Transcript of The Shocking Murder of Terry King (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elaina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

I need a fridge cigarette, and we don't have any.

Bam.

And the episode has started. I think I took the last one.

Mikey's looking for me. Mikey's like, I got you, girl. He waved his fist. He's going to punch me. He's going to punch me. At at the fact that there's no fridge cigarette.

Like, he's going to punch me and possums. Yeah, it's true. You will understand that until you listen to the rewatcher. If you listen to the rewatcher. Just plug in all our shows. Plug any, plug, plug.

Plug any, plug, plug. Actually, the rewatcher, just quick little plug any, plug, now that we're on it. The amount of people that were either like, Hey, I never watched Trueblood, and I'm watching it now because of this, or I didn't initially like Trueblood, and now I'm loving it. Hell, yeah. I've seen some of those, and I think that's a pretty good indication that you should be listening to the rewatching. I think that's a great indication. It's a lot of fun over there. Talking about a lot of vampire sex right now.

It's the same vibe. I've never seen Trueblood before, so I'm watching it for the first time, and Nikki and Elaina have seen it. We should do a thing that you guys have never seen that I've seen. It would be the most reckless. It would have to be reality television or secret life of the American teenager. Oh, my God. We should rewatch watch that show, please don't do that to me. I don't know if I could do that to myself. No, frankly, I really don't know if I could do that to myself.

Yeah, I could not.

I remember there came a time where my mom made me stop watching that because it got so reckless. And honestly, that was one of the only good parenting decision she ever made.

So there's that.

Speaking of crazy family dynamics, we are in part two of the gruesome awful murder of Terry King.

Yeah, this one's rough.

This one is very rough. It's very layered. There's a lot of divisive opinions about this case. I don't think any of us will really ever know the full truth of certain aspects of this case, but we definitely know some truths, and they're tough to sit with. But in part one, we talked about how Terry was discovered in a house fire, which they initially just thought was a house fire. But it turned out that he had basically suffered blunt force trauma to his head, and then the killer had left and set the house on fire. Then this guy Ricky starts showing up everywhere.

I don't like Ricky.

Being a strange character. The lead investigator, I almost just said doctor, Detective Sanderson starts talking to Ricky a little more, and Ricky slowly is saying, Oh, I really love this family. They mean a lot to me. I'd do anything for the kids. I'd do anything for Terry. But Terry's abusive and the kids probably killed him. And that's where we ended part one.

And the detective said, huh?

The detective said, Huh? The detective said, Quoi? What? The detective said, Sometimes you just get an interview and then you have to move on. Yeah. Like, you know that TikTok trend? Yeah. I was making a funny. I like it. Thanks. So let's get into it. Later that same afternoon, after that initial interview with Ricky, Detective Sanderson and his partner decided they would accompany Ricky back to his trailer under the guise of wanting to check the answering machine to see if either boy had contacted him. There weren't any messages on the machine, but the level of security at the house struck them as highly unusual. The trailer was surrounded a huge security fence that was electrified. Okay. And there were security cameras literally all around the property, like every angle was covered.

Wow.

So the level of security implied that there was something probably precious are valuable inside. But once they walked through the door, Detective Sanderson couldn't fathom what that would be because every surface of Ricky's home was covered with garbage and clutter.

Eew.

Yeah, it was yuckus. So after checking the answering machine and not finding anything, the Detective thanked Ricky and got the fuck out of there because he was like, Eew. Also, that was weird. So he spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing the people who had known Derek and Alex the best. And like the interviews he had conducted earlier that day, Ricky Chavis' name kept coming up again and again and again. According to Frank Lea, Derek's former foster father, the boys had struggled with Derek's return home, and there was tension in the house, but he himself didn't think there was any abuse. As for the previous weeks, when the boys had run away, he clarified they hadn't been in the woods like Ricky said they had been. But actually, they were living at Ricky's house for that week that they were missing.

Oh.

Yeah. Derek told his former foster father that Chavis helped them plan their escape and protected them by hiding them from their father.

Okay.

So Louis Tyson, a friend of Terry's, told the detective a similar story. According to Tyson, he had been at the house when the boys were returned by the police officer the following day, like back into Terry's home. Derek and Alex said they stayed in the woods the entire time that they were missing, but Tyson pressed them and he told the detective, I said, I know you're lying. You two didn't stay in the woods. Derek, you're afraid of spiders. Alex, you're afraid of the dark. That's when they just looked at the ground and they told me about their friend. Okay.

Their friend is Ricky Chivas. I was going to say.

So Tyson didn't know the name of Derek and Alex's quote, unquote, friend, but he knew that the boys had been spending a lot of with whoever this was. According to Tyson, they said they liked going to this person's house because he had a computer and he wasn't very strict. When he described the house and the security fence and the cameras around the property, Sanderson immediately was like, Okay, we're talking about Ricky fucking Chavis like everybody else's. Yeah. So by the end of the first day of the investigation, Sanderson and his partner still hadn't found Derek or Alex, or really, they weren't able to determine what happened in this house. But after everything they heard that day, they were starting to think that whatever the fuck happened here and whatever the fuck happened just before the fire, Ricky Chavis was somehow involved.

Yeah. It's certainly seeming that way.

Everybody they're talking to is either hinting toward him having something to do with this or just saying he was around all the time. So after wrapping up his interview with Louis Tyson, Detective Sanderson was on his way back to the station, and he got a call. On the other end of the line, a Sheriff's deputy informed him that Derek and Alex King had been found, and they were on their way to the station in the company of Ricky Chavis and Deputy Reggie Jernigan. I don't know if that name sounds familiar to you, Reggie Jernigan.

Yeah, definitely. I remember it being mentioned.

So in part one, when Ricky Chavis initially talked to one of the investigators, he said, You really want to talk to Reggie Jernigan.

You want to talk to this guy.

Who's a deputy. Yeah. So as soon as they got to the Sheriff's station, Derek and Alex were taken to a separate room away from Ricky, and Sanderson sat down again with Ricky for another interview. Ricky said he was at home and he got a call from some anonymous woman calling from a pay phone outside of a convenience store in Pace, Florida. He said the woman indicated she knew where the boys were and that Ricky should get to the convenience store right away. So he jumped in his car without hesitation and he made it to the store in 10 minutes. Right when he pulled his car into the parking lot, Derek and Alex walked out of the woods and both got into his car and returned back home to his house.

