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The Boys Who Burned Their Father Alive · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The fire was spotted just before dawn on November 26th, 2001.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Neighbors in a rural stretch of Escambia County, Florida, saw
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the orange glow through the pines and called it in.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: By the time firefighters reached the house, the front room
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: was fully consumed. They pulled the flames back and pushed inside.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And there, in the middle of all that ruin, they
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: found a man sitting on his sofa. He looked he
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: had fallen asleep, watching television. He was not asleep. Terry
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: King was forty years old, and the back of his
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: skull had been caved in. His face was almost unrecognizable,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: but the detail that would quietly unravel everything that followed
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: was not visible to the eye. It emerged from the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: autopsy report, in a single line that forensic examiners noted,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: almost without comment. There was no soot in his lungs,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: no smoke particles, in his airway. Terry King had not
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: breathed a single breath after the fire started. He was
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: already dead when the flames began. Someone had burned down
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the house around a corpse. His two sons, Alex, 13
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: years old, and Derek, 14, were gone. The house was empty,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: except for the body and the fire. And there is
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: something about that image that I find genuinely difficult to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: move past. A father sitting upright in his own living room, destroyed,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: while the world around him burns, and his children are nowhere.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: There is no version of this story where everything makes sense.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: The next morning, November 27th, a man named Richard Chavez
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: walked into the Escambia County Sheriff's Station. He had Alex
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and Derek King with him. Within hours, investigators sat the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: two boys down separately, in different rooms, with different officers.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: They asked each one the same question, and each boy
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: gave the same answer, in the same order, with the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: same details. Alex had planned it. Derek had carried it out.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: A baseball bat. Approximately ten blows. Then they set the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: fire and walked to Rick's house, a short distance away,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: where they had been since the night their father died.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: The confession was so clean, so synchronized, that it felt
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: like a resolution. A tragedy, yes, but a closed one.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Two broken boys who had cracked under pressure they were
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: never equipped to carry. The case seemed to answer itself
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: within 24 hours of Terry King's body being found. That
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: answer was wrong, and the evidence that dismantled it had
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: been sitting in Richard Chavez's house the entire time. Terry
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: King had not always been the primary parent. For most
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of Alex and Derek's childhood, he wasn't in the picture
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: at all. Their mother, Marino, raised them, or tried to.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: By the time Alex was around seven and Derek around eight,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: she had four children and was struggling with drug use
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and what she later described as an overwhelming sense of suffocation.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: She walked away. All four children entered the foster care system.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: The younger two twin boys born from a separate relationship,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: were adopted together quickly. Alex and Derek were not. They
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: were separated and placed with different families. Derek was eventually
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: taken in by a family named Lay, who kept him
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for five years. Then, in September of 2001, just two
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: months before Terry King's death, they sent him back. The
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: reason given. Threatening behavior. an unsettling fixation on fire, and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a habit of inhaling lighter fluid. He was 14 years
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: old and had already been returned like something that didn't fit.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Derek came home to a father he barely knew, a
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: younger brother he hadn't lived with in years, and a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: house in rural Florida with no money for the Ritalin
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: that had been prescribed to manage his attention disorder. Without
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the medication, the friction between Derek and Terry and Terry
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: escalated into something neither of them seemed able to stop.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Terry's mother, Thelma, would later say that her son never
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: struck the boys. She said Alex was obedient, a good student,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that the relationship between Alex and his father was by
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: her account manageable. The discipline Terry used was psychological. Rather
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: than physical, he would sit his sons down in a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: room and stare at them in silence for long stretches
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of time. That was his punishment. The sustained, unblinking weight
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of a parent's gaze. That detail stayed with me in
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: a way I didn't expect. There is something about that image.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: A man sitting across from his child, saying nothing, just watching.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: That tells you everything about the emotional register of that
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: house itself. without describing a single act of violence. Into
