Instead, they both said that he was doing a decent job as a father, although in poor circumstances.ĭerek's foster parents regarded him as an increasing menace and wanted to send him to military school. Had their father been extremely abusive, it might have triggered Derek to defend himself and his brother, but not even the boys themselves claimed this. What bonds could they have formed in seven weeks, to make the one kill for the other? So, Alex and Derek would have been strangers to one another. He returned to his father, with whom Alex had lived just about all of his life. Only seven weeks before the murder, Derek was thrown out of his foster home, where he had lived for six years. But how could he have gotten his brother along on that?įor most of their lives, Alex and Derek had been separated. Alex had confessed something of the sort, also claiming to have pushed his brother to the murder. What appears most likely is that Alex feared that his father would stop him from pursuing his love affair with Chavis. Why would the boys kill their father, who seems not to have abused them? The circumstances around the murder remain confusing, although there's little doubt as to how the actual killing took place and the whodunit. It's an absurd punishment for washing clothes, so it seems he was in fact punished for other crimes from which he had been acquitted, or plainly because he was a convicted child molester.
For that he got the maximum penalty, 35 years in prison. Instead he was sentenced for hiding the boys for a couple of days after the murder and destroying evidence – washing the blood off their clothes. He ordered for mediation, in which the brothers admitted to third degree murder and were sentenced to 7 and 8 years.Ĭhavis was acquitted from accusations of having had sex with Alex.
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Later it was revealed that their jury believed the boys had been accessories to the murder, but that Chavis had been the one swinging the baseball bat.įor this and other reasons, the judge wisely decided to throw out the conviction of the boys, calling the prosecutor's double trial “unusual and bizarre”. It turned out he had been acquitted, whereas the boys were declared guilty to murder of the second degree. If he couldn't decide on who was the murderer, then how could he expect a jury to do that?Ĭhavis was tried first, but the jury's verdict was kept secret until the trial of the boys had finished. The prosecutor hardly believed that there were two equally true sequences of events, not in this universe. Chavis had previous been convicted of child molestation.įor some reason, the prosecutor chose to have two separate trials – one where Chavis was accused of the murder and the other where the boys were accused. Alex said that they had a sexual relation. The boys changed their story, now claiming that Rick Chavis had killed their father, in order to pursue his love affair with Alex, the youngest. As if compassion is perversion.īut it got more complicated, once trial procedures started. How can they be tried as adults when they are not? That's an idea stemming from a vindictive society, taking pride in refusing to consider circumstances – as if crimes are committed out of malice alone, as if some people are evil from birth. The prosecutor decided that the boys should be tried as adults, which is deplorable in itself. Then they set fire to the house and fled to the home of Rick Chavis, a 40 years old friend of their father, where they hid for a couple of days before turning themselves in to the police.
Derek, the slightly older brother, smashed his sleeping father's head repeatedly with an aluminum baseball bat.
It happened in Florida in November, 2001. Is it only in fiction we can reach solid conclusions? Their story raises more question than it answers. That's certainly true in the case of Alex and Derek King, who killed their father Terry when they were only 12 and 13. What really happened is rarely ascertained, nor why it did. That's what intrigues us about crime cases – real or fictional.