[dramatic music playing]
Mark: This crime scene was one of the bloodiest
Crime scenes that anyone would ever see.
Randall: Four out of five members of a family
Dead in this one house.
Mark: We found these carvings of gang symbols and signs.
Tommy: Whoever did this had a score to settle.
Randall: The father was actually an undercover.
He did sales and buys of narcotics.
Daniel: The criminal would sit there and say,
"you wait until we get out, we're gonna find you."
Randall: The father of the two children in that house
Has got a new man living with his kids.
He is a natural suspect.
Mark: Why would anyone kill the whole family?
Randall: We have no clue who it is
That we're dealing with.
[ominous music playing]
Mark: The city of pelham, alabama.
It's a great community to live in and raise kids.
Tommy: Just good hard working people,
Blue-collared people.
Karen: Pelham is really a place where a lot of people go
And feel like they can relax and not worry about crime.
Tommy: Murders were very rare in 1997 in pelham.
[phone ringing]
Woman: 911 emergency.
Mark: On March 23rd, 1997,
The pelham police department received a 911 call.
The caller was 16-year-old mark duke
And he had said that his whole family was dead.
Tommy: In the call, he says that he returned home
And his family was killed, his father,
Randy duke and randy's girlfriend,
Uh, dedra hunt and dedra's two girls.
Mark: So the dispatcher told him to get out of the house
And make sure that he was safe until we could arrive.
[sirens wailing]
Tommy: When we got there, officers on the scene
Told us that, uh, there was four people deceased
In the house and they said that,
Uh, it's bad, it's brutal.
Randall: At that point, mark hall and I decided to do
A walkthrough of the house
Just to see what the circumstances were.
When we walk in the front door,
What we were immediately struck with was the whole room
Was in disarray.
It was obvious that there had been either a struggle
Or someone had intentionally torn this place up.
A white male individual was leaning down
Over the fireplace.
Tommy: He'd been shot multiple times and stabbed
About seven, eight, nine times
In the head and in the back.
Randall: Next to him was a blade from a kitchen steak knife.
Not the handle, just the blade,
Where whoever had stabbed him had done it so hard
That they broke the handle off of the knife.
Tommy: It was a violent scene.
I knew somebody hated this man because this was overkill.
Randall: Immediately behind him was a coffee table.
On that coffee...
On that coffee table was...
A child's crayon, uh, drawing...
And on the sofa
Was some human teeth.
I've never seen that before.
There was a trail of blood from there up
The stairs and down the hallway.
Mark: The front bedroom was in disarray
And there were some type of emblems
And different wording,
Typically used,
Uh, by gangs, cut into the sheet rock.
Randall: We went around to examine the other bedroom
On the front of the house
And that's where we observed a child
Face down over an air-conditioning vent.
She had multiple lacerations,
Lots and lots and lots of blood everywhere.
Mark: Her throat was slashed.
This was a very traumatic violent way to die.
Tommy: It appeared that she had probably hid
Under the bed and was forcefully pulled out from under there.
Her hands had defense wounds.
I could tell this little girl was fighting for her life,
And she was giving it all she had.
And I was having a hard time.
I don't see kids violently taken like this.
Randall: We walk down the hallway
To the master bedroom,
Drawers were pulled out, clothes was everywhere,
And when I turned to look
At the master bathroom door,
There was a hole in the left-hand side
Of the door.
Mark: This was a six panel door and one of the upper panels
Was knocked out.
So it was fairly obvious that whoever was doing this
May have reached in to try to open that door.
Randall: There was blood coming out
From underneath the door.
So I looked in and saw
A small child with her throat cut.
We also saw another dead body
Laying at the base of that door
With a gunshot wound to the head.
Mark: Appeared she was barricading the door
So no one else could get in.
Mark: The point where we were trying to decide
Who's in the house and who they were,
We could piece together information
From the 911 call of the son mark duke,
Uh, verifying his father's identity
And the adult female, the mother of the children.
