Live to Tell: Sole Survivor

Dana, why you're here today?

Did you talk about what happened this morning? [MUSIC]

“I have a question, Do I really have to talk about what happened this morning again?”

These have told people, and they're just asking me to say it. Look, I can't really talk about that again. [MUSIC] I've got one important share of my to say, there was a shoot out of my house, and I don't know. I just didn't understand what's to this.

I was 10 when all this happened. [MUSIC] I was so young and so little. [MUSIC]

Is there anybody up in the hands of these?

No, I think I'm the only one who has to help it, I'm scared to throw on my mouth. [MUSIC] I live with my mother, that's Michelle Conrad. I live with my stepfather Brian Conrad, and then my older brother, Zac Don. I had a dog named Molly.

And my stepdad Brian was a farmer. And then my mom was also six months pregnant. [MUSIC]

“That night, I was having an nightmare, and I remember hearing the gunshot to my dream.”

But like when I woke up, it didn't end. The gunshots were actually going off in my house.

My mother started screaming, screaming and screaming and screaming.

[MUSIC] My jump time, my bed, and I'd went and crouched down by my door. That's when I had heard footsteps. It was very loud, he was stomping. I just remember popping up as fast as I could and just taking two leaps back into my bed and just freezing.

[MUSIC] He fired two rounds off at me. I had one of them grazed my left leg in my left arm. [MUSIC] He turned to my brother's room, and I just remember gunshots going off in my brother moaning.

[MUSIC] I played dead for two and a half hours. [MUSIC] I just, like, I can't just lay here, I need to do something. So I just proceeded out the door and started dialing 911.

[MUSIC] I just couldn't get there fast enough. I'm cold, I'm very cold. I could not get there fast enough. [MUSIC]

What in the world could have taken place? And why is she the only one on the phone? [MUSIC] Robin's home in Pampa, Texas is literally in the middle of nowhere. So you have to wonder, why this family?

Why this farmhouse? [MUSIC] Whoever the shooter was, whatever his reason for gunning down an innocent family in cold blood. He probably didn't count on one thing. He left behind a witness.

[MUSIC] It's a highway 70, it's about 13.3 miles out from the bowling alley. I have a purple shirt on, I have purple pants on. It felt so long before they got there. [MUSIC]

Okay, they're coming, they're coming too. I just kept looking and looking and hoping to see, you know, someone coming to my rescue. Oh, I know, it's my boy's kit, it's my cool. [MUSIC]

“I'll never forget when I turned down the driveway.”

I asked you, I asked you, this child on a phone about a shooting. [MUSIC] She ran straight to me, the hugger is destroyed as she was. She's very articulate, just telling me in absolute detail what was going on and what she heard and everything. He told me everything was going to be okay, they were going to figure it out.

We're obviously not going in the house with her.

So I put her in my patrol car and locked it.

“All the cops had their guns drawn and they were going to clear out the house to make sure no one was in there.”

We're going to go see who was alive and who was not alive. Any crime scene that you go into, you know, it's the ultimate who done it. [MUSIC]

One comment we made when we first got there is, this is like the All-American family.

[MUSIC] Everything was in place, the coffee was set to come on the next morning. Mom, dad, children, getting ready for the birth of a child. The east door to the residents had been kicked in and whoever entered that residence at that time immediately went to shooting. [MUSIC]

Brian had been shot three times and Michelle had been shot six times and the dog had been shot twice. [MUSIC] I guess I kept playing games with myself in my head.

“When it's my mom going to walk out of there, when it's Brian going to walk out of there.”

Where's Molly? [MUSIC] I wanted all of my family to walk out of there, okay, just like I did. [MUSIC] How that bullet miss Robin, I do not know.

It struck a little drawer next to her bed.

Sack had been shot three times laying in his bed, appeared Zack never woke up and Zack never knew what hitting.

[MUSIC] I would never ask the question who's still alive. I wouldn't do it, like I just wouldn't do it. [MUSIC] Chief Deputy looked at me and we looked at each other and he said go be with that little girl.

“And I just wanted to take care of her best I could.”