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that atmosphere walked Richard Chavez. He was a friend of Terry's,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: not a relative, not a neighbor in any official capacity,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: just a man who had been around. He had a
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: prior conviction for a lewd or lascivious act against a minor,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: for which he had served six months and five months
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: of probation. He also had convictions for robbery and petty theft,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: including Three years in prison. None of that stopped him
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: from becoming a presence in the lives of Alex and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Derek King. Chavez offered the boys what the house on
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the county road did not attention. Warmth. Video games. A
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: kind of easy affection that a 13-year-old who had been
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: abandoned twice might not be able to distinguish from something genuine.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: What investigators found when they searched his home after the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: arrests was not ambiguous. On the bed in Richard Chavez's room,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: there was a photograph of Alex King. Alex was 13.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: The photograph was on top of the sheets, up in
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the attic tucked away. They found a diary that belonged
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: to Alex. One entry had been written sometime in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: weeks before Terry King's death. The line read, before he
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: met Rick, Alex had considered himself straight. Now, he wrote,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: he was gay. And from Alex's phone number, Sent to
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Richard Chavez's number, sometime before the 26th of November, there
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was a text message. Tell my father that neither my
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: brother nor I will ever be with him again. The
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: case had not resolved itself in 24 hours. It had
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: only appeared to. The case seemed to close itself within
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: 24 hours. Two boys walk into a police station with
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a man who isn't their father. Both confess. The details match.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the confession that Alex and Derek gave on November 27th.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: 2001 was precise in the way that guilt is supposed
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: to be precise. A baseball bat, approximately 10 blows, the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: fire set afterward. The flight to Rick's house. Investigators had
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: seen false confessions before. They knew the signs. And this
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: didn't look like one. That assumption lasted about as long
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: as it took to search Richard Chavez' home Inside Rick's bedroom,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: sitting on top of his bed, was a photograph of Alex.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Not a family photo. Not a group picture. A single
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: photograph of a 13-year-old boy. Placed on the bed of
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a man with a prior conviction for a lewd act
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: against a minor. The investigators moved through the house. In
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the attic, they found Alex's diary. The entry that stopped
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: everything read, Before I met Rick. I was straight, now
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I am gay. A 13-year-old boy had written those words
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in his own handwriting and hidden them in the attic
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of a man who had previously served six months in
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: jail for a sexual offense against a child. The rational
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: explanation for the photograph on the bed stopped working here.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The rational explanation for the diary entry in the attic
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: stopped working too. Then the phone records surfaced. A text
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: message sent from Alex's number to Rick's number, sent before
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the murder. Tell my father that neither my brother nor
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I will ever be with him again. The message had
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: been sent from a child's phone to an adult who had,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: by his own account, a casual friendship with their father.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: That was the relationship Rick had described to police. A
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: casual friendship. Nothing more. Rick was arrested. Bail was set
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: at $ 50, 000, and then investigators began pulling on the thread
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: that the phone message had exposed. Rick's criminal history was
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: already logged. The lewd act. Conviction. Six months served. Five
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: months of probation. Plus, a separate conviction for robbery and
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: petty theft that had earned him three years in prison.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: What the investigation now needed to establish was not his past,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but his present. Specifically, where Rick stood in the boys'
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: lives in the weeks before Terry King died. The answer
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: came from an unexpected direction. Rick told Terry's father, the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: boy's grandfather, James, that he had entered the burning house,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: that he had seen Terry's body with his own eyes.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: That same day, Rick told police something different. He told
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: investigators that the firefighters had never allowed him inside, that
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: he had stood at the perimeter, that he had seen nothing.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Same day. Two versions. One of them was a lie.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: That detail changes everything. Because a man who lies about
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: what he saw at the scene of a murder, on
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the day the body is found, before he has any
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: reason to believe he is a suspect, is not a
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: man acting from grief. He is a man managing information.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: The lie about the body was the first crack in
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: this story. Rick had been building since the moment he
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: walked those two boys into a police station and presented
