- Reverend, you're on duty today.
Can you think... just think about the man
whom you are going to encounter in an hour from now,
less than an hour from now.
- I really am going there without any expectations.
I'm going there to experience what God has prepared for me,
for him, for all of those involved,
and I don't preconceive anything.
Not today.
I will let that happen as it occurs,
as time gets there.
We have a loving, caring,
forgiving, merciful God,
and in time of joy and in time of need,
in time of trial or tribulation,
God is always there for us.
I want to make that presence to them.
- And technically when he is led to the gurney,
what is your duty then?
- After everything is completed,
as far as the preparation,
then I walk over, and I stand as he has allowed me to stand.
I always ask permission to be able to stand at his feet
and hold his ankle,
and I move toward that position,
and I place my hand on his ankle,
and then that's what... what I do
until death occurs.
- And if there is no family interested
in taking care of the body,
the condemned men would end up right behind you?
- Yes, they end up here at the state cemetery,
and they're buried by the state.
No names on the crosses, only numbers.
- Why does God allow capital punishment?
- I don't know the answer.
I believe that there's always a purpose
why God allows things to happen.
God has created so many things in this world.
I play golf sometimes.
I love to be on the golf course,
because one thing I do, I put my phone on a silent mode.
I go out there sometimes by myself with no distractions,
and I can see the beautiful grass.
I can see the squirrels, from time to time, running.
Sometimes the deer are running.
Sometimes I look across the golf course,
and I see a cow or a horse, and... and I... and I stop,
and I acknowledge life.
Life,
the things that God has created.
- Please describe an encounter with a squirrel.
- An encounter with a squirrel,
I was driving the golf cart, and I was on the golf...
on the cart path, and I saw two squirrels.
They were chasing each other, and as I was getting closer,
they were running across the cart path,
and I put on my brakes,
and they stopped in the middle of the cart path
and looked at me, and I said, "How about this?"
"If I wouldn't have stopped,
"I could have run over one of these squirrels.
Their life would have ended."
(voice breaks) And that reminds me...
of the many people that I have been with
in their last breath of life,
and due to bad choices and mistakes in their life, they...
their life is taken away in that moment.
So life is precious, whether it's a squirrel
or a human being.
So I will sometimes meditate on that experience.
Make a little noise, and the squirrels will take off
and continue their life,
but I cannot do that.
For someone on the gurney,
I cannot stop the process for them.
But I wish I could.
(exhales)
- Good, yeah.
You are not wired yet,
so we have to wire you first.
Michael Perry, now from all of us,
the whole team here,
we would like to offer our condolences.
Your father passed away.
- Right, on the 10th.
My dad died 13 days ago.
- 13 days ago.
- Yeah, on June 10th.
- But you will die or you are scheduled for execution...
- Right.
- In only eight days. - Yes, sir.
- How are you doing?
- You know... you know, I'm a Christian, so, you know,
I believe that, you know, paradise awaits
one way or the other, so I tell people all the time,
I'm either going home or home, so...
I'm either going home to the world or home to God,
so I... you know, as the days get closer,
I can feel the pressure on my shoulders.
They call it clinical depression where I just start having
less motivation to do things, less energy.
You get frustrated at the... at the system.
How can they not see, you know, my situation is wrong?
You know, I... I used to write all the time
and have a lot of energy,
and I just don't have it any more.
I just feel like I've been beaten down.
- I have the feeling that destiny, in a way,
has dealt you a very bad deck of cards.
It does not exonerate you,
and... and when I talk to you,
it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you,
but I respect you, and you are a human being,
and I think human beings should not be executed.
- Mm-hmm. - As simply as that.
- Right.
(eerie instrumental music)
♪ ♪
- Lieutenant, this looks idyllic and safe.
- Well, and you would think that.
This is a gated community, obviously.
The houses that are out here are very large houses,
very expensive houses,
and you would think that this is...
this is a very quiet area,
and you would, I guess, associate that with security.
But this house right here is actually the house
where Sandra Stotler was murdered.
This is where Michael Perry and Jason Burkett
parked out on the street
and went in and... and murdered her.
At the time that we found her,
she was actually baking cookies,
and there was evidence of that.
There was... there was cookies out.
There was cookie dough out.
So she was in the process of that when she was killed.