I said, is there anything I can do for you Robin? And she said, I want to feed my animals and I said, I fed animals before, let's go feed animals. [MUSIC] Maybe it's just pure survival, you know. Coming from one situation is just so traumatic to a diversion.

I just remember him helping me feed. I laughed at the amount of alpha hay he tried to give my goats because he was like in the large mountain I said, no, no. She just blew me away. She completely flipped a switch and was absolutely bragging about her animal.

Got first or second in this and her brother got first and second with his animal. Once we leave the crowds and that moment's over, the switch flipped again and it was right back to reality and she's immediately back to crying and cold and she grabbed my forearm. Finally, I kind of got the courage to just come right out and say mom and Brian aren't going to walk out of there are they broke the law enforcement people's hearts when they had to tell me no

that they weren't walking out of there. I was the only one that could walk out of there still alive. [MUSIC]

Zach never woke up and he never knew what was going on.

So I'm thankful that he didn't have a chance to hurt. I'm really thankful for that. [MUSIC] Right after it all had taken place, I went to my great grandma's house. It was just family after family after friends after people and everybody was crying.

And you know, people were yelling at the top of their lungs saying what's going on, what's going on, what's going on, and I couldn't answer questions because I was just scared I really don't want to go to sleep anymore, okay. It makes me to where I'm too scared, I really don't want to sleep. Okay, so I got put in a room with one of the advocates at the bridge.

There was a microphone in the room and there was a camera in the room. Can you chat my room and listen, and so I had a routine like I was staying tuned or hours. Everything was videotaped to make sure that they had it for evidence and stuff like that. Did anybody say anything? Could you hear anybody talking?

Nobody talked. They asked me, what do you remember? Can you describe what he looked like? I don't know this for sure, but I thought I saw a white, white, white eyes. My question to the other investigators was, I need to know if she heard shots,

And when he shot, I saw a flash.

She never hesitated in her answer of 15 shots.

And through the course of the crime scene investigation, 15 fire rounds were found inside the home. Something that you'd hope no 10-year-old getting woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning would have indelibly burned into their memory. I can't talk about it. It's inch to my face.

One of the things that our officers were very concerned about was the safety of Robin.

“Because you have to remember at this point,”

we had no idea who had done this, why it had happened, or where those people might possibly be. They put us in a shelter kind of thing. It was my biological dad, my stepmom at the time, my steps at the time and myself.

You had to be buzzed in, there was cameras all outside of it. I understood that it was for my own safety. I was not allowed to leave except to go to the funeral. We knew there would be an outpouring of the community at the service and indeed there was. Everyone loved the comrades.

They were what we would call in the panhandle, salt to the earth, kind of people. They were real people that we loved and cared about and cared about others.

“I just remember sitting there and I would just look at one casket and I'd look at the second casket”

and then I would turn and I'd look at the third casket and I would do it all over again.

It wasn't fair to sit there and look at that. I was at the funeral, we did have surveillance set up at the church just looking for suspicious people. No leads were developed through the funeral services. The anxiety and fear among the community went through the roof. People were afraid that there was somebody on the loose that could actually come into their home

and do the very same thing. So people were certainly making sure their doors were locked. People who kept guns in their homes were making sure they were closed by.

“We're trying to let the evidence speak to us. We had the show casings.”

We had a lot of blood evidence. We found several shoe prints. There were some tire tracks that we located on the property. What investigators didn't have was any DNA or fingerprints. They knew it wasn't a burglary. So they had to look for another motive. There was one theory that it was a drug hit that had got the wrong house.

While the leads were hitting dead ends. There was no rhyme or reason for why this may have happened. We all sat around and wondered, "Wow, they did this." We had no clue who this was. There was no reason for it.

Who would do this to this family? I received a call from a family member trying to reach out to my mother, but was unable to do so. So I called the house and my mother cell phone. I didn't get an answer, but wasn't alarmed at first. Around lunchtime that day, I decided to leave work and drive to the house to see if I could find them. Once I get to the house, a relative is standing outside and he tells me that my mother and

my grandfather had been murdered. My mom was a very loving and caring mother and was my best friend.

And my grandfather was always supportive, always there for me. I had just recently lost my father as well.

Orally McCool and Don McCool were the two victims in the house.

