[producer speaking]
[Derek] I just knew that,
you know, this is bad.
I've never located a body that was sitting upright,
it was really unnerving.
[Derek speaking]
[Mollye] People looked at those angelic faces and thought,
"Did they really do it?"
[Alex speaking]
As we dug deeper, it became clear that there was
a sinister puppet master at the heart of all of it.
It's crazy, a 12 year old and a man his age.
Then we find this trap door.
The boy had written love notes.
They explained to us what a pedophile was.
He was sort of a pawn in this terrible story.
[theme music playing]
[theme music ends]
[Derek] I haven't seen a lot of these before.
I'm glad that they're all here.
Here's my dad with my brother and me.
I Was so glad to see there's so many of us,
of my brother, uh, Alex and I.
If I could go back and change things,
what would I have done different?
Questions like that,
I can't change the past.
I can't undo anything that's been done.
I have to continue to grow and move forward.
There's got to be a reason bigger than me that I have been
given a second chance at life.
[Janine] People started covering this story nearly 25 years ago,
and it shocked our readers.
It's a story about two young brothers facing hardships
most children and adults can only imagine.
But it was the violent death of their father that would
define their lives more than anything else.
It happened in a small Florida town called Cantonment,
just 10 minutes from the Alabama state line.
Terry King was a quiet, thoughtful person.
He had a great smile.
And I really respected his devotion to his children.
[Mollye] Terry King was a man of faith.
He was very involved in the Pentecostal church.
He had grown up in the Pentecostal church.
His dad had been a preacher himself.
So those conservative values -- that work hard, pay your bills,
take care of your family -- that was very important to him.
In 1985, 21-year-old Terry King meets
and falls in love with 17-year-old Janet French.
When Janet first brought Terry home, they were so in love.
All of us wanted Janet and Terry to be together and be happy.
Terry and Janet have two boys together, Derek in 1988
and Alex a year later.
Derek and Alex were adorable children.
They were just beautiful.
Derek was so loving, always giving you a hug,
saying, "I love you."
Derek also was kind of a handful when he was little,
and Alex was a little more reserved.
I guess he was more like Terry. Very quiet and thoughtful.
Just two very different children.
Terry was a good father.
He didn't make very much money, but he worked long hours
to try and provide for his family.
Friends and family that we spoke with
paint a picture of Terry as an intelligent young man.
He was struggling to pay the bills,
but he did what he could.
[Lisa] Financially, it was difficult.
So Janet decided to try and help Terry with the income.
And so she got a job outside the home.
Janet started working at a club as a cocktail waitress.
Being very young, I think she thought that was
more interesting and more fun than to be a stay-at-home mom.
Janet was in and out of the home,
and then eventually she just left for good,
and she left those boys behind.
[Janine] Terry is raising the two boys on his own,
and struggling financially.
And in 1995, he makes the painful decision
to give up six-year-old Derek
and five-year-old Alex to foster homes.
Derek and Alex were both placed into homes,
but Alex cried so much and just was inconsolable.
And the family finally reached out to Terry and said,
"You've gotta take him back. This can't go on."
Terry wound up getting Alex back, and Terry continued
to work very hard 'cause it was his goal
to get both his children back.
Despite Terry's best efforts to get Derek back,
years go by without any contact.
I was very blessed to be in the home that I was at.
It was a great opportunity for me to
learn a lot of different things.
I was very, very sheltered growing up.
But as Derek's teenage years approach, his relationship
with the foster family begins to fracture.
It was a vicious cycle with, uh,
bad grades and restriction and homework.
[Lisa] Derek had ADHD.
He was so easily distracted and so mischievous.
I feel like they should have gotten him some help.
Derek needed that help, and I don't think he got it.
[Derek] As much as I wanted to be a member of this family,
it was always like I was a spectator, like I
didn't really feel like I was
part of them.
I was trying to figure out who I am.
I just wanted to be reunited with my family.
There were a whole slew of incidents where Derek was
acting out and the family was frustrated,
and eventually they were just overwhelmed.
