It has been nearly ten years since Robin Doan was awakened by the sound of gunshot and her mother’s screams while she laid in her bead inside her family’s Texas Panhandle farmhouse.
It was only a few short, tragic moments later when she saw a bright flash from the muzzle of an AK-47 but miraculously, the bullet had missed its mark and she was unharmed.
“I pretended I was dead the whole time,” she told a dispatcher during a frantic 911 call September 30, 2005. “I’m 10 years old, and I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.”
Robin is now 19-years-old but to this day, she is still haunted by the sounds and sights that she experienced nearly 10 years ago when Levi King murdered her family and she had to play dead for two hours in order to survive.
“Robin lives every day with thoughts of her mother’s screams in her head,” said her aunt, Christy Powell in 2009 interview with the Associated Press.
On Saturday, Sole Survivor will be aired on CBS , which will recount the horrifying chain of events that unfolded on that tragic evening as King broke in and massacred her family which consisted of Robin’s mother, 35-year-old Michell Conrad, who was six months pregnant, her father, 31-year-old Brian Conrad and her 14-year-old brother, Zach.
Viewers will hear Robin detail how she was awakened by her mother’s screams, then crouched by her bedroom door and heard gunshots, then heavy steps down the hallway.
Robin describes how she climbed back into bed and hid under the covers as she felt something whiz by her body. Moments later, she heard King walk down the hall to her brother Zach’s bedroom, and then heard more gunshots which were followed by a groan.
She heard King walk into the kitchen and he began rattling around, all the while she remained silent and still until she felt it was safe.
When she felt it was safe and believed King had left the premises, she took the phone and ran outside to her stepfather’s pickup. It was a cold, fall morning and Robin feared the worst, never taking a moment to check the bedrooms.
‘I so hope my mom is not dead,’ Robin told the dispatcher between sobs. ‘I want my mommy. I want my mom. I think I’m the only one alive,’ she continued.
The harrowing 911 tapes reveal the terror that Robin experienced when King broke into her family’s home on a two-day killing spree in September 2005 that took him from Missouri to Texas.
King, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009, claimed in court that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. He methodically walked around her home, killing simply for fun. He also pleaded guilty to the shooting deaths of Orlie McCool, 70, and his daughter-in-law Dawn McCool, 47, in rural Pineville, Missouri.
King drove Orlie McCool’s pickup from Missouri to the Conrads’ home in Texas and was caught the same night while trying to re-enter the United States at the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas.
During his trial, prosecutor, Lynn Switzer told jurors that Robin and her family had ‘no idea what was fixing to happen to them.’
Prosecutor Switzer described how King, dressed in black and toting an AK-47, breached the backdoor of the Conrad’s home and immediately went to the master bedroom. He first shot Brian Conrad three times and then killed Molly, the family’s dog, before turning to Michell Conrad, who began screaming, Switzer said.
“Her screams were cut short because the defendant put five rounds into her body,” Switzer said. “Can you imagine what it would be like to be awakened like that?”
King then went to Robin’s room and fired into her bed before walking to Zach’s room, her brother, and shooting three times.
Johnny Doan, Robin and Zach’s father, testified that his daughter called him and said, “Daddy, Daddy, they’re all in the house and they’ve all been shot.”
Even though nearly ten years has nearly passed, Robin says birthdays are particularly hard.
“Even my birthday is hard because I don’t like celebrating it without them,” Robin said to CBS. “I just have those days where I want my mommy, or I want my stepdad, or I want my brother, and want things to go back to being normal, and you just can’t help but burst out into tears.”
Under the agreement with Missouri prosecutors, King pleaded guilty to killing Orlie McCool, 70, and his 47-year-old daughter-in-law, Dawn McCool, in exchange for two consecutive life sentences with parole.
Their bodies were found by a relative in a rural Pineville, Mo., home on Sept. 30, 2005 – the same day authorities in Texas discovered the bodies in the Conrads’ home. Missouri authorities said King left the state in Orlie McCool’s pickup, driving south and then west before coming upon the Conrads’ home.
Source: Daily Mail