Dateline NBC - The Haunting

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

In 1979, Pastor Richard Douglass, his wife Marilyn, and their children, Brooks and Leslie, lived peacefully just outside of Okarche, Oklahoma -- until two drifters arrived at their home. Keith Morrison reports in this Dateline classic. Originally aired on NBC on May 27, 2011. 

It's not like some scary movie. This really happened. I remember falling on my knees. You just think, I want to live. I have to do something. It was a miracle they lived through it. Just two frightened kids. The night terror knocked on their door. He had pulled out a.357 and he said, move over here. A loving pastor's family. Instant targets.

I heard the first shot go off and said, I love you. I love you, Dad. They were the only ones who survived, and no one knew then how long justice would take or what it would cost. Were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you? Absolutely. A chilling manhunt. A young survivor driven to become a state senator. He was very, very passionate. Would they ever come out of the dark? I always get a little emotional, and I can't believe it's been this long. 30 years later, an answer.

The power of forgiveness. This is what my dad and my mom taught me. In his 40s and married again, he started fresh on the beach at Malibu. It was time to finally put it to rest. Use Hollywood to release those demons of his. Get the nightmares in the rearview mirror. I looked back and I was just building this coat of armor and 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. After all, what else but a movie could make sense of it? What those people did to him, and then what came of it? You couldn't make up.

And the movie, it turned out to be, a decades-long saga of crime and punishment, retribution and forgiveness. Perhaps it was too unbelievable not to be true. 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, a warning. 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.

Yes, it all did. The unspeakable crimes, the strange, painful path toward punishment. And then, could there ever be forgiveness? God knows. That's what the be forgiveness? God knows. That's what the father demanded. God knows all about us. There's not a secret crevice of our heart that he's not fully aware of. But could the son obey?

God never expects of us that which we cannot do. God never demands of us what he does not empower. Imagine now that it's 1979. A little place called Okarchee, Oklahoma. Commutable drive into Oklahoma City, as people were discovering back then, before it happened. Okarchee is a smaller community and a pretty quiet, peaceful little town. And to be frank, the Douglases didn't quite live in Akarchi proper. They preferred a modest little place way out by itself, miles beyond the streetlights.

A little detail worth keeping in mind later. 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. Richard Douglas was one of the most influential Baptist pastors in Oklahoma, and at the time was pastor of a 3,000-member church.

Sort of family everybody wanted to associate with. The pastor's daughter, Leslie. I mean, we became the people who we are because my parents were so strong. We lived a life that he would want us to live and learn the lessons he wanted us to know. And the fact that the Reverend Mr. Douglas was a man of some heft in the Baptist church seemed somehow secondary to his nature. Kindly, approachable, principled. If he wasn't at the church, he was visiting people and helping them work out their problems all the time. 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. It was for Leslie and her big brother Brooks, unlike anything they would ever know again. Magic time. We grew up in this city called Bel-Aim, which is right on the mouth of the Amazon, so right where the Atlantic meets the Amazon River. And it finally occurred to me why I loved being near the water so much, because that's where I grew up and where I traveled with my dad. And so they were close, as close as a family on its own in such a place could possibly be.

And accomplished. Marilyn Douglas could have sung professionally had she wanted to, could have done all kinds of things. 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. And what she wanted to do more than anything else was raise Brooks and Leslie. You can see their faces still. Oh yes, and I can hear my mom singing. She did once every week at church and at home where she sewed the outfits Leslie wore to compete in Miss Teen Oklahoma. I was the one that spent time with my mom, whether it be singing or her making

me a new dress for a pageant. So, autumn 79. 16-year-old Brooks was an advanced football playing senior in high school, making some spending money breeding Doberman Pinscher dogs. Lastly, a pretty 12-year-old was in middle school. 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 for the pastor and his wife. Charity began at home. 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. It was that generosity and openness that, many years later, Brooks would honor in his movie about his parents

and about that haunting night. It was October 15th, a Monday. Everybody home. My mom was in the kitchen fixing dinner and Leslie was in the kitchen with her. It was Brooks who answered the knock at the door. People called in all the time at the pastor's house. This one he didn't recognize. A bearded stranger who wanted a favor.

And no one felt the evil then 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. And here we are. Coming up. Suddenly, just before dinner, terror. He had pulled out a.357, had it in my face, and he said, move over here. 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.

Who was this at the door? When Dateline Continues. A little house in the country, just outside Okarchee, Oklahoma, October 15, 1979. Pastor Richard Douglas and his family were getting ready for a quiet school night dinner. Around dusk, a knock at the door. Sixteen-year-old Brooks Douglas put down his homework, answered it. A bearded stranger stood before him. He asked if he could use the phone, trying to get a hold of somebody that lived near us. So let him in, and he went over, he picked up the phone, he said, I have phone numbers in my other pants. And so he went outside.

And when he returned a moment later, he bent down, reached behind his back, and the awful business began. He had pulled out a.357, had it in my face, and he said, you know what it's all about, move over here. A second man armed with a double-barreled shotgun stormed through the door. It was a robbery, the men said. I took my wallet out and it had 43 bucks in it and handed it to him. That's all you got? That's all you got? Yeah. And then he went through my mom's purse and then he asked my mom if we had any rope. They pointed their guns, herded the family together, hog-tied them.

So he told us all to lie down on the living room floor, face down, and they tied me up with our hands and feet behind our back. One stood guard with a shotgun. The other ransacked the house, pulled the phones from the wall. Then the man with the pistol, pulled the phones from the wall. Then the man with the pistol returned to the living room. And he looked at pretty 12-year-old Leslie. And now the character of the attack changed.