Relative found orally McCool lying in the floor with blood. And once I stepped in, I found a bullet casing and saw a shell lying on the floor and saw Miss McCool downstairs.

“The shell casing that were there were of a strange, I believe like a Russian ammunition.”

And it wasn't something you buy at Walmart or somewhere like that. It was a different kind of ammo. We're looking at the ammo, the shell casing and one of the other deputies there that

does a lot of the crime scenes and said, "I just took a burglar report from the night before,

from Scott King just lives down the road. Mr. King had reported that his son Levi had come into the house while he was gone and broke into his gun safe and stole several guns. And some of the ammo was the same kind." Once investigators had recognized those shell casings, they had their suspect. 23-year-old Levi King, law enforcement, new Levi King, well. He had been in prison for

burglarizing a neighbor's home and then burning it down. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison,

but he served less than three before he was sent to a halfway house. He disappeared from that halfway house and was on the run just a week before the bodies of the McCool's were found. So we started trying to piece stuff together. One of the family members also said that the Orley and Don McCool's pickup, Dodge Dakota pickup was gone so it was entered into the computer system nationwide as stolen. We had a warrant signed for Levi at, I want to say like 11 o'clock

that night, and that warrant was issued in the computer for nationwide pickup. None of us knew why this had happened. It did feel completely random. Law enforcement kept us abreast of the situation and had informed us that they had identified

“Levi King as a suspect, he needed a way to escape the area and so I believe that he had targeted”

my grandfather's house as well as the truck for transportation. Levi King was found in the truck by the border patrol in El Paso. He admitted having guns in the back. Well that drew their attention. They ran the tags, found out there was a stolen truck with a possible suspect from a murder inside so they detain him there at El Paso PD and actually interviewed him.

So El Paso police held in question Levi King until the Missouri investigators could arrive. Just 15 minutes into that interview Levi King calmly confessed to killing Orley McCool and his daughter law dawned, but he couldn't fully explain why. We'd be before I even realized that I mean I had just pointed it out of the fire. How many times did you fire? I just want he spun and fell over. He walked by to the door

“and you see this woman. Why explain to me why you shot at her?”

I was scared. I mean I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I was panicking. We get to El Paso PD. We are met by the detectives that are working the case. I observed Levi standing there, knew him, said his name. He knew who I was. We both acknowledged each other. We loaded him up and the pickup up and headed back towards Missouri. During a conversation with Levi he described that even hours later he could still smell

the gunpowder, the sweat and the blood, describing it as a feeling that it was probably better than any drugs he'd ever done. I want to say within the next week or two I had been told

We got him out of the cell, took him to the outdoor exercise yard and somewhere in that conversation

“within the next few minutes. Levi made a statement, "You know there's four more in Texas."”

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“At a point in time Levi King says you know there's four more in Texas.”

I didn't know whether to believe him to not believe him. He'd been in our jail for approximately two weeks and nobody was hunting him. Nobody was questioned him. So I don't know why he made that statement. Describing the location of his murders. He he talked about the big cross in Texas. I knew exactly where he was talking about. There's only a couple that are that big,

it stand out like that. So Don Ruby reached out to investigators near

“that cross in the Texas Panhandle to see if there were any open homicides. There were the murder”

of Robin's family. It didn't take long to piece everything together. After killing the coals and driving 500 miles Levi King decided it was time to kill again. The phone call that we received from the Pineville Sheriff's Office in Missouri blew open the case force. We found out that Levi had gone in and killed Orley and Don McCool and taken their vehicle and driven down through Oklahoma to interstate 40.

At some point in time Levi decides that he's going to exit the interstate and looks over and sees the farmhouse belonging to the Conrads and pulls in. Kills Brian and Michelle and Zach and shoots at Robin thinking he's killed Robin. If there was ever a case where a man

deserved to die, it was Levi King. But first Levi King would have to face justice in Missouri for

the McCool murders. There he took a plea deal to avoid execution. He agreed to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. In Texas he also took a guilty plea, but the DA refused to take the death penalty off the table. The purpose of this trial was only to see what sentence he was going to get. It was about whether he was going to be executed or whether he was going to go back to Missouri and spend the rest of his life in prison.