Okay.

Convenient. Among other things, Ricky said that as they drove back to his house, Derek confessed to murdering his father with a baseball bat and setting the house on the fire right before they disappeared into the woods. Completely shocked, quote unquote, by the boy's confession, Chava said he insisted they had to turn themselves into the police, and that's when he called his friend Reggie, who came over, picked the three of them up, and brought them to the station. Okay. So after listening to this story, Sanderson and his partner were like, Okay, this is fucking weird, but now we need to go talk to these two children.

This has opened up a lot more.

So they went to the room where Derek and Alex were being called and introduced themselves. In Florida, miners actually can be interviewed by law enforcement without a parent or a guardian in the room. Jesus. Which is, in my opinion, crazy.

That's wild to me.

So the only people present, it's just important to note, were the detectives and the voice. And about 15 minutes into the interview, they were joined by Deputy Jernigan.

That's really wild. It really is. We breathed by that, but that's really wild. No, it really isn't. That minors can be interviewed by the police. Like, interrogated But essentially, without a guardian or parent present.

Please. Obviously, in this case, it seems to work out. I think this detective had very pure intentions and just wanted to get this case solved and there's no weird shit here.

But that's not always the case.

But that's not always the case. We literally just covered the yogurt shop murder where we don't need to get into all of that again. But that didn't go well.

Yeah. That's why it was very scary.

The interview started casually. The detectives just asked innocuous questions. How old are you guys? What grades are you in? So on, and so forth. But after a few minutes, the conversation turned to what happened in the house the previous evening. By the way, all of this has happened in a day.

Yeah. It feels like this has happened in four years. Yeah.

So Derek said earlier in the afternoon, Terry had been abusing Alex and was throwing him around. Like several of the others Sanderson talked to, Derek insisted that his dad had been abusive to both of them in the past, but he also wasn't really explaining the abuse in any specific, explicit way.

Just a nebulous abuse.

He was really just saying he's abusive to us and not really saying anything. So the best he could come up with, he said he was staring me down some.

Okay.

Which I don't know. I wasn't there. It took some time, but eventually the conversation turned to the murder itself. At first, Derek said that he had hit his father with the baseball bat in defense of his brother. But Sanderson explained that the evidence at the scene didn't exactly support that explanation. Because remember, when they found Terry's body, he's literally sitting in a chair with a coffee cup and his legs propped up on a couch. Like, he was chilling. Yeah. So that's when Derek changed his story. He said they waited until later in the evening when Terry had fallen asleep in his recliner in the living room. Derek didn't just remember the chair that Terry was sitting in, but he was able to describe the exact position of his father's body reclined feet up on the couch and the fact that he had a coffee cup. And I think it was in his hand at that moment. He said, I went in there, I hit him once and I heard him moan, and then I was afraid he might wake up to see us. So I just kept hitting him. I hit him somewhere around 10 times.

Like, to be able to do that as any human being is horrifying.

This is a 13-year-old.

But a 13-year-old child. And it's like, this is just. And it was not that long that he had been back in his custody.

So unfortunately, I'm so glad you said that.

So unfortunately, this is a whole different dynamic because you sit there and you say any human being able to do this to another human being, you just can't fathom. No. And then a child being able to do this to a parent, you just can't fathom. They're a little bit of new.

There's a new dynamic here. They don't have the typical parent-child relationship.

It's not like a child who's grown up in the house this whole life. Right.

He was taken out of the house when he was five or six and returned two months earlier at 13 years old.

Yeah. So it's like there's this massive span of time where they were just getting to know each other again, it feels like at this point.

They went seven years with little to no contact. Because remember, there was a little bit of contact when Derek was placed with his foster family, but they had to cut that out. But they were confusing. They had to cut that out. They didn't really talk for seven years.

The better part. There's an even weirder dynamic, like way more complex dynamic here, which is very, it's heck, very unsettling.

So throughout the interview, Derek got flustered once or twice, obviously. But he was otherwise pretty composed, very matter of effect of everything that happened. He described the murder with incredible detail, including the extent of his dad's wounds, the sound that Terry made as he was hit, and the exact section of the rug that was lit in order to set the fire. Wow. I was their details.

And also- You would think. I wasn't in a frenzied state.

I wasn't blacked out.

I remember each and every detail, and it was pretty gruesome. Like, methodical. Yeah. About everything.

So according to Derek, Alex knew what Derek was going to do, and he encouraged him, but he did not take any part in the actual killing. It was all Derek. And he's the younger brother. He's the younger one. He's twelve. Yeah. And he had lived with Terry for a longer time.

I was going to say for a longer time.

He had been placed back with Terry when he was in kindergarten. Yeah. And now he's twelve. Yeah. So during the interview, Derek did almost all of the talking while Alex sat next to him pretty quietly. After taking the statement from Derek, the detectives turned to Alex and asked him if what Derek had just said was true. Alex said, It happened just as Derek said. But he also did add some context to the abuse allegations. He said, The mental abuse started a long time ago. It had been going on for a real long time. I got informed by someone he was doing this.

Oh.

Yeah.

So someone has told him that he's being mentally abused, not even not physical. Not that that's, you know.

Yeah.

Not that it's- But that he isn't coming up with this himself.

Somebody told him that.

Somebody's putting that in his head. Yeah. Okay.

So when Sanderson- Can you imagine who? Yeah, you'll never guess. When Detective Sanderson asked who told the boys that they were being abused by their father, he was very unsurprised to learn that it was Ricky. Ricky.

Yes.

So from that moment forward, the story would dominate the press, first in Florida alone and then the country. Like I was saying, this happened right after 9/11. So all the news was, of course, about 9/11. But once this broke out of Florida, it was everywhere. At first, investigators actually weren't saying whether the boys were considered witnesses or suspects, but based on the way that they were talking about everything, it was pretty clear that they were suspects.

Yeah. And I seem to remember. I think that's where I remember this, is I remember it on the news.

Yeah, of course. Regardless of what investigators thought, nobody in the public really seemed able to believe that two kids could have committed such a brutal act of violence against their own father. Terry's mother, Joyce, told a reporter, I don't think there's any way they could even think about doing that.

Which, of course, you're not going to. No.