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: them to the world as the killers. the investigators went
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: back to Rick's house. This time they looked not just
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: at what was there, but at what it meant that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: it was there at all. A diary hidden in an attic,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a photograph on a bed, a text sent from a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: child's phone to an adult man telling a father his
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: sons were never coming back. These were not the artifacts
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: of a casual friendship between neighbors. These were the artifacts
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: of something else entirely. Five months after their original confession,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Alex and Derek recanted. What Alex said in his second
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: statement did not arrive as a slow revelation. It arrived
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in a single, flat sentence that recontextualized every moment that
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: had come before it. Alex told investigators that before he
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and Derek walked into that police station on November 27th,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Rick had spent hours with them rehearsing exactly what to say.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Every detail. The bat. The number of blows. The sequence
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of the fire. The route they took to Rick's house.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: All of it had been scripted and practiced until it
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: sounded like memory. The first confession was not a confession.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: It was a performance. Alex went further. He stated that
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Rick had told both brothers something specific before they went in.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That because they were minors, they would not go to prison.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: that the law protected children, that if they took responsibility,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the consequences would be minor and temporary. Alex also stated
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that Rick had abused him sexually, that the relationship was
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: not a friendship, that it had never been a friendship.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Derek's statement was shorter, and in some ways, more devastating.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: He said he did not remember many of the details
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: from the night of the murder. He said they had confessed...
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: protect Rick. He said that was the reason, that was
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the only reason. The prosecution now faced a problem with
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: no clean solution. Two boys had confessed in precise matching detail.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Those same two boys had then retracted those confessions and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: pointed at a third person. Rick's trial and the boys
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: trial ran simultaneously with verdicts sealed. Each defense team argued
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: that the other party had committed the murder Rick's attorneys
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: argued the boys had done it. The boys' attorneys argued.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Rick had done it. The jury in Rick's case acquitted
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: him of murder and arson. The jury in the boys'
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: case convicted them of second-degree murder and arson. The sentences
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: handed down for Alex and Derek were 52 years. Or life.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Two children. 52 years. For a crime that a concurrent
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: jury had just decided an adult man did not commit,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and this is the detail that still does not resolve cleanly.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: The note found in the trash near Alex's cell, written
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: in Rick's hand, recovered after Rick had found ways to
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: communicate with Alex through messages scratched into the floor of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the recreation area and written on the walls of the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: visiting room. The note said, I love you. Don't trust
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the police. Don't change your story. I'll wait for you
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: however long it takes. Rick Chavez, acquitted of murder, was
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: sending that message to a 14-year-old boy from inside a
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: prison where they were both being held. Do not change
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: your story. I'll wait. There is no version of this
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: story where everything makes sense. The legal system produced two simultaneous,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: contradictory verdicts about the same death. A jury decided the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: boys did it. A concurrent jury decided Rick did not.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Both verdicts were delivered from the same set of facts,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and neither one established what actually happened inside that house
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: before it burned. What the evidence does establish is a pattern.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Rick Chavez had a prior conviction for a lewd act
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: against a minor. A photograph of a 13-year-old boy sat
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: on his bed. That boy's diary, hidden in Rick's attic,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: described a sexual and emotional transformation tied directly to Rick.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Rick lied about seeing the body on the day the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: body was found. Rick communicated illegally with Alex, after both
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: were incarcerated, specifically instructing Alex not to change his story.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And Rick was convicted, not of murder, but of tampering
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: with evidence and accessory to murder, and sentenced to 35
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: years in prison. The boys were convicted first. Then a
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: mediator reduced their sentences. Alex served seven years, and was
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: released in 2008 at 20 years old. Derek served eight
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: years and was released in 2009 at 22. Their only
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: public statement after their release came in an interview with
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Matt Lauer, in which both brothers said, quietly, that people
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: make mistakes. They did not elaborate. They have not spoken