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. And she said, well, we don't have any hiding place for money, so we're going to find some. And so he put his gun to the back of her head and walked around 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. You all knew what was going on? Yeah. And my mom, of course, was laying next to me, and she just was sobbing. And I said, Mom, Leslie's going to be okay.

We're going to be okay. We're all going to be okay. Brooks and his parents lay on the living room floor, hogtied, and they listened, helpless, as each man took his turn, as each one raped Leslie. They brought Leslie in, tied her up, hands and feet behind her back like the rest of us were. 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. The two gunmen helped themselves to the meal. Marilyn had cooking on the stove.

They sat down at our table and ate our dinner. And then the terrifying round of bargaining began. 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 go to the police, then we won't shoot you. I go, well, of course, we'll give you four hours. Then, two hours into their ordeal,

the family heard the leader, the one with the pistol, issue an order. Go outside, start the car, turn it around, and listen for the sound. Was it pretty clear to you, listen for the sound meant? Oh, that's what I took it to mean, was that he was going to shoot us. And at that point, it came home to you that it was really gonna happen? I don't think I believed that we were actually gonna get shot. I mean, what had we done, you know?

And all they could do then was wait and pray. I remember him walking right up over my head and saying, well, I don't wanna have to shoot y'all, but, 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 there was two other shots and then two more. And then I heard him run to the door and go out. Shot twice in the back, Brooks shimmied on his stomach toward his parents.

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. And my dad was like, I love you, too. Get me untied. And he said, quit worrying about things. Just get your mother untied. And I said, Dad, I'm trying. He said, Mom, you're loose. your ropes are loose and tie me and tie me and you know she looked up at me one last time and then you know her head tipped down and she 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 and um he never really said anything else. I told him again I loved him, and he said, I love you. And I said, it's okay, Dad. Leslie and I are going to be okay. It was the last thing Pastor Richard Douglas ever heard. He died with his son at his side, 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.

Coming up. You just think, I want to live. I have to do something. I can't just lay here. What could they do? 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. A race for life and for the gunman begins when Dateline continues. On the night of October 15th, 1979, two drifters raced away from the Okarchee, Oklahoma home of the Douglas family. In their wake lay the dead and dying. Pastor Richard Douglas and his wife Marilyn shot to death.

Sixteen-year-old Brooks and his twelve-year-old sister Leslie, each shot twice, were hogtied and bleeding beside the bodies of their parents. If I was going to live, I needed to make a decision. I remember thinking, as long as I can draw breath or even twitch a muscle, I need to keep trying. The house was eerily quiet, and Brooks feared his sister, too, was gone. I'd been shouting to her periodically and she was responding and then she stopped responding. Yet, despite being shot twice herself, Leslie had somehow escaped her bonds and made her way to the kitchen. I looked up and Leslie came running in with a knife and cut me loose. You're the one who got things going afterwards. Right, right. Where did that come from? I don't know. I guess that internal

drive that you just think, you know, I want to live. I want to be here. I have to do something. I can't just lay here. Brooks and Leslie were bleeding to death, both of them. And at least Brooks knew it. We needed to get to a hospital or we were going to die. Brooks carried Leslie out to the family car. They were terrified, all but sure the killers must be out there somewhere, lying in wait for them. 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. As they raced up Route 81, brother and sister had a surreal, surprisingly composed conversation.

It was very strange because there was moments of silence. And then Leslie asked me, Mom and Dad dead? And I said, yeah, they are. And she goes, so what are we going to do? I guess we'll go live with our aunts and uncles. And I said, I guess so. I just said, we don't need to worry about it right now. We just need to, you know, we need to get better. Brooks was doing better than 100 miles an hour in his

dad's 1970 Plymouth Duster. He drove onto the lawn of the Okarchee home of a family friend, a doctor, blurted out what had happened. 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. And then I collapsed as soon as I got in the living room. The doctor and his son carried Brooks and Leslie to a nearby hospital. And then the doctor and his son went out to the house to check on my mom and dad. The children fought for their lives. In the middle of the night, they were moved to an intensive care unit in Oklahoma City. Their wounds were appalling. One bullet had nicked Brooke's heart.

It came in this side of my back and collapsed this lung. And what about your sister's injuries? 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. And then the second bullet went through the middle, just off the center of her back and came out her chest. The doctor called the sheriff's office. Officers reached the Douglas home around 11 p.m. Lynn Stedman was sheriff of Canadian County.

The preacher, Reverend Douglas and Mrs. Douglas, were still at the residence on the living room floor. Dead. Mm-hmm. Pretty shocking thing. Yes, certainly was. Like an execution. Yes, sir it was. Like an execution. Yes, sir.

It didn't take Laman long to identify their suspects. There had been another home invasion earlier that day in Hennessey, Oklahoma, just up the road from the Douglas's. Two men fled that crime in a distinctive banana yellow Chevy Malibu with primer spots. The victims, who were robbed but not physically harmed, gave deputies good descriptions, both of the men and their vehicle. Investigators were able to trace that distinctive car to an oil field a few miles up the road from the Douglas property. Two roughnecks working the drilling rig had up and quit that very morning,

taken off in a borrowed car. Thought they were wanted for parole violations, apparently. They weren't. They thought they were. The two were named Stephen Hatch and Glenn Ake, and they were familiar already to the local police. One of them had a burglary conviction. These are petty criminals. Yes, sir. 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. Each one of them got approximately $500 out of a savings account. They bought beer and whiskey and scored some speed in cocaine,

then roared off in the borrowed car to rob the family in Hennessy. That crime netted more than $1,000 and a double-barreled shotgun. From there, they headed south to Okarchi and the pastor's modest ranch house out beyond the streetlights. Assistant District Attorney Bill James responded to the crime scene at the Douglas home that night. He was starting to help build a case. Within 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, we had the identity of the people because of their prior robbery.

