The Haunting

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Speaker 10 It's not like some scary movie this really happened.

Speaker 5 I remember falling on my knees.

Speaker 10 You just think, I want to live. I have to do something.

Speaker 12 It was a miracle they lived through it.

Speaker 16 Just two frightened kids the night terror knocked on their door.

Speaker 5 He had pulled out a 357 and he said, move over here.

Speaker 18 A loving pastor's family.

Speaker 14 Instant targets.

Speaker 5 I heard the first shot go off and said, I love you, Mom, and I love you, Dad.

Speaker 19 They were the only ones who survived.

Speaker 15 And no one knew then how long justice would take or what it would cost.

Speaker 21 Were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you?

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 22 A chilling manhunt.

Speaker 24 A young survivor driven to become a state senator.

Speaker 26 He was very, very passionate.

Speaker 15 Would they ever come out of the dark?

Speaker 10 I always get a little emotional, and I can't believe it's been this long.

Speaker 27 30 years later, an answer.

Speaker 5 The power of forgiveness. This is what my dad and my mom taught me.

Speaker 6 In his 40s and married again, he started fresh on the beach at Malibu.

Speaker 30 It was time to finally put it to rest.

Speaker 27 Use Hollywood to release those demons of his.

Speaker 3 Get the nightmares in the rearview mirror.

Speaker 5 I looked back and I was just building this coat of armor and

Speaker 5 that was killing me and it was killing my marriages, my friendships. It was protecting me but it was keeping me away from people that I loved.

Speaker 33 After all, what else but a movie could make sense of it, what those people did to him and then what came of it.

Speaker 19 You couldn't make up.

Speaker 35 And the movie, it turned out to be a decades-long saga of crime and punishment, retribution, and forgiveness.

Speaker 37 Perhaps it was too unbelievable not to be true.

Speaker 36 Though, back where it happened, back east along the old Route 66 where it snakes through Oklahoma, where his sister lived with demons of her own.

Speaker 42 A warning.

Speaker 10 It was really true. It's not like, you know, some scary movie that you watch on TV or, you know, a CSI or whatever show it is you're watching.
This really happened.

Speaker 15 Yes, Yes, it all did.

Speaker 35 The unspeakable crimes, the strange, painful path toward punishment.

Speaker 36 And then, could there ever be forgiveness?

Speaker 19 God knows.

Speaker 31 That's what the Father demanded.

Speaker 45 God knows all about us. There's not a secret crevice of our heart that he is not fully aware of.

Speaker 18 But could the Son obey?

Speaker 45 God never expects of us that which we cannot do.

Speaker 45 God never demands of us what he does not empower.

Speaker 19 Imagine now that it's 1979.

Speaker 20 Little place called O'Karchee, Oklahoma.

Speaker 17 Commutable drive into Oklahoma City, as people were discovering back then, before it happened.

Speaker 48 O'Kartee is a smaller community and a pretty quiet, peaceful little town.

Speaker 49 And to be frank, the Douglasses didn't quite live in O'Carchee proper.

Speaker 51 They preferred a modest little place way out by itself, miles beyond the streetlights.

Speaker 1 A little detail worth keeping in mind later.

Speaker 1 But mention the Douglas name back in 79, and the location people would be apt to think of was the Putnam City Baptist Church of Oklahoma City, where the Reverend Richard Douglas and family had established a remarkable reputation.

Speaker 26 Richard Douglass was one of the most influential Baptist pastors in Oklahoma and at the time was pastor of a 3,000-member church.

Speaker 39 Sort of family everybody wanted to associate with.

Speaker 12 The pastor's daughter, Leslie.

Speaker 10 I mean we became the people who we are because my parents were so strong. We lived

Speaker 10 a life that he would want us to live and learn the lessons he wanted us to know.

Speaker 34 And the fact that the Reverend Mr.

Speaker 18 Douglas was a man of some heft in the Baptist church seemed somehow secondary to his nature.

Speaker 19 Kindly, approachable.

Speaker 18 principled.

Speaker 10 If he wasn't at the church, he was visiting people

Speaker 10 and helping them work out their problems all the time.

Speaker 55 Pastor Douglas preached his first sermon at 16, and once he'd grown into a husband and father, took his little family all the way down to the jungles of Brazil, where he and they spent their happiest years in a missionary outpost.

Speaker 17 It was for Leslie and her big brother Brooks, unlike anything they would ever know again.

Speaker 42 Magic time.

Speaker 5 We grew up in the city called Bel Aim, which is right on the mouth of the Amazon, so right where the Atlantic meets the Amazon River.

Speaker 5 And it finally occurred to me why I love being near the water so much. And because that's where I grew up and where I traveled with my dad.

Speaker 54 And so they were close, as close as a family on its own in such a place could possibly be.

Speaker 32 And accomplished.

Speaker 19 Marilyn Douglas could have sung professionally had she wanted to, could have done all kinds of things.

Speaker 10 She was a straight A student and you know I just saw her as being so smart and successful in what it was that she wanted to do.

Speaker 53 And what she wanted to do more than anything else was raise Brooks and Leslie.

Speaker 52 You can see their faces still.

Speaker 10 Oh yes and I can hear my mom singing.

Speaker 33 She did once, every week at church, and at home where she sewed the outfits Leslie wore to compete in Misteen, Oklahoma.

Speaker 10 I was the one that spent time with my mom, whether it be singing or her making me a new dress for a pageant.

Speaker 39 So, autumn 79.

Speaker 34 16-year-old Brooks was an advanced football playing senior in high school, making some spending money breeding Doberman Pincher dogs.

Speaker 46 Leslie, a pretty 12-year-old, was in middle school.

Speaker 40 Dad was busy and all over Oklahoma, a chaplain at the State House, visitor of prisoners at McAllister Penitentiary, and packing them in at Putnam Baptist.

Speaker 47 But the pastor and his wife, charity, began at home.

Speaker 5 Their door was always open. They really, truly cared about people and where they were and how they could help them and how they could serve people.

Speaker 34 It was that generosity and openness that many years later, Brooks would honor in his movie about his parents.

Speaker 59 And about that haunting night.

Speaker 55 It was October 15th, a a Monday.

Speaker 47 Everybody home.

Speaker 5 My mom was in the kitchen fixing dinner and Leslie was in the kitchen with her.

Speaker 47 It was Brooks who answered the knock at the door.

Speaker 33 People called in all the time at the pastor's house.

Speaker 19 This one he didn't recognize, a bearded stranger who wanted a favor.

Speaker 17 And no one felt the evil then.

Speaker 5 As it entered the house, the first thing I remember raising my hands and thinking, always happens to the other guy, never happens to you.

Speaker 5 And here we are.

Speaker 60 Coming up.

Speaker 61 Suddenly, just before dinner, terror.

Speaker 5 He had pulled out a 357, had it in my face, and he said, Move over here.

Speaker 10 I remember that night just thinking, you know, you've got to remember this, you've got to remember this, you've got to remember this.

Speaker 57 Who was this at the door?

Speaker 62 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 47 a little house in the country just outside O'Carchee, Oklahoma, October 15, 1979.

Speaker 30 Pastor Richard Douglas and his family were getting ready for a quiet school night dinner.

Speaker 33 Around dusk, a knock at the door.

Speaker 39 16-year-old Brooks Douglas put down his homework, answered it.

Speaker 42 A bearded stranger stood before him.

Speaker 5 He asked if he could use the phone, trying to get a hold of somebody that lived

Speaker 5 near us. So I let him in, and he went over, he picked up the phone, he said,

Speaker 5 phone numbers in my other pants. And so he went outside.

Speaker 61 And when he returned a moment later, he bent down, reached behind his back, and the awful business began.

Speaker 5 He had pulled out a 357, had it

Speaker 5 in my face, and

Speaker 5 he said,

Speaker 5 you know what it's all about. Move over here.

Speaker 35 A second man armed with a double-barreled shotgun stormed through the door.

Speaker 22 It was a robbery, the men said.

Speaker 5 I took my wallet out and had 43 bucks in it, handed it to him, and he said, That's all you got, that's all you got, yeah. And then went and he went through my mom's purse and

Speaker 5 then he asked my mom if we had any rope.

Speaker 45 They pointed their guns, herded the family together, hog-tied them.

Speaker 5 So they told us all to lie down on the living room floor, face down, and

Speaker 5 they tied me up with her hands and feet behind her back.

Speaker 47 One stood guard with the shotgun.

Speaker 30 The other ransacked the house, pulled the phones from the wall.

Speaker 55 Then the man with the pistol returned to the living room.

Speaker 45 And he looked at pretty 12-year-old Leslie.

Speaker 7 And now the character of the attack changed.

Speaker 5 And he got Leslie and he said, I want you to show me where all the other phones are and where your hiding places for money are.

Speaker 5 And she said, well, we don't have any hiding place for money, so we're going to find some.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 he put his gun to the back of her head and walked her in the house. And then I heard him walk back into Leslie's room, and then I heard her start crying and saying, no, no, no.

Speaker 5 You all knew what was going on. Yeah.
And my mom,

Speaker 5 of course, was laying next to me and she just was sobbing.

Speaker 5 And I said, Mom,

Speaker 5 Leslie's going to be okay. We're going to be okay.
We're all going to be okay.