So it was fairly obvious that these people in the house
Were the people that were supposed to be there.
Tommy: Randy duke and randy's girlfriend,
Uh, dedra hunt and dedra's two girls.
Mark: This crime scene was one of the bloodiest
Crime scenes that anyone would ever see
Because everybody in there lost
Every bit of the blood that they in their bodies
Just about because of the magnitude of the injuries.
It's hard to understand.
Why would anyone kill the whole family?
How anyone could do this to two precious children?
But you have to gather your composure
And whomever...
Had sure working for these kids,
But, uh...
It's tough.
Randall: Sixteen-year-old mark duke was the last
Of his entire family that was alive.
So we had serious concerns for his safety
At that point because we had no idea
If there was someone else out there
That was waiting to come finish the job.
Mark: One of our officers asked him to come back
To the police department so that we could make sure
That he was safe.
So he agreed to go into protective custody.
At that time, one of the officers
Told us that a relative had arrived at the scene.
Randall: We were presented with an individual
Who had driven up to the crime scene,
Who represented himself as tommy hunt,
The father of the two deceased children inside.
Mark: As we approached him,
He understood something terrible had happened.
How do you tell a parent that their two little girls
Have been murdered?
It's tough.
Randall: He had a meltdown,
I remember--
I remember going back and forth at that point
Between [clears throat] is this a dad
Who has just lost both of his children
Or is he putting on a really good act
And has had something to do with this?
Mark: And we were kind of perplexed as to how
He made it to the scene so fast because this crime
Had just been discovered around 9:00 pm
And he was there almost immediately after.
So how did he gain knowledge of this incident
Because it hadn't been publicized yet?
The media hadn't arrived.
That raised some questions in our mind,
Is why was he there?
Did he have any role in killing this family?
[ominous music playing]
Randall: Tommy hunt is a natural suspect.
Tommy: And we were very interested
In what he had to say.
Randall: Gang related killings
Were a very plausible way
That this thing could have gone down.
Is this part of a gang ritual?
[ominous music playing]
Randall: Pelham, alabama did not have murder cases.
If they did, it was usually a domestic case
And something that was easily explainable.
But all of a sudden,
You wind up with four out of five members
Of a family who are dead in this one house,
In a neighborhood where this does not happen.
Woman: C49 east 18th street.
Tommy: When tommy hunt shows up on the scene,
He talked to the initial officers that are on the scene.
Randall: What we discovered very quickly
Was that tommy hunt has two children
In that house,
Chelsea and chelisa.
He is divorced from dedra hunt.
She's got a new man, randy duke,
Living with his children.
Randall: If you see someone who was murdered with a knife,
99 times out of a hundred, it's personal.
You have to lay your hands on him and intentionally
Take their life with a knife.
So tommy hunt is a natural suspect.
Why is he there?
We're very interested in what he had to say.
Tommy told us that he and dedra the mother
Of the children had an agreement in the divorce,
A shared custody and such.
Tommy: The girls lived with mr. Hunt not with dedra.
Mark: Dedra was supposed to return the children
To him and she didn't show up.
[phone ringing]
Mark: She wouldn't answer the phone
And he couldn't get in touch with anyone to find out
What was going on.
Randall: Tommy hunt told us he was going to pick up
His children from dedra hunt,
Randy duke that weekend.
Tommy: He gave explanation as to why he was there,
It was plausible.
If my kids didn't return home,
I'd be looking for them too.
But he was immediately taken back
To the police department to,
Uh, talk with him.
Randall: We needed to find out what he knows.
Check out alibis, check out any other information
That he could give us about what may
Or may not have happened.
Mark: In talking with tommy hunt the father
Of the two little girls that were killed,
We were able to find out that he had now
A good relationship with his ex-wife.
Really his mannerisms,
The information he gave, all checked out.
So we really didn't feel like that he had anything
At that point to do with this.