- But apparently the first plan was not murder.
- Well, and that was something that we were told,
that initially the... the boys were all...
when I say "boys," Michael Perry, Jason Burkett,
Adam Stotler, and Jeremy Richardson...
they were acquaintances
through, you know, some mutual friends.
They weren't really friends themselves,
but they... they were acquaintances,
and what we were told was... is that they came here
with the intention of trying to get Adam Stotler
to allow them to stay the night
by telling them they didn't have a place to stay,
and they were going to try to get the keys to the car
and steal it.
That's what they were after,
was the red Camaro that was in the garage.
Upon going to the door and talking to the mother,
and she said that they were out, the boys were out,
and so they left,
and that's when their plan changed,
that they were just going to kill her and take the car.
So they went back up to the door,
and the garage was open,
and the door going into the house was open.
Michael Perry, by his own admission,
entered that garage door and went into the laundry room
at the time that Jason Burkett knocked on the front door.
And as their truck was out here,
he told them that the truck wouldn't start
and they needed to call someone to come and assist them.
So she let him in the house to use the telephone,
and while he was doing that,
Michael Perry stepped out of the laundry room
and knocked on the back garage door,
which made her come and answer it,
and he stepped out from the laundry room from behind her,
and that's when he shot her.
The actual garage door itself was open
when our deputies arrived on the scene.
The master bedroom,
which is in the back part of the house
behind the garage over here,
they went in, and they took the top bedding,
the blanket and the... the top sheet,
and that's what they wrapped her in.
They brought her out, put her in the truck,
and they drove her out to Crater Lake
to dispose of her body.
- And how does it happen?
Was it drugs?
- You know, I don't know that there was ever
any direct evidence as far as, you know,
drugs relating particularly to this case.
I mean, honestly, it was just... you know, they had a car.
You know, this lady owned a car that they wanted,
so, you know, it was...
unfortunately, you know, people died for a theft.
Other than it being dark,
this is pretty much the way it was
that night when we came out here.
You'll see all kinds of debris and trash here, as I said.
This is... was pretty commonly used for a dumping ground.
They've pulled lots of vehicles out of... out of Crater Lake.
We've had, actually, a few other bodies
that we've... that we've gotten out of Crater Lake.
This is Crater Lake here.
This little area right here,
this is where the tire treads in the dirt was actually here.
At the time that they first came down here,
they actually backed up to that
and tried to slam on their brakes,
hoping to eject the body in the water,
and that didn't work, so, again,
that was just something that... that we heard.
I don't know that that's actually what happened,
but you could tell from...
there wasn't any distinct tire wear in the ground.
You could just tell that a tire...
tires had been spinning there, so...
So it seemed to fit the story,
but they ended up getting the body
and... and carrying it out here,
and it was just dropped in the water.
We didn't know when we processed the scene here
and when we processed Sandra Stotler's residence,
we still did not know
that we had any other victims other than her.
This is the gated community of Highland Ranch.
Inside those gates is the house
where Sandra Stotler was murdered.
When Michael Perry and Jason Burkett came back here
to get the Camaro that they were after,
these gates were... were shut and locked,
so they didn't have access to it,
so they waited around and parked
until Adam Stotler and Jeremy Richardson returned home,
and that's when they got them to come out in the woods with them
and... and murdered them so that they could get
basically the clicker to come back and get access in...
you know, into this gate
so that they could go back to the house
and take the Camaro.
- So only because they didn't have the code here
and it was closed at night,
two more young people had to die.
- Yes, sir. That's correct.
- Lieutenant, Jason Burkett and Michael Perry
bragged about what they had done.
How clear evidence was that?
- Well, because it came from multiple people.
It wasn't just one.
We got reports from several people
from the different hangouts
that they had said that they had killed people.
That's how they got the vehicles.
It was pretty convincing.
I mean, we believed it.
Although, again, we... we didn't have evidence
that we had other bodies at the time.
- Only after Perry confessed,
he pointed you to the location of the two young boys.
- Yes, sir.
- As soon as I found out my mother...
her body had been found,
that whole week is just a blur.
I was watching the news.
It was Monday morning,
and I saw helicopters flying over Ronny's truck stop here.
Well, we live a mile, and I had a glimmer of hope.