Speaker 3 Brooks and his parents lay on the living room floor, hog-tied, and they listened, helpless, as each man took his turn, as each one raped Leslie.

Speaker 5 Then they brought Leslie in, tied her up, hands and feet behind her back, like the rest of us were.

Speaker 10 I remember that night just thinking, you know, you've got to remember this, you've got to remember this, you've got to remember this.

Speaker 47 The two gunmen helped themselves to the meal. Marilyn had cooking on the stove.

Speaker 5 And they sat down at our table and ate our dinner.

Speaker 63 And then the terrifying round of bargaining began.

Speaker 5 They went back and forth about what they were going to do. At one point, he had said, if you'll give us four hours before you

Speaker 5 go to the police, then we won't shoot you. Well, of course, we'll give you four hours.

Speaker 16 Then, two hours into their ordeal, the family heard the leader, the one with the pistol, Issue an order.

Speaker 5 Go outside, start the car, turn it around, and listen for the sound.

Speaker 52 Was it pretty clear to you, listen for the sound meant?

Speaker 59 Oh,

Speaker 5 that's what I took it to mean, was that

Speaker 5 he was going to shoot us.

Speaker 21 And at that point, it came home to you that it was really going to happen?

Speaker 5 I don't think I believed that we were actually going to get shot. I mean, what had we done, you know?

Speaker 14 And all they could do then

Speaker 15 was wait and pray.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 remember him walking right up over my head and saying, well, I don't want to have to shoot y'all, but

Speaker 5 and then I heard the shot go, first shot go off and felt it hit me. And then I heard another shot went off and my mom screamed.
And then

Speaker 5 there was two other shots and then two more. And then I heard him run to the door and go out.

Speaker 17 Shot twice in the back.

Speaker 47 Brooks shimmied on his stomach toward his parents.

Speaker 5 And then I went over to my mom and was untying her ropes with my teeth. I was able to get a hold of him and I said, I love you, mom.
I love you, Dad. They heard that? Yeah.

Speaker 5 My dad was like, I love you too. Get me untied.

Speaker 5 And he said, quit worrying about things. Just get your mother untied.
And I said, Dad, I'm trying. I said, Mom, you're loose.

Speaker 5 Your ropes are loose. Untie me, untie me.
And she looked up at me one last time and then

Speaker 5 her head tipped down and she just faded. And I knew she died.
And then I went over to my dad and I looked him in the face and I said, Dad, mom's dead.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I never really said anything else.

Speaker 5 I told him again I loved him and he said I love you and I said

Speaker 5 I said it's okay dad

Speaker 5 yeah Leslie and I are gonna be okay.

Speaker 39 It was the last thing Pastor Richard Douglas ever heard.

Speaker 47 He died with his son at his side.

Speaker 46 A son's assurance which the father may or may not have understood to be wishful thinking because Brooks and Leslie were at death's door themselves.

Speaker 64 Coming up.

Speaker 10 You just think, I want to live. I have to do something.
I can't just lay here.

Speaker 15 What could they do?

Speaker 5 I needed to make a decision. I remember thinking, as long as I can draw a breath or even twitch a muscle, I need to keep trying.

Speaker 19 A race for life and for the gunman begins when Dateline continues.

Speaker 40 On the night of October 15th, 1979, two drifters raced away from the O'Carchey, Oklahoma home of the Douglas family.

Speaker 4 In their wake lay the dead and dying.

Speaker 52 Pastor Richard Douglas and his wife Marilyn, shot to death.

Speaker 55 16-year-old Brooks and his 12-year-old sister Leslie, each shot twice, were hogtied and bleeding beside the bodies of their parents.

Speaker 5 If I was going to live, I needed to make a decision. I remember thinking, as long as I can draw a breath or even twitch a muscle, I need to keep trying.

Speaker 22 The house was eerily quiet, and Brooks feared his sister too was gone.

Speaker 5 I'd been shouting to her periodically and she was responding and then she stopped responding.

Speaker 45 Yet, despite being shocked twice herself, Leslie had somehow escaped her bonds and made her way to the kitchen.

Speaker 5 I looked up and Leslie came running in with a knife and cut me loose.

Speaker 65 You're the one who got things going afterwards.

Speaker 5 Right, right. Where did that come from?

Speaker 10 I don't know, I guess that internal drive that you just think, you know,

Speaker 10 I want to live, I want to be here, I have to do something, I can't just lay here.

Speaker 55 Brooks and Leslie were bleeding to death, both of them.

Speaker 50 And at least Brooks knew it.

Speaker 5 We needed to get to a hospital or we were going to die.

Speaker 39 Brooks carried Leslie out to the family car.

Speaker 11 They were terrified, all but sure the killers must be out there somewhere, lying in wait for them.

Speaker 5 I remember also thinking they might be down at the end of the driveway, so I drove really fast and they weren't there and then thinking they might be on the highway.

Speaker 20 As they raced up Route 81, brother and sister had a surreal, surprisingly composed conversation.

Speaker 5 It was very strange because there was moments of silence and

Speaker 5 then Leslie asked me, mom and dad dead and I said, yeah,

Speaker 5 they are. And she goes, so

Speaker 5 what are we going to do? I guess we'll go live with our aunts and uncles. And I said,

Speaker 5 I guess so.

Speaker 5 I said,

Speaker 5 we don't need to worry about it right now. We just need to, you know, need to get better.

Speaker 30 Brooks was doing better than 100 miles an hour in his dad's 1970 Plymouth duster. He drove onto the lawn of the O'Karchee home of a family friend, a doctor, blurted out what had happened.

Speaker 5 They actually didn't believe us. We were saying, you know, we've been shot.
Mom and dad are out of the house. Dad, help us.

Speaker 14 And then I collapsed.

Speaker 5 as soon as I got in the living room.

Speaker 47 The doctor and his son carried Brooks and Leslie to a nearby hospital.

Speaker 5 And And then the doctor and his son

Speaker 5 went out to the house to check on my mom and dad.

Speaker 53 The children fought for their lives.

Speaker 66 In the middle of the night, they were moved to an intensive care unit in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 67 Their wounds were appalling.

Speaker 66 One bullet had nicked Brooks' heart.

Speaker 5 It came in this side of my back

Speaker 5 and collapsed this lung.

Speaker 61 And what about your sister's injuries?

Speaker 5 She was shot twice. One of them went through her forearm because we had our arms tied together behind our back.
And then it went through her lower back.

Speaker 5 And then the second bullet went through the middle,

Speaker 5 just off the center of her back and came out her chest.

Speaker 18 The doctor called the sheriff's office.

Speaker 12 Officers reached the Douglas home around 11 p.m. Lynn Stedman was sheriff of Canadian County.

Speaker 48 The preacher, Reverend Douglas and Mrs. Douglas, were still

Speaker 48 at the residence on the living room floor, dead.

Speaker 35 Pretty shocking thing.

Speaker 5 Yes, certainly it was.

Speaker 52 Like an execution. Yes, sir.

Speaker 12 It didn't take Loman long to identify their suspects.

Speaker 55 There had been another home invasion earlier that day in Hennessy, Oklahoma, just up the road from the Douglasses.

Speaker 16 Two men fled that crime in a distinctive banana-yellow Chevy Malibu with primer spots.

Speaker 18 The victims, who were robbed but not physically harmed, gave deputies good descriptions, both of the men and their vehicle.

Speaker 11 Investigators were able to trace that distinctive car to an oil field a few miles up the road from the Douglas property.

Speaker 45 Two roughnecks working the drilling rig had up and quit that very morning, taken off in a borrowed car.

Speaker 22 Thought they were wanted for parole violations, apparently.

Speaker 45 They weren't. They thought they were.

Speaker 70 The two were named Stephen Hatch and Glenn Ake,

Speaker 11 and they were familiar already to the local police.

Speaker 48 One of them had a burglary conviction.

Speaker 3 These are petty criminals.

Speaker 65 Yes, sir.

Speaker 11 As police pieced together Ake and Hatch's activity that day, they learned that after the two borrowed the yellow Chevy, they drove into town and cleaned out their bank accounts.

Speaker 48 Each one of them got approximately $500 out of a savings account.

Speaker 12 They bought beer and whiskey and scored some speed and cocaine, then roared off in the borrowed car to rob the family in Hennessy.

Speaker 6 That crime netted more than $1,000 and a double-barreled shotgun.

Speaker 34 From there, they headed south to Okarchie and the pastor's modest ranch house out beyond the streetlights.

Speaker 39 Assistant District Attorney Bill James responded to the crime scene at the Douglas home that night.

Speaker 6 He was starting to help build a case.

Speaker 72 Within

Speaker 72 two, three, four o'clock in the morning, we had the identity of the people and

Speaker 72 because of the prior robbery.

Speaker 65 They took money out of their bank accounts, then they robbed another place.

Speaker 71 They had a couple of thousand dollars.

Speaker 63 They had a car.

Speaker 59 They had guns.

Speaker 5 Why?

Speaker 65 Go into yet another house.

Speaker 72 I think it was so easy. They had a somewhat of a high from doing that first time, so they wanted to do it again.

Speaker 30 The county sheriff, the state police, the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, the FBI were all looking for Aiken Hatch.