They took money out of their bank accounts, then they robbed another place. They had a couple of thousand dollars. They had a car. They had guns. Why go into yet another house? I think it was so easy. They didn't have somewhat of a high from doing that first time, so they wanted to do it again.

The county sheriff, the state police, the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI were all looking for Aiken Hatch. But the fugitives had at least a six-hour start. They weren't here. They were gone, yeah. Meanwhile, back in an Oklahoma City hospital, Brooks and Leslie Douglas clung to life in an intensive care unit. And lawmen had a bad feeling.

I really was afraid. When I was standing at the scene that night, these people were likely to go out and commit one murder after another because it was just so cold and without thought, without necessity. Coming up, were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you? Absolutely. Round-the-clock protection for Brooks and Leslie. Were they still in danger?

People don't know where these two guys are. They could be anywhere. And Dateline continues. It was Thursday, October 18, 1979. The choir sang Amazing Grace, 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. Even the governor was there. It was three days after the home invasion, after the murder. The children couldn't be there. Brooks and Leslie remained in intensive care.

Brooks took a turn for the worse. The morning of the funeral, my temperature shot way up, and 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. As the mourners listened to eulogies and the Douglas' favorite hymns, a multi-state manhunt was on for the shooting suspects, oilfield roustabouts Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch. Leslie and Brooks were kept together in the same hospital room under 24-hour police guard.

Were you frightened, terrified that they would come back and try to kill you? Absolutely. It obviously caused some angst, you know, among the police and the family. It wasn't just the still-healing Douglas children who were frightened. The enormity of the crime transfixed Oklahomans. Russ McCaskey was an anchor at KJRH Tulsa.

This terrible thing has happened. There's a manhunt that's going on. There's a lot of tension. People don't know where these two guys are. They could be anywhere. Reports of sightings came in. Some of them disturbingly close. What were they up to? Bill James was assistant district attorney. Were you worried that they'd come back and try to get those other two kids once they learned that they were alive?

Correct. Somebody thought they had seen them almost in the Carl Karchi area, and we had a manhunt up there. But of course, Brooks and Leslie Douglas were more than just victims, more than survivors even. They were crucial witnesses. 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.

What was interesting about them to you? How analytical they were about it and discussing and exact questions and what was going to happen. And they were pretty intelligent kids. And they were actually pretty well in control of their emotions. As you were lying in the hospital trying to recover, trying to understand what had happened to you, what was that like for you? It was really strange.

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, we're going to be okay. 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 little house that was owned by the church. secure location, still under police guard. It was Halloween.

We were staying in a little house that was owned by the church in a residential neighborhood. And a bunch of trick-or-treaters came out. They were adults and showed up at the door wearing masks. Leslie and I both came out of our skin. And the highway patrolman actually had his weapon drawn behind the door and was telling him, you don't want to be here. That was a scary moment. Out of the hospital, orphaned now, the finality of the children's loss sank in all the way. The hardest thing was the cemetery.

I remember walking towards the gravesite. It was just dirt and with a grave marker with both of their names on it. That was the first moment 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 I remember falling on my knees and just thinking how senseless. Then imagine this.

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. And so began repercussions neither they nor anyone else imagined. A haunting, really, that would go on for decades. First, the siblings who kept each other alive through crisis and recovery were separated. Leslie moved in with relatives in another town and started at a new school. Brooks, just a term shy of high school graduation, stayed in the neighborhood with church members so he could finish school. At the end of the day, I was still 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 with security.

It was all necessary, but it was hard to take for a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old. And Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch were still out there somewhere. Coming up, worst fears are confirmed. Their feet and hands were bound behind their back. They had hoods over their head, and both of them had been shot execution style. The suspects strike again and again. The car just got away, just disappeared. But police are about to get the break they need

when Dateline continues. Stephen Hatch and Glenn Ake were on the run. The day after the murders, Ake called family in Oklahoma and learned that lawmen were on their trail for killing Pastor and Mrs. Douglas and shooting Leslie and Brooks. Sheriff Lynn Stedman led the investigation. And they ended up that next morning in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Still in the yellow Malibu?

Yes, sir. They spent the night, then they walked to the bus station. Eventually, police managed to track down their yellow getaway car, abandoned now. But by then, they were long gone, had hopped a bus to Memphis. They spent three nights there, drinking heavily. They lost about a thousand dollars while they were in the motel as a result of cabbie bringing a couple of hookers to their room and the hookers rolled them for about a thousand dollars. And after Memphis they wandered around southern Louisiana looking for oil field work before hitchhiking to New

Orleans. There the two found jobs in a carnival, and Ake took up with a young woman named Virginia Ginger Keefe. They hooked up with her, and they went on the road with her for a good while. Back on the road after they lost those carnival jobs. Happened when Ake got drunk at work and fired a shotgun in the air. They were just about broke by then, except for a credit card they'd stolen from Mrs. Douglas. 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. That was Lumberton, Texas. Ake and Hatch and Virginia Keefe arrived there, they was on a Continental Trailway bus. Billy Payne was sheriff of Hardin County back then. 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. And when the homeowner returned, a friend along with him,

Ake and Hatch, were waiting with a sawed-off shotgun. Sheriff Payne later found some signs of a struggle, but otherwise the crime scene was a carbon copy of the Douglas murders. They had been tied with the ropes. Their feet and hands were bound behind their back. They had hoods over their head, and both of them had been shot execution style. Payne didn't know then about the Douglas case, didn't connect the two right away. But he did have something to go on. The homeowners knew Datsun 280Z was missing.

