Posted on 08/25/2002 4:58:27 PM PDT by ItisaReligionofPeace
The Associated Press
PENSACOLA - It looked at first like an open-and-shut case against Alex and Derek King, ages 12 and 13, and they appeared destined to spend the rest of their lives in prison for murdering their father with an aluminum baseball bat.
More than four months after the Nov. 26 killing, the brothers changed their story. After hearing secret testimony from the boys, a grand jury in April also indicted a convicted child molester, Ricky Chavis, for the murder of Terry King, 40, at his home in nearby Cantonment.
Two juries will be selected Monday to decide whether Chavis, one or both of the King brothers or all three are guilty in a case that has become a focal point for opponents of prosecuting and sentencing children as adults.
If convicted, the only penalty possible is life without parole for all three defendants. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for Chavis, 40, a mechanic and handyman. The boys are too young.
Chavis lied in two earlier statements before admitting to Escambia County sheriff's investigators that he picked up the boys after the killing, hiding them from police before turning them in the next day.
Linda Walker, the boys' maternal grandmother, said she doesn't talk to them about the case. She surmised that Chavis, a friend of the boys' father, convinced them they could take blame and avoid punishment because of their youth.
"They found out they wouldn't get away with it," Walker said. "We knew they were hiding something."
In statements to investigators a day after the killing, Derek said he swung the bat at his father's head about 10 times as he slept in a recliner. Alex said the killing was his idea because the boys were afraid their father, a single parent who worked as a printer, would spank them for running away from home.
"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 told deputies.
Alex said it "sounded like wood cracking or hitting concrete." He told investigators he could see his father's brain through a hole in his head.
The boys said they set the house on fire, caught a ride with a stranger and hid out in the woods until the next day when they got in touch with Chavis, who picked them up.
The stories about the stranger and hiding out in the woods were fabrications.
Chavis later admitted to investigators the boys called him from near their home immediately after the killing. He said he picked them up, took them to his Pensacola home and washed their clothes.
He also disclosed something else the boys left out: They had gone to his house in Pensacola when they ran away from home 10 days before the killing.
Chavis' home, behind a six-foot wooden fence topped with electrified wire, was a neighborhood hangout where children played video games and watched a big-screen television.
Their parents were unaware Chavis had pleaded no contest to charges of having sex with two runway boys, ages 13 and 14, in 1984.
Before lawyers were put under a gag order in February, Alex's attorney, James Stokes, said Chavis was his young client's "adult lover."
Inside the charred King house, investigators found a note Alex had written saying he admired Chavis and wanted to be just like him.
"Before I met Rick I was straight but now I am gay," Alex wrote.
Chavis has been in the Escambia County Jail, where the King brothers also have been held separated from adult inmates, since Dec. 11 when he was charged with evidence tampering and being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Upon hearing the King boys' testimony, grand jurors later indicted him on charges of first-degree murder, arson and lewd and lascivious sexual battery of a child 12 or younger.
Michael Rollo, a lawyer for Chavis, said at a pretrial hearing Thursday that the brothers told grand jurors they were outside their house when their father was slain and that Chavis later confessed to them he was the killer.
The boys are to testify against Chavis, so Rollo was given the grand jury testimony to help prepare a defense. He was allowed to disclose it while arguing a motion to dismiss the murder charge against his client, which was denied.
Chavis is facing separate trials Oct. 21 on the sex charge and Nov. 4 on the accessory and evidence tampering counts.
In the murder-arson trials, one jury will begin hearing Chavis' case Tuesday. When it is done, the second jury will hear the King brothers' case. The Chavis verdict will be sealed until the boys' trial is completed, probably next week.
The Rev. Thomas Masters, a juvenile justice reform advocate, says he plans to attend hoping to bring attention to his cause and persuade prosecutors to try the King brothers in juvenile court or give them immunity for testifying against Chavis.
Masters is pastor to Nathaniel Brazill at New Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Riviera Beach. Nathaniel was 13 in May 2000 when he fatally shot Lake Worth teacher Barry Grunow. He was convicted as an adult of second-degree murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Chavis insists he is innocent but worried jurors will believe the boys, not him.
"They're children, and most adults are weak to children," he told the Pensacola News Journal.
"It ain't true that I was there," Chavis said. "That's a setup. That's all I can tell you. They were coached into it."
Photos by The Associated Press Derek King, 14, left, and his brother Alex, 13, are charged with murdering the boys' father, Terry King.
I dunno. I knew I wanted to do naughty things to girls since I was about 9-10. There was a teacher in our school who molested some boys, but the interesting thing was out of 30-40 kids who were over at his house (he was a popular teacher, this was back in the 70s) he only put the moves on the two kids he molested. I think he knew which kids would be receptive, and which wouldn't. I suspect the kid in this story was *already*..."that" way.
I don't know- if I'd been seduced by an older female when I was 14-15, would that have been recruitment in the heterosexual "lifestyle"?
I suppose people differ in the degree to which they incline one way or another, and perhaps "fence sitters" might be swayed, but based on my memories/experiences I have a hard time imagining a male interesting me in sex as a young boy
regardless, it's a very sad situation.
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