Speaker 6 But the fugitives had at least a six-hour start.

Speaker 72 They weren't here, they were gone. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Meanwhile, back in an Oklahoma City hospital, Brooks and Leslie Douglas clung to life in an intensive care unit.

Speaker 38 And lawmen had a bad feeling.

Speaker 72 I really was afraid when I was standing on the scene that night that these people were likely to go out and commit one murder after another because it was just so cold and

Speaker 72 without thought and without necessity.

Speaker 64 Coming up.

Speaker 5 Were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you? Absolutely.

Speaker 34 Round-the-clock protection for Brooks and Leslie.

Speaker 64 Were they still in danger?

Speaker 73 People don't know where these two guys are. They could be anywhere.

Speaker 62 And Dateline continues.

Speaker 52 It was Thursday, October 18, 1979.

Speaker 49 The choir sang Amazing Grace.

Speaker 52 And 2,000 mourners crowded into Putnam City Baptist Church for the funeral of the church's beloved pastor, Richard Douglas, and his wife Marilyn.

Speaker 49 Even the governor was there.

Speaker 1 It was three days after the home invasion, after the murder.

Speaker 52 The children couldn't be there.

Speaker 12 Brooks and Leslie remained in intensive care.

Speaker 63 Brooks took a turn for the worse.

Speaker 5 The morning of the funeral, my temperature shot way up, and

Speaker 5 they thought at that point they were going to lose me. But they caught it.
early and they treated it and so it was pretty miraculous.

Speaker 12 As the mourners listened to eulogies and the Douglasses' favorite hymns, a multi-state manhunt was on for the shooting suspects, Oilfield Roustabouts, Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch.

Speaker 58 Leslie and Brooks were kept together in the same hospital room under 24-hour police guard.

Speaker 21 Were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you?

Speaker 5 Absolutely. It obviously caused some angst

Speaker 5 among the police and the family.

Speaker 40 It wasn't just the still-healing Douglas children children who were frightened.

Speaker 33 The enormity of the crime transfixed Oklahomans.

Speaker 35 Russ McCasky was an anchor at KJRH Tulsa.

Speaker 73 And this terrible thing has happened. There's a manhunt that's going on.

Speaker 73 You know, there's a lot of tension. People don't know where these two guys are.
They could be anywhere.

Speaker 39 Reports of sightings came in.

Speaker 36 Some of them disturbingly close.

Speaker 5 What were they up to?

Speaker 42 Bill James was assistant district attorney.

Speaker 61 Were you worried that they'd come back and try to get those other two kids once they learned that they were alive?

Speaker 39 Correct.

Speaker 72 Somebody thought they had seen them almost in the Okarchie area and we had a manhunt up there.

Speaker 50 But of course, Brooks and Leslie Douglas were more than just victims, more than survivors even.

Speaker 32 They were crucial witnesses.

Speaker 72 I went to the hospital and met them. How were they? They were pretty stable at that time.
They'd answer any question I asked them directly.

Speaker 61 What was interesting about them to you?

Speaker 72 How analytical they were about it and discussing and exact questions and what was going to happen and

Speaker 72 that they were pretty intelligent kids and they were actually pretty well in control of their emotions.

Speaker 65 As you were lying in the hospital trying to recover, trying to understand what had happened to you, what was that like for you?

Speaker 5 It was really strange.

Speaker 5 Part of it was, I think nobody knew how to react. Members of the church would come in to console us, and we would wind up consoling them and hugging them, and hey, it's going to be okay.

Speaker 5 We're going to be okay.

Speaker 57 three weeks after the shooting brooks and leslie were spirited out of the hospital and taken to a secure location still under police guard it was halloween we were staying in a in a little house that was owned by the church

Speaker 5 and uh on a in a residential neighborhood and a bunch of trigger-treaters came up. They were adults and showed up at the door wearing masks.

Speaker 5 Leslie and I both about came out of our skin and the

Speaker 5 highway patrolman actually had his weapon drawn behind the door and was telling him, you don't want to be here.

Speaker 5 That was a

Speaker 5 scary moment.

Speaker 23 Out of the hospital, orphaned now, the finality of the children's loss sank in all the way.

Speaker 5 The hardest thing was the cemetery. I remember

Speaker 5 walking towards the grave site. It was just dirt and with a grave marker with both of their names on it and that was the first

Speaker 5 moment

Speaker 5 that it was real to me that they were gone and I just felt like everything that was in me at that moment just fell out and

Speaker 5 I remember falling on my knees and

Speaker 5 just thinking how senseless.

Speaker 19 Then imagine this.

Speaker 33 Having survived the deadly attack, having lost their parents, having soldiered through an arduous recovery, Brooks and Leslie's home and all the family's possessions were auctioned off to pay their medical bills.

Speaker 47 And so began repercussions neither they nor anyone else imagined.

Speaker 58 A haunting, really, that would go on for decades.

Speaker 31 First, the siblings who kept each other alive through crisis and recovery were separated.

Speaker 34 Leslie moved in with relatives in another town and started at a new school.

Speaker 16 Brooks, just a term shy of high school graduation, stayed in the neighborhood with church members so he could finish school.

Speaker 5 At the end of the day, I was still

Speaker 5 a 16-year-old kid that didn't want to be strapped down in a hospital, and I didn't want to be stuck in a house

Speaker 5 with security. It was all necessary, but it was hard to take for a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old.

Speaker 23 And Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch

Speaker 47 were still out there somewhere.

Speaker 36 Coming up, worst fears are confirmed.

Speaker 77 Their feet and hands were bound behind their back.

Speaker 32 They had hoods over their head, and both of them had been shot execution style.

Speaker 17 The suspects strike again

Speaker 19 and again.

Speaker 79 The car just got away, just disappeared.

Speaker 31 But police are about to get the brake they need

Speaker 64 when Dateline continues.

Speaker 33 Stephen Hatch and Glenn Ake were on the run.

Speaker 16 The day after the murders, Ake called family in Oklahoma and learned that lawmen were on their trail for killing Pastor and Mrs.

Speaker 12 Douglas and shooting Leslie and Brooks.

Speaker 55 Sheriff Lynn Stepman led the investigation.

Speaker 48 And they ended up that next morning in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Speaker 31 Still in the yellow Malibu? Yes, sir.

Speaker 48 They spent the night, then they walked to the bus station.

Speaker 16 Eventually, police managed to track down their yellow getaway car, abandoned town.

Speaker 5 But by then, they were long gone, had hopped a bus to Memphis.

Speaker 48 They spent three nights there drinking heavily. They lost about $1,000 while they were in the motel as a result of

Speaker 48 Cabby bringing a couple of hookers to their room and the hookers rolled them for about $1,000.

Speaker 18 And after Memphis, they wandered around southern Louisiana looking for oil field work before hitchhiking to New Orleans.

Speaker 16 There, the two found jobs in a carnival, and Ake took up with a young woman named Virginia Ginger Keefe.

Speaker 72 And they hooked up with her, and they went on the road with her for a good while.

Speaker 16 Back on the road after they lost those carnival jobs.

Speaker 12 Happened when Ake got drunk at work and fired a shotgun in the air.

Speaker 17 They were just about about broke by then, except for a credit card that'd stolen from Mrs. Douglas.

Speaker 58 By early November, three weeks after the Douglas murders, Ake, Hatch, and Ginger caught a bus as far as their remaining funds would take them.

Speaker 15 That was Lumberton, Texas.

Speaker 78 Aiken Hatch and Virginia Keefe arrived there.

Speaker 81 They was on a Continental Trailway bus.

Speaker 50 Billy Payne was sheriff of Hardin County back then.

Speaker 81 They got the bus to stop right out in front of the house, and they went and broke into the house. The two men did.
Virginia stayed out in the woods and they was going to wait till somebody come home.

Speaker 33 And when the homeowner returned, a friend along with him, Ake and Hatch were waiting with a sought-off shotgun.

Speaker 39 Sheriff Payne later found some signs of a struggle, but otherwise the crime scene was a carbon copy of the Douglas murders.

Speaker 78 They had been tied with the ropes.

Speaker 77 Their feet and hands were bound behind their back. They had hoods over their head, and both of them had been shot execution style.

Speaker 58 Payne didn't know then about the Douglas case, didn't connect the two right away, but he did have something to go on.

Speaker 34 The homeowners knew Dotson 280Z was missing.

Speaker 77 And we were able to put out a national bulletin for that vehicle.

Speaker 27 Hatch, Ake, and Ginger Keefe squeezed into the stolen car and headed west.

Speaker 58 They had a little cash, a gasoline credit card stolen in the Texas murders, and Marilyn Douglas' visa.

Speaker 16 The trio drove to California, then doubled back east to Wyoming, Hatch and Ake again looking for oil field work.

Speaker 58 But their murderous road trip was about to end.

Speaker 56 In a bar in downtown Baggs, Wyoming, Ake got drunk, started slapping ginger around.

Speaker 34 She'd had enough, and at her first opportunity, spilled her guts to the barkeep.

Speaker 11 The bar owner alerted the police.

Speaker 32 By then, Ake and Hatch had escaped into Colorado.

Speaker 16 Jeff Corvo was a detective sergeant in Moffat County, Colorado back then.

