Two brothers, aged 13 and 14, face possible life prison sentences after they were found guilty yesterday of killing their sleeping father and setting his house on fire, while a 40-year-old friend tried separately for the same crime was found innocent.
The holding of two separate trials for the same murder was all the more unusual as the boys were the key witnesses in the trial of the man accused of carrying out the killing under different circumstances.
A jury found cherubic-looking Alex and Derek King guilty of second degree murder in the November death of their father Terry King (40) at their Cantonment, Florida, home.
The two also were found guilty of setting the house on fire.
The two brothers, whose scrubbed, angelic faces make them look even younger than they are, were tried as adults by a Florida court, and could face life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in the killing of their father, and 30 years for the arson.
They looked stunned as the verdict was announced, and Derek broke down in tears as he was led from the courtroom. The boys' mother, a former nightclub dancer who no longer lived with the boys at the time of the murder, wept as the verdict was read.
Sentencing was set for October 17th.
The boys initially confessed to police they had used a baseball bat to kill their father in his sleep, but later blamed Ricky Marvin Chavis.
Mr Chavis was found not guilty in the slaying. In an unusual twist, Mr Chavis (40) a family friend and a convicted child molester, had been tried earlier for the killing but his verdict, reached by a different jury, was only unsealed about an hour the boys were found guilty.
Alex has claimed that Mr Chavis killed their father after a fight.
The boys said Mr Chavis convinced them to confess to the crime, arguing that they would receive light sentences. Mr Chavis has always maintained his innocence.
But in their original statements to police, Alex said he was the mastermind, and Derek confessed to repeatedly hitting his father on the head with a bat.
"I was afraid he might wake up and see us, so I kept hitting him. I hit around 10 times," Derek said in the videotaped confession shown to the court last week.
AFP