Man gets life sentence for killing his 3 young sons at their Ohio home

BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) — A man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the shooting deaths of his three young sons at their Ohio home last year.

A Clermont County judge sentenced Chad Doerman, 33, on Friday to three consecutive life terms after he pleaded guilty to aggravated murder charges. He was also sentenced to another 16 years on two felonious assault charges for injuring his former wife and his stepdaughter.

Prosecutor Mark Tekulve had originally vowed to seek the death penalty in the June 15, 2023, murders of Clayton Doerman, 7, Hunter Doerman, 4, and Chase Doerman, 3, in Monroe Township, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Columbus.

But on Friday he cited the trauma that the surviving family members “experienced that day and continue to experience on a daily basis.”

“My job, as I saw it this week, was to relieve them of that additional agony,” he told reporters Friday.

Prosecutors earlier said that Doerman, who was taken into custody after he was found sitting on a stoop at the home, admitted to having planned the killings and chased down one of the boys in a field after the child tried to flee. Defense attorneys had argued that he was struggling with severe mental illness.

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Laura Doerman, the children’s mother and the ex-wife of the defendant, wept as a prosecutor read a statement in court from her saying her life had been “ripped away from me and destroyed.”

“I would do anything to push them on the swing, cover them up one more time and hear their little ways of saying, ‘I love you,’” she said. "... I have anger, frustration and so much sadness. Grief will never go away because it is all the love that is left with no place to go.”

In another statement issued through prosecutors after the sentencing, she said that she was in “full agreement” with the resolution of the case.

“No punishment will ever bring my boys back,” she wrote. “Having a guarantee that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars is what is best for my family.”

The prosecutor said he plans to reveal more details about the case at a news conference Monday. Laura Doerman thanked prosecutors and first responders and asked for privacy, saying she and the family “grieve every day” for the boys. She also asked, however, that people remember the children as they were before the events of that day.

“Remember them as the three little boys who loved fishing, go-carting, and swimming,” she said. “Remember them as the little boys who were always at the baseball fields or running around outside. Remember them as the boys who love to have fun and were inseparable from one another.”