Speaker 79 Our deputies found out that the car was associated with Aiken Hatch and that they were wanted on a number of different murders in Oklahoma and Texas.

Speaker 79 They tried to pursue the car, but what we had then was just kind of old pickup trucks for patrol vehicles, and of course these guys got away real quick.

Speaker 18 Aiken Hatch floored the 280Z, lost the lawman.

Speaker 27 Aware of how dangerous the two were, the searchers scoured the county.

Speaker 79 Our guys gave chase and the car just got away from them, just disappeared about 25 miles north of town.

Speaker 53 They've given the cops the slip.

Speaker 17 Low on money and freezing in the Colorado winter, Ake and Hatch were as desperate as cornered animals.

Speaker 57 They resorted to what they knew.

Speaker 16 They invaded a ranch house belonging to Mike Pondela outside Craig, Colorado.

Speaker 79 And they got the car stuck in the driveway leading up to his house. They went out of the car, went to his house, basically forced their way in,

Speaker 43 armed, of course, and took Pondela hostage.

Speaker 37 Here's how Ake and Hatch convinced the rancher they meant business.

Speaker 79 Mr. Pondela had a little dog.
He called it his little three-legged dog. And

Speaker 79 the dog went to jump up on the bed, and one of the guys shot and killed that dog. And they told Mr.
Pondela that if he didn't do exactly as they said, he would be next.

Speaker 37 After Ake's bloody warning, the rancher stalled for time.

Speaker 79 He got them to drink a lot of beer, and when they either went to sleep or passed out, he got away from them.

Speaker 79 So his quick thinking and the way that he handled himself in that situation absolutely saved his life.

Speaker 57 The rancher met with the sheriff.

Speaker 79 We showed him the pictures of Aiken Hatch. He instantly identified them as the two people that had taken him hostage the night before.

Speaker 46 The rancher warned the lawmen that Aiken Hatch had access to an arsenal.

Speaker 79 Between the firearms and the ammunition that he had and the firearms and the ammunition that they brought, they were very, very well armed.

Speaker 79 I want to say close to 30 different firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Speaker 23 Early the next morning, nearly a dozen lawmen stormed the ranch house.

Speaker 79 And right as we're driving up to the house, we see two Two men, Aiken Hatch, jump from a window in the house and run, and they run in two different directions. They were both armed.

Speaker 22 A deputy fired a warning shot, double-odded buckshot, over Ake's head.

Speaker 79 Ake tripped over an irrigation ditch out in this meadow and fell down. It was all of our thought at the time that we had, in fact, hit that guy, that maybe we would have killed him.
But not a scratch.

Speaker 34 Ake and Hatch surrendered without firing a shot.

Speaker 16 They were taken to the county jail.

Speaker 22 When their belongings were inventoried, they each had less than a dollar and change, a gas credit card belonging to a Texas victim, and Pastor and Mrs.

Speaker 14 Douglas' wedding rings.

Speaker 18 Coming up, arrested at last.

Speaker 15 Was the long nightmare over for Brooks and Leslie Douglas?

Speaker 16 Or was it just beginning?

Speaker 84 I unloaded a 357 Magnum road with 38 wide cutters

Speaker 84 on these people.

Speaker 17 Chilling words from a killer.

Speaker 23 Did you have any idea how much you still had to go through, even though they caught him?

Speaker 5 Oh, heavens, no.

Speaker 5 No idea.

Speaker 62 When dateline continues.

Speaker 63 It was stunning news.

Speaker 30 Thanksgiving Eve, 1979, six weeks after the O'Carsee, Oklahoma murders of Richard and Marilyn Douglas, the shooting of their children.

Speaker 20 The manhunt was over.

Speaker 15 The governor calls a news conference.

Speaker 73 It was that big of a deal. They wanted to put people at rest that these two guys weren't out there terrorizing the state of Oklahoma anymore.
It was a big deal.

Speaker 22 Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch, who were by now also wanted for questioning in two additional murders in Texas, have been captured in Colorado after another home invasion.

Speaker 34 Word reached the prosecutor Bill James at the El Reno courthouse.

Speaker 15 It was the call he was waiting for.

Speaker 72 I jumped over the railing,

Speaker 72 ran to the office. We prepared the extradition papers.
I put a call on the governor, he signed them. We had them done within a few hours.

Speaker 51 Why the hurry? Why the rush?

Speaker 72 We wanted them.

Speaker 39 Remember, the fugitives had committed a double murder in Texas, too.

Speaker 16 But the Oklahomans were determined they wanted first crack at Aiken Hatch.

Speaker 30 Had to get there before some lawman from Texas beat them to it.

Speaker 57 The news of the capture was a huge relief, of course, to Brooks and Leslie Douglas.

Speaker 48 And now the the race to bring back Ake and Hatch Sheriff Lynn Stedman flew by charter to Colorado it was about 2 30 to 3 o'clock in the morning that we landed at Will Rogers World Airport here in Oklahoma City

Speaker 19 with them and then took them by car on it back to El Reno and then the sort of thing that almost never happens on their way back to Oklahoma Hatch and Ake told the lawman they wanted to make a statement.

Speaker 48 We had a semblance of Thanksgiving that day and then did this that evening, Thanksgiving evening at the sheriff's office in El Reno.

Speaker 45 They locked up Hatch in the old El Reno jail.

Speaker 68 Ake they kept in a more secure facility, a more modern place just down the block.

Speaker 68 Thanksgiving night, sheriff's deputies collected the two of them, took them around the corner down to the sheriff's office so they could deliver those confessions they seemed so eager to make.

Speaker 74 And so they did.

Speaker 33 Apparently without any remorse or emotion, first hatch and then Ache calmly described their activities on that murderous night.

Speaker 84 I stands by the end of the couch

Speaker 84 and I unload a 357 Magnum loaded with 38 wide cutters

Speaker 84 on these people.

Speaker 84 I continued to run out the door. The dogs was all barking at me, so I slowed down to a walk, walked out the door, and drove off.
And drove off.

Speaker 84 Steve asked me what I'd done and he told me I should have never done nothing like that.

Speaker 48 They told us they didn't do that kind of stuff in their words unless they were drunk

Speaker 48 and they had been drinking heavily

Speaker 48 the day that this happened of October the 15th of 79.

Speaker 40 Taking drugs as well?

Speaker 48 Yes, sir. In one of their

Speaker 48 areas they mentioned some speed.

Speaker 48 Ake even mentioned cocaine that they had taken.

Speaker 17 Glenn Ake made it clear at his statement that he was the shooter.

Speaker 18 He was in charge.

Speaker 84 This shouldn't be on Steve's part because Steve can't kill nobody because he doesn't have no gut to do nothing with.

Speaker 84 All this doing was my brain, not his.

Speaker 15 Why'd Hatch go along with him?

Speaker 48 Hatch was a,

Speaker 48 and this is Ake's words: Hatch is a follower.

Speaker 48 Ake said, I'm the strong one and made all the decisions.

Speaker 31 So it was like a big dog, a little dog, and Hatch would follow along behind him.

Speaker 20 Ake told the sheriff that he and he alone was the trigger man, not only in the Douglas killings, but in Texas as well.

Speaker 22 The other incident was the shooting of those two fellows in Texas.

Speaker 52 Did Ake tell you about that and about why he pulled the trigger then?

Speaker 48 He said that

Speaker 48 he had to do it because

Speaker 48 Steve Hatch was was just too weak to do it.

Speaker 1 He was afraid to pull the trigger. Yes, sir.

Speaker 61 Did either one of them express any remorse in these statements?

Speaker 48 The only remorse that I got was that Ake said, I want the death penalty.

Speaker 84 Out of all this here, I want the death sentence

Speaker 84 and I want injection

Speaker 84 as soon as possible.

Speaker 84 After I'd like to have a little bit of time

Speaker 84 so I can see my parents and my nephew, then I'm ready to get executed.

Speaker 3 He knew what he had done.

Speaker 65 Yes, sir.

Speaker 40 For Brooks and Leslie Douglas, the capture of the killers appeared to put an end to their ordeal.

Speaker 60 Little did they know.

Speaker 65 Did you have any idea how much you still had to go through, even though they caught him?

Speaker 5 Oh, heavens, no.

Speaker 5 No idea.

Speaker 65 You figured it was sort of done at that point, probably.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 Naive little you. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 12 By the early weeks of 1980, Brooks and Leslie Douglas had healed sufficiently to return to school, healed physically, that is.

Speaker 32 But now, shell-shocked after the murder of their parents the previous October, they struggled, any semblance of teenager normalcy, forever lost to them.

Speaker 46 And they coped separately.

Speaker 55 Leslie had moved to another town.

Speaker 57 Brooks was still in the old neighborhood near his high school.

Speaker 33 And they still had no idea at Oklahoma Winter that the legal trials of the men who killed their parents, which were about to begin, would become their own decades-long tribulation.

Speaker 58 Despite their long and detailed confessions, Glenn Ake, the trigger man, and Stephen Hatch, his accomplice, had pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering Reverend Richard Douglas and his wife Marilyn and shooting the Douglass children.

Speaker 17 Stephen Hatch was tried first at the Canadian County Courthouse.

Speaker 72 Hatch was a follower, but he's the one that picked out the house that night. He's the one that wanted to commit another crime.