Kendra: Tommy and dedra were high school sweethearts.
Um, married right out of school.
Dedra wanted to have a family early,
She knew that's what she wanted.
So they had the two children, chelsea and chelisa.
Chelsea was more of the tomboy,
Chelsea played softball on my team.
Chelisa, she was more of the pageant girl,
The freely, she wanted her hair fixed.
After chelisa was born, dedra and tommy
Began to slightly grow apart like young love does.
And eventually, tommy and dedra separated
A little while later.
Dedra called me and said she'd met a new guy.
His name was randy duke.
Daniel: Randy called me and told me that he had met
Somebody and that she had two little girls.
And he seemed to be very committed to her
And had made plans to be getting married.
Kendra: Randy made dedra very happy.
When she told me that they had been to look
At venues for their wedding, she said,
"I'm ready to do this, I'm ready to have a life
With him."
She said, "we're set."
He treated the girls great.
Daniel: And he was really trying to be a dad
To those girls even before he was their dad.
And also at that time, he had finally gotten custody
Of his son from a different woman,
Whose name was mark anthony duke.
He was about 14 years old.
He was really brotherly towards the two little girls.
It seemed to randy that things were coming together.
Kendra: Dedra and randy had set a date to be married.
But they were killed.
Dispatcher: Street 15194.
Mark: Once the medical examiner and people
From the alabama department of forensic science arrived,
They started trying to look at how to establish
An approximate time of death,
How long the bodies have been in the house.
From looking at the evidence, they were able to tell us
That they had been there at least 36 hours,
Possibly more.
Randall: It took the evidence technicians somewhere
Between 10 and 12 hours to go through the scene,
Documenting everything, where every piece of evidence,
Or potential evidence was.
Mark: So you're looking for shell casings,
Knives, other weapons,
Anything that could've been used to perpetrate
A crime of this magnitude.
There were two different caliber bullets
Found in the house.
So now we've got two guns.
Which suggested to us multiple perpetrators.
Mark: We know there's two different caliber guns.
Were they brought? Were they taken from the house?
We really don't know at this point
Where those weapons are.
We found these carvings of what we thought to be
Gang symbols and signs in the house.
Some of the local gangs in the birmingham area
Use similar symbols and drawings to indicate
What their territory was, what kind of gang,
Their affiliation.
Randall: Gang-related killings were a very plausible way
That this thing could have gone down.
Is this part of a gang ritual?
All of those things start going through your mind
And that gate starts opening into an area
That you never thought you would have to deal with
In pelham, alabama.
Mark: At this point, we had four people dead,
A family in a nice neighborhood.
We're trying to piece everything together.
Now we know that two different guns were used,
There were two different caliber bullets found,
So now we're looking at possibly two shooters.
And then we've got knives involved.
So could there be a third person?
We don't know.
Randall: Once we found the gang drawings
And the gang symbols and the other things,
We had genuine concern for mark duke's safety
At that point.
Mark: At the crime scene, we had approached mark,
You know, with the idea that some random killer
Had come into their house and killed his family.
You know, we're gonna ask that you stay with us
In protective custody with the juvenile authorities
Until we can make sure that there's not someone
Out there looking for you as well.
So we had mark duke in protective custody.
And at that point, we felt like it was time
To interview him.
Randall: We're trying to suck up any bits of information
That you can to start you in a particular direction.
And that's the purpose of talking with mark duke
Because he was the last person that we know of
That saw these people alive.
And remember, mark duke is the one who made the 911 call
And discovered his soon-to-be family,
Uh, that is dead inside that house.
So whatever information he could impart to us
About what happened on Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Would be critical in where we went from there.
And during mark's initial interview,
We start going through to try and figure out
Where has he been.
Mark: Mark told us that he had a busy weekend,
Away from home.
Tommy: Mark said that, uh, he had been
At the ellison's farm and working with two other guys,
Brandon samra and david collums to help
Mr. Ellison tear down an old barn.