Conceive of that. So just one day later, the district attorney's office couldn't contain the story any longer, and it was made public that Derek and Alex had been arrested for the murder of their father. And just as shocking as the crime itself, was the fact that if the grand jury returned an indictment for either first or second-degree murder, both of them were going to be tried as adults.

Holy shit.

They are 12 and 13 years old. Damn. And one of them would have been on trial for a murder that they technically didn't take.

Actively take part in.

Actively take part in. Exactly. That's the best way to say it. So given the severity of the crimes, because there's also arson, the press and public all speculated on what could have led these two kids to kill their father. In interviews with their teachers and their former foster parents, everybody described them as nice, polite children. Obviously, Derek had behavior problems, but they were mostly related to his ADHD, and there was never any sign that he would have committed murder. Nobody could look back and say, I thought he would have killed his father. He's a violent person. The pastor, or their pastor at all of Baptist Church, Reverend Ted Traylor, described Derek as a boy constantly seeking affection and validation. Oh, man. He said he was reaching out for what he didn't have. He longed for these kinds of relationships. You could sense that in him.

That's devastating. It is.

While people on the outside speculated what could have possibly driven them to do this, detectives on the inside were also wondering the same thing. According to Derek and Alex, it was the abuse of behavior on part of their father that led them to kill him. But when they were pressed to describe that abuse, they just kept struggling to come up with anything more than Terry just being strict.

Yeah. It's like if this is like a, you know Well, because it makes me... Obviously, I'm sure many people are thinking about the Monendo's brothers right now. Yes. They were pretty explicit in what was going on in their house, according to them. So that's like, you would think they'd be able to come up with- And to point to certain incidents. Something that's like, this atrocious thing happened, and I couldn't handle it anymore. Yeah. Whether that's- I snammed. Whatever you think of that, whatever. For them to not be able to coherently come up with even one instance of specific physical or any abuse. You know what I mean? It's just interesting as all.

It's interesting, too, because I agree with you. It's interesting that when they were pressed about it, Alex said to the detective, somebody told him.

That's the thing. Somebody informed me. And that's when it clicked for him. And somebody informed me that we were being mentally abused. Yes.

Not even physically.

Not even physically, which is- Which, again, I'm not saying either is worse than the other. No. But it's very Interesting. It is.

So several people involved, we've gone over it, tried to and really seem determined to convince Detective Sanderson and the other investigators that Terry King was abusing his children. But none was more emphatic about that than Ricky Chavis. Yes. And the other person who had talked about it was Jimmy Walker, their grandfather, their step grandfather. But he was told by Ricky Chavis. Yeah. That Terry was being abusive. He never said he saw anything.

And he's the maternal step grandfather.

The maternal step grandfather. Yes. Based on his own interviews with Derek and Alex, Sanderson was pretty sure that the boys killed their father. They had all the details, but he couldn't help but think there was more to this going on than what he was told. And he just kept going back to Ricky Chavis because Ricky Chavis is everywhere in this investigation. Yeah. He's at the crime scene within less than an hour of the fire, by the way. His name came up in almost every other interview conducted. He got the mysterious call that led to the boys' discovery, which was like, very... He said he literally pulled up his car to the convenience store as they were coming out of the woods.

Yeah, like that's wild.

And when it came to the abuse narrative, it was becoming increasingly clear that he was the one pushing that, too.

I'm really glad that the police, the investigators, didn't take this at face value. Because it would have been easy for them to do so and just clear it.

Yeah. I mean, two kids are telling you they're being abused.

And two kids are just telling you, We did it, and we were being abused. And that's why. End of story. They could have just been clear-cut. There's the motive, there's the suspects. We can just move forward with this. Ricky's weird. I don't know. They could have just moved forward.

It's honestly great detective work, in my opinion. Also Ricky Chivas just being a fucking idiot, which, thankfully. Thankfully. But he's just interjecting himself into everything. He can't help it. He truly can't help it, which is a good thing.

It's clear.

Given all the places that his name had popped up, it came as no surprise to Detective Sanderson that Ricky's name also came up several times in Alex's interview. Alex's answers were a lot less coherent and detailed than his brother's, but it was clear that Ricky was the one who told both of them they were being abused. Alex said, We had talked a lot about it, and we were good friends. He said that he'd done mental abuse, and he told me about it, and I started getting stronger because I knew what it was, and I found a way to just deflect. Now, he's sitting here saying, by the way, as a twelve-year-old, that Ricky Chavis, 40 years old, is his good friend who he spends a lot of time with.

That's what struck me.

No 40-year-old is friends with a 12-year-old. No.

And if they are, it's a problem.

It's fucking weird. It's a problem. Red flag. Fucking I don't care what anybody else's opinion is on that. No, you're wrong. That's weird.

It is. It was clear from his interview that Alex felt a lot of affection, specifically Alex, felt a lot of affection toward Ricky, and that Ricky obviously had a very strong influence on him.

So now, Detective Sanderson is like, he's sitting here wondering, did Ricky use this influence to convince the boys to kill Terry? It's leading in that direction. But if that's the case, Why would he want that to happen? What would he possibly gain from that? It didn't take very long for investigators to find out why Ricky Chivas had been so eager to spend time with Alex and Derek.

Oh, God.

A quick background check revealed among other things, in 1984, he had been arrested and convicted of sexual misconduct for sexually abusing two boys in their early teens. Fuck this guy. So he has a type because he's a fucking pedophile.

Yeah, he's disgusting.

So that added a very troubling new layer to the case. But Detective Sanderson and other investigators would also learn that Chavis' connection went a lot deeper than they imagined. In the next few days, as the family combed the wreckage of the King's house, the boy's other grandfather, Jimmy French, so they have two grandfathers named Jimmy. Well. This other grandfather found a notebook buried in the ashes of what was Alex's bedroom, and it was pretty well preserved. Written on the front in Alex's handwriting, it said, biography, do not read. Which like, it's just his whole journal. I know, it's such a kid. Yeah. So Jimmy French flipped through the notebook, obviously, because he's like, this, like my grandson is saying that his dad was abusing him and him and his brother decided to kill him over it. Like, there's got to be something in here.

Maybe there's something in here.