By now, Derek's father is working a steady job
at a printing company, and he jumps at the chance
to bring his son home.
Terry was very excited, but it was seven years
of separation with no contact.
So when they finally got back together,
they had to kind of reacquaint.
I had just gotten reunited with my dad, but it was
a huge culture shock.
By November of 2001, 13-year-old Derek has been
under Terry's roof for almost two months.
Everyone is hopeful that Derek and Alex King will have
a fresh start with each other until it all goes up in smoke.
[Brandon] It was November 26, 2001.
At one to two o'clock in the morning,
we received a report of a possible structure fire
in District 4 in Cantonment.
Headed to the fire, arrived on scene.
I went to the assistant chief, and he stated that bystanders
on scene said that there's possibly several people
trapped in the house.
Myself and a firefighter from Engine 4 went
through the front door.
The hose line was already inside fighting the fire,
so we start searching rooms for possible victims.
We got to what appeared to be a living room.
We noticed a body in the corner sitting in a chair
with his legs crossed on the edge of a couch.
I mean, I've never located or found a victim or a body
that was sitting upright.
Then we noticed that he had a lot of blood on his face,
and then there was red blood splatter
on the wall behind the body.
It was really unnerving.
I get there probably a little after 5 in the morning.
I knew we had a victim in the house, and at that time,
I entered the house.
The victim was sitting in his chair
with his legs crossed, propped up on a couch,
and he had his hands crossed like he had been sleeping.
And he had a cup between the chair and his leg.
The victim had trauma to his head,
and there was blood spatter above him, on the roof,
on the sides, on the walls. It's all around him.
At that particular point, my thoughts was
blunt force trauma, like he was beaten to death.
He obviously was dead before the fire.
It quickly became apparent that it wasn't an accidental
fire that had just flared up.
It appeared that an accelerant was used, and we found
what appeared to be a melted aluminum baseball bat
in the bedroom.
By now, several neighbors have arrived on the scene,
and they tell law enforcement about the family
who lives in that house.
[Brandon] That's when they advised that there was two children
that lived at the house, and they were missing.
We're looking. We're searching under beds.
Most people, children especially they'll hide under beds.
They'll hide in closets. They're scared.
But we did not find anybody.
Of course, everything's running through your mind.
You're thinking, you know, "Are they dead?
Is somebody holding them against their will?"
We were major concerned about the boys and their safety.
-[phone ringing] -[Lisa] It was early in the morning,
and our phone rang, and we're like,
"Who's calling at this hour?"
And my husband Jimmy answered the phone,
and then he came back in the room and said,
"Terry's dead." And I went, "What? What?
What do you mean Terry's dead?"
He said, "there was a fire, and he burned in the fire."
I couldn't believe everything that was happening,
and I said, "Where are the boys?
"Are they OK? Did they get hurt?
Did they get burned in the fire?"
While police get a search underway to find Derek and Alex,
a man arrives at the crime scene and introduces himself
as a family friend.
40-year-old Ricky Chavis says he knows the missing boys.
This guy apparently had heard that there was a fire up there
on his scanner, and he comes up there that night
to Terry's house in the middle of everything,
and he inserts himself into the investigation.
[Mollye] Ricky Chavis was a friend of Terry King.
He had a big personality, very gregarious.
He was also well known around the neighborhood
as a fix-it-type guy.
Like, if your refrigerator breaks down, you have a problem
with your car, you go to Ricky Chavis.
[John] He cooperated. He came on into the office.
He started telling us a little bit of background,
that him and Terry had been friends for a long time,
and then he's talking about the boys that were missing.
He said he didn't know where they were, but he thought
the boys ran away.
I asked Ricky, "Why?" and he said that Terry was
abusing the boys, not abuse physical-like,
but more mind games he was playing with 'em.
[Johnny] Ricky said, that Terry had some rather odd
parenting techniques.
When the boys would misbehave, he'd do what was basically like
a sort of staring therapy where he would sit and make the boys
stare straight into his eyes for hours at a time.