Mark: He told us he and his friends had been
To a movie Friday night and that he has stayed
With his friends at the friend's house.
Randall: We would have to go and interview these individuals
To corroborate mark duke's story
About where he had been and what he had been doing.
Mark: Mark said he didn't come home until Sunday night.
The house was locked, he opened the door
With the code and he looked in
And saw his dad was deceased.
He noticed a trail of blood in the foyer leading upstairs.
So he just assumed that everybody was dead.
And he grabbed a cordless phone.
He ran back outside and dialed 911,
Called the police, and said his family's dead,
Get somebody over here.
Randall: Once we have the initial interview
With mark duke, we checked out his alibi.
Mark: Friday night, he and his friends
Went to the movie screen.
Mark had the ticket stubs, showed he'd been there
Around 10:00 pm that night.
Tommy: Mr. Ellison verified that mark and his friends
Were doing some work for him at the farm and the boys
Had been kind of staying there as well over the weekend.
So it all checked out.
Randall: So next, we decided to start looking
At any possible link to gang-related killings.
Mark: When we looked in the background of dedra hunt,
We really didn't see anything that, you know,
Would focus our attention toward her.
Although as we started looking into the background
Of randy duke, we did find that he had been
Employed by the alabama alcoholic beverage
Control commission in the narcotics bureau.
Randall: Crack cocaine and powdered cocaine was fueling
The gang activity around birmingham
And some of the suburban areas.
Mark: In those years, if you work
As a narcotics agent for the abc board,
You are not well-thought of in many circles.
Randall: Randy duke was actually an undercover.
He did some undercover sales and buys of narcotics.
Daniel: When he was an undercover agent
On the street, his name was "freddy rollins."
He would go into pubs, bars, and he would get contacts
And try to buy marijuana or crack.
All of the crack was invading all of the high schools
And everything.
When he had to go to court,
They had to introduce him
As randy duke.
The criminal would sit down and say,
"I know you, freddy. He set me up.
You wait until we get out. We're gonna find you."
Tommy: Whoever did this,
In our opinion, had a score to settle.
Kendra: We're still trying to piece together
What's happened.
We still had no information as to why they were killed.
Mark: By this time, the national media
Had descended on pelham, alabama.
Randall: And then we received a phone call.
Mark: The caller stated that his niece,
He had information about the killings
That had not been shared on the media.
Randall: It is the thing that could make or break this case.
[tense tommy: The next day on March 24th, 1997,
We're still at it.
We're trying to put the pieces together.
Mark: We were looking at randy duke.
We found that he'd been employed
By the alabama alcoholic beverage control commission
In the narcotics bureau.
We were very anxious to find out
Who he was investigating during his brief time
And see if there's any possible leads there
Or some gang involvement.
Randall: We started looking at some of the cases
That he worked with the abc board.
None of that, uh, bore any fruit.
We started looking at his bank records,
Uh, to see if he owed people money,
If he was doing large financial transactions,
That sort of thing, to suggest,
Uh, trafficking and drugs.
None of that showed us anything.
So that kind of hit a dead end.
Mark: By this time, the national media
Had descended on pelham, alabama
Because we had four people dead,
A family in a nice neighborhood.
You know, we're feeling the pressure,
Like, we got to find justice for these victims.
Kendra: We're still trying to piece together what's happened.
We still had no information
As to why they were killed.
This investigation now is into the second day
And we're starting to get real concerned
That we're losing time on finding things
While they're still fresh.
So we need someone in the community
To come forward.
[tense music playing]
Randall: On Monday afternoon,
The chief of police
And the district attorney held a press conference.
Mark: The governor held a $20,000
Reward leading to the arrest and conviction
Of any suspect or suspects in this.
Randall: We start getting calls
From people around the community
Saying, "hey, I know this about mark duke
Or I know this about randy duke."
Tommy: We learned that mark duke
Was a--was a troubled young man.