I said, "Adam got away. He's found his way home."
Because that's the exit you'd get off to come to my house.
So I told my husband.
I said, "Get in the car. We're going down there."
'Cause they showed the crime scene,
the helicopters.
My brother's car was there on the news.
So we went up to Ronny's truck stop,
and I saw all that stuff on the car,
and I'm like, "oh, that's not Adam's car.
He doesn't have all that stuff on there."
- "Stuff" meaning?
- The stickers and the... - "Gauge," "A.B."?
- Yeah, I saw all that stuff.
I was like, "oh, that's not his car."
You know, and then I looked at the license plate.
The car was riddled with bullets,
and they had just chased them down
and caught them at the apartment complex,
and I was kind of trailing behind them,
and they left to go to the hospital,
and they told me... I was like, "Please tell me,"
because Adam had been missing now since Wednesday,
and it was now Monday, and I said,
"Please tell me, was Adam with them?"
And they said, "Adam got shot",
and they took him to the hospital."
Now, Michael Perry is still saying he's Adam.
He got out of jail. He bonded out of jail.
- Perry just had his ID.
You believed... - I believed he was alive.
- Your brother was safe, only wounded,
because you were told Adam was safe...
- Was shot.
- And shot but in hospital.
- And I... you know, I was like...(sighs)
Thank God.
So I started calling the hospitals
trying to figure out which hospital he was at,
and I described him, and she's like...
I finally got a nurse who would talk to me,
and she's like, "That's not the kid that's here, ma'am."
- But you had hopes, I mean, substantial hopes
that your brother Adam was wounded but safe.
- Yes. - Alive.
- Yeah.
- And all of a sudden...
- My world was ripped out from underneath me.
Everyone was gone.
I called Lieutenant Davidson,
and he told me to come down to the police station,
and I told him,
"I'm watching you on TV right now.
Just tell me if that's Adam."
And he said, "I really would like you
to come down to the station."
And I said, "Just tell me."
And he said, "Yeah, it's Adam."
He said, "It's Adam,"
and my knees gave out,
and I never knew that your knees really went weak, you know,
but that saying is true, "Weak in the knees."
My knees went weak, and I fell to the floor.
- This is Lindsey Lane.
This is where we were directed on this road
by Michael Perry in his confession
that we would find two additional bodies
of Adam Stotler and Jeremy Richardson.
We came down this road, and then we split up.
We went to the end of the road,
and we actually walked back this way
and discovered Adam's body.
They lured them into this area
by telling them that there was a mutual friend of theirs
that had gotten hurt while they were hunting.
This house obviously was not here at the time.
You can see, as this is coming out,
how it's coming around,
so it's gonna be somewhere about...
somewhere in that concrete is gonna be
about where his body was discovered.
Once we actually processed the scene
and we moved the body, once we moved the body,
there was a cigarette butt under it, which we collected,
and there was also another cigarette butt close by,
but the one that was under his body,
once we submitted it to the state lab for DNA,
it had Michael Perry's DNA on it.
- Which means the body had fallen...
- Had fallen on the cigarette
after it was already discarded on the ground.
The other body was Jeremy Richardson.
From where we actually found his body,
it was so dense with trees, we couldn't even get into it.
I don't know how he got into it.
We couldn't hardly even get into it without taking machetes
and... and cutting back some of the brush.
Jeremy, he ran for some distance
while he was being shot at.
I don't know if it was 'cause
he heard the gunshots here and got startled,
or if Jason pointed the shotgun at him,
and he realized it before he was actually shot,
and he took off running.
- Charles, you lost your brother, Jeremy.
Do you remember the moment when you heard about it?
- I was in Georgia,
and I got a phone call from my aunt
saying for me to call home.
Something bad had happened.
I tried to call.
I didn't have no money at the time,
and my phone wouldn't let me call long distance,
so I tried to call collect, and my grandpa hung up on me.
He didn't want to...
he didn't even want to pay $2 to talk to me
to tell me my brother was dead.
I had to actually get my aunt to call
and find out what was going on,
and then she called me back, and my first thought was...
just because on the phone she says,
"Do you know Jason Burkett?"
I said, "Yeah."
She said, "Well, something's happened,
and your brother's dead," and, uh...