So that turned out, like I said, to be basically a diary. And within a few seconds, he was seriously alarmed by the context and immediately turned it over to investigators. In a lot of ways, Alex's diary was what you would expect from somebody his age, mundane stories of the day to day. But sprinkled throughout, there were increasingly concerning entries about Ricky Chabis. I don't want to quote anything because I'm not going to quote somebody's diary. But the early entries talked about meeting Ricky, how great it was, and how they were getting close her. But as the entries went further, they took on a more romantic tone. It was very clear. Eventually, Alex wrote about realizing that he was gay because of Ricky. Wow. And as Detective Sanderson, once he got the journal, continued reading, it became clear that while Alex's affection and infatuation with Chavis were obvious, those feelings were not one-sided at all. And whatever was going on between them, it had been initiated by Chavis and was continued by Chavis. A He's a 40-year-old man.

Yeah. Doing whatever he's doing with a 12-year-old. Yeah. He's a disgusting monster. He's a pig. Yeah.

Based on everything they learned from the interviews and now from the evidence, it was clear that Ricky Chavis had played some role in Terry King's death.

Yeah, and now it looks like we're getting a motive here. Yeah.

And it was also very clear that he had been sexually abusing at least one of these boys. Prosecutor David Rimmer said, I think he planted the seeds in their mind, and I think he got the idea that if their father was dead, they could live with Chavis. He had told them that.

That is so fucked up beyond measure.

It's diabolical. And mind you, Terry King made the acquaintance of Ricky Chavis when he was down on his luck and really just turning things around and just trusted enough in another guy that he was wanting to help him. So Ricky Chavis took not only advantage of a child, but a man, his own age. The entire situation. A full situation. And it wasn't the first time he had done it. So the problem here was, though, that when it came to the murder and the arson, all of the evidence, including the confessions, pointed directly at Derek and Alex. So they weren't able to charge Chavis with the more serious crimes of arson and murder. But Rimmer took the alternative approach of charging him as an accessory after the fact because he was convinced that he had aided the boys in the murder and hidden them somewhere after the crime.

That makes total sense.

And it became the theory that he Basically, they were living in his trailer and they must have gone somewhere because the detective was coming to the house when they were there. But he's believed to have helped them wash the blood out of their clothes and let them stay there after. Wow. So he fully thought that they were just going to all live together.

And now he's just fully throwing this on them, too. I'm like, so not only are you a fucking monster, pedophile, predator, piece of shit, but then at the end of the day, you have brought these kids in. You have groomed them horrifically to make them completely infatuated with you and willing to do your bidding.

And specifically the younger one.

Yeah, specifically the younger one. And now when everything is going down, You threw them so hard under the bus.

Oh, just wait.

You piece of absolute shit. Just fucking wait. Also- Talk about lighting the grenade and throwing it and walking away.

Fuck. This is his MO. This is who he is. This is what he does. Look up a picture of him. Also, he has the most punchable fucking face, and I can say that because he's a pedophile. Yeah, fuck that. So on December 13th, the same day that Derek and Alex were arrained on charges of first-degree murder, Ricky Chabis was arrained on one count of being an accessory after the fact to murder.

He has the most punchable face I've ever seen.

He looks exactly like who he is. So it would take more than a year for Derek, Alex, and Ricky's trials to begin. And in that time, more and more information started trickling out about Ricky's past, and none of it was good information. He had spent nearly his entire adult life making a living through criminal ways. He sold weed, he fixed up cars, but he stole things and resold them and had other people do his bidding. He didn't have a lot of bills to pay, and he earned a lot more money selling drugs than he knew what to do with. So his trailer became a popular spot with local teenagers who he would invite to the house and cry with alcohol and drugs. He's a predator.

He's disgusting.

Once he'd won these boys over and they felt indebted to him because they get to go hang out at Ricky's house and it's so fun and he gives us alcohol. He lets us smoke and la-di-da-do.

He sounds like Dean Coral.

Yeah, he actually is very reminiscent the Candyman. The Candyman, yeah. He sounds exactly like that, actually. So once he went them over and they felt indebted to him, he would inevitably make some small, quote unquote, small request in In exchange for his kindness and his generosity that he had showed them. Yeah, of course. So in time, he basically formed his own teenage criminal organization made up of the boys that he had groomed and met around town and quote, unquote, befriended. So in exchange for allowing them to drink and to use drugs at his house, they would help him with whatever petty crimes he was into that day. Wow. At first, it was small things like stealing go-cards, bicycles, other things. But in time, things got to the point where he was forcing these teens to break into houses of neighbors and steal from them. What the fuck? And each successful theft increased their confidence and led to more jobs. And with each one, they got more and more bonded and felt obliged to do whatever he told them to do.

Oh, yeah. Because now there's blackmail. Exactly. He can just feel like, Oh, I'll turn you in.

The way his brain works is so fucked. So for most of the boys who spent time with Ricky over the years, their activities were limited to drinking, getting high, committing petty theft. But there were some other boys that Ricky took a more personal interest in. After the typical strategy of a predator, he would encourage them to spend time alone with him, give them gifts, groom them until he was sure that they weren't going to reject his sexual advances.

He's disgusting. It makes me sick.

The fact that he managed to get away with the theft and child abuse for so many years is pretty much a testament to the people that he targeted. He targeted boys who were in marginalized communities and whose parents maybe weren't around very often, didn't know that this was happening.

Yeah.

According to Katherine Mariko and Molly Barrows, who, again, we'll link their book in the show notes, at least one of the boys' mothers was informed by her nine-year-old son, and this is a lot, just trigger warning, that Ricky had exposed himself to him and his brother, and this piece of shit, garbage, sorry-ass excuse for a mother didn't call the police.

I don't even know how to respond to that. Yeah, you're a piece of shit. Yeah, I don't even know how to respond to It wasn't until 1985 that upon learning of her son's quote-unquote sexual relationship, which, by the way, as a child, you can't have a relationship with a grown person.

Rape. One of the boys' mothers finally pressed charges, and Ricky was prosecuted and sent to prison. Jesus. It was his second offense at that point, by the way. But he ultimately only served three years. Three years. Of a nine year sentence.

For being a... Wow. Okay.

He's a child predator. This is his second offense. And they sentenced him to nine years. Wow. Don't do it again.

Yeah. It's worked out so well. Every time we let these people go roaming around again, they'd never do it again. It's crazy.