Speaker 72 He's the one that created the energy for action for the second crime.

Speaker 44 And the state of Oklahoma looked to have an ironclad case against him.

Speaker 39 Most important, of course, the harrowing stories of the eyewitnesses and survivors Leslie and Brooks Douglas.

Speaker 85 Then Hatch and Ake's Thanksgiving statements, those confessions.

Speaker 34 The state also had ballistic evidence linking them to the murders, and the testimony of Ginger Keefe, their traveling companion, while they were on the run.

Speaker 54 Keefe, who was never charged with any crime, testified that Aiken Hatch told her about killing the Douglasses and shooting Brooks and Leslie.

Speaker 72 We had two surviving witnesses. We were able to identify who the people were.
We were able to put the bullet in. You know, we somewhat kept it simple.

Speaker 20 Simple?

Speaker 17 For the judge hearing the case, maybe, but certainly not for those surviving witnesses.

Speaker 17 Brooks had already testified once in the preliminary hearing, but both he and his sister would have to relive it all for Hatch's trial.

Speaker 86 13-year-old Leslie Douglas appeared in court for the first time since the shooting that left her and her brother critically wounded and her parents dead.

Speaker 61 How did those two kids do on the stand?

Speaker 72 Oh, they did excellent. They were good.

Speaker 5 They were both well.

Speaker 71 Stood up under cross-examination.

Speaker 72 We tried the case in chief in one day.

Speaker 72 We just one witness after another.

Speaker 55 Altogether, the Hatch case took three days of the court's time.

Speaker 71 Hatch testified in his own defense. He was convicted, sentenced to death.

Speaker 30 Glenn Ake's trial in early summer didn't take much longer, but in the courtroom, they kept him under heavy guard.

Speaker 31 Ake was volatile, unpredictable.

Speaker 72 Ake was really mean. I mean, he just was a mean person.

Speaker 39 Sheriff Lynn Stedman testified for two hours about Ake's Thanksgiving confession.

Speaker 12 Then came the star witnesses for the prosecution, Brooks and Leslie, two teenage siblings who were about to revisit the most traumatic night of their lives.

Speaker 60 Coming up,

Speaker 6 face to face with the gunman.

Speaker 10 It was like I had to pretend like I was somebody else.

Speaker 25 Leslie and Brooks find the courage to speak when Dateline continues.

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Speaker 50 Glenn Ake was on trial for the murders of the Reverend Richard Douglas and his wife Marilyn.

Speaker 52 The cold-blooded executions were witnessed by the Douglas children.

Speaker 14 And now, Brooks and Leslie would have to to relive the horrific details of that night from the stand.

Speaker 50 They both calmly identified Ake as the man who shot them and murdered their parents.

Speaker 61 Did you watch the children's testimony? Yes.

Speaker 48 Brooks was very strong in his testimony. Leslie was too,

Speaker 48 but it bothered her more than it did Brooks to testify.

Speaker 10 It was like I had to pretend like I was somebody else just telling a story of what happened. And it's kind of like the night that it happened and I had to remember all this I have to remember all this

Speaker 58 that promise that Leslie Douglas made to herself the night her parents were killed not to forget anything that's what carried her through she said I didn't know why

Speaker 10 I just I just knew that I had to remember every detail and and so whenever it was time to be on the stand, I knew that everything that I said was important

Speaker 10 and that I had to be specific and remember. So it's like, I don't know what got in my head.
I just have to remove all emotional attachment.

Speaker 53 The jury needed just two hours to make up its mind.

Speaker 55 Ake was convicted. He was sentenced to a thousand years for shooting the Douglas children.

Speaker 90 And as for the murder of Brooks and Leslie's parents, we, the jury impaneled and sworn by to try the issues in the above entitled Cause, do upon our oaths, having heretofore found the defendant Glenn Burton Ake guilty of murder in the first degree fixed punishment at death

Speaker 38 so end of the road for Ake and Hatch or so lawmen and prosecutors assume Sheriff Stedman escorted Ake to Macalester Penitentiary and Death Row

Speaker 48 when I took Glenn Burton 8 to Macalester Oklahoma to

Speaker 48 be processed in by the Department of Corrections

Speaker 48 when we got out of the car I told him Glenn this is the last time I will see you until I come back to see you die.

Speaker 46 With this monstrous chapter of their lives apparently over, Leslie and Brooks began to thrive.

Speaker 15 Leslie, living in that new town with her mother's family, became a stellar high school student, a cheerleader, college-bound.

Speaker 57 How in heaven's name did you go on to do all the things that you did like any regular teenage person?

Speaker 10 I think it's because my mom mom saying one night, if anything ever happened to him, she wanted me to be strong and move on with my life. And I remember crying going, Mom, why are you saying that?

Speaker 10 Nothing's ever going to happen to you. But I think it was one of those things that I just

Speaker 10 had in the back of my mind and it helped me

Speaker 10 push through things.

Speaker 89 Through those first trials and in the years immediately after, Brooks also felt his parents were somehow still with him.

Speaker 5 I was able to, at least during that first couple of years, and even now, but especially I think in that first few years, I could hear them, hear their voices as, you know, I was having them make decisions or do things.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so I felt like they were still with me.

Speaker 5 And it wasn't until years later somebody said, oh, you're an orphan.

Speaker 17 Oh, yes, he was.

Speaker 38 And because of what happened to make him one, both the law and life began now to spin in very strange directions, certainly beyond his control, as it began to look like his parents' killers might just escape justice after all.

Speaker 64 Coming up.

Speaker 67 I felt the bullet hit me,

Speaker 91 and I heard another one go off and my mother screamed.

Speaker 34 Brooks and Leslie returned to the courtroom.

Speaker 92 I screamed and then he shot me again.

Speaker 41 But this time, the outcome will be very different.

Speaker 93 I remember when

Speaker 5 the

Speaker 93 verdicts were read in the courtroom, there was an audible gasp.

Speaker 62 When dateline continues.

Speaker 40 Some days it seemed that for every step forward he made, Brooks Douglas took two back.

Speaker 46 He made it out of high school, all right, though orphaned with his sister by the murder of his parents and haunted by the complications of survival, grief, confusion, he was adrift.

Speaker 57 Though scattered might be a better word for those years after Brooks headed off to college.

Speaker 5 I went to six or seven different universities because I called it my Rhodes Scholar Days because I'd either go for eight weeks and either get kicked out or leave and drop out and drive down the road to the next school and enroll there for six or eight weeks.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so I was having a hard time.

Speaker 5 I'd in, had a hard time focusing.

Speaker 71 And legal developments over the next few years didn't make it any easier.

Speaker 54 The appeals of the two men convicted of killing Brooks' parents seemed to be drifting too, deflected and scattered and confusing.

Speaker 34 A U.S.

Speaker 54 Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty in a far-off case in Florida led to Hatch's death sentence being vacated twice.

Speaker 39 And therefore, more uncertainty for the Douglas kids, more legal hearings.

Speaker 82 If this case doesn't fit, the aggravating circumstance that it was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, I can't imagine a case that would.

Speaker 57 His sentence reinstated, Stephen Hatch went back to death row.

Speaker 34 And meanwhile, Glenn Ake, the trigger man, had been filing appeals from a nearby cell.

Speaker 34 In February of 1985, six years after the Douglasses were murdered, The United States Supreme Court ruled in Ake v.

Speaker 15 Oklahoma that he deserved a new trial.

Speaker 58 Prosecutors had failed to provide a psychiatrist at state expense.

Speaker 17 Kathy Stoker was the DA.

Speaker 93 I

Speaker 93 contacted Brooks and Leslie

Speaker 93 and indicated that we would have to retry Ake. I'm sure they just thought, will this ever end?

Speaker 34 That was exactly the stunned siblings' reaction.

Speaker 39 Once again, they opened their psychic and emotional wounds for inspection by the court.

Speaker 69 And this is the thing that is so remarkable is that you're able to go there again and again

Speaker 61 in places that are daunting and difficult. And yet, you clearly feel that same emotional turmoil every time it comes up.

Speaker 70 I do. Here you are sitting with us.

Speaker 5 You're feeling it all again.

Speaker 10 You'd think 31 years later it would be different. We always get...
a little emotional and

Speaker 10 start remembering and think, wow, you know, I can't believe it's been this long.

Speaker 18 As Ake's second trial began in February 1986, his lawyer laid out the defense's case.

Speaker 76 We

Speaker 76 entered a plea of not guilty by the reason of insanity.

Speaker 76 And that will be, we'll maintain that defense throughout the trial.

Speaker 34 Defense of insanity. After six years in maximum security, Glenn Ake was nearly unrecognizable.

Speaker 39 Sheriff Lynn Stedman was in charge of security.

Speaker 48 And the second trial,

Speaker 48 he made not a sound during the trial. He had let his hair grow long,

Speaker 48 and he sat there with his head down looking at the table the entire trial.

Speaker 11 But jurors heard from other witnesses. Despite the passage of time, details of the crime remained chilling.

Speaker 74 Reverend Douglas was, again, laying on his back.

Speaker 74 His feet were also tied together with a cord-type material.

Speaker 31 Although Ake never took the stand, never even said a word to his lawyers, the jury heard his Thanksgiving statement.