My... my first thought was, you know,
Jason was just driving, being stupid
the way he normally was and had wrecked,
and then she told me no,
that Jason shot my brother over a car.
I... I just fell out.
I fell out.
My uncle came and picked me up, and, uh...
We just went driving around.
- And your father?
Where was he?
- He was in prison.
- How serious?
- Well, it was the first time
he was in jail for murder, in prison for murder.
- Life sentence?
- Well, no.
He... he was doing his 15 year sentence first,
and then he was out for about a year,
and then he went and got a life sentence,
and he's just getting out after that.
- And you flew in for the funeral?
- Yeah, I flew in for the funeral.
The cops said I had jumped bond, and the cops were there to...
to take me to jail over my brother's...
Can I tell 'em what it was for or...
I mean, would it be okay to tell 'em,
you know, it was a drug possession?
- So you took the jail time for your brother,
and you were arrested?
- Yeah, at the funeral.
The cops came in there.
There was six cops came in and identified me
and told me they were gonna take me to jail right then.
I asked them, you know, could I at least stay
for my brother's funeral.
- And the teardrops, the tattoos,
what do they signify?
- I lost my... my brother and my sister.
- Brother murdered.
Your sister, what happened to her?
- She was coming to my house,
and she crossed the freeway,
and she got ran over by a car.
- Tell me about your brother Jeremy.
Can you show us?
- Jeremy was... he was...
he was just the golden child.
He was a good kid, trusted his friends.
He would get in trouble just... just to...
to have that attention,
but he wouldn't do nothing serious.
He would... he would never do anything too serious.
He got in trouble for making people laugh, you know,
talking during class, you know, stuff like that.
He was a very sociable person.
Everybody loved him, and, uh...
Everybody said that I was the one
that was supposed to be dead before I was 21 and not Jeremy.
- And you loved him.
- Of course.
He was my... he was my best friend.
He was my best friend growing up.
He's all I had.
- You took care of him.
- I tried.
Turns out the only thing I did was hurt him.
I introduced him to the people that killed him.
He'd tell me all the time,
it was me and him against the world.
I tell my wife the same thing now.
It's just me and him against the world.
- I believe from the time that we got the initial call
until they were caught, it was within a week.
It was, I believe, five to seven days.
- And you arrived at the scene where they were apprehended?
- Yes, sir.
- Can you describe?
Was it mayhem?
- Yes, sir, it was.
There was a truck stop...
actually, the truck stop's not there any more,
but it was at the... kind of the side parking lot
of a truck stop,
and there was an abandoned warehouse,
and then on the other side of that, an apartment complex,
so the entire scene spanned from that parking lot
all the way well into the apartment complex.
There was shotgun shells.
There was cartridge casings where they had exchanged fire
with the officers that were there.
There was wrecked vehicles,
and, I mean, there was just people everywhere.
- And the police officer was run over?
- Yes, sir, his leg.
There was a vehicle wrecked out,
and all the glass in the vehicle
had shattered from the gunshots.
Burkett and Perry both sustained gunshot wounds.
I believe Jason Burkett was shot three times,
if I'm not mistaken,
and I'm not really certain about Michael Perry,
but they... they both had wounds from gunshots
and obviously glass cuts and scrapes.
- So there was a wild, hot pursuit,
and you were in this wild chase.
Did you actually open fire at them or...
- What had happened...
- I don't want to be too indiscreet, but I think...
- Well, I can tell you.
I can tell you. I pled guilty.
I've got 10 years done on a 15 year sentence for it, so...
- I see, yeah. - We were asleep.
We had been drinking the night before.
We were sleeping in the car
because we couldn't get to the motel,
which was on the other side of a fence.
I don't remember this other guy that was in the car with us.
I don't know how he got with us.
I don't know his name.
I don't know anything about him.
Michael Perry and me were drinking,
and somehow this guy got with us that night.
I remember getting woke up and getting shot in the car.
I looked around.
Michael Perry wasn't next to me.
It was some other kid next to me,
but Perry was in the backseat,
and Perry tried to get out of the car in the back,
and then he shut the door.
I started the truck, and I went to flee,
and everybody says, "You shouldn't have ran.
You shouldn't have ran."
I had just been shot,
and the only way for me to not to get shot again
was to get out of there,
and I wasn't thinking clearly.