Mark: It appeared that he had difficulties
With his relationships, he had troubles at school.
You know, everyone that tell us that, you know,
He had an anger
That they couldn't really put their finger on.
He wanted to be perceived as a tough guy.
We learned that mark had formed his own gang,
Kind of a rough club.
Tommy: It's just really these four guys.
Mark duke, randy samra,
Michael ellison, and david collums.
Mark: We were told that they had this reputation
As being loners that gathered together
And formed their own group.
They wanted respect, they wanted to be feared.
All those things started to come together
And painted this picture of mark duke
That started to indicate
There's a pattern of behavior
That could be related to this homicide.
[tense music playing]
Randall: The next day, we received a phone call
From an individual whom said,
"my niece has had a conversation
With the girlfriend of mark duke."
Mark: The caller stated that his niece
Had information about the killings
That had not been shared on the media.
Gentleman's niece had shared with him
That the girlfriend of mark duke had shared with her
That mark duke killed his whole family.
We're like, "wow.
We need to talk with mark duke's girlfriend.
This is the call we may have been waiting on."
This may be the big break.
Randall: Tuesday morning,
Somewhere around 7:00 or 8:00,
Mark duke's girlfriend and her mother
Were asked to come to pelham police department.
When we talked to her,
We learned that she had a conversation with him
Shortly after the killings
Where duke told her
That he had killed his whole family
With his friends, samra, collums, and ellison,
And gave her some details about how the victims died.
She knew the children were dead in different rooms,
And that the children had had their throats cut.
She also knew that one of the children
Had been dragged out from underneath the bed
And executed, and certainly nobody knew that.
Tommy: This girl had very incriminating evidence.
Either she was there, had involvement,
Or she's telling the truth that she was told of these facts
Because they were right on the money.
[tense music playing]
Randall: We decided at that point
We wanted to confirm the girlfriend's story
With his friends samra, collums,
And ellison first.
Because duke was in juvenile detention at the time
For protective custody.
Mark: So we decided with the district attorney,
Mr. Hillman, that we would get
Mark duke's girlfriend wear a wire.
Randall: With the idea that that afternoon
She is going to meet with collums, ellison,
And/or samra, uh, at her apartment
And get them to talk about their role in all of this,
And record that.
It is the thing
That could make or break this case.
We instructed her not to turn it off,
To leave it on all day long,
And then duke's girlfriend left pelham pd
With the wire on.
It was very important to us
That we get these conversations
And have them recorded
And get the information we needed
To charge them with capital murder.
And then, uh, sometime during the day,
The wire had been turned off,
She was the single thread that tied all of this together.
Without her help, we have nothing.
Randall: Mark duke's girlfriend agreed to wear a wire
But she intentionally turned it off.
So when we learned that the wire had been turned off,
We made a visit
To duke's girlfriend's apartment that evening,
And she said she was afraid that
Mark duke's friends might hurt her.
We assured her that that was not gonna happen
And we emphasized to her the magnitude of this case.
Fortunately, by the grace of god,
This 14-year-old stepped up
And ultimately, she agreed, again,
To wear a wire and have a conversation
With the other members of this criminal enterprise,
Ellison, collums, uh, and samra.
It was a big deal.
Mark: So the next day, michael samra
And ellison went up to the residence where she lived
And started just casually talking with her.
Randall: In the recorded conversations,
Ellison and samra, they didn't get into great detail
About their role in the killings
But they admitted their involvement
In parts of this crime,
And that was enough to take us to the next step.
[siren wailing]
Randall: We took samra, collums, and ellison
Down to the pelham police department.
We chose to talk to michael ellison first.
After a long conversation,
He decided to tell us the truth.
Michael ellison confirmed
That mark duke killed his family.
Mark: He gave details on how
He and collums facilitated the murders
By giving mark duke and brandon michael samra
A ride at the house,
But he said he did not go into the house,
But he knew enough to indicate
That we're on the right track now.