Speaker 14 Who did you shoot first?

Speaker 67 Man,

Speaker 28 boy,

Speaker 28 daughter, mom,

Speaker 94 man, again.

Speaker 84 I think I shot the boy twice.

Speaker 34 Then came the eyewitnesses to the carnage that night.

Speaker 39 Leslie Douglas, now 20 years old, a college student, calmly explained it all to the jury.

Speaker 92 And then I heard two more shots which hit my father and then another shot and I screamed and then he shot me again.

Speaker 92 And then I heard him run out the door.

Speaker 93 I was

Speaker 93 amazed by her courage. She had to go back there in her mind and

Speaker 10 tell

Speaker 93 you exactly what happened, what she did. She did not falter.

Speaker 39 And she was rock-sholler.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 67 I heard.

Speaker 38 Brooks Douglas wasn't spared his turn on the stand.

Speaker 67 I felt the bullet hit me,

Speaker 91 and I heard another one go off, and my mother scream.

Speaker 71 The core of the defense case was the testimony of psychiatrists, three of them.

Speaker 76 Do you believe that he was insane on the 15th of October 1979?

Speaker 37 Yes, sir. I am convinced that at that date,

Speaker 47 Mr. Ake

Speaker 37 did not know right from wrong.

Speaker 15 And throughout it all, in court, Glenn Burton Ake remained silent, presented himself more like a mental patient than a convicted murderer.

Speaker 39 Sheriff Steadman watched and decided it had to be a ploy.

Speaker 53 He was feigning insanity.

Speaker 48 He had about

Speaker 48 five years or so to

Speaker 48 come up with this act.

Speaker 13 But did the jury see what the sheriff believed he saw?

Speaker 20 The decision, when it came,

Speaker 6 was quite a surprise.

Speaker 93 I remember when

Speaker 93 the verdicts were read in the courtroom, there was an audible gasp.

Speaker 95 We, the jury, impaneled and sworn in above and titled cause, do upon our oaths, having heretofore found the defendant Glenn Burton Ake, guilty of murder in the first degree for the death of Richard Barry Douglas and fixed his punishment at life in the state penitentiary.

Speaker 58 No death penalty.

Speaker 36 This time, the jury spared his life.

Speaker 15 He would come off death row.

Speaker 93 The jury came came back and sentenced Ake to life

Speaker 93 for each of the murders and to 200 years each for the shootings of the children.

Speaker 14 But wait a minute.

Speaker 54 Stephen Hatch, who did not fire a weapon, faced execution, but Ake, the trigger man, got life.

Speaker 14 Brooks was floored.

Speaker 96 As I heard the decision read,

Speaker 96 what was going through my mind was

Speaker 96 that I could just see my parents dying and knowing that they would never be fully avenged,

Speaker 96 that

Speaker 96 they died, that this person took their life, and yet

Speaker 74 he's going to

Speaker 96 allow to continue living and

Speaker 5 at our expense.

Speaker 42 As Brooks saw it, after all this time, all the suffering, his parents, his, his sisters, Glenn Ake had plain cheated the executioner.

Speaker 6 That day after sentencing, a shell shock, Brooks escaped into a hallway, followed by sheriff's deputies escorting Glenn Ake back to a prison cell.

Speaker 13 There they were, standing feet apart.

Speaker 24 Brooks looked at Ake and something in him snapped.

Speaker 45 He saw the deputy passing by, his revolver tantalizingly close. And in that moment, Brooks Douglas contemplated murder.

Speaker 6 He reached for the officer's weapon.

Speaker 61 You saw at one point him being led somewhere and there was a deputy with a gun.

Speaker 5 Just by chance I walked out of one door of the courtroom and he came out in front of me and

Speaker 5 it was actually Kathy Stoker that grabbed my arm.

Speaker 39 Because she saw what you wanted to do. Yeah.

Speaker 65 You might have done it.

Speaker 5 I might have done it. I thought, you know, two can play that game.
You know, if he can play crazy, I can too. Wow.

Speaker 61 So that crime had done a lot to you after all. Yeah.

Speaker 58 But Brooks knew, he said, that he wouldn't, couldn't have done it, even if the prosecutor had not stayed his hand.

Speaker 34 He told us it went back to the night he was shot and bleeding and made his decision to try to save himself.

Speaker 5 Why did I get off that floor? Did I get off that floor to go kill them?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 Is that what my parents would have wanted for me?

Speaker 5 I would have been much better off to have died that night. I needed to live my life, and I'd never be able to do it as long as I was holding that

Speaker 5 like that.

Speaker 63 But of course, at that moment, he could have no idea that this was not the last time he'd encountered the man who killed his parents.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 71 They were destined to meet again.

Speaker 64 Coming up.

Speaker 64 A confrontation with a killer.

Speaker 39 What did you see in him?

Speaker 15 Powerful emotions and long-buried demons.

Speaker 5 What I really really wanted was for it to be

Speaker 5 was for it to be over.

Speaker 64 When dateline continues

Speaker 39 As the years rolled by, it seemed as if the emotional and psychic wounds inflicted the night Brooks and Leslie Douglas were shot and their parents murdered might never heal.

Speaker 33 But they did learn to live, and any outsider might think they had learned that lesson well.

Speaker 36 Leslie, the cheerleader and high school homecoming queen, went on to college, then graduate school, became first a teacher, later an assistant principal, had a family, two children of her own.

Speaker 10 I never wanted to seem like this person that just, you know, hid and

Speaker 10 fell apart and be the stereotypical person that goes through all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 10 I wanted to make something of myself. And if somebody said, well, she's never going to be okay, she's not ever going to go to college.
So I went to college and I got a master's degree.

Speaker 10 You know, it's just one of those things that I don't like people to tell me I can't accomplish things and do things because they think I'm going to allow everything that's happened affect my whole life.

Speaker 16 Brooks finally struggled through college, took an Army ROTC commission, then went to law school.

Speaker 14 and got married.

Speaker 6 But again and again, both put their lives on hold to unpack their awful memories for trials and appeals and parole and clemency hearings for Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch.

Speaker 61 How many times did you have to testify?

Speaker 5 I think it was a total of nine.

Speaker 51 What did it do to you?

Speaker 5 As soon as I would hear that I was going to need to go testify again,

Speaker 5 my mind would go to that place and it would just,

Speaker 5 it was a month of, or however long, leading up to it.

Speaker 20 apprehension and the you know the fear and just plain little fear in In 1990, 11 years after the murders, just out of law school, just about broke, frankly, with a marriage headed south, Brooks decided, almost on a whim, to run for the Oklahoma State Senate.

Speaker 61 Was it that frustration with the system that made you decide to go and finish your law degree and to get involved in politics?

Speaker 5 I remember feeling helpless

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 looking for what are ways that I can begin to gain a little bit of control over what's happening to me.

Speaker 61 Didn't that seem absolutely ludicrous to you?

Speaker 5 I think I was just sort of

Speaker 5 really oblivious.

Speaker 33 You didn't know what was impossible.

Speaker 5 Yeah, nobody told me I couldn't do it, so

Speaker 5 why not? Let's do it. Let's try.

Speaker 32 He won.

Speaker 57 It was, need we say, an upset.

Speaker 39 It made him, at 27, the youngest senator in Oklahoma history.

Speaker 50 Russ McCasky, then a TV reporter covering the Capitol, became a close friend.

Speaker 73 His teenage years were pretty rough. He struggled for a long time,

Speaker 73 but he was starting to put the pieces back together.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 73 I think that, you know, at that point,

Speaker 73 he was ready to start moving forward with his life.

Speaker 73 You could see a transformation in him.

Speaker 33 You met another young senator, later governor, Brad Henry.

Speaker 26 It was just kind of natural that we gravitated toward one another because we were the youngest by a long shot. And

Speaker 26 even though he is a Republican and I'm a Democrat,

Speaker 26 we just became very, very good friends.

Speaker 29 It was in his second year in the Senate when Brooks found the cause close to his heart.

Speaker 5 Victims' rights was simply one of those things that nobody talked about.

Speaker 17 But of course, that was the core experience of his life.

Speaker 34 Did he know how the system treats victims of crime?

Speaker 15 Oh, yes, he did.

Speaker 39 And so he introduced Oklahoma's first Victims' Rights Act.

Speaker 97 The jury never hears one word about the family. We're not considering how brutal that crime was.
This person took another individual's life in these cases.

Speaker 39 The victims' rights movement was in its infancy then. It met resistance from judges and prosecutors.

Speaker 26 He was very, very passionate and focused on victims' rights.

Speaker 26 And who could argue with him? There was nobody in the Senate, or in the House for that matter, who had been through that kind of a traumatic experience.

Speaker 31 The law's passage was a huge victory for Brooks and his allies in the legislature.

Speaker 32 And personally, for him?

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 53 it happened during his second term in the Senate.

Speaker 38 Revelation.

Speaker 32 And not a happy one.

Speaker 40 For all he had accomplished, all he had overcome, the grief, the fury, the drift, the confusion, it wasn't enough.

Speaker 17 Perhaps it was his long-dead father still whispering in his ear, something he needed to do.

Speaker 17 He found himself on a legislative tour of Oklahoma's infamous maximum security prison at McAllister.