We were able to put out a national bulletin for that vehicle. Hatch, Ake, and Ginger Keefe squeezed into the stolen car and headed west. They had a little cash, a gasoline credit card stolen in the Texas murders, and Marilyn Douglas' visa. The trio drove to California, then doubled back east to Wyoming, Hatch and Ake again looking for oil field work. But their murderous road trip was about to end. In a bar in downtown Bags, Wyoming, Ake got drunk, started slapping Ginger around.

She'd had enough, and at her first opportunity spilled her guts to the barkeep. The bar owner alerted the police. By then, Ake and Hatch had escaped into Colorado. Jeff Corvo was a detective sergeant in Moffett County, Colorado back then. 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. 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. Aiken Hatch floored the 280Z, lost the lawman.

Aware of how dangerous the two were, the searchers scoured the county. Our guys gave chase, and the car just got away from them. Just disappeared about 25 miles north of town. They'd given the cops the slip. Low on money and freezing in the Colorado winter, Ake and Hatch were as desperate as cornered animals. They resorted to what they knew. They invaded a ranch house belonging to Mike Pondella outside Craig, Colorado. 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,

armed of course, and took Pondella hostage. Here's how Akin Hatch convinced the rancher they meant business. Mr. Pondella had a little dog. He called it his little three-legged dog. And the dog went to jump up on the bed and one of the guys shot and killed that dog. And they told Mr. Pondella that if he didn't do exactly as they said, he would be next. After egg's bloody warning, the rancher stalled for time. He got them to drink a lot of beer, and when they either went to sleep or passed out, he got away from them. So his quick thinking and the way that he handled himself in that situation absolutely saved his life.

The rancher met with the sheriff. We showed him the pictures of Aiken Hatch. He instantly identified them as the two people that had taken him hostage the night before. The rancher warned the lawmen that Aiken Hatch had access to an arsenal. Between the firearms and the ammunition that he had and the firearms and the ammunition that they brought, they were very, very well armed. I want to say close to 30 different firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Early the next morning, nearly a dozen lawmen stormed the ranch house. And right as we're driving up to the house, we see two men, Ake and Hatch, jump from a window in the house and run, and they run in two different directions.

They were both armed. A deputy fired a warning shot, double odd buckshot over Ake's head. 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. Ake and Hatt surrendered without firing a shot. They were taken to the county jail. 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. Douglas' wedding rings. Coming up...

Arrested, at last. Was the long nightmare over for Brooks and Leslie Douglas? Or was it just beginning? I unloaded a.357 Magnum loader with 38 wad cutters on these people. Chilling words from a killer. Did you have any idea how much you still had to go through even though they caught him? Oh, heavens no.

No idea. When Dateline continues. It was stunning news. Thanksgiving Eve, 1979, six weeks after the Ocarchee, Oklahoma murders of Richard and Marilyn Douglas, the shooting of their children, the manhunt was over. The governor calls a news conference. 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.

Glenn Ake and Stephen Hatch, who were by now also wanted for questioning in two additional murders in Texas, had been captured in Colorado after another home invasion. Word reached the prosecutor, Bill James, at the El Reno courthouse. It was the call he was waiting for. I jumped over the railing, 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. Why the hurry? Why the rush? We wanted them. Remember, the fugitives had committed a double murder in Texas, too. But the hurry? Why the rush? We wanted him. Remember, the fugitives had committed a double murder in Texas, too.

But the Oklahomans were determined they wanted first crack at Aiken Hatch. Had to get there before some lawman from Texas beat them to it.

The news of the capture was a huge relief, of course, to Brooks and Leslie Douglas. And now, the race to bring back Aiken 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 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. We had a semblance of Thanksgiving that day and then did this that evening, Thanksgiving evening at the sheriff's office in El Reno. They locked up Hatch in the old El Reno jail,

ache they kept in a more secure facility, a more modern place just down the block. 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. And so they did. Apparently, without any remorse or emotion, first Hatch and then Ake calmly described their activities on that murderous night. I stand by the end of the couch,

and I unload a.357 Magnum loaded with 38 wad cutters on these people. 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. We drove off. Steve asked me what I'd done, and he told me I should have never done nothing like that. They told us they didn't do that kind of stuff, in their words, unless they were drunk. And they had been drinking heavily the day that this happened, of October the 15th of 79.

Taking drugs as well? Yes, sir. In one of their areas, they mentioned some speed. Ake even mentioned cocaine that they had taken. Glenn Ake made it clear in his statement that he was the shooter. He was in charge. This shouldn't be on Steve's part because Steve can't kill nobody because he don't have no gut to do nothing with. All this doing was my brain, not his. Why did Hatch go along with him? Hatch was a, and this is Ake's words, Hatch is a follower.

Ake said, I'm the strong one and made all the decisions. So it was like a big dog, a little dog, and Hatch would follow along behind him. Ake told the sheriff that he and he alone was the trigger man, not only in the Douglas killings, but in Texas as well. The other incident was the shooting of those two fellows in Texas. Did Ake tell you about that and about why he pulled the trigger then? He said that he had to do it because Steve Hatch was just too weak to do it. He was afraid to pull the trigger.

Yes, sir. Did either one of them express any remorse in these statements? The only remorse that I got was that Ake said, I want the death penalty. Out of all this here, I want the death sentence. And I want injection as soon as possible. After, I'd like to have a little bit of time so I can see my parents and my nephew, then I'm ready to get executed.

