Teenage brothers murdered father with baseball bat

Florida prosecutor gave two versions of killing in attempt to convict the boys and their alleged abuser.

A jury in Florida found two boys guilty of the violent murder of their father yesterday, a week after a 40-year-old man was tried for the same crime on the basis of a completely different version of events.

Derek King, 14, and Alex King, 13, were tried as adults for the murder of Terry King, who was found beaten to death, apparently with an aluminium baseball bat.

The verdict of murder in the second degree means they can be jailed for life.

Ricky Chavis, a convicted child molester accused of conducting a sexual relationship with Alex, was tried for the same murder last week and found not guilty. The verdict was sealed until yesterday's verdict was delivered.

If Mr Chavis had also been found guilty, at least one person, by definition, would have been convicted of a crime he had not committed.

The US news networks, usually barred from televising the trials of children, gave blanket coverage of the case in Pensacola this week, showing Alex King being cross-examined while Derek rocked in his seat.

The brothers showed little emotion as the verdict was read, though Alex later began to cry and was comforted by his lawyer.

When the verdict in his case was read out Mr Chavis wept and relatives of the Kings became audibly angry.

The defence case in the boys' trial - like the prosecution's case in Chavis's trial - was that Mr Chavis, a former family friend, murdered King to cover up his sexual relationship with Alex, then persuaded the boys to lie on the grounds that they would receive lighter punishments.

It is claimed that he promised that they could live with him when their father was dead.

But David Rimmer, the prosecutor in both trials, argued in the second case that Derek wielded the bat and Alex plotted the crime because they feared punishment by their father, a strict disciplinarian, for having run away for 10 days before the killing.

A woman who had been Derek's foster carer for several years testified that he told her he was planning the murder.

They then set fire to the house in Cantonment, Florida. The jury also found both boys guilty of arson.

The boys allegedly confessed immediately after King's body was discovered, then repeatedly altered details of their stories, before finally retracting their confessions.

"I left it up to the juries to decide. The King boys said he was the perpetrator, and I left it up to the jury to decide," Mr Rimmer said after the two verdicts.

The second-degree verdict in the Kings' case does not imply a lesser degree of involvement in the killing, it simply allows a more lenient sentence. First-degree murder requires mandatory life without parole.

The jury's decision to find the boys guilty of murder "without a weapon" was being interpreted yesterday to mean that they had simply decided not to classify the baseball bat as a weapon, since the version of events to which they were subscribing rested heavily on the use of the bat.

Far from seeking to deny Mr Chavis's sexual involvement with Alex, the prosecutors in the case against the boys argued that Alex planned the murder because he wanted to live with Mr Chavis. In a note found at the murder scene Alex said that Mr Chavis had helped him clarify his goals. "Before I met Rick I was strate [sic] but now I am gay," he wrote.

Mr Rimmer had urged the jury to ignore the King brothers' youth. "You can't go back there and say, 'Those poor boys. They're so young. How could they do this horrible thing? I just can't convict them.' It would be a miscarriage of justice."

The defendants knew too many details of the circumstances in which Terry King was found, he said. Derek allegedly spoke of a hole in King's head through which his brain was visible.

Mr Chavis, who did not testify in either trial, was convicted in 1984 of molesting two boys, and is due to stand trial in October for lewd and lascivious acts against Alex King, a crime which carries a maximum 15-year sentence.

The fact that the prosecution proceeded with two contradictory cases may provide the Kings' lawyers with grounds for an appeal.