[John] Ricky said, that Terry didn't let 'em watch TV
or play video games and all that.
Wanted them just be locked up in the house
whenever he wasn't around.
Chavis says, they ran away a couple weeks earlier
and they called him and left a voice message.
The fact that the boys had just recently ran away is
an intriguing lead, so Sanderson travels
to their middle school to find out more about them.
[John] I went to the school that the boys attended,
and they started telling me about Ricky Chavis.
They said Ricky had permission to pick 'em up
at school."
Well, then, for some reason, Terry changed that.
Terry told school officials, "Under no circumstance are
"you to let my boys go home and be taken from school
by Ricky Chavis."
Seemed like they had fallen out. So, in my opinion,
that was definitely of interest.
But before they can reach Ricky, Inspector Sanderson gets
a surprising phone call.
[John] The next afternoon, we get a phone call.
We were told Ricky has the boys and he's bringing them in.
First time I saw the boys when they were brought
into our office, I mean, Alex, instead of 12,
he looked more like he was, you know, eight years old.
They came in and they were happy-go-lucky.
Matter of fact, no big deal.
You know, they were cutting up with each other.
It made me think of my sons who were about the same age.
We interviewed Derek first.
[Derek] I didn't understand all this stuff when I was a kid.
I didn't really --- I just knew that --
you know, this is bad.
Once you go beyond a certain point, I mean,
there's really no turning back.
And...
I understood that point was days earlier.
I said that my dad was beating my brother.
I stepped in and hit him, and he fell down on the chair,
and I kept hitting him.
[John] Well, there's no way.
No way he's gonna hit him and knock him into that chair,
and he's sitting there with his legs crossed
and his hands crossed and everything.
I mean, I knew that wasn't true.
[Derek] The detective's like,
"Well, son.
"Crime scene tells the story.
"The story you're telling us doesn't match up
with the one the crime scene's telling us."
After that, he changed his statement.
We didn't know what to do. Kind of felt just trapped.
[Janine] Derek changes his story and says they made a plan
to kill their father because they were afraid
that he was going to punish them for running away.
[John] After we talked to Derek, then we talked to Alex.
Well, Alex comes in with the same story as Derek,
but Alex, he described it even more graphic than Derek,
describing each blow.
I mean, I was like, "My gosh, man!"
And it bothered me because of my sons being that age.
Investigators were thinking these boys were saying things
that were rehearsed.
They were thinking this was not necessarily the language
that a child would use, that perhaps they were
repeating what somebody had told them to say.
Based on their confessions, 13-year-old Derek
and 12-year-old Alex are booked into the county jail.
[reporter] 12-year-old Derek and his brother Alex are charged
with first-degree murder and arson.
They gave us jumpsuits. I really didn't know
what I -- what -- what kind of, um...
chain reaction, what kind of serious events
I put in motion.
Inspector Sanderson and his team let Ricky Chavis
return home, but an air of suspicion just surrounds him.
Police ended up running a background check
on Ricky and quickly learned that in 1984, he'd been arrested
for assaulting two young boys, sexually.
[John] He's molested two boys, and he's a convicted felon.
With all of that in mind, we're like, "Hey,
we gotta check him further."
Chavis is quickly going from a witness
to a person of interest.
Detectives subpoena his phone records,
and right away they see evidence of a very suspicious call
on the night of Terry's murder.
There was a phone call made from a store
a quarter to a half-mile from the house.
It was a collect call to Ricky Chavis.
That happened 1:39 in the morning.
And the fire call came in about the same time.
We believe that phone call was from the boys.
We get Ricky Chavis back in, and we talked to him
about these phone records.
He tells us that he did get a call
that night from the boys.
And he said Alex was on the phone
and Alex sounded real distressed,
mumbling and everything.
He knew something bad was going on.
He said he took off up there, told 'em to get in the trunk
of his car, he takes them to his house,
and he tells us the boys said they killed their father
and set the house on fire.
