harrowing stories of the eyewitnesses and survivors brooks and leslie douglass. and then ake and hatch s thanksgiving confessions. the state had ballistic evidence linking them to the murders and the testimony of ginger keep, the traveling companion while they were on the run. keefe, who was never charged with any crime, testified that ake and hatch told her about killing the douglasses 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. we somewhat kept it simple. simple? to the judge hearing the case maybe, but certainly not for the 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. 13-year-old leslie douglass 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?
they did excellent. they were good. they were both well. stood up under cross-examination? yeah. we tried the case in chief in one day. just 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. glen 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. but once again, brooks and leslie were the star witnesses for the prosecution. they both calmly identified glen 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.
yes, sir. for brooks and leslie douglass, 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 them? oh, heavens, no. no idea. you figured it was sort of done at that point probably. yeah, yeah. naive little you. yeah. coming up, the trial begins, face to face with their parents killers. it was like i had to pretend i was somebody else. reliving that painful, fateful night. i m burning out this useless telephone my hair is gone cheap cologne motor home i m the rocket man! [ both ] rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone burning out his fuse up here alone? ahh. [ male announcer ] crystal clear fender premium audio. one of many premium features available on the all-new volkswagen passat.
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 have to remember all this, i have to remember all this. i was trying to almost forget about what was actually happening and just, okay, remember what their face looked like, what did their what happened here, what happened there. that s the remarkable thing, that even when it was going on you were conscious of the fact you would have to remember for the sake of what might happen. right, right. and i didn t know why. that promise that leslie douglass made to herself the night her parents were killed is what carried her through, she said. i didn t know why. i just 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 1,000 years for shooting the douglass children, and as for the murder of brooks and leslie s parents we the jury empaneled and squorn by to 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 ake and hatch or so lawmen and prosecutors assumed. sheriff stedman escorted ake to mccallister penitentiary and death row. when i took glen burton ake to mccallister, oklahoma, to be processed in by the department of corrections, when we got out