It's insane.

Yeah.

So it was during that prison sentence that he became friendly with one of the prison guards, Deputy Reggie Jernigan.

Oh, so wait. Just to be clear, this child predator in prison became friends with a prison guard? Yeah. Fuck you. You're disgusting.

Literally, fuck you. Really weird to make friends with a child predator.

Yeah, especially considering prison has a pretty fucking clear hierarchy of where they lay. Yeah, apparently not this one. You, the prison guard, are like, I'm going to befriend this guy.

Yeah, this guy seems great. Seems like a good guy. Fuck you. I didn't do it. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that's all a lot. The information about his past that was appearing in the papers day after day definitely gave credence to the prosecution's theory that he managed to convince Derek and Alex to kill their dad. Yeah. But when he was asked directly by reporters and detectives, he just repeatedly denied playing any role in Terry's death. He said only that he allowed the boys to stay on his house on two occasions where they ran away, and that was that. When he was asked very directly whether he had been sexually abusing either of the boys, he said, I'm not sexually active. I've been out of it eight, nine years or better.

I've been out of it?

Out of it? Like, out of child predator behavior? Here?

Like, what?

Because you were convicted of that. So you are a child predator. Yeah. Okay, cool. So despite his repeated denials, as the months passed, his true nature got the better of him because he's a fucking predator and he can't help himself. And he tried to stay in contact with Alex.

Are you fucking kidding me?

No. In January 2002, guards at the county jail found him trying to scratch a note into a concrete floor of the recreation yard with the sharp corner of a rock. At that time, he got as far as Alex Don't Trust, before he was stopped and dragged back to his cell. Which, by the way, can we all just take a minute to realize that they were locked up in the same prison as the person who was grooming them, or the very least grooming Alex? Wow. Why the fuck in a million years were they ever placed in the same prison? Wow.

I don't even- The miscarriage of Just there alone is nuts. That's wild.

Two months later, in late March, another message for Alex was discovered, scratched into the wall of a courthouse holding cell. The message didn't have a signature, but it was obviously believed to have been left there by Ricky Chabis, who had been in that cell and been held there for six days. Yeah, just prior to the discovery of the message. The note read, Hang in there. It will work out if nothing changes in the testimony. You know who not to trust. They are just keeping us apart until this is It literally makes me physically ill.

This boy is twelve.

And this man is 40.

This boy is twelve and this man is 40.

And this man is 40. They're keeping us apart.

And also, if nothing changes in the testimony, I'm like, Oh.

Interesting. Okay. So it was almost like he had a pathological compulsion to implicate himself in this crime at this point. Yeah. He was just confident that prosecutors couldn't find evidence substantial enough to charge him with anything other than being an accessory. But then, to everybody's surprise, lies, a grand jury indicted him for murder after hearing a secret testimony from Derek and Alex in April. Like Derek and Alex, Ricky Chavis now faced a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole.

Holy shit.

Which is the mandatory sentence for murder in Florida. So prosecutor David Rimmer had spent months prepping his case against the boys, based mostly on their own confession. But the indictment of Ricky Chavis in April was a very unexpected twist, and it proved to be just the first of multiple twists that were going to complicate things for everybody. So after the boys testified for the grand jury in April, and those new charges got brought up, David Rimmer started hearing rumors that Derek and Alex were changing their story again and wanted to recant their confessions now. Those rumors were proved true when in August, he got word from their lawyer with an official request to change the statement. So now they claimed, and this is interesting, I think this gets tossed to the side in a lot of the things that I read, but to me, it's interesting. They said on the night of the murder, they went with Ricky to the house and they waited in the car while he went inside and killed Terry with a baseball bat. According to Derek, Ricky asked them to take the blame because the court would go easier on them.

And he said he promised his mom before she died that he'd never get locked up again. That's so specific.

I mean, that's really specific.

And it's such predator behavior.

Yeah.

It was also during that period that Alex confirmed investigator suspicions that Chavis had been sexually abusing him. He said it himself. So to the press and public, the news story came as a relief in a way. It was a lot easier to accept that a child predator had committed murder rather than two children against their own father.

Because they're already a complete piece of fucking garbage.

Exactly. The family was equally relieved to hear the story. The boy's grandmother, Linda Walker, told a reporter, They found out they wouldn't get away with it. We knew they were hiding something.

Damn.

So while the press and public were eager to believe this new version of Alex and Derek's story, the team at the prosecutor's office, they found it to be too convenient. Investigators did always suspect that Ricky had played some role in Terry's death, but they also believed the initial confession that Derek had been the one to kill his father. Prosecutor Rimmer said, The boys weren't saying that he helped him. They were just trying to dump the whole thing on Chavis. That made me suspicious because I knew that wasn't true. I knew they were there.

I mean, which I get that. Which I get. Because the way that he described this, I mean, the sounds Derek. Yeah, Derek described the sounds that the bat made when it connected with a skull, and it's pretty accurate. It's pretty accurate. It's something that I don't think a kid would just pull out of their ass.

No, I don't think so either. But it does make you wonder if they were just there. Were you just there? You're just trying to remove yourself a little bit further.

To be honest, I could see it going either way. I could see it that Ricky was the one who swung the bat and the boys were there. You never know. But again, I have no idea.

Ricky Chivas did go on trial murder in August 2002. Under the somewhat unusual circumstances of having one jury decide the verdict on the murder charge and another jury decide the verdict in the arson and accessory charge. It's very strange. The trial for the charge of lewd and lascivious behavior against a child was scheduled for later that year. As expected, Ricky Chavis' lawyer argued that while Ricky admitted to hiding the boys after the murder and lying to the police, he did not help kill Terry King. Ricky Chavis said to reporters, My big problem is that I like to help people. It ain't true that I was there. That's a setup. It's all I can tell you. They were coached into it. No, your big problem is that you're a child predator. Yeah, that's It was a pretty big problem. So from David Rimmer's perspective, he's the DA, this strategy of putting Ricky Chavis on trial before Derek and Alex did come with a pretty big risk. The evidence against Ricky was circumstantial, and charging him with murder seemed like a guaranteed loss. Instead, he ended up being charged with being a principle to murder, which basically means that whoever is being charged is indirectly responsible for the murder itself.

