It was a sunny June afternoon in Monroe Township, Ohio, the kind of day made for playing outside. But at 4:00 PM on June 15, 2023, the quiet community was shattered by the sound of a rifl3 and the screams of a 14-year-old girl sprinting down the road toward a fire station.
“He kllled everyone!” she screamed to passersby, her voice breaking with terror.
Behind her, at a well-kept home with a manicured lawn, a father had just done the unthinkable. Chad Doerman, 32, a man who coached his sons’ baseball team and posted happy family photos on Facebook, had lined up his three little boys and ended their lives in an execution-style attck that has been described by seasoned prosecutors as the most “revolting” crime they have ever seen.
The “Game” That Turned Deadly
According to court documents and the chilling confession Doerman later gave to detectives, the horror began when he came home early from work. He asked his wife, Laura, and their three sons—Clayton, 7, Hunter, 4, and Chase, 3—to join him in the master bedroom for a “nap.”
But Doerman didn’t want to sleep. Instead, he opened his gun safe.
As he retrieved a Marlin Model 70HC .22 caliber rifl3, the atmosphere in the home shifted from domestic routine to sheer terror. Sensing the danger, Laura tried to protect her children.
Doerman opened f1re. He sh0t his 4-year-old son, Hunter, twice while the boy was still inside.
Chaos erupted. The 14-year-old stepdaughter, Alexis, witnessed the violence and made a split-second decision that likely saved her life: she ran. She fled the house, racing toward the nearby fire department, desperate to get help for her brothers.
“I Hope You Die in Prison”
Back at the house, the nightmare continued. 7-year-old Clayton, the oldest of the boys, managed to escape the house and ran for the field behind their property.
In a detail that haunts investigators to this day, Doerman didn’t stop. He “hunted” his son down. He chased the terrifyingly young boy through the grass, catching up to him before sh0oting him from behind.
Doerman then took the 3-year-old, Chase, from his mother’s arms. Laura, who had been sh0t in the hand while trying to shield her babies, was powerless to stop him. He carried the toddler back to the yard, lined him up with his brothers, and pulled the trigger.
When police arrived minutes later, they found a scene of devastation. Three small bodies lay in the yard. Laura was wounded and screaming in agony.
And Chad Doerman? He was sitting calmly on the front stoop, his rifl3 resting beside him.
The Bodycam Footage: “I Ain’t Mad”
Police bodycam footage released after the incident shows a chillingly calm Doerman. As officers rushed toward him with w3apons drawn, shouting for him to get on the ground, he didn’t fight. He didn’t cry. He simply laid down.
When an officer asked him what was going on, Doerman’s response was devoid of emotion. “Nothing,” he said. “I ain’t mad.”
He was handcuffed without a struggle. Later, during interrogation, he admitted to planning the attck for months. He told detectives he had been thinking about it since October. On the morning of the mrder, on his way to work, he had listened to a song titled “Happy in Hell.”
The Courtroom Confrontation
The video that has recently gone viral captures the raw intensity of Doerman’s arraignment. In the clip, the judge and prosecutor make it clear that the severity of this crime warrants the ultimate punishment.
Clermont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve did not mince words. “This is a death penalty case,” Tekulve stated, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “My goal is to have this man executed for slaughtering these three little boys.”
In the viral clip, the gravity of the situation hits Doerman as the legal authority speaks to him, implying that if he is found guilty, he would be “getting the chair” (a colloquialism for the death penalty, though Ohio uses lethal injection).
Throughout the early hearings, Doerman often sat stone-faced, sometimes weeping, as the charges were read: nine counts of aggravated mrder.
“He Was Their Hero”
The tragedy is compounded by how the community viewed Doerman before the violence. He was a “Super Dad.” He coached Clayton’s baseball team. Just days before the killings, he had posted photos of himself and the boys at a car race, all smiling.
“They loved him,” Laura Doerman said in a statement read during the final sentencing. “He was their hero.”
The betrayal of that trust is what makes this case so uniquely disturbing. The boys did not fear him until the very last moments of their lives.
The Final Verdict
For over a year, the legal battle raged over whether Doerman would face the death penalty. His defense team argued he suffered from “serious mental illness,” claiming he had snapped.
However, in August 2024, in a move to spare the surviving mother and daughter from reliving the trauma during a lengthy trial, a plea deal was reached.
Chad Doerman pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated mrder and two counts of felonious assault.
The judge sentenced him to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He will d1e in prison.
“You will never see the light of day again,” the judge told him.
A Mother’s Grief
Laura Doerman, the survivor of this horrific domestic violence incident, has asked the world to remember her sons not for how they d1ed, but for how they lived.
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Clayton, 7, loved baseball and protecting his brothers.
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Hunter, 4, was the firecracker of the family who loved fishing.
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Chase, 3, was the baby who wanted to be just like his big brothers.
“My life has been ripped away from me and destroyed,” Laura’s statement read. “Grief will never go away because it is all the love that is left with no place to go.”