Second Chances

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

To this day, does anyone understand how it happened? They were so young. TOO young, some said back then, even to understand the awful thing they did.

Here they were, nearly eight years ago --  two little boys in leg irons.  And they looked so innocent, guileless, as they stood before a judge to hear the charge that they had killed their own father with a baseball bat.

Little boys?  How was it possible? And how should the courts deal with them? How, indeed?

Derek King in 2009: It-- it blows me away.  I mean, it's just so shocking that I would do something like that.

The little boys are not little anymore.

Alex King in 2009: I remember very clearly what I went through. I remember very clearly the price I paid for my mistakes.

Now, Alex and Derek King give their first interviews ever --about a horrible, baffling crime ---

Video   Brothers describe life in prison "Prison is what you make it," say Derek and Alex King. Hear more in this web-exclusive clip. Dateline NBC

and the surprising turns their lives have taken since then.

How did it begin? Well, it started with a family. Two boys, barely toddlers, their father, Terry King, a printer by trade and a mother who paid the bills as an exotic dancer. When the boys were six and seven, she abandoned them all. It didn't take long for single-parent-life to overwhelm the father. His older boy, Derek, was a live-wire ---so he sent him away to live with a foster family.

After that, Derek rarely saw his father and little brother, but he seemed to be doing all right with his new family. The younger brother, Alex stayed with his father -- keeping quiet, doing what he was told.  He attended the Pentecostal Church with relatives. Went to school --off and on -- and stayed with a family friend, Rick Chavis, when his father was busy.

Rick Chavis: He was financially, you know, in a bind, you know for a while.          

As for Derek ---he'd been living with that foster family for about six years when he started acting out. So in the fall of 2001, his foster family sent him back to his father. Dad and boys, together again.

Seven weeks later Dad, Terry King, was dead. It happened the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Firefighters responding to a house fire found King dead in his recliner, his head smashed in.

The boys, now 12 and 13, were gone when their father's body was found -- but two days later Rick Chavis turned them over to the police. And that's when they confessed.

Derek King: I made sure he was asleep.  i got the bat and i hit him over the head."

Derek, the older brother, said he did the killing.

Derek King: I hit him once, and I heard him moan.  And then I was afraid that he might wake up and see us, so I just kept on hitting him.

Alex said he was behind it all.

Alex King: Derek took the hits. But i was the one that gave him the idea.

The boys also admitted they'd started the fire to cover up the killing.

Derek King: My anger just so overwhelming that i just did what I thought was right.

What he thought was right? Had their father beaten them?  Abused them?  Well, not really, said the boys. He hit them occasionally, but…

Their friend Rick Chavis said it was more like mental abuse - just the way their father Terry looked at them.

Rick Chavis: It was just a real hard stare, it was like one of those type stares.

Chavis says he had told the boys to watch out for that kind of mental abuse..

Rick Chavis: I was truly worried. But -- what can I do?

But aside from that, said the boys, Terry wasn't a bad father. And yet, here they were, Alex and Derek King, at 12 and 13- two of the youngest children ever to be charged with murder and arson as adults.

They faced a possible sentence of 22 years to life.

Video   'A safety net for the boys when they got out of prison' Lisa Alton talks about the trust fund she helped establish for Derek and Alex King to help them with education and living expenses. Dateline NBC

Rick Chavis: I've never imagined in a million years, children were capable of this.

From the start, investigators were as perplexed as anyone about the motive behind the murder, but that family friend Rick Chavis had caught their interest. Chavis lived in a fenced compound filled with video games and computers, things kids crave. He had a record: in 1984 was convicted of sexually abusing two 13 year old boys. And he seemed especially fond of Alex.

All this information clearly troubling, but still, the boys had freely confessed to the murder. So, charged as adults, they spent six months in the county jail awaiting trial. And then, it was the spring of 2002. They suddenly changed their story.

They didn't kill their father, Alex and Derek told a grand jury; the real killer was Rick Chavis.

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