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 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 not unlike a horde of my grants in the clusters of hollywood 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.
when i took glen burton ache to mccallister, oklahoma, to be processed in by the department of corrections, when we got out of the car, i told him, glen, this is 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 heavens name did you go on to do all the things you did like any regular teenage person? i think it s because my mom saying one night if anything ever happened to them, 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
it was for leslie and her big brother unlike anything they would ever know again magic time. we grew up in the city right on the mouth of the amazon so where the atlantic meets the amazon river. and it occurred to me why i like being near the water so much. because that s where i grew up. and where my i traveled with my dad. and so they were close, as close as a family on its own in such a place as this 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 and 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 in. oh, yes, and i can hear my
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. ache was convicted. he was sentenced to 1,000 years for shooting the douglass children, and as for the murder of brooks and leslie s parents we the jury empanelled and sworn by to see try the issues in the above entitled cause do upon our oaths having heretofore found the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree fix punishment at death. so end of the road for ache and hatch or so lawmen and prosecutors assumed. sheriff stedman escorted ache to mccallister penitentiary and death row.
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 the children, brooks and leslie douglass, continue to feel. i can say sorry for the rest of time, and that would not be enough. i could die 100 times, and it would never be enough to make up for what had happened. but then testimony that astounded leslie douglass and brought back all the horror. i had found out some things at the clemency hearing that 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 ake and 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