He knew what he had done. Yes, sir. For Brooks and Leslie Douglas, the capture of the killers appeared to put an end to their ordeal. Little did they know. Did you have any idea how much you still had to go through even though they caught him?

Oh, heavens no. No idea. You figured it was sort of done at that point, probably. Yeah, yeah. Naive little you. Oh, yeah. By the early weeks of 1980, Brooks and Leslie Douglas had healed sufficiently

to return to school. Healed physically, that is. But now, shell-shocked after the murder of their parents the previous October, they struggled, any semblance of teenager normalcy forever lost to them. And they coped separately. Leslie had moved to another town. Brooks was still in the old neighborhood near his high school. And they still had no idea, that 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. 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 Douglas children. Stephen Hatch was tried first at the Canadian County Courthouse. 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. He's the one that created the energy for action for the second crime. And the state of Oklahoma looked to have an ironclad case against him. Most important, of course, the harrowing stories of the eyewitnesses and survivors, Leslie and Brooks Douglas. Then, Hatch and Ake's Thanksgiving statements, those confessions. 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. Keefe, who was never charged with any crime,

testified that Aiken Hatch told her about killing the Douglases and shooting Brooks and Leslie. 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. Simple?

For the judge hearing the case, maybe. But certainly not for those surviving witnesses. 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. Thirteen-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. How did those two kids do on the stand? Oh, they did excellent. They were good. They were both well.

Stood up on the cross-examination? We tried the case in chief in one day. We just, one witness after another. Altogether, the Hatch case took three days of the court's time. Hatch testified in his own defense. He was convicted, sentenced to death. Glenn Ake's trial in early summer didn't take much longer, but in the courtroom, they kept him under heavy guard. Ake was volatile, unpredictable. Ake was really mean. I mean, he just was a mean person. Sheriff Lynn Stedman testified for two hours about Ake's Thanksgiving confession.

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. Coming up, face-to-face with the gunman. It was like I had to pretend like I was somebody else. Leslie and Brooks find the courage Richard Douglas and his wife Marilyn. The cold-blooded executions were witnessed by the Douglas children, and now Brooks and Leslie would have to relive the horrific details of that night from the stand. They both calmly identified Ake as the man who shot them and murdered their parents. Did you watch the children's testimony? Yes. Brooks was

very strong in his testimony. Leslie was too, but it bothered her more than it did Brooks to testify. 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. 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.

I just knew that I had to remember every detail. And so whenever it was time to be on the stand, I knew that everything that I said was important and that I had to be specific and remember. So it was like, I don't know what got in my head. I just have to remove all emotional attachment. The jury needed just two hours to make up its mind. Ake was convicted. He was sentenced to a thousand years for shooting the Douglas children, and as for the murder of Brooks

and Leslie's parents. With the jury impaneled and sworn to try the issues in the above entitled cause, upon our oaths, having heretofore found the defendant, Glenn Burton Ake, guilty of murder in the first degree, fixed punishment at death. So, end of the road for Ake and Hatch, or so lawmen and prosecutors assumed. Sheriff Stedman escorted Ake to McAllister Penitentiary and death row. When I took Glenn Burton Ake to McAllister, Oklahoma, to be processed in by the Department of Corrections,

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. With this monstrous chapter of their lives apparently over, Leslie and Brooks began to thrive. Leslie, living in that new town with her mother's family, became a stellar high school student, a cheerleader, college-bound. How in heaven's name did you go on to do all the things that you did like any regular teenage person? I think it's because my 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 nothing's ever going to happen to you but I think it was one of those things that I just had in the back of my mind, and it helped me push through things.

Through those first trials, and in the years but especially I think in that first few years, I could hear them, hear their voices as, you know, as having to make decisions or do things. And so I felt like they were still with me. And it wasn't until years later somebody said, oh, you're an orphan. Oh, yes, he was. 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. Coming up... I felt a bullet hit me. And I heard another one go off and my mother screamed. Brooks and Leslie returned to the courtroom. I screamed and then he shot me again. But this time, the outcome will be very different. I remember when the verdicts were read in the courtroom.

There was an audible gasp. When Dateline continues. Some days it seemed that for every step forward he made, Brooks Douglas took two back. 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. Though scattered might be a better word for those years after Brooks headed off to college. 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 you know six or eight weeks and so I was having a hard time you know I'd get in had a hard time focusing. And legal developments over the next few years didn't make it any easier. The appeals of the two men convicted of killing Brooks' parents seemed to be drifting too,

deflected and scattered and confusing. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty in a far-off case in Florida led to Hatch's death sentence being vacated twice. And therefore, more uncertainty for the Douglas kids, more legal hearings. If this case doesn't fit the aggravating circumstances that it was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, I can't imagine a case that would. His sentence reinstated, Stephen Hatch went back to death row. And meanwhile, Glenn Ake, the trigger

man, had been filing appeals from a nearby cell. In February of 1985, six years after the Douglases were murdered, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Ake v. Oklahoma that he deserved a new trial. Prosecutors had failed to provide a psychiatrist at state expense. Kathy Stoker was the DA. I contacted Brooks and Leslie and indicated that we would have to retry Aik. I'm sure they just thought, will this ever end? That was exactly the stunned siblings' reaction. Once again, they opened their psychic

and emotional wounds for inspection by the court. And this is the thing that is so remarkable, is that you're able to go there again and again in places that are daunting and difficult, and yet you clearly feel that same emotional turmoil every time it comes up. I do. Here you are sitting with us, and you're feeling it all again. You'd think 31 years later it would be different. I always get a little emotional and start remembering and think, wow, I can't believe it's been this long. As Aik's second trial began in February 1986,

his lawyer laid out the defense's case. We entered a plea of not guilty by the reason of insanity. And that will maintain that defense throughout the trial. After six years in maximum security, Glenn Aik was nearly unrecognizable. Sheriff Lynn Stedman was in charge of security. And the second trial, he made not a sound during the trial. He had let his hair grow long, and he sat there with his head down looking at the table the entire trial. But jurors heard from other witnesses.

