Jennifer Plesko

In late September 2005, a young man named Levi King killed a 70-year-old man named Orlie McCool and his daughter-in-law, Dawn McCool, in McDonald County, Missouri. Then he stole Mr. McCool’s pickup truck and drove to the Texas Panhandle. Thirteen miles south of Pampa, he broke into a remote farmhouse in the middle of the night and shot Brian Conrad and his wife Michell, who was six months pregnant with their son Michael, as they scrambled out of bed. Then he fired a shot into the room of Michell’s 10-year-old daughter Robin Doan. Next, he shot Michell’s 14-year-old son Zach as he slept. Then, he headed for Mexico.

What Levi didn’t know is that, when he fired a shot into Robin’s room, he missed. She laid for hours in her bed, playing dead, until she finally emerged and called 9-1-1 from the bed of her stepfather’s pickup truck in the driveway.

The same night, he was caught trying to re-enter the United States at the Mexican border in El Paso. When investigators brought the truck back to Missouri from El Paso, a name tag with Brian Conrad’s name was found in the vehicle.

Why am I telling you this story? Brian Conrad was my cousin. Therefore, we’ve been following this trial with particular interest from the beginning. This week, after two murder trials in two different states and five weeks of defense testimony, Levi King was sentenced to life without parole.

If you’re thinking that it’s odd for someone who randomly killed six people to receive life in prison instead of the death penalty, you’re probably right. In the Missouri case, he agreed to plead guilty to the murders of the McCools if the death penalty was taken off the table. In the Texas case, a death sentence requires that the jurors unanimously believe that the defendant poses a future danger to society and that there are no mitigating circumstances that warrant a life sentence without parole instead of death. One lone juror couldn’t bring herself to put him to death.

Levi’s two court-appointed defense attorneys spent weeks arguing that a childhood full of neglect, abuse, poverty, guns and drugs in the backwoods of McDonald County, Missouri, led him to a rage that prompted the slayings. But that doesn’t really explain why none of his other siblings went on a killing spree. And now, in addition to the abuse they’ve suffered, they have to live with what he’s done.

As Brian’s father pointed out, there are no winners in this case. Everyone has lost. The Conrads lost a son and brother. Robin lost two brothers, her mother, and her stepfather and gets to live with the memory of her mother’s scream, the sleepless nights, and the struggle that comes with being the sole survivor. Levi’s family has essentially lost him. And Levi has lost his freedom. He once told a sheriff’s deputy that the gunpowder, sweat and blood heightened his sense of smell and still lingers with him. Now that he will be in prison for the rest of his life, I imagine that he will have a lot to think about.

But I don’t think God is through with Levi King yet. I think his life was spared for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but that’s not really for me to know. What I do know is that God has a way of bringing good out of even the most disgusting, most devastating, most hopeless situations. I see it all the time. And I’ve experienced it myself. Robin stood before Levi and told him that she forgives him, and that she hopes one day when he meets God, he will ask for forgiveness too. I hope he doesn’t wait that long.