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: publicly since. The question the case never answered in a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: courtroom is the one that makes it impossible to close.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: If the first confession was scripted and rehearsed, and the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: second confession pointed to Rick, and Rick was acquitted of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the killing itself, then who held the bat? The legal
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: record says it was the boys. The boys say it
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: was Rick. Rick said nothing that resolves it. And the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: only person who could confirm the answer was found seated
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: on a sofa with no smoke in his lungs, and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: his face unrecognizable, in a house that was already supposed
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to have killed him. Rick Chavez is still serving his
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: 35-year sentence. Alex is 34 years old. Derek is 35.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Whatever happened in that rural house in Escambia County on
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the night of November 26th, 2000? And one, the two
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: people most likely to know the full truth have said
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: their piece and gone silent. The system that failed them
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: as children, that placed them, lost them, returned them, and
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: then convicted them, has no further claim on them now.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: But the note Rick sent from his cell has no expiration.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Don't change your story. I'll wait for you however long
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: it takes. Some instructions outlast the person who gave them.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: The first jury handed Alex and Derek sentences that could
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: have kept them in prison until they were old men.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: 52 years or life. Two children, 13 and 14 years old,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: convicted of second-degree murder and arson for killing the only
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: parent who had taken them back. Then Rosie O'Donnell read
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: about the case and hired attorneys, not investigators. Attorneys, the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: kind who knew how to find the seams in a verdict.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: On November 14th, 2002, A mediator reduced everything. Derek's sentence
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: dropped to eight years. Alex's to seven. The charges fell
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: from second-degree murder to third-degree murder and arson. The brothers,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: who had confessed to the same crime in the same words,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: would be home before they turned 23. Rick Chavez watched
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that happen from his own proceedings. A jury had already
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: acquitted him of murder and arson in the first trial
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: The same jury that convicted the boys of killing their
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: father found Rick not guilty of helping plan it. That
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: contradiction was never resolved in open court. It was simply
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: filed and forgotten. What the second proceeding did establish, Rick
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: was convicted of tampering with evidence and accessory to murder.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: 35 years. The man who was acquitted of the killing
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: received a longer sentence than both boys combined. by decades.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: That arithmetic has no clean explanation. Alex walked out of
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: prison in 2008. He was 20 years old. Derek followed
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: in 2009 at 22. Neither of them had spent their
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: teenage years in a school. They had spent them in
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a correctional facility, carrying a conviction for killing their father,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: which had been entered into the public record, and then
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: partially walked back and never fully erased. Their one documented
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: public appearance, after release, was an interview on the Today
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: program with Matt Lauer. Both brothers sat in front of
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a camera and said, in almost identical phrasing, that people
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: make mistakes. They did not elaborate. They did not name Rick.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: They did not say whose mistake they meant. After that interview,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: they disappeared from the public record entirely Alex is 34 now.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Derek is 35. Where they live, what they do, whether
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: they are in contact with each other, none of it
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: is known. Rick Chavez is still serving his 35-year sentence.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner's finding from November 26, 2000. And one
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: has never changed. Terry King's lungs contained no soot, no smoke,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: no trace of the fire that burned around him. He
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was dead before the first flame was lit. Someone beat
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: him to death while he sat in his own living room,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and then someone set the house on fire to make
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it look like something else. Who held the bat has
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: never been established by any court. The only version of
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: events that was ever entered into the record as a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: formal confession. Two boys. Same story, same words, delivered the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: morning after the murder was later described by one of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: those boys as a script. Hours of rehearsal. An adult
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: in the room, walking them through it, telling them what
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to say. Telling them they would be safe because of
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: their age. That adult was convicted of tampering with evidence,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: not of murder. And the boys who said they did
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: it served less time than the man who said he didn't.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: That is the only sentence the legal system ever produced
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: that everyone involved agreed on. Something happened in that house
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: on the night of November 26, 2001, and whatever it was,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: no version of it was ever fully told. This show
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: is made by Obermedia.