Ricky said when he got home, he had 'em take showers,
and he washed their clothes.
The statement is enough for police to claim
probable cause to search his property.
[John] We got the search warrant for Ricky's house,
and eventually we went out there to find
any evidence possible.
When we get there, we noticed he's got
a privacy fence around this yard,
and on top of the fence is electric wiring,
and he's got signs all over about this electric fence
and surveillance equipment.
It wasn't normal.
In Ricky's bedroom, there was a picture of Alex,
and then there was some letters from Alex to Ricky.
They found evidence that there was
an inappropriate relationship between Alex and Ricky Chavis.
[Sharon] There was a whole lot that Alex had written,
and some of it was love letters to Chavis.
It's crazy, a 12-year-old and a man his age,
I mean, can't comprehend it.
Then we find this trap door underneath the trailer.
Chavis had cut a hole in the floor of his trailer,
and he had enclosed an area underneath his trailer
with plywood and things, so you couldn't see
in from outside.
We think when the boys ran away the first time,
that's where he had been hiding the boys from their own dad.
[Mollye] The first time they ran away, Terry is frantic,
and he's looking everywhere for these boys.
Well, little does Terry know that Ricky knows exactly
where they are because they're staying with him.
The investigators are going through the rest
of this compound.
They found the clothes that the boys had been wearing.
Not only did Ricky hide the boys out
after their father's death, that he had also contributed
to destroying evidence.
So we charged him with accessory after the fact
and tampering.
By December 11th, 2001, the two young boys,
Alex and Derek King, and 40-year-old Ricky Chavis,
are all behind bars awaiting trial.
[Mollye] It was shocking. I think, first of all,
people looked at those boys and saw angelic faces
and thought, did they really do it?
[Janine] As the Grand Jury proceedings for Derek and Alex King begin,
the whole case suddenly gets flipped upside down.
[Mollye] Alex and Derek testified before a Grand Jury,
saying they were outside their home last November,
the night their father was killed.
They say Chavis went back inside, killed their dad,
and later confessed to them what he had done.
[John] The boys changed their story, and now they're saying
that they didn't do the murder,
that Ricky Chavis put 'em in the trunk of his car,
killed their father, and then he took 'em to his house.
[reporter] Before a Grand Jury, the boys changed their story
and implicated 40-year-old Ricky Chavis.
[Johnny] They claimed that Ricky told them that,
"Look, confess to this murder. You can say it was
"in self defense, you're young and you're juveniles.
"You're not gonna get into trouble,
"and eventually, when this all blows over,
you can come live with me and we can all be together."
The entire case just blew up 'cause there were
so many people that are wanting to believe
in the innocence of these boys.
This case and the trial quickly devolved into
a bona fide media circus.
There were those who believed that Ricky Chavis was
totally responsible for everything.
There were those who believed that Alex and Derek were
totally responsible for everything.
[Ann] The image of those little boys standing before a judge
set off alarm and debate.
[David] Based on looks alone, the possibility that these
young brothers with choir-boy faces could plot and murder
their own father seemed inconceivable.
Based on the boys' news story, the head prosecutor makes
the unusual decision to charge all three individuals
with first-degree murder in two separate trials.
The media and everybody talked about how odd that was.
[reporter] In back-to-back trials, two juries would hear
two conflicting theories.
One jury would hear evidence that Rick Chavis had wielded
the bat that killed Terry King.
And a separate jury would hear evidence that his own sons
had done it.
Essentially, the prosecution's take on it was,
"Well, this is what the boys said.
"This is what Ricky's saying. We're just gonna let
"the jury hear the evidence, see what we've got
and let them decide."
The case against the boys and the case against Chavis
were traveling parallel paths.
Basically, it was the same evidence
against all three of them.
Chavis's trial was set to occur before the boys' trial.
This is a very unusual set of circumstances.
[Mollye] This will be the moment everybody had been waiting for.
Is it gonna be Ricky Chavis that takes the fall
for murdering Terry King? Is it gonna be
Terry King's own sons? What really happened?
