A Dateline podcast featured the 1979 attack on Brooks and Leslie Douglass and murder of their parents. Learn on the case and killers Glen Ake and Steven Hatch.
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 different from what you normally can that can be scary sometimes. 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 douglass who taught her to sing a lifetime ago. tis seven long years since last i saw you away you rolling river she has a beautiful voice. and that voice got silenced. and in the movie she sings, and
of a struggle, but otherwise the crime scene was a carbon copy of the douglass 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 douglass case, didn t connect the two right away, but he did have something to go on. the homeowner s new datsun 280z was missing. we were able to put out a national bulletin for the 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 douglass visa. the trio went to california, then doubled back east to wyoming. hatch and ake looking for work. but the murderous roadtrip was about to end in a bar in
but shellshocked by the deaths of their parents the previous october, they struggled. any semblance of teenage 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. they still had no idea that oklahoma winter that the legal trials of the men who killed their parents which were about to begin could become their own decades s long tribulation. despite their long and detailed confessions, glen ake, the trigger man, and stephen hatch his accomplice, had pleaded not guilty to charges of the murders of reverend douglass and his wife marilyn and shooting the 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 actually for the second crime. and the state of oklahoma looked to have an ironclad case aga