Man convicted of aiding teen killers

The family friend helped the boys after they fatally beat their father with a baseball bat.

©Associated Press
March 6, 2003

PENSACOLA -- A friend of a man whose two sons bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat was convicted Wednesday for helping the adolescent brothers hide from police after the crime.

Ricky Chavis, 41, was immediately sentenced to 30 years in prison for being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. Circuit Judge Joseph Tarbuck also gave Chavis five years for evidence tampering, but allowed the terms, both maximum sentences, to run concurrently.

Chavis helped Derek and Alex King, then 13 and 12, avoid arrest immediately after the Nov. 26, 2001, murder of their father, Terry King, 40, at their home in Cantonment.

He took the boys, who telephoned him from a convenience store, to his Pensacola home, washed their clothes and hid them from police before turning them in the next day.

Chavis stared straight ahead when the verdict was read and showed no emotion. Another jury convicted him last month of falsely imprisoning Alex, for which he was sentenced to five years. Tarbuck on Wednesday ordered the new sentences to be served after that term, for a total of 35 years.

Chavis' lawyer, Michael Rollo, protested that the sentence was disproportionate to the seven- and eight-year terms that Alex and Derek, now 13 and 14, are serving in juvenile facilities for their guilty pleas to third-degree murder.

"This is politics, judge. This is a persecution, not a prosecution," Rollo said.

Chavis has been convicted of 17 felonies in his lifetime, including child molestation.

"I'm very glad that this long, sordid, sad soap opera has come to an end," Assistant State Attorney David Rimmer said later.

Soon after their arrest, the King boys confessed to killing their father as he slept in a recliner. Derek said he swung the aluminum baseball bat, while Alex said he urged his brother to do it.

But then the boys recanted and falsely accused Chavis of the killing. Chavis was tried and acquitted of first-degree murder last year. In a separate trial, the King boys were then convicted of second-degree murder, but Circuit Judge Frank Bell threw out the verdict and ordered mediation. The brothers finally pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, as well as arson for setting their house on fire to destroy evidence.

A six-member jury deliberated nearly six hours Wednesday, in a case that relied heavily on Derek's testimony Tuesday that he had told Chavis exactly what happened within hours of the killing.

"Derek told him he'd killed his father," Rimmer said in closing arguments. "Derek told him he used a bat. Derek told him he hit him 10 times. Derek told him he set the house on fire."

Chavis, therefore, clearly knew the killing was a first-degree premeditated murder, Rimmer said, but still concealed the boys and advised them to plead self-defense before he turned them over to police.

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