I was 14 and about to turn 15 when trial was taking place. I understood that we were in court for the death penalty. You know I told them okay he did this to my family. So yeah okay go for it.

It always in death penalty cases what you don't want the jury to be stuck with is

picture of a person as a killing entity, an evil entity. First thing we had to figure out how to do was to turn Levi from a monster into a human being. Are you Levi Alexis King? Yes sir. Levi had been bipolar at least since adolescence. At varying times he had other diagnosis for depression for bipolar with with some amount of psychosis and then I believe it at some

showed signs of serious anti-social behavior setting fires and killing animals and drug use in his home

“was rampant. His father introduced him to hard liquor in marijuana and by his teens Levi King”

had moved on to meth and heroin and the place he called home you'd have to see it to believe it. The environment which he grew up in and just the overwhelming poverty and despair until we went up there and actually walked around in it you just could not get a feel for it. It

was truly protting. The first thing you notice was just filth. The insulation was just black and

melted. There was one wall that just had this massive display of ceremonial knives and swords.

“There was lots of guns and knives and you know regardless of whether they had food or not”

there was that money for ammunition. The defense did a very good job to paint Levi as this poor pathetic mistreated sad little person. There's a whole lot of other people out there in this world that have grown up in the same type of environment that Levi did or even worse than Levi did and they don't go on killing sprees. Levi King kills people because he likes the smell of blood. He kills people because he likes that smell of gun smoke. He doesn't care.

I was going to be sitting in front of a murder who had killed my loved ones and to testify, I didn't want to but I knew that I needed to for my family's sake. I was the only one that got to walk out of that house. They didn't and they needed a voice too. Before she goes into testify, she's absolutely scared to death. I just look at her and

“I said, Robin, we've got you back. Go do what you need to do. Tell the truth and just realize”

we're right outside this door. He will never get to you.

I tried to avoid looking at Levi King as long as I possibly could and finally I couldn't resist the urge anymore because I wanted to see who had actually done this and so I looked at him and the stare that I got back was the worst feeling of my entire life. He is very cold. He's very blank and essentially it just felt like he was staring a whole right through me. When Robin testified, the hard part about Robin testifying was to see the pain that

that precious little girl had to go through it and do her and then to see her say, I've endured this but you're not taking my life away from me. I am not giving you that kind of control. I don't want to live with being bitter and being angry all the time for what had happened. I did forgive Levi King because me forgiving Levi King, it was my sense of peace and it was my sense of this is how I was raised and this is my family coming out.

We present the evidence that defense has their time to present their case and we asked 12 people to make a very very difficult decision to either take or not take a man's life. You asked the question why and that's the question that sometimes holds you forever.

Why? Why this family? Why this day? Why this time? We may never know.

the randomness of it, the lack of motive, is to understand that there truly are people out there

“who are just plain evil. Levi King is one of those people.”

I'm asking 12 people to sentence this man to death. This was a horrible crime and we knew

we had to be honest with the jury. We tried to get to him, so I look, he will never walk

as a free man ever that that is punishment and he will never harm anyone else again. For years I lived and breathed this case and despite your best efforts, you don't always get it right. The jury deliberated for approximately seven to eight hours and they came back and said that they wanted to give him life with that pro. One of them wanted to give him life with that pro. The rest of them wanted him to have the death penalty.

I credit that with a given the eventual one hold out enough strength to hold out.

“I don't think we ever believe we'd get a life verdict. I thought the best we would get would be a”

spa hungry. Just to look on Lynn's face that almost looked like that she had failed us, but she really did it.

Lynn's Switzerland fought for my family and that's something that I will never be able to think

her enough and all the law enforcement that was involved and set on the stand. Neither way, ultimately I'd still won and my family had still won. Believe that King would be extradited back to Missouri to serve that sentence. So I was fine with him being a Missouri because Texas is my state. I don't want you back in my state. You've already done your damage here.