Despite the passage of time, the tales of the crime remained chilling. Reverend Douglas was again laying on his back. His feet were also tied together with a cord-type material.

Although Ake never took the stand, never even said a word to his lawyers. The jury heard his Thanksgiving statement. Who did you shoot for? A man, a boy, a daughter, a mom, a man again. I think I shot the boy twice. Then came the eyewitnesses to the carnage that night. Leslie Douglas, now 20 years old, a college student, calmly explained it all to the jury.

And then I heard two more shots, which hit my father, and then another shot, and I screamed, and then he shot me again. And then I heard him run out the door. I was amazed by her courage. She had to go back there in her mind and tell you exactly what happened, which she did. She did not falter. And she was rock solid? Yes. Brooks Douglas wasn't spared his turn on the stand.

I felt a bullet hit me. And I heard another one go off, and my mother screamed. The core of the defense case was the testimony of psychiatrists, three of them. Do you believe that he was insane on the 15th of October 1979? Yes, sir. I'm convinced that on that date, Mr. Ake did not know right from wrong. And throughout it all, in court, Glenn Burton Ake remained silent. Presented himself more like a mental patient than a convicted murderer. Sheriff Stedman watched and decided it had to be a ploy.

He was feigning insanity. He had about five years or so to come up with this act. But did the jury see what the sheriff believed he saw? The decision, when it came, was quite a surprise. I remember when the verdicts were read in the courtroom, there was an audible gasp. We, the jury, impaneled and sworn in above entitled cause, do upon our oaths, having here to forefound the defendant, Glenn Burton Ake, guilty of murdering the first degree for the death of Richard Barry Douglas and fixed his punishment at life in the state penitentiary. No death penalty. This time, the jury spared his life.

He would come off death row. The jury came back and sentenced Ake to life for each of the murders and to 200 years each for the shootings of the children. But wait a minute. Stephen Hatch, who did not fire a weapon, faced execution, but Ake, the trigger man, got life. But wait a minute. Stephen Hatch, who did not fire a weapon, faced execution, but Ake, the trigger man, got life.

Brooks was floored. As I heard the decision read, what was going through my mind was that I could just see my parents dying and knowing that they would never be fully avenged, that they died, that this person took their life, and yet he's going to allow to continue living at our expense. As Brooks saw it, after all this time, all the suffering,

his parents, his, his sisters, Glenn Ake had plain cheated the executioner. That day after sentencing, a shell-shocked Brooks escaped into a hallway, followed by sheriff's deputies escorting Glenn Ake back to a prison cell. There they were, standing feet apart. Brooks looked at Ake, and something in him snapped. He saw the deputy passing by, his revolver tantalizingly close. And in that moment, Brooks Douglas contemplated murder. He reached for the officer's weapon. You saw at one point him being led somewhere, and there was a deputy with a gun. Just by chance, I walked out of one door of the courtroom, and he came out in front of me.

And it was actually Kathy Stoker that grabbed my arm. Because she saw what you wanted to do. Yeah. You might have done it. I might have done it. But, you know, two can play that game. You know, if he can play crazy, I can too. Wow. So that crime had done a lot to you after all.

Yeah. But Brooks knew, he said, that he wouldn't, couldn't have done it, even if the prosecutor had not stayed his hand. He told us it went back to the night he was shot and bleeding and made his decision to try to save himself. Why did I get off that floor? Did I get off that floor to go kill them? No.

Is that what my parents would have wanted for me? 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. Mm-hmm. Like that. 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. No.

They were destined to meet again. Coming up, a confrontation with a killer. What did you see in him? Powerful emotions and long buried demons. What I really wanted was for it to be, was for it to be over. When Dateline continues. 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.

But they did learn to live, and any outsider might think they had learned that lesson well. 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. I never wanted to seem like this person that just, you know, hid and fell apart and be the stereotypical person that goes through all this kind of stuff. And 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. 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. Brooks finally struggled through college, took an Army ROTC commission, then went to law school and got married. 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. How many times did you have to testify? I think it was a total of nine. What did it do to you? As soon as I would hear that I was going to need to go testify again, my mind would go to that place and it would just, it was a month of, or however long, leading up to it and the apprehension and the fear, just plain old fear. In 1990, 11 years after the murders, just out of law school,

just about broke, frankly, with the marriage headed south, Brooks decided, almost on a whim, to run for the Oklahoma State Senate. Was it that frustration with the system that made you decide to go and finish your law degree and to get involved in politics? I remember feeling helpless and looking for what are ways that I can begin to gain a little bit of control over what's happening to me. Didn't that seem absolutely ludicrous to you?