They didn't commit it, but they're responsible. Which makes sense in this case because you're talking about the murder committed by two miners if it was. That's the thing. For this strategy to work, Rimmer had to call Derek and Alex to testify, which was another big risk. He knew there was a good possibility that they would tell the revised version of their story rather than their initial confession, which did imply Ricky Chabis' involvement as a principle. If they had stuck with their original story, it could have worked out a little bit better, potentially. Because it already did. Potentially.

Because it already did put that there.

Exactly. But when they were called to testify against Chabis, they told their version of the story that Ricky had been sexually abusing Alex and killed their father to prevent them from stopping the relationship. When asked by David Rimmer why he changed his story after initially confessing to committing the murder himself, Derek said, Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison covering for somebody else's act.

Wow.

Which, mind you, I think he's 14 at this point when he's testifying. But still. But That's so heavy.

That's so heavy.

Also, you look at pictures of them.

They look even younger. Oh, they look so young. They look like babies. It's actually like, horrifying. It really is. I couldn't handle it. When I looked at the pictures because that's the pictures I was talking about when I said I looked up the case saw the pictures. It's like them in court and shit.

They look like they're like 11.

They literally look like children. If you told me they were both like 8 and 9, I'd be like, yeah.

Yeah, they look young. Yeah. So Derek explained on stand that Chavis had convinced both boys that their father was mentally abusing them and that they could get away with the murder if they confessed, and he couldn't. So they had to do this and claim self defense and that they would get away with it and they'd all be able to basically live happily ever after.

Which does make sense.

Yeah, it does. So regardless of guilt or innocence, Derek and Alex's appearance on the witness stand were a demonstration of how, like we were just saying, truly young both of these boys were and how unbelievable the charges against them sounded. According to one reporter, sometimes Derek couldn't follow the attorney's questions and couldn't remember all the details of the murder, a prior confession, and his grand jury testimony. Which, of course he can. He's a kid. This is incredibly overwhelming. And he has a multitude of other trauma.

And to think if this kid did this, you're just like, whoa.

So at multiple points during his own testimony, Derek's eyes walled up with tears when he talked about his father. Alex's testimony was equally heartbreaking, particularly when Rimmer read parts of his diary out loud and asked the boy directly whether he had a, quote, sexual relationship with Chavis. And he replied, Yes, I did. Which is a fucked up question because a kid cannot have a sexual relationship with an adult. Exactly.

They are being raped by that adult.

And unfortunately, the question needs to be posed that way. Yeah, it does. Were Were you raped by this man?

Were you being sexually abused by this adult?

That hits a lot harder to a jury.

Yeah, not were you in a sexual relationship?

No, he can't consent to that. He can't consent to that.

And it looks like this has been happening for a while. Exactly.

It's like, this is a child predator convicted Damn. I hate when things are worded like that.

I know. It drives me nuts.

In cases like this. Because, again, it hits harder for a jury when it's said the right way. Yeah. Like you said, it changes things. But after both sides rested their case, Judge Frank Bell considered the evidence and ultimately, threw out the charge of being a principle to murder on the grounds that there wasn't enough evidence to support the claim. But he said there was, Just enough evidence to proceed with a charge of murder. So he wants a direct charge of murder. Okay. Which is interesting. Bell's This judgment came after DA Rimmer played the boy's taped confession for the jury, where Derek makes it clear he committed the murder and makes no mention of Ricky Chavis' involvement. Judge Bell said, There's plenty of evidence in this trial of what he did after the fact, meaning Ricky. But the trial is to be decided at a later time. So with his revised instructions, which were pretty confusing, the jury went to their chambers to deliberate whether the state had made a strong enough case to support a conviction for murder. The outcome of their deliberation would be sealed until Derek and Alex's trial was complete, though. Holy shit.

This is all super messy. Yeah. So in his decision to keep the verdict sealed, Judge Bell cited potential for the jury in Derek and Alex's trial to be influenced over the verdict in the Chabas case, and that's why he was having it sealed. Okay. Which I get, but it's tricky.

It is tricky. It's tricky. It's for sure tricky. You can understand the thought process behind it.

Definitely. I think he was doing his best. So Derek and Alex King's trial began in September, and prosecutor David Rimmer, same prosecutor, presented pretty much the same case that he had in the Chabas trial. When called to the stand, both boys remained committed to their revised story. Alex told the court, Ricky told us that there had been a fight, that he said he killed my dad to protect us. According to Alex, he and Derek hid in the trunk of Mr. Chavis's car while Ricky was inside killing their father, and that they only learned about the murder once they were back at Chavis's house later that night. He said, and this is awful, He said, I wanted to be with Rick because I was in love with Rick. He said my dad would have killed us before he would have let us go.

And that was all fed to him, by the way.

Yeah, absolutely. It was. And also, he doesn't know.

Check the trunk of his car for hair fibers.

I know.

Their hair is going to be in there if they were in the trunk.

Great point. That didn't happen.

Damn. I would have been like, go find a hair in there. There's something in there.

Exactly. So in his closing statement to the jury, David Rimmer reminded the story of the brutal crime that they were both accused of because remember, he's the prosecutor.

And that Terry is getting a little lost in the sauce here. It's like, that's a brutal fucking murder.

That's honestly such a good point to bring up. He gets so lost in this story because it's insane.

Because there's so much going on. Yes.

But I'm glad you said that. But he warned, David Rimmer, warned the jury not to let the ages of the accused influence their deliberation. He said, You can't go back there and say, 'those poor boys, they're so young. How could they do this horrible thing? ' It It would be a miscarriage of justice.

Which is like, it's true on one side that if Derek took a baseball bat to his father's head- That you do have to consider that as a brutal crime that shouldn't have happened, that took a man's life. But on the other side of that coin, they are children who have gone through an unimaginable amount of trauma.

Yeah. And they're being abused at the hands of Ricky Chamies.

Yeah. That's the thing. There's been so much warping of their- I think this case is a little too nuanced for that closing statement, in my personal opinion. I completely agree with you.

But also that as a closing statement- But also that as a closing statement- He's a prosecutor with a job.