Pampa's home. It's where my mom and Brian and my dad all raised me. So to leave, I felt like I was

being a coward and I was running for my problems and running for what happened. It's not saying that

I want to say that forever because I don't. Robin tries very hard to not be a victim. But occasionally I see glimpses of that scared little girl in Robin. I really don't want to go to sleep anymore. It makes me swear. I'm too scared. I really don't want to go to sleep. The fear is still there and it's so very real. I really hate being alone because I feel like that's when my mind wanders the most to

“I think the worst thoughts of what if I could have done this or what if I could have done that?”

Should I have gone and woke up Zach? I think an impacts are every day. Robin has to deal with nightmares still. She has to deal with repetitive memory of what happened to her. She told me all the time she remembered her mom screaming. There were times when she texted me at night and say, you know, I hear things going on and

she was very scared whenever noises would happen and just because she doesn't show it on the outside. I think that she obviously has to deal with it on the inside. I am very superstitious I guess. The day that everything happened, I had on socks and I had on long sleeves and long pants. I will not sleep in long sleeves long pants or socks now. I will not sleep with my door open because I feel like there's a figure of a person standing

in my doorway. I'm scared of the dark when I walk into the house and I know that I'm there by myself. I will go through every single no concranion the house to make sure that there's no one in there. The dates that are really hard are birthdays. Zach's birthday, mom's birthday, brands birthday, even my birthday is hard because I don't like celebrating it without them. I just have those days where I want my mommy or my stepdad or my brother and want things

go back to being normal and you just can't help but burst out into tears. Robin is 21 years old. She's lived often on with her biological father and an aunt and now lives with friends. No place has felt like home since the day Levi King walked into her life. Robin briefly

If I wanted to talk to someone, I'll talk to my family or put a law enforcement person in front of

“me and I'll talk to you. But a psychiatrist? No thanks. I don't need someone to pat me on the back”

and tell them, you know, ask me, well how do you feel? I don't need that. I don't expect you to pity me and I don't want you to because that's not how I am. I want to be just like everybody else. So how does Robin move past the memories of that horrible day? There's a group of people determined to help her. Maybe the only people who really understand what she's been through.

The heroic things that Robin did to survive that day and to survive that incident will always

stick in my mind. When that investigation was through, we weren't through. The law enforcement

“community surrounded Robin. We wanted to give her a mechanism of people that she could go to.”

If she had questions, if she had issues, if she just wanted to talk. Everybody in the law enforcement field got together and raised funds to start a scholarship program for. I'm thrilled to death every time that phone rings and I see Robin's name on it. It's always with a sense of joy because she has a special place in my heart and she always will. They treated her like their little sister. They just have big hearts. They carry big guns,

but they have big hearts. When you go through things as traumatic as this experience was, you have a bond and I connected with her. We did keep in contact and later on when she turned 16, Robin.

And bottomed me to her birthday party. I revisit that place and I've always had this hesitation.

It's seeing me a happy day or a tragic day. I have had a really good relationship with Chad. When I hug him, every time I see him, it's that same hug I got. The day that he came and he was the first one to me. And it's just the most heartwarming. It's like a safe place. I don't let what happened keep me down. No. No. Sorry. That's not me. That'll never be me. I played basketball, I played volleyball, I played softball, ran track, I was a cheerleader,

I think a leader. We have had a lot of moments, Robin and I that we have been together. For prom, she came and got ready at my house. I was of course there for her graduation. Just things that I know that she's going to need a mom for. She says that her mom won't be there for her wedding. And I just want to be there for her.

I called Denise my adopted mom. I looked at Denise for everything, whether it be homework, a new boyfriend. Oh my gosh, I don't know what to wear today to school. Every little thing to every major thing. That's when I look to Denise. She has this positive outlook on life. She has one of the most

“caring hearts that anyone could ever see and I believe that Robin needs to be in a filled with”

caring and helping people. I made the statement many times back then and I still make it today. And I hope the good Lord keeps me around long enough to see why he kept Robin

don't on this earth. Because it's got to be an incredible special reason.

And I hope I get to witness that. I could honestly not tell you why I was left. Why I was ill. The one that survived. I couldn't tell you whether it be I'm able to tell people there's nothing that you can't get through. Maybe if I get married one day and have kids, if it's to help my kids get to life or help other people in the world. I don't know. I don't know what my purpose is, but

it's going to be great when it comes.