I think I was just sort of really oblivious. You didn't know what was impossible? Yeah. Nobody told me I couldn't do it, so why not? Let's do it. Let's try. He won. It was, need we say, an upset. It made him, at 27, the youngest senator in Oklahoma history. Russ McCaskey, then a TV reporter covering the Capitol, became a close friend. His teenage years were pretty rough. He struggled for a long time. But he was starting to put the pieces back together. And I think that, you know, at that

point, he was ready to start moving forward with his life. You could see a transformation in him. He met another young senator, later governor, Brad Henry. It was just kind of natural that we gravitated toward one another because we were the youngest by a long shot. And even though he is a Republican and I'm a Democrat, we just became very, very good friends. It was in his second year in the Senate when Brooks found the cause close to his heart. Victims' rights was simply one of those things that nobody talked about. But of course, that was the core experience of his life. Did he know how the system treats victims of crime?

Oh, yes, he did. And so he introduced Oklahoma's first Victims' Rights Act. 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. The victims' rights movement was in its infancy then. It met resistance from judges and prosecutors. He was very, very passionate and focused on victims' rights. 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.

The law's passage was a huge victory for Brooks and his allies in the legislature. And personally, for him? Well, it happened during his second term in the Senate. Revelation. And not a happy one. For all he had accomplished, all he had overcome, the grief, the fury, the drift, the confusion, it wasn't enough.

Perhaps it was his long-dead father still whispering in his ear something he needed to do. He found himself on a legislative tour of Oklahoma's infamous maximum security prison at McAllister. 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.

At first, Brooks was afraid he might run into Glen Ake in the penitentiary. He was nervous about that, wanted to avoid it. But then something started gnawing at him, and eventually he realized he knew what he had to do. 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. 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. 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. I said, for 15 years, I've wanted nothing more than to see you dead. And I still want it.

And, you know, hearing some of that, hearing myself say that was very, very strange. You had to confront the fact that you just said that to this man. Yeah. That you wanted him dead? I wanted him dead and by saying it Something went click inside. Yeah that That what I really wanted was for it to be over.

And I didn't realize how much I think that that was dominating my life. It was not what he intended to do. Didn't know what he would do when he found himself sitting face to face with his parents' killer. But now the words came out and he realized he meant them completely. He forgave Glenn Ake. And inside him, he said the reaction was almost physical. 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 your desire to see these guys die for what they did to your parents. What reaction did you see in him?

He was completely remorseful, which surprised me right off the bat. And when that moment came was when he was messing with cuffs and was trying to wipe away tears. Brooks confided in his friends. He calls me after the meeting. And I said, how'd it go?

And he said, I forgave him. And there's just silence on the phone for a minute. I think because of the teachings of his father and his mother to find that forgiveness inside somehow. And I think it has been a tremendous, tremendous load off of his shoulders. Leslie's reaction was more muted. He had told me about meeting with Aik and him forgiving him and me having a hard time understanding it. Is forgiving part of moving on like that?

Part of getting past it? I think it is. I mean, I feel like I've forgiven. You can forgive, but it just doesn't change the circumstances sometimes. But there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting. The state of Oklahoma, along with Brooks and Leslie Douglas,

had some unfinished business with Stephen Hatch. Not the trigger man, no. But a murderer? Yes. Coming up... I was afraid to sleep at night. I was afraid somebody was coming to get me. A new part of the story.

After all these years. When Dateline Continues. It was 18 months after that extraordinary meeting with Glen Ake. The one at which Brooks Douglas forgave his parents' killer. The other man convicted in their murder, Stephen Hatch, was scheduled to die. Brooks

had tried to meet with Hatch on death row. He was rebuffed. Appeals exhausted, Hatch's execution date was set in the summer of 1996. There was a final clemency hearing. Brooks and Leslie would have to testify against him one last time. Hatch pleaded for his life.

I'm sorry for the pain that children Brooks and Leslie Douglas continued to feel. I can say sorry for the rest of time, and that would not be enough. I could die a hundred times, and it would never be enough to make up for what had happened. But then, testimony that astounded Leslie Douglas and brought back all the horror. I had found out some things at the clemency hearing that I was not aware of. And so it kind of shattered my world. It happened at the very beginning when the state brought those murder charges against Aiken Hatch in the first place. They chose not to put Leslie through the additional trauma

of testifying about the rapes. After all, they could prove murder easily. And Leslie never knew, not in all those years, that the killers denied raping her all along. Then hatches clemency hearing, when with his life on the line, he stuck to his story that he had not sexually assaulted her. They had denied raping me. And so I think right then it just really threw me for a loop. I was only supposed to talk like 30 seconds, and it ended up being three or four minutes because I was so upset and remembered every minute of it like it was happening right then.

Not only did I have nightmares, I was afraid to go to restaurants. I was afraid to go to restaurants. I was afraid to sleep at night. I heard noises that would wake me up because I was afraid somebody was coming to get me. And not only did I not get to go to my parents' funeral, I denied that they had died. He just still, even after all these years, just seemed like there was no remorse. And not only denying that he did, but calling you a liar, basically. Right. And it 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. 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 Hatcher's death. 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. A brother and sister, among the first family members ever to witness the execution of a murderer, that they could do so at all was because of additional victims' rights legislation Brooks helped pass that year. The night of the execution, and they give them an option of making a last statement,

he didn't even say anything. He knew you were there? Right. 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 change the things that we've done in life that we regret and go back and mend those things or ask for forgiveness because he took a big, huge part of me. 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. Hatch left behind a written statement.

In it, he called those who sat in judgment of him evil and barbaric and politicians. An hour after Hatch was pronounced dead, Brooks spoke to the press. Leslie and I have again witnessed the taking of a life. The first time we did so, we were young people who were present when our mother and father were viciously killed. Today is the end of a very long ordeal that has dominated our lives. A family witnessing an execution was so unusual. Leslie appeared on the Today Show. How has this crime haunted you and followed you since it happened?