Speaker 35 Big Mac's general population housed the state's most dangerous prisoners, including Glenn Ake, the trigger man in his parents' murder, and in an even more secure wing, Stephen Hatch, Ake's accomplice, waiting out his final days on death row.

Speaker 45 At first Brooks was afraid he might run into Glenn Ake, but the penitentiary, he was nervous about that, wanted to avoid it.

Speaker 45 But then something started gnawing at him, and eventually he realized he knew what he had to do.

Speaker 45 He had to confront the man who'd murdered his parents, the man he'd contemplated killing outside that courtroom years before. So he went to see the warden.

Speaker 45 Being a senator does have its perks, and the warden sent a note to the prisoner. And much to everyone's amazement, Glenn Ake agreed to a meeting.

Speaker 45 It was February 1995. Brooks Douglas found himself sitting across a table from the man who'd murdered his parents and shot him and his sister.

Speaker 5 I said, for 15 years I've wanted nothing more than to see you dead. And

Speaker 5 yeah, I still want it.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 hearing some of that, hearing myself say that,

Speaker 5 was very, very strange.

Speaker 53 You had to confront the fact that you just said that to this man.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 65 That you wanted him dead.

Speaker 5 I wanted him dead.

Speaker 65 And by saying it,

Speaker 65 something went click inside.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That

Speaker 5 what I really wanted was

Speaker 5 for it to be over.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I didn't realize

Speaker 5 how much I think that that

Speaker 5 was dominating

Speaker 5 my life.

Speaker 58 It was not what he intended to do.

Speaker 39 Didn't know what he would do when he found himself sitting face to face with his parents' killer.

Speaker 85 But now, the words came out, and he realized he meant them completely.

Speaker 54 He forgave Glenn Ake.

Speaker 17 And inside him he said the reaction was almost physical.

Speaker 61 And yet you were now in the one in the position of having to forgive the unforgivable and were confronted at the same time with

Speaker 61 your desire to see these guys die for what they did to your parents.

Speaker 61 What reaction did you see in him?

Speaker 83 He was

Speaker 5 completely remorseful, which surprised me right off the bat. And when that moment came was when he was, you know, messing with cuffs and was trying to wipe away tears.

Speaker 6 Brooks confided in his friends.

Speaker 73 He calls me after the meeting,

Speaker 73 and I said, how'd it go? And he said, I forgave him.

Speaker 73 And there's just silence on the phone for a minute. My jaw is on the floor.

Speaker 26 The thing that

Speaker 25 really purged

Speaker 26 his soul was this forgiveness that washed forward that

Speaker 26 he really couldn't explain.

Speaker 26 And I think he surprised himself that he actually would affirmatively

Speaker 26 forgive his parents' murderer. I think because of the teachings of his father and his mother, he was able to

Speaker 26 to find that forgiveness inside somehow. And

Speaker 26 I think it has been a tremendous, tremendous load off of his shoulders.

Speaker 38 Leslie's reaction was more muted.

Speaker 10 He had told me about meeting with Ake and

Speaker 10 him forgiving him and me having a hard time understanding it.

Speaker 21 Is forgiving part of moving on like that?

Speaker 52 Part of getting past it?

Speaker 10 I think it is. I mean, I feel like I've forgiven.

Speaker 10 You can forgive, but it just doesn't change the circumstances sometimes.

Speaker 39 But there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting.

Speaker 71 The state of Oklahoma, along with Brooks and Leslie Douglas, had some unfinished business with Stephen Hatch.

Speaker 15 Not the trigger man, no.

Speaker 19 But a murderer?

Speaker 51 Yes.

Speaker 64 Coming up.

Speaker 98 I was afraid to sleep at night. I was afraid somebody was coming to get me.

Speaker 57 A new part of the story after all these years.

Speaker 62 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 3 It was 18 months after that extraordinary meeting with Glen Ag, the one at which Brooks Douglas forgave his parents' killer.

Speaker 34 The other man convicted in their murder, Stephen Hatch, was scheduled to die.

Speaker 33 Brooks had tried to meet with Hatch on death row.

Speaker 31 He was rebuffed.

Speaker 27 Appeals exhausted, Hatch's execution date was set in the summer of 1996.

Speaker 39 There was a final clemency hearing.

Speaker 71 Brooks and Leslie would have to testify against him one last time.

Speaker 18 Hatch pleaded for his life.

Speaker 94 I'm sorry for the pain the children, Brooks and Leslie Douglass, continued to feel.

Speaker 95 I can say sorry for the rest of time, and that would not be enough.

Speaker 94 I could die a hundred times, and it would never be enough to make up for what had happened.

Speaker 37 But then, testimony that astounded Leslie Douglass and brought back all the horror.

Speaker 10 I had found out some things at the clemency hearing that I was not aware of, and so it kind of shattered my world.

Speaker 52 It happened at the very beginning when the state brought those murder charges against Aiken Hatch in the first place.

Speaker 34 They chose not to put Leslie through the additional trauma of testifying about the rapes.

Speaker 16 After all, they could prove murder easily.

Speaker 36 And Leslie never knew, not in all those years, that the killers denied raping her all along.

Speaker 23 Then Hatch's clemency hearing, when with his life on the line, he stuck to his story that he had not sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 10 They had denied raping me and so I think right then it just really threw me for a loop.

Speaker 10 I was only supposed to talk like 30 seconds and it ended up being three or four minutes because I was so upset and

Speaker 10 remembered every minute of it like it was happening right then.

Speaker 98 Not only did I have nightmares, I was afraid to go to restaurants. I was afraid to sleep at night.
I heard noises that would wake me up

Speaker 98 because I was afraid somebody was coming to get me.

Speaker 98 And not only did I not get to go to my parents' funeral, I denied that they had died.

Speaker 10 He just still, even after all these years, just seemed like there was no remorse.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 3 not only denying that he did a dying duty,

Speaker 4 but calling you a liar, basically.

Speaker 10 Right. And was just like, I just could see where that poor 12-year-old girl could have thought that I did or this happened.
And I was like, there's no thought it did.

Speaker 47 The clemency appeal was denied and so on August 9th 1996 Leslie and Brooks Douglas drove from Oklahoma City to McAllister Prison to witness Stephen Hatch's death.

Speaker 101 All of the filings at the Supreme Court have been denied and we have a green light to proceed with the execution shortly after midnight.

Speaker 34 A brother and sister among the first family members ever to witness the execution of a murderer.

Speaker 34 That they could do so at all was because of additional victims' rights legislation Brooks helped pass that year.

Speaker 10 The night of the execution and they give

Speaker 10 them an option of making a last statement, he didn't even say anything. He knew you were there.

Speaker 32 Right.

Speaker 10 That just kind of left me kind of numb, kind of stunned, just like, wow. You know, in that what we all want to do is is change the things that we've done in life that we regret and

Speaker 10 go back and mend those things or ask for forgiveness because he took a big, huge part of me.

Speaker 71 And just after midnight, 17 painful years after their parents were killed, Leslie and Brooks watched Stephen Hatch, strapped to a gurney, die by lethal injection.

Speaker 15 Hatch left behind a written statement. In it, he called those who sat in judgment of him evil and barbaric and politicians.

Speaker 38 An hour after Hatch was pronounced dead, Brooks spoke to the press.

Speaker 97 Leslie Leslie and I have again witnessed the taking of a life.

Speaker 97 The first time we did so,

Speaker 102 we were young people who were present when our mother and father were viciously killed.

Speaker 97 Today is the end

Speaker 97 of a very long ordeal that has dominated our lives.

Speaker 1 The family witnessing an execution was so unusual.

Speaker 51 Leslie appeared on the Today Show.

Speaker 76 How has this crime haunted you and followed you since it happened?

Speaker 10 I dealt with it a lot better then, but as I become older and have had children, it has become so much harder to try to explain to my children that they're never going to get to know their grandparents, they're never going to see them.

Speaker 61 So was it what you expected it would be?

Speaker 5 I now know that I'm never going to get a call, whether I'm in California or wherever it is that I'm living, outer Mongolia, and be told, guess what?

Speaker 5 I hate to tell you this, but you're going to have to come back and testify against Stephen Hatch again.

Speaker 5 It was over.

Speaker 31 But was it?

Speaker 17 He had forgiven Ache, felt as if he had put that behind him, accepted things the way they were.

Speaker 54 But according to Brooks' friends, he was troubled after the execution.

Speaker 53 And not long afterward, his second marriage ended.

Speaker 73 He was depressed for a while. It brings everything back up.
You know, when you have to go to the prison and so forth

Speaker 73 and witness it, it takes you back to that place. And I think that that made it tough for him.

Speaker 60 Indeed, it took him right back there.

Speaker 5 One of the more

Speaker 5 bizarre things was

Speaker 5 I felt like as I was watching him die

Speaker 5 that I was also watching the events of that night all over again.

Speaker 5 Part of us died

Speaker 5 back there.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, I'll never forget it. Leslie will never forget it.

Speaker 75 No.

Speaker 39 And nor could either of them have known then that one day he was going to choose his own decision to relive the worst night of his life in living color.

Speaker 103 And he was just gut-wrenching, bawling, saying, I just feel so bad for my mom and dad because, you know, he knew that that was their last day. And he's he's so young and had so much to live for.