Tommy: Next guy we wanna talk to is, uh, david collums.
Randall: Collums started denying everything
Until we played him a copy
Of ellison placing collums at the scene.
Once david collums heard his buddy ratting him out
Then he goes, "okay. You got me."
Mark: He says, "hey, man, I didn't kill anybody.
I can tell you what they did and how they did it,
You know, but I don't know what happened in the house."
And that he had stayed in a car out in the driveway,
And that michael samra
Had assisted mark duke in the killing.
With this information from ellison and collums,
Uh, we decided to talk to michael brandon samra.
Randall: He minimized his role in everything,
But once we let him understand
That his buddies had ratted him out,
He basically rolls over
And gives us what we call a lay down confession.
He told us about several interesting points
That we didn't know.
We learned that mark had been telling
All of his friends that he was gonna kill his father.
Mark duke had been in trouble,
He was supposed to be working a job to pay restitution.
Brandon said mark was not very diligent in doing that,
And that was a source of friction between he and his dad.
Brandon also said that mark duke
Asked to use the pickup truck
The night of the killing,
And his dad refused to let him do it.
That's when he tells samra
And he tells collums and ellison,
"today is the day."
Brandon said they go back to ellison's house
And they start planning
How it is that they're gonna kill his dad.
Brandon says, "okay.
You're going in to kill your dad.
What about the other three people in the house?"
And duke replies,
"well, I guess there can't be any witnesses."
As a prosecutor and as a human being,
You go, "holy cow,
What drives a person to just go,
'you know what, I hate one person so bad,
I don't care about killing a whole family
As long as I can get to him.'"
Brandon told us
When they go in to the house
Later that night,
The dad and dedra are watching tv,
Chelisa is coloring on the coffee table.
Duke walks up to his dad,
Points the gun at him.
His dad says,
"you don't have to do this."
And duke says,
"I will see you in hell."
And pulled the trigger and shot him
Square between the eyes.
Dedra freaks out,
Samra had said he attempts to shoot her
In the side of the head
But she flinched and he shot her in the mouth
And blows her teeth out.
Her teeth hit the sofa,
She grabs the youngest child,
Runs past samra,
Goes up into the master bathroom.
Samra follows mama into the bathroom,
She's locked the door, he can't get in.
Meanwhile, duke is downstairs
Finishing his dad off with a steak knife.
He stabs dad in the head
So hard that he breaks the handle off
Of the steak knife.
Duke then comes back up the hallway
To where samra is and he says,
"where is dedra?"
Samra says, "she's in there
And she's locked the door."
Duke takes a step back, kicks a hole in the door
And shoots dedra in the head.
Duke is now out of bullets.
They only had a couple of bullets.
He goes back down the stairs, into the kitchen,
Gets two butcher knives,
And back to the bathroom door,
Pushing or forcing that door open.
Takes the first child out of the shower
And tells her, "this will only hurt for a second."
And cuts her throat twice.
They leave the bathroom
And go across to the other bedroom
Where the second child is under the bed,
You can imagine a seven-year-old child
Trying to figure out,
"what in the world is going on?"
Duke drags her out from underneath the bed
But she's fighting him,
So he looks over and tells samra, "finish her."
And samra reaches over, grabs a knife,
And cuts her throat.
Samra had absolutely no emotion,
No feeling, no remorse,
No nothing.
Mark: You know, why kill the little girls?
He said, "well, mark told me
We couldn't leave any witnesses,
So we had to kill them."
Then he gave details on how mark then--
He carved the gang symbols in the walls, you know,
To make it look like maybe somebody
Was after mark as well,
Then they decided all go to movie
So they would have an alibi.
Randall: Once michael brandon samra
Gives us the truth about what happened,
He helped us retrieve the two knives
That had been used to do the killings
Of chelsea and chelisa.
They still had blood and hair on them
That were later tied back to the children.
We have all that in hand.
Mark: Now it's time to talk to mark duke one last time.