Yeah, exactly. That's his job. He's got to win the case. But it is Absolutely more nuanced than that because when you think of it from the side of Ricky Shavis doing all that he did and convincing these boys and grooming them, and they're so young and impressionable and have gone through this trauma, and he's literally sexually assaulting at least one of them. Yeah, exactly. At least one of them. It's like, so that makes you go, well, fuck. They're children. So you do have to consider that. And they've been molded into this. Then you look at it from the other side of like, holy shit, if that kid did just swing that bat into his dad's head and murder him. That's a very adult thing that you just did. But it's also, I have to think when I say it out loud, that influence at that age has to be considered at the very least. Absolutely. Like you said, I think it's just so much more nuanced than letting that be the, and again, that's his job. But it's like, you have to go back there and you do. But that also makes the jury decision so much harder.

I can't imagine sitting on this jury.

I don't know what I would do on this jury because you have to consider every part of this. Yeah.

So he reminded them, DA Rimmer, reminded the jury that Derek and Alex's original confession was supported by the evidence, which is correct. Yeah. And that they only changed their story once it seemed positive that they could pin this murder on somebody else, no matter how fucking disgusting that person is and diabolical. So the jury deliberated for days, spending most of the time analyzing the taped confessions given by Derek and Alex upon the initial arrest. One juror said later, as we listened to them one by one, the thing we came to right away was that they sounded contrived, but there were some parts of it that I knew were true. When they describe how it sounded when their dad got hit, you could tell that they had seen what happened.

That's where I sit. They had to have been in the room. At the very least, they were in that room. They were not in the trunk of a car.

At the end of the day, I don't know who I think swung that at.

I have no idea.

I could see it going both ways. That's the thing. But no matter what, in my opinion, at the end of the day, I do think that at least Derek was in the room with what he described and the way he described it.

I think at least Derek was in the room.

In the end, the jury concluded that it seemed highly unlikely that Derek and Alex had actually killed their father. But they were still responsible because they opened the door to the man who had killed him.

Because there was like a plan.

Yeah, which they believed to be Chavis. So really, they're like principles to murder. Yeah. But that's not the charge here. That's not the charge. Alex and Derek were found, both of them, were found guilty on second-degree murder without a weapon. And that conviction carried a prison sentence of up to 22 years in adult prison. Which I just have to say, when you think of what they've at least Alex has been through already, you're going to go send him to adult prison?

That's the thing.

It's like- You're going to send that child to adult prison after you know he's already been abused by an adult predator?

That doesn't make any fucking sense, especially when there's There are things you can do. There's other options. There's juvie. That's the thing. There's other very viable options that will still give a consequence to an action.

And again, I know that this is a very nuanced case, but I'm looking at those key parts of it where you're going to send him to adult prison. I can't imagine hearing that as somebody that... As a family member of his.

The main thing here is What is that going to do?

Because the whole thing- What is that going to do? The whole thing that we're supposedly looking for here- Is rehabilitation. Is rehabilitation. What's that going to do? Sending a child, because he's now 13 at this point, to an adult prison, I don't think is going to be a good stepping stone in his rehabilitation.

He is going to be so further traumatized that he's going to be lost. Struggling to even exist as a human being after that.

And we will find that he was.

And he's going to learn the worst shit you can possibly learn. And he's going to be retraumatized in a myriad of ways.

And we will see that he was.

And that's why is no one, why are all of these adults not thinking about that. They're all thinking, yes, this crime, it's brutal. There needs to be consequences that people face for this. Absolutely. Absolutely. Terry King lost his life. He needs justice here. You know what I mean? And his family deserves justice. But to put him in an adult prison at 13 years old.

And honestly, you do have to think about this family because this family, it lost their... Terry's mother lost her son. But now she's facing losing her two grandchildren who she's lost before. Yeah, exactly. And this is a lot of trauma. And this is a lot.

To me, the easy thing for everybody that should have been in front of everybody's face is some adult should have stood up there and said, What's this going to do? What are we getting out of this?

In my personal opinion- Don't we want to help? In this case, they shouldn't have been tried as adults. No, it's like- I just don't think they should have.

It's like, trying as an adult and giving an adult sentence in an adult prison is like an adult prison? What the What the fuck do you think is going to happen there? It's like, no, they need to be in a place where they can get help to become a better person as their frontal lobe is developing.

I don't think we were thinking about that in the early 2000s. That's just wild. It's upsetting. That's really wild. So that was the sentence. Mind you, they didn't get sentenced to that, but that was what they were facing. In the days that followed the verdict, the outcome of Chavis' trial was unsealed. He was found not guilty guilty of murder.

Wow.

Now, remember, he has other trials to go through, but he was found not guilty of murder.

That's wild.

So between the announcement of the verdict, but before the sentencing phase of the trial, Judge Bell considered the situation and made a surprising decision, which Judge fucking Bell. He said, There's no question in my mind based upon legal arguments and trial transcripts that David and Alex King did not receive due process. Yeah. And I fully agree. From Bell's In my perspective, Rimmer's choice to try Ricky Chavis for the same crime before he tried Derek and Alex was a violation of their rights, and it influenced the jury. It also seemed absurd that a separate jury could have found Derek and Alex guilty of participating in a murder supposedly committed by a man who previously had been found not guilty of the same murder. Yeah, that's wild. None of it makes any sense. Under the circumstances, and this is crazy, or this next part is crazy. Under the circumstances, their defense team immediately submitted a motion for a new trial, and Judge Bell denied that motion. But instead, he sent the case to mediation, which is a very unusual process where the prosecution and the defense teams have to come together to find a compromise that they both find suitable.

Which is like, this doesn't happen. It happens very, very rarely.

Especially in something like this.

Mediation is for divorce cases.

I was going to say it's not for murder trials. I was going to say it's not just chill out and just be like, do you want the flat screen? Exactly.

After several weeks of mediation, Rimmer, the DA, offered a plea deal that the defense found reasonable. Derek and Alex would bleed guilty to third-degree murder, given honest confession. In exchange, Derek would serve eight years in a juvenile facility, and Alex would serve seven.

Okay.

So that's better. It's not awesome, but it's better. They did have to serve some prison time. A man lost his life.

Oh, 100 %. And it's a juvenile facility. It's a juvenile facility. That was my main... A consequence has to be had here. You can't solve problems by taking an aluminum bat to people's heads, and kids do need to learn that with a consequence. Absolutely. I mean, you can't just be like, Don't do that again. That's a pretty big deal. But they need to be in a place where... And again, not every juvenile facility is going to be.

