They were just children 17 years ago when they and their parents were shot in the back and they watched the hogtied couple bleed to death. Friday morning, a state senator and his sister witnessed the execution of one of the killers.
State Sen. Brooks Douglass wrote the law that allowed him and his sister to watch the death of Steven Keith Hatch, which came just hours after another execution in Arkansas.Douglass and his sister, Leslie Frizzell, were joined by three of their uncles.
"We're very sad, and very sorry, that the circumstances of 17 years ago have brought us to this place," Douglass said. "Leslie and I have again witnessed the taking of a life. The first time we did, we were young people who were present when our mother and father were viciously killed."
Douglass was 16 and his sister 12 in 1979 when Hatch and Glen Burton Ake got into their home by posing as lost motorists. They hogtied Douglass and his parents and forced his sister to lead them to cash, jewelry and credit cards. They also tried to rape the girl.
Ake sent Hatch outside("listen for the sound" and start the car) then shot all four family members in the back. Richard Douglass, a minister, and his wife, Marilyn, died but the children survived.
Ake was sentenced to die but won a new trial on appeal. A new jury sentenced him to two life terms.
Hatch, 42, always maintained his innocence, arguing he shouldn't be executed because he didn't pull the trigger.
The legislation allowing victims' families to watch killers die is a major achievement of Douglass' two terms in the state Senate, where he has worked to help victims play a part in the criminal justice system.
Several other states, including Texas, Virginia, Louisiana, Washington, California, Montana and Utah, also allow victims' relatives to witness executions.
Hatch was executed by injection as Douglass family members watched through glass from aroom newly constructed for victims' relatives. Other witnesses watched from a separate room. In April, the first time relatives in Oklahoma got to witness an execution, they watched by closed-circuit television.
In Arkansas late Thursday, Si-Fu William Frank Parker was executed by injection for killing his ex-wife's parents in 1984 because he believed they broke up his marriage.
Parker - a converted Buddhist whose adopted name means teacher in Chinese - attracted support from the Dalai Lama, who wrote to oppose the execution, and actor Richard Gere, a fellow Buddhist who had hoped to visit him on death row.
The Corrections Department refused to allow the visit, saying it didn't have time to do a background check on Gere.
In his final words, Parker, 42, invoked his Buddhist beliefs: "I seek refuge in the Buddha. I seek refuge in the Dharma. I seek refuge in the Sangha."
His mother, Janie Parker, waited out the final hours with her son after pulling up to the prison with several cans of beer iced down in the car and a handgun in her purse. The weapon was confiscated by guards.
"I forgot I had it in my purse," she told KARK-TV. "You never know when you might break down and someone try to kill you."
Opponents of capital punishment, including Carol Gnade of the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, say Hatch's execution is an example of how arbitrary applying the death penalty can be.