Mark: So now we got all the weapons,
We've got a confession from the people
Who say he help murder the family.
So we went to the shelby county jail
And sat down with mark duke.
Randall: Once we start laying out
What samra had told us,
And saying that he had been implicated,
Uh, and I'm paraphrasing,
He basically says, "you think I killed my family?"
And we said, "as a matter of fact, we do
And we know that you did."
And he says,
"screw you, I want my lawyer."
Mark: You know, everything was collected
On that homicide scene that night,
Really just a mountain of evidence.
The blood evidence actually put the prime suspect mark duke
In the rooms where he said he had not been.
In an act of the confessions,
We recovered all the weapons
And ballistics matched the weapons.
There was trace evidence still on the butcher knives
That were taken from the house.
There was just a mountain of evidence
That prove that these individuals
Had committed these homicides.
Randall: On March the 26th, 1997,
After mark duke ended that interview,
We charged ellison and collums with murder
And we charged michael brandon samra
And mark anthony duke with capital murder.
Mark: So as time went on and we had the case settled
And ready for trial,
Initially ellison and collums
Struck a plea bargain so that the felony murder trials
Did not take place.
Randall: The plea that was offered was 16 years.
In March of 1998,
Michael brandon samra was tried
In front of a jury for capital murder
And ultimately convicted
And sentenced to death.
Then we had to get ready to try the ringleader
For capital murder.
What we had was all of the evidence
From the codefendant testimony of ellison and from collums,
And all of the physical evidence,
But again, all we had was samra's confession
Of what exactly happened inside the house
The night those four people were killed,
And duke wasn't talking.
When mark duke's trial came up,
Michael brandon samra came off of death row
And went in and testified against mark duke.
What was about to happen in the next 45 minutes
Would make the difference
Between mark duke getting what he really deserved
And maybe somehow
Walking a free man someday.
After I got through the direct examination,
I knew that the defense lawyers
Were gonna jump up and climb on
To michael brandon samra
And start pointing the finger and screaming,
"isn't it true you've made a deal with the devil,
You've made a deal with the da
That one day you'll walk out a free man?"
And they are just pounding on this guy.
Until finally he had enough.
He stopped and he looked up,
And the question was,
"isn't it true that you've made a deal with the da
And one day you'll walk out a free man?"
And samra looks up and he said,
"no, sir. That's not true."
Brandon said, "somebody has to tell the truth
About what happened
And it looks like I'm the only one
That's gonna do it."
The entire courtroom went dead silent
For about three seconds.
That case was over with right then
Because that jury knew
That this kid was telling the absolute truth
About what happened that night.
Mark duke was convicted,
Got a death recommendation from the jury.
It took, I think, 35 minutes
Which is a shockingly small amount of time
Which tells you they had no question
In their mind about this.
Duke was sentenced to death.
Tommy: He had no remorse.
He knew that dedra
And the two girls were in that house,
And he knew he's gonna have to kill all of them.
Somebody that would do that is just pure evil.
Randall: In 2004, mark duke
Was resentenced to life in prison without parole
Because the united states supreme court said
A person between the age of 16 and 18
Cannot appreciate
The criminality of their conduct,
Therefore, they should not be
Subject to the death penalty.
But samra stayed on death row
Because he was 19 at the time of the killing.
On may 15th, 2019,
Michael brandon samra
Was executed by lethal injection.
Kendra: It was unreal to think that some 16-year-old person
Could take the life of family members like that.
It's something that's just incomprehendable,
It's just not--it's not fair.
Daniel: Why would anybody do such a thing
And how could anybody do such a thing
And you have to deal with the fact that
There's no answers for that.
How could anybody murder their father?
Randall: It's been 24 years
And you still see...
How raw it is.
I salute the families and I hope
That they have somehow pieced things together,
What they can, and they've moved on,
And that somehow we brought a little bit of justice
And a little measure of something
Back to them to make their life a little better.