I tried to, like, behave myself as much
as I possibly could.
It was very hard to sit still.
All day long, in the same seat.
It was very difficult for me.
At our age, it's like a different language.
Yes, sir.
As the trial for Ricky Chavis begins, the star witnesses are
Derek and Alex King, who would later face
the same charges themselves.
[Mollye] The whole courtroom was packed.
Everybody was there to see what was going on.
And then just to see these two angelic-looking boys,
it was difficult to reconcile what they were
accused of doing to what you saw standing there
in front of you.
[Lisa] I was able to attend every day, and it was
heart-rending to watch it happen, especially
when they asked Derek about Terry.
[Judge] That's fine.
Derek's time on the stand is unsettling,
but it's the testimony of younger Alex
that has everyone in dismay.
So many people felt like maybe this is the chance
that these boys will be able to get off.
Maybe Ricky Chavis really did do it, and we're gonna
find the truth.
[Johnny] After a three-day trial, the jury came back
with a verdict, but in yet another stunning first,
the judge says, "We're gonna seal the verdict."
[Sharon] The judge ordered Chavis's verdict sealed
because he didn't want that to impact the jury pool
for the boys' case.
[Janine] When the trial for Derek and Alex begins,
they are among the youngest children to be tried as adults
for first degree murder.
And like Ricky Chavis's trial, it will be broadcast
on national TV.
There were so many people who said if they commit
an adult crime, they should be punished as adults.
But kids, they don't see consequences the same way
that adults do.
The consequence may be life in prison.
That means nothing to a child.
At the age of 12 and 13, the thought of living in prison
for your next 70 years, it just, it doesn't even register.
It doesn't compute.
The defense chooses not to call Derek to testify,
but they do bring Alex to the stand.
We defense attorneys felt like Alex would be a much
better witness because Derek just could not focus.
I don't think Derek realized
what was coming. He just didn't understand.
[Janine] Alex repeats the claim that Ricky Chavis
had actually killed Terry King
and manipulated the boys into taking the blame.
But again, the most shocking part of the trial was hearing
Alex's story of how 40-year-old Chavis groomed and seduced him.
We made the argument that the boys were subject
to manipulation by Ricky Chavis.
Chavis was a real driving force in Alex's life,
and Derek was very easy to manipulate
by pretty much anybody. He was just a wide-open target.
Our lawyers, they explained to us what a pedophile was,
like, the strategies and techniques,
and explained how we were...
used and taken advantage of.
But the audio recordings, with the boys confessing
on them, are extremely hard to overcome in open court.
The parts of the confession that stood out to me was
the description of
Terry's condition after the first swing of the bat.
And that was --
That was really bad.
[Johnny] Alex said that he was making a gurgling sound,
and he was describing it, and it sounded like the death rattle,
and most people wouldn't have an idea of what that sound is.
So no matter what, you were definitely there.
[Sharon] But our argument was that they had been with Chavis
when people came looking for them.
He had taken them to the sheriff's office,
So it seems very possible that these confessions were coached.
After three days of disturbing testimony, the jury is
sent to deliberate.
They take the boys back to the holding cells, and we go,
and we just wait.
When I was first incarcerated, I understood that I was gonna
be there for a little while,
but the permanence and severity of the whole situation
didn't strike me until the verdict was read
on the last day of my trial.
And that's when I realized that
it was gonna be a very
cold and lonely road ahead of me.
When they opened the verdict and read it.
Oh.
Like, it just hit me like a truck.
That was just...
'cause I had just done a year in jail,
and then thinking to myself,
I gotta do this
over and over and over again for at least the next 20 years.
I was like, "Oh, my god."
[Johnny] When the verdict came back, everybody was stunned,
in the courtroom and across the nation.
And the judge, apparently, was stunned, too.
And he ends up announcing that he's throwing out the verdict
and wants the court to be resolved by mediation,
which is another head-scratcher.
That's, you know, something that happens
in a divorce case or a child custody case.