Speaker 103 And that whole night was really excruciating for everyone, more real than you would have imagined.

Speaker 10 Coming up, I think my parents would be proud.

Speaker 32 Freeing his ghosts, the surprising move that helped Brooks heal the past at last.

Speaker 62 And Dateline continues.

Speaker 38 Brooks Douglas was restless.

Speaker 33 The man who'd helped murder his parents had been executed.

Speaker 20 The shooter was behind bars for life.

Speaker 19 And Brooks seemed unsure where he belonged.

Speaker 33 Three terms in the Oklahoma Senate was enough. He started a business, sold it, served as an Army officer in the Middle East.

Speaker 40 enrolled in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he met and married Julia.

Speaker 34 The crime that so infected his life?

Speaker 20 Well,

Speaker 71 he did make speeches from time to time about victims' rights.

Speaker 102 It took 14 years for us to get the wedding rings back that these guys had stolen and taken with them, and that one of them they actually had to saw it off of him when they caught him.

Speaker 18 But life was different now.

Speaker 57 He and Julia had two children, settled down in California.

Speaker 27 And then Brooks decided

Speaker 85 that maybe he could do some acting and writing.

Speaker 83 I was teaching a writing workshop and Brooks came to the class and he pitched three ideas. One a sitcom, one a drama.
And he proceeds to tell me about his life.

Speaker 63 Paul Brown is a Hollywood writer and director.

Speaker 83 I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A story about justice and vengeance becomes a story about forgiveness.
And I thought that was a very unique, important story.

Speaker 5 He said, that's the one you need to write. And I said, well, I don't think I can write it.

Speaker 5 It's too personal and it's too painful. But he convinced me that I should try it.
And so I wrote a few scenes, and parts of it were very difficult.

Speaker 5 I mean, extraordinarily difficult.

Speaker 32 Oh, yes, difficult.

Speaker 46 But before long,

Speaker 39 as important as anything in his life had ever been.

Speaker 14 Could he actually make a movie?

Speaker 30 He'd never done anything like this before, not even close.

Speaker 50 And egos are destroyed, fortunes made to vanish, with amazing regularity here.

Speaker 40 Still, this, he believed, was the answer.

Speaker 50 He hired Brown to co-write and direct his movie.

Speaker 38 E-rated his bank account, then went fundraising among friends and family, scraped together a couple of million dollars, poured three years into his labor of love, cast Hollywood actors, as well as some of his friends, and then called it Heaven's Reign.

Speaker 39 for reasons his father would have understood.

Speaker 11 Heaven's Reign opened in in 2010, and Leslie, who had survived the whole long ordeal in her own very private way,

Speaker 12 had to watch someone else, very publicly, be her.

Speaker 99 Do you realize that every time we go through this, I have to relive everything again?

Speaker 99 And then I don't know who's going to show up in my dreams.

Speaker 61 The thing that kept coming into my head was: I

Speaker 59 how she feels about this.

Speaker 65 I wonder what she thinks about this.

Speaker 10 It kind of just made me look back at

Speaker 10 where my head was and what I was thinking.

Speaker 10 And she actually did a great job portraying me because I thought I can say exactly word for word everything that she said because those things all came out of my mouth.

Speaker 10 And you just kind of go on with your life and then you look back and go, wow, I really did live through that. You know, it's different.
It is.

Speaker 34 It's kind of like seeing yourself as others see you, which is something we normally can't do.

Speaker 10 That can be scary sometimes.

Speaker 10 But no, I think my brother has told a beautiful story, and

Speaker 10 you know, I think my parents would be proud of how he's portrayed our family.

Speaker 17 Leslie herself has a small part, a tribute of sorts, to her mother, Marilyn Douglas, who taught her to sing a lifetime ago.

Speaker 10 Tis seven long years since last I saw you

Speaker 10 away

Speaker 10 rolling river.

Speaker 83 She has a beautiful voice and that voice got silenced. And in the movie she sings and people that heard her voice were just astonished by how beautiful it is.

Speaker 83 So I'm hoping that this will be a new chapter for her to start singing again.

Speaker 44 And Brooks?

Speaker 5 But I'd done local theater here in Oklahoma City and so I knew that I wanted to act in this movie.

Speaker 20 Act? Oh yes.

Speaker 33 But in fact there was really only one role he wanted to play, one he may have been born to.

Speaker 52 Brooks decided he would portray his own father.

Speaker 5 Nothing excited me more than the possibility of

Speaker 5 really being able to do that as a tribute to my dad.

Speaker 61 Please go tonight.

Speaker 17 The movie follows Brooks and Leslie's life, picks it up just after Brooks' election to the Oklahoma Senate with flashbacks to their idyllic years as missionary children in Brazil.

Speaker 16 It's a portrait of an American family with, at the heart of it, the words he still remembers contained in his father's very last sermon.

Speaker 57 Delivered, of course, by Brooks as his preaching dad.

Speaker 68 See, the joy of life

Speaker 70 is poisoned by the resentment of past grudges.

Speaker 61 You intentionally put that particular sermon in the movie.

Speaker 5 Yeah. A lot of that was a sermon he preached the morning before he died.

Speaker 37 But the theme certainly was forgiveness.

Speaker 61 And it was something he preached and believed in.

Speaker 69 Thus, that title, Heaven's Rain,

Speaker 45 it's from Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice. The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed.

Speaker 45 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Speaker 6 I'm so so sorry for what I did to you and the family.

Speaker 45 Why don't you tell me why?

Speaker 45 Well the truth is there was no reason.

Speaker 40 It's the reason he made the movie, this scene.

Speaker 61 Why is that moment one that still makes the emotion come into your eyes?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 it was so revealing.

Speaker 5 I looked back and it was just building this coat of armor and

Speaker 5 that was killing me and it was killing my marriages, my whatever, the friendships.

Speaker 5 At the end of the day,

Speaker 5 it was protecting me, but it was keeping me away from people that I loved.

Speaker 57 There's another scene in the movie, a flashback to the night of the crime, and maybe this was the scene he needed to play to finally move on.

Speaker 65 I wondered how it must have been.

Speaker 21 You're portraying him when he died.

Speaker 5 That was one of the very few instances in my life where it was actually much harder and

Speaker 5 much more painful

Speaker 5 than I

Speaker 5 started out thinking it was going to be.

Speaker 34 His wife was with him on set for that one.

Speaker 103 Brooks was upstairs before we filmed and he was just gut-wrenching, bawling, saying, I just feel so bad for my mom and dad because, you know, he knew that that was their last day.

Speaker 103 And he's so young and had so much to live for.

Speaker 104 And that whole night was really excruciating for everyone.

Speaker 103 More real than you would have imagined.

Speaker 69 Dad, mom's dead.

Speaker 10 He had to relive

Speaker 10 that night, and I know how hard that was for him, and we talked about it, and how hard that was going to be, and that I was glad it was him going and not me, because I couldn't have dealt with it.

Speaker 40 After a Los Angeles opening, Heaven's Rain was first released in Oklahoma and Texas and later across the southwest.

Speaker 34 And as if to close another chapter in Brooks and Leslie's life, in April of 2011, Glenn Ake, the trigger man, died in prison of natural causes.

Speaker 52 Brooks went on to promote the movie, often speaking after group screenings.

Speaker 50 The film found its early audience among Oklahoma churchgoers.

Speaker 69 I'm not sure people can fully appreciate the power that the grace of God has had in your life

Speaker 69 in granting the forgiveness to the people who have murdered your parents.

Speaker 32 An old wound.

Speaker 19 He could have left it alone, scarred over as it was.

Speaker 15 More than once he turned down book and movie deals proposed by others, chose to let the dead lie.

Speaker 20 But not now.

Speaker 28 Not anymore.

Speaker 29 And by opening the wound again himself, he might finally have healed it.

Speaker 22 He could have just said, no, forget about it.

Speaker 5 You know, forgive someone or some, you know, something that's happened or be forgiven. And these are all, very old lessons.
That's not anything I came up with.

Speaker 5 This

Speaker 5 is what my dad and my mom taught me and what my faith has taught me. And I wanted people to see who my dad was, who both my parents were.

Speaker 5 and the work that they did and the lessons that they taught me.

Speaker 33 What do you want people to take away from this movie of yours?

Speaker 5 The power of forgiveness and the importance of it. If as individuals, I mean, as people,

Speaker 5 if we're going to move on past

Speaker 5 the things of our past, we've got to find a way to forgive

Speaker 5 or be forgiven. Aight and Hatch did some horrible things.
They threw some huge curbballs our way.

Speaker 5 But it's always up to me. Every day that I wake up, it's up to me whether I want to really live a full life or not.

Speaker 89 Brooks chose to live a full life.

Speaker 52 But in May of 2020, tragedy struck the Douglas family yet again. At age 56, Brooks died of cancer.

Speaker 32 His message of forgiveness was not lost on his sister.

Speaker 10 I just look at it as that you have to forgive or your heart's not clean and you just can't move on. I mean, you just dwell on it and dwell on it, especially when people have hate for people.

Speaker 10 I couldn't go on hating these men because that reflects in your own life. If you have hate for people, it makes you a hateful person.

Speaker 10 And I don't want to live like that the rest of my life.

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