The Clermont County father who executed his three young sons last year will spend the rest of his life prison with no possibility of parole.
Chad Doerman, 33, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder and two counts of felonious assault Friday afternoon as part of the plea deal with prosecutors. The prosecutor agreed to stop pushing for the death penalty and drop the charges in exchange for the admission.
Doerman was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.
It has been nearly 14 months since since Clayton, 7, Hunter, 4, and 3-year-old Chase, were found gunned down in the front yard of their own home while their father sat quietly on the porch with a rifle by his side.
On Friday, a court worker laid out tissue boxes in the gallery of Common Pleas Judge Richard Ferenc's courtroom in preparation for the hearing.
Doerman appeared in a blue shirt and black pants. He answered the judge's numerous questions with "Yes, your honor."
About half a dozen of his family and friends sat behind him in the gallery. His wife, Laura Doerman, and his stepdaughter, Alexis, who was 14 at the time of the killings, only came into the courtroom when a prosecutor read statements they had written. Both Laura and Alexis tried to save the boys.
What the boys' mother and sister said
Laura Doerman and her daughter, Alexis, both appeared in court in black dresses Friday. Alexis faced her stepfather as her statement was read.
"Chad, I trusted you with my life," she wrote. "I always wanted to make sure I was making you proud … but most of all, I saw you as my dad, not just a stepdad."
She said she misses seeing her brother on the sidelines of her softball games and missing sharing moments from her life that she knows would make him proud.
"I don't think I will ever be able to hate you," she wrote. "I will forever hold on to the memories I have of you and the boys because those are all happy memories ... I will never in a million years ever forgive you for what you have done, and hope you pay for your actions like you deserve, but I will never hate you."
Laura Doerman cried as her statement was read in court.
"Where there used to be so much laughter, happiness, noise of rowdy little boys, there is now sadness and emptiness," she wrote. "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 there is nothing the courts could do to bring her sons back, and no punishment would equal her suffering. She said she questions herself every day about whether she could have done something more to save her sons.
"Grief will never go away because it is all the love that is left with no place to go," Laura Doerman wrote before closing her statement paraphrasing a quote from a Brad Paisley song.
"When I get to where I'm going, I'll only have happy tears," she wrote. "Until then, I will live my days with nothing but sadness."
The plea and sentence
As part of the plea agreement, Doerman will serve three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, Ferenc said.
“It is unmistakably clear that you will spend the rest of your life in prison,” Ferenc told Doerman in court Friday. “There is no early release date for you.”
Additionally, the two felonious assault charges carry a 16-year minimum sentence, which would be served consecutively to the life sentences.
The plea brings the end to a case that was not expected to go to trial until 2025 due to multiple delays.
Doerman has been held at the Clermont County Jail since his arrest last June.
On Friday, Doerman's attorneys acknowledged the horrific acts their client committed, but said Doerman was struggling with mental illness at the time and he was "profoundly sick." They said two experts who analyzed Doerman believe he was seriously mentally ill at the time of the offense, though a third disagreed.
Prosecutor Mark Tekulve said he believes the plea deal spared Laura Doerman and her daughter, as well as police and other first responders, from further trauma. He said other men sentenced to death in Clermont County spent decades on death row.
"Chad Doerman will die in prison," Tekulve said.
He said he will hold a press conference Monday at 1 p.m. to reveal more details and background about the case that left his community stunned and heartbroken.
What happened the day the Doerman boys were killed
On June 15, 2023, Doerman was at home with this wife and sons when he started pacing the house carrying a Bible and mumbling, "Chad knows what's right," according to prosecutors.
It was a warm Thursday afternoon. The boys had baseball practice the night before. Their bikes and toys sat in the yard of the single-story home on Laurel Lindale Road in Monroe Township.
"He then began to get into the gun safe, which was located in the master bedroom," court filings state.
His wife noticed the behavior and told Doerman he was scaring her. Doerman told her he was "just kidding" and "playing around," and decided to lie down.