I think it's fair to say that we were all taken aback.
For the years that all of us had been practicing,
we had never seen a murder case go to mediation.
But eventually, we did reach a resolution.
I was...
resigned to the fact that I was gonna be doing some time.
But then
my lawyers were, like,
beside themselves, they were, like,
all excited and stuff.
I'm like, "Man, what's going on?"
They explained it to me, and I was like, "Oh, wow."
Derek and Alex plead guilty to third-degree murder
and are sentenced to eight and seven years
in juvenile detention, respectively.
The boys were facing adult prison time of 20 years.
And two little boys going into an adult prison was
just unacceptable. So juvenile prison came as
a little bit of good news.
Now that Alex and Derek's case is adjudicated,
the judge releases the verdict in Ricky Chavis's case.
[Johnny] Everybody was shocked.
Ricky Chavis was acquitted of murder.
But the state isn't done with Ricky.
And after the first trial, he's charged with kidnapping
and 10 counts of molestation against Alex.
[Janine] In a second trial, despite Alex's testimony
about their relationship, Ricky is found
not guilty of molestation and kidnapping.
He's only convicted of the much lesser charge
of false imprisonment for hiding the boys
the first time they ran away.
He's given a prison sentence of just five years.
But prosecutors don't give up.
They put Chavis on trial for a third time,
as an accessory after the fact and for evidence tampering.
This time, he is found guilty on all counts.
On March 5th, 2003, Ricky Chavis is sentenced
to 30 years in prison.
I believe that Ricky Chavis orchestrated this.
I think he planted the idea that they could come
live with him forever if Terry was not in the picture.
I don't think this ending had to happen but for the fact
that the devil was at the door.
When Alex is released in 2008, the public is
still hungry for answers.
This man, Chavis, who's doing time in prison,
he caused this, did he not?
Well, I can say that had he not been around,
um, my father would...
I would believe my father would still be alive.
[Johnny] Derek gets out a year later,
and the two brothers finally get to reunite.
And it seems like maybe this horrible story is
just a chapter of their lives that they can put behind them,
and they're gonna move forward.
But that...
unfortunately, it doesn't happen.
Alex ends up having a parole violation
and goes back to prison.
He gets out, but in 2024, he ends up overdosing
on drugs and dies.
Being involved with a convicted sex offender,
that's bound to have effects on somebody.
He was never given any tools to deal with that,
and at some point, there was a crash and burn.
I wish my brother was still here.
I hadn't really thought about how much time has gone by
since everything has happened.
And
I always kind of had him in my mind,
some of the stuff that we had planned on.
Like when we got together, we had planned on staying
close and having,
like, done hardly any of those things,
that really, like, hit me hard, where, like, the reality of
him never being there.
And that really, really hit me.
It's a tragic end to a tragic story.
But decades after the crime, there are still
so many questions, including who really killed Terry King.
I didn't wanna do it.
I just wanted to protect my brother, make sure he's safe.
Derek maintains that he and Alex were afraid
of being punished by their father, Terry,
after they returned home from running away.
[Derek] He threatened to do some violent stuff to us,
so...
Did what I had to do.
I went up to him, hit him.
First time, he kind of,
you know,
his muscles and everything clenched up.
Second time...
freaked out, just went wild.
After that,
I just...
kept going.
And I...
kind of blacked out.
My brother and I
broke down in tears,
grabbed each other, held each other and cried.
[soft nostalgic music playing]
Terry Lee King,
April 17th, 1961, November 26th, 2001.
I love you, Alex and Derek.
[exhales softly]
It's the first time I've
been able to
come out here.
I don't really have the words to express.
Makes me think of
how far I've come and what all has happened.
Please forgive me.
[somber music plays]
[music continues]
I could see blood splatter.
[newscaster] 37-year-old Robin Lawrence stabbed to death.
[man] There was a lot of passion involved with this.
She was tortured.
The detective are thinking this affair has got to have
something to do with this murder.
[man] I cannot imagine anyone that could have done this.