he knew what he it h done. yes, sir. for brooks and leslie douglass, the capture of the suspects 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 down at that point probably. yeah, yeah. enaive little you. yeah. coming up, the trial begins, face to face with their parents killers. it was like his to pretend like i was somebody else. you are my sunshine my only sunshine you makes me happy when skies are grey you ll never know, dear
wipe away tears. brooks confided in his friends. he calls me after the meeting. i said, how did it go? and he said, i forgave him. and there s just silence on the phone for a minute. my jaw is on the floor. the thing that really purged his soul was this forgiveness that washed forward, that he he really couldn t explain. and i think he surprised himself that he actually would affirmatively forgive his parents murderer. i think because of the teachings of his father and his mother was able to find that forgive not inside. somehow. and i think it has been a tremendous, tremendous load off of his shoulders.
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. she saw what you wanted to do? yeah. you might have done it. i might have done it. 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 that he wouldn t, couldn t have done it even if the prosecutor had not stayed his hand. he told us he 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 d of been much better off to
as soon as i would hear that i was going to need to go testify again, you know, 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 a 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 if finish your law degree and get into sflix. i remember feel into 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 this seem absolutely ludicrous to you? i think i was just sort of really oblivious
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. and 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