis faces a trial on child molestation charges this fall and the King boys -- the children who once consumed his world and later tried to pin a murder on him -- await a sentencing hearing that could send them to prison for the rest of their lives.
Alex King, 13, waits with defense attorney James Stokes for a Pensacola, Fla., jury to return a verdict. Alex was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his father. Derek King, 14, and his brother initially confessed to killing their father by beating him with a baseball bat.
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