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. So was it what you expected it would be? 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, out of Mongolia, and be told, guess what, I hate to tell you this,

but you're going to have to come back and testify against Stephen Hatch again. It was over. But was it? He had forgiven Ake, felt as if he had put that behind him, accepted things the way they were. But according to Brooke's friends, he was troubled after the execution. And not long afterward, his second marriage ended.

He was depressed for a while. It brings everything back up. You know, when you have to go to the prison and so forth and witness it, it takes you back to that place. And I think that that made it tough for him. Indeed, it took him right back there. One of the more bizarre things was I felt like as I was watching him die, that I was also watching the events of that night all over again. Part of us died back there.

And, you know, I'll never forget it. Leslie will never forget it. No, 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. 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 so young and had so much to live for. And that whole night was really excruciating for everyone, more real than you would have imagined. Coming up. I think my parents would be proud. Freeing his ghosts. The surprising move that helped Brooks heal the past. At last.

And Dateline continues. Brooks Douglas was restless. The man who'd helped murder his parents had been executed. The shooter was behind bars for life. And Brooks seemed unsure where he belonged. Three terms in the Oklahoma Senate was enough. He started a business, sold it, served as an army officer in the Middle East, enrolled in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he met and married Julia. The crime that so infected his life? Well,

he did make speeches from time to time about victims' rights. 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. But life was different now. He and Julia had two children settled down in California. And then Brooks decided that maybe he could do some acting and writing. 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.

Paul Brown is a Hollywood writer and director. 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. He said, that's the one you need to write. And I said, well, I don't think I can write it. 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. I mean, extraordinarily difficult. Oh yes, difficult. But before long, as important as anything in his life had ever been. Could he actually make a movie?

He'd never done anything like this before, not even close. And egos are destroyed, fortunes made to vanish, with amazing regularity here. Still, this, he believed, was the answer. He hired Brown to co-write and direct his movie. He raided 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, for reasons his father would have understood. Heaven's Reign opened in 2010,

and Leslie, who had survived the whole long ordeal in her own very private way, had to watch someone else, very publicly, be her. Do you realize that every time we go through this, I have to relive everything again? And then I don't know who's going to show up in my dreams. The thing that kept coming into my head was, I wonder how she feels about this. I wonder what she thinks about this. It kind of just made me look back at where my head was and what I was thinking.

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. 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. It's kind of like seeing yourself as others see you, which is something we normally can't do. That can be scary sometimes. But no, I think my brother has told a beautiful story. And, you know, I think my parents would be proud of how he's portrayed our family. Leslie herself has a small part, a tribute of sorts, to her mother, Marilyn Douglas, who taught her to sing a lifetime ago. Tis seven long years since last I saw you

Away, rolling river 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. So I'm hoping that this will be a new chapter for her to start singing again. At Brooks. I'd done local theater here in Oklahoma City, beautiful it is. So I'm hoping that this will be a new chapter for her to start singing again. And Brooks? I'd done local theater here in Oklahoma City, and so I knew that I wanted to act in this movie. Act? Oh, yes. But in fact, there was really only one role he wanted to play,

one he may have been born to. Brooks decided he would portray his own father. Nothing excited me more than the possibility of really being able to do that as a tribute to my dad. Please go tonight. 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. 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. Delivered, of course, by Brooks as his preaching dad. See, the joy of life is poisoned

by the resentment of past grudges. You intentionally put that particular sermon in the movie. Yeah, a lot of that was the sermon he preached the morning before he died. But the theme certainly was forgiveness. Yeah. And it was something he preached and believed in. Thus that title, Heaven's Reign,

is 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. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. I'm so, so sorry for what I did to you and your family. Why don't you tell me why?

Well, the truth is there was no reason. It's the reason he made the movie this scene why is that moment one that still makes the emotion come into your eyes when he's sitting in front of egg yeah um i think it it was so revealing. I looked back and I was just building this coat of armor. And that was killing me and it was killing my marriages, my, you know, whatever, the friendships. At the end of the day, it was protecting me, but it was keeping me away from people that I loved. 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. I wondered how it must have been, you're portraying him when he died. That was one of the very few instances in my life where it was actually much harder and much more painful than I started out thinking it was going to be. His wife was with him on set for that one. 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

and he's so young and had so much to live for and that whole night was really excruciating for everyone. More real than you would have imagined. His dad, mom's dead. They had to relive 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 I was glad it was him going and not me because I couldn't have dealt with it. After a Los Angeles opening, Heaven's Reign was first released in Oklahoma and Texas and later across the Southwest. 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. Brooks went on to promote the movie, often speaking after group screenings. The film found its early audience among Oklahoma churchgoers. I'm not sure people can fully appreciate the power that the grace of God has had in your life in granting the forgiveness to the people who have murdered your parents. An old wound. He could have left it alone, scarred over as it was. More than once he turned down book and movie deals proposed by others, chose to let the dead lie. But not now, not anymore. And by opening the wound again himself, he might finally have healed it.

You could have just said no, forget about it. You know, forgive someone or something that's happened, or be forgiven. And these are all very old lessons. That's not anything I came up with. This 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 of my parents were,

and the work that they did and the lessons that they taught me. What do you want people to take away from this movie of yours? The power of forgiveness and the importance of it. If as individuals, I mean, as people, if we're going to move on past, you know, the things of our past, we've got to find a way to forgive or be forgiven. I and Hatch did some horrible things.

They threw some huge curveballs our way. 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. Brooks chose to live a full life. But in May of 2020, tragedy struck the Douglas family yet again. At age 56, Brooks died of cancer. His message of forgiveness was not lost on his sister.

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