I didn't know about a murder.
I didn't know about what they were looking...
I didn't know the extent.
I didn't even know they knew who I was.
And when I drove off,
the officer was right in front of me.
I drove to the right,
and he shot me through the door right here in my arm.
- How badly were you wounded?
- I was shot right here.
- Can you show it higher for me?
- I was shot right here in my wrist.
I was shot right here in my hand, my finger.
I was shot right here.
I was shot right here,
and I was shot right here.
Right here, I had a piece of the car door in my side.
- Still lodged in your side?
So how do you get through a metal detector?
- Well, it came out afterwards. It came out.
It did finally come out in the jail.
Right here in my collarbone, I had a piece of glass
from the car door, went inside.
I crashed into a building because I couldn't steer.
My blood's all in the truck.
They said, "Well, your DNA's on the gun."
My DNA's on everything in there.
I was shot. My DNA was on Michael Perry.
My DNA was on every seat in there from being shot.
Blood went everywhere.
Whenever I crashed, I jumped out and ran.
I ran.
I ran in the building.
There was cops shooting at the building
where we were crashed into.
They were shooting from every direction.
The window in the back of the building's like this.
You can't get through it.
I shot one time with the gun through the window.
I probably shouldn't have done that,
but I was trapped, and I was panicking.
I didn't know what to do.
And when we got through there, we ran to some apartments,
and, you know, I... I carried Perry half the way,
but, I mean, we got to the apartment.
- You... you dealt with it like real tough men.
I remember reading somewhere
that Michael Perry shouted, "This is it.
Put the balls at the walls," or something.
"Let's bolt. Let's fight back."
Can you remember something like that?
- I remember reading that they said, "Balls to the walls,"
or, you know, something.
I don't recall him saying it.
He could have said it.
- Too much commotion. Too many bullets flying.
- I didn't really understand what was happening.
All I knew is, where we were at, we could not stay there.
- Yeah.
- And... and he was screaming, "Balls to the walls," they say.
- Well, um, how can I say?
I... I don't want to go into the details of...
of what happened,
but fact is that three people were killed.
- Mm-hmm.
- And you deny that you were even close to the scene or...
how... how do you...
- Well, there's no longer a question.
There's no longer a question of my innocence.
That's... question is out the door.
The question is, what is anyone gonna do about it now?
I mean, a perfect example is, you're here with these guys.
They show up at your hotel room in a car.
You're gonna assume that that car is...
you know, these are your friends,
so when Jason shows up to pick me up in a car,
I'm gonna assume it's okay.
You get in it, and you get arrested,
and you come to find out he just murdered someone from that car,
you're gonna end up on Texas death row.
You're gonna end up right here
because you trusted one of these guys
to show up and pick you up in a... in a real car
that wasn't just stolen.
- But trusting in Jason was a bad choice.
- Oh, absolutely. - I mean, let's face it.
He was some sort of a bad apple, and so... so were you.
- I was homeless and starving, so it was...
- And using drugs and stealing.
- He offered me drugs. He offered me a place to stay.
He offered me food, so I chose...
I chose that, which I shouldn't have.
I regret it every... every minute now.
Cherish every minute, huh?
Cherish every minute.
Make the most of it because, you know,
they can... they can... they can do you like me.
Be in the wrong situation at the wrong time,
and there's no telling where you end up.
You might want to get out of Texas as soon as possible, huh?
They might arrest you any... any second, huh?
- I went over to my buddy's house.
There was a guy there, and he wanted to fight me,
and he run up on me as I got out of the truck,
and... and I just kind of blew him off.
You know what I mean?
"Just go on, man, go on about your business."
And everybody said he was saying he was gonna stab me
when I got out of the truck.
You know, it kind of pissed me off,
so I... I went back, found the dude,
and run up on him, and I was taking off my shirt,
and I threw my... threw my shirt up like that, you know,
and threw it up over my elbow.
I was gonna take it off, and when I did that,
he hit me right here with a screwdriver, you know,
a screwdriver about that long, and it was a Phillips,
you know, them little skinny, long screwdrivers.
It sunk in to the handle, and after that, uh...
- All the way to the handle? - All the way to the handle.
- How did it happen?
- Man, it's probably, probably about right in there.