I was going to say, I don't know how much better Juvy is than adult prison, but It's got to be at least a little- It's at least better in the fact that you're not being put in there with grown ass adults.

That's different. So there's that.

It wasn't good for euthers. The prison system is very fucked up.

I was going to say the whole system is so flawed and fucked. It is.

So when the time came to give their confessions, which was part of the deal, like I said, the story told by both of them was very similar to their first confession that they immediately gave after their father's death.

In This is their honest confession.

That likely could be what happened. Okay. Still, I don't know what I believe.

I have no idea.

In the wake of the boys' plea deal, Ricky Chavis went on trial for arson and for being an accessory to murder after the fact for aiding and abetting. After a brief deliberation, he was found guilty on both counts and ultimately sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Oh, hey. All right. Bye.

In his defense, his lawyer argued that the sentence was seriously disproportionate relative to the light sentences given to Alex and Derek. I'm sorry, what? A 12 and 13-year-old. I'm sorry, what? He said, It's just simply not fair. This is politics, Judge. This is a persecution, not a prosecution.

It's not fair. It's not my feet.

Life's not fair, babe.

It's not fair that he's a pedophile.

It's not fair that he's a pedophile. It's not fair the life that these two kids lived.

Yeah, it's not fair that he literally consistently ruins the lives of children. Thanks.

One year later, Chavis was acquitted of the charge of loot and lecivius acts upon a minor, which is absurd. He's literally a no... He has a history of being a child predator and another child...

Come on. Do you think that was just happenstance? That he was like, I'm just going to- That's not happenstance. I'm going to say that this guy did this.

He also aided and abetted two fucking minors. That's weird. Come on. In this case, that's fucking weird. In 2008, Alex King was released from a juvenile detention in Florida, and he went to actually live with one of the of the book that we linked in the show notes, Katherine Madiko, who was a journalism professor at the University of West Florida, and he became close with her during his time in detention. One year later, Derek was released from the Lancaster Correctional Institution and lived temporarily with his grandmother before he found his own place to live. After their release, they really didn't make an attempt to reconnect with their living relatives or each other, which there's a lot of fucking trauma here.

I was just going to say there's a lot of shit to unpack there.

In In 2009, they did participate in a reunion episode on Dateline, and that was the first time they had seen each other since they pled guilty to murder. When asked whether he thought they would try to maintain contact going forward, Alex said about Derek, I spent very little time with him actually throughout my life.

And that's true.

Yeah. He said, We've not really had much chance to form any bonds or any real relationships or anything.

That's the thing. It's not like these were tight brothers who spent their entire 13, 12, and 13 years together. They had a long period of time where they didn't know each other.

They were five and six when they were removed from their house and placed into foster care. Alex went back when he was... I think Alex was only gone for about a year or so. And then it was seven more years before he was reunited with his brother.

He shows up at 13.

He shows up at Thirteen. And then two months after that, this all happened.

This all happened. They've had two months, essentially. Basically. Of bonding time. So really, that doesn't shock me.

No, it's not shocking. Yeah. So tragically, though, whatever relationship they did or could have had in the future was cut short. On April 23rd, 2024, when Alex King died from a drug overdose in Montana, which is tragic.

Because it's just the worst ending. It's the worst ending. The life they lived was just...

As of now, though, Derek King is still alive, and he lives with family in Florida.

Damn.

So that is- That's a tragic story all the fucking way around. All around.

None of that was good.

Nobody won. No. Nobody won in that case. No. And it was from the start, from the very start of their lives. Yeah.

It's awful. There was no chance whatsoever. And then it feels like it was... And it is true. It's like this Ricky guy. And now you can realize, too, because for some reason it escaped me while you were saying it, that Alex had been with Terry for most of his life. So he had known Ricky for much longer. Yeah. So he had been being groomed a lot longer. Derek had only really known this guy for a couple months.

And remember, Ricky was introduced to Alex when he was pretty young and he was alone with Alex for a long time.

So he had a long time.

Because Ricky sat there and volunteered to watch Alex while Terry was at work. And Terry just thought he was being a good friend.

Oh, it's so sad. You can't trust anyone, I swear. No, you can't. You really can't.

You can't.

It becomes more and more apparent. Oh, that's horrific. It's really tough because obviously you have no idea what happened in that house on a day-to-day basis.

No.

But it really does look like Terry was being painted as something that perhaps he was not. Yeah.

Because it was being planted. It very much seemed like it was being planted. Because in Alex's own words, Ricky told him that he was being abused.

Then Derek was just like, he just like, scared me down.

You also have to realize that in Abuser is the person who told the child that they were being abused by somebody else.

That's an important detail. So it's like, he's not here to defend that claim. And that sucks. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah.

So I think We should end this with a fun fact. Yeah. And I just found one that is really, truly beautiful. Oh, cool. Dolphins have names for each other.

Fuck. Are you kidding me?

I found this on Cosmopolitan, and it says, According to National Geographic, dolphins use a unique whistle to distinguish between different members in their pod, which serve as names.

I love that.

Dolphins have names for each other.

Oh, I love that. I love dolphins. That's great.

I just want to think about dolphins right now.

I really like that. And I want you all to think about dolphins right now.

Just whistling their names at each other.

Just whistling.

Yeah. Hey, Betty. Yeah. Another fun fact. I just like sometimes dolphins remind me of dogs. And I was just thinking of my dog Dolores. And last night she was very tired and Drew kept singing, This girl is so tired. It was very funny.

I love that a lot. Thank you. I like that a lot.

So, yeah, fun facts. Fun facts and fun happenings.

I also like how you introduced that with my dog Dolores. I introduced her again. Dolores.

Just in case you weren't aware of who the fuck she is. My girl Dolo. My girl Dolo, Catanias Isaac.

Oh, I love that a lot. What a horrific tale. And go learn about dolphins, Please. Please.

And sing to your dogs. And watch Frankenstein. I said Frankenstein, which was strange. Just watch it. I'm upset and I have to go now. We love you and we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it.

But not too early. You don't go learn about dolphins and sing to your dogs. Yes, please. And be good to each other and protect children. Yes. And beat the shit out of anybody that doesn't protect children. Just kidding. I don't condone violence unless it's against child predators. I should go. I'm saying crazy things.