His wife did not want him to be alone, so she and her sons went into the bedroom with him.
At some point, Doerman got back out of bed and got his .22 caliber Marlin rifle out of the gun safe and shot one of his sons twice, the document states.
His wife immediately called 911 while screaming for her other children to run. Doerman chased one of the boys into a field behind the house and shot him as he fled then again at close range after the boy fell, according to the document.
The boys' sister picked up her last surviving brother and ran with him toward a nearby firehouse, but Doerman caught up to her and at gunpoint demanded she put the boy down.
"Once she put the child down, (she) begged the defendant not to shoot her," the document states. "She witnessed the defendant attempt to shoot (the boy) however the gun misfired, and (he) fled to his mother."
The boys' sister kept running toward the fire station telling a passerby that her father was "killing everyone."
Doerman went to the last boy and shot him. His mother suffered a gunshot wound to her hand trying to protect the boys, prosecutors said.
The document said after the boys were dead, Doerman picked them up and laid their bodies next to each other in the yard.
The arrest
Two Clermont County Sheriff's deputies responded to the 911 calls. When they arrived at the house, they spotted Doerman on his front porch.
Body camera footage shows the deputies at the edge of the Doerman property with their guns trained on Doerman demanding he put his hands up and step toward them. He did not comply.
As they began approaching the house, they debated with each other whether to rush in or try to approach more cautiously.
They stopped as a message crackled over the radio: "If he's not complying and you know he's the shooter, shoot him."
Keeping Doerman in their sight, the deputies walked up to the porch as they continued to issue commands. Then they grabbed him and pulled him away from the rifle resting at his side.
"I ain't gonna hurt nobody," Doerman said calmly. "I'm completely sober." He also told the officers his dog wouldn't bite them.
A woman screamed in the background of the footage: "What do I do? You took my life from me! My life! They're so little."
As he was escorted to a cruiser, Doerman asked a deputy if he would take his wallet out of his back pocket.
"Shut up, dude," the deputy replies. "You have the right to remain silent. (Expletive) use it."
Prosecutors said that during his arrest Doerman said, "I did it. Take me to jail."
Doerman was given a $20 million bond. At his arraignment, he appeared in padded green vest meant to stop prisoners from harming themselves. He would eventually plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
A confession thrown out
Doerman was charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping and felonious assault. Clermont County Prosecutor MarkTekulve declared he would seek the death penalty.
But Doerman's defense team began their work and decided to fight to have Doerman's confession thrown out.
After his arrest, Doerman was interviewed for more than two and a half hours. He said he had contact with members of the CIA and, according to prosecutors, confessed to the killings. During that interview, Doerman said he had been planning the executions for months, according to investigators.
Doerman's lawyers said their client was denied access to an attorney even after he asked for one.
According to thedefense's motion to suppress, 45 minutes into the interview, Doerman asked: "Where's a lawyer?" The detective replied: "Laura?"
Judge Ferenc agreed with the defense and said Doerman's rights were violated because his Miranda rights were not read to him completely and he asked for a lawyer multiple times without being provided one. Much of Doerman's confession was thrown out and deemed inadmissible in trial.
A community scarred
The Doerman boys all played baseball and their sister played softball. Playing ball is a big deal in the Clermont County community of Monroe Township.
It's the type of place where people will go to watch games even if they don't have kids on the team. It's generational.
After Clayton, Hunter and Chase were killed., their teams canceled the rest of their seasons.
Dwayne Kuhn coached Clayton for several years. He said he was not sure how to explain to a group of 7-year-olds that their friend is gone.
"I have a hard time explaining it to myself," Kuhn said. "These boys are bigger than what happened to them."
The community has rallied to make sure people remember just that.
Following the killings, the community launched a Facebook Page called Play Catch for the Doerman Boys. Teams from all over the country joined to post positive clips and photos from their games.
This year, the boys even got their own field. CHC Field – for Clayton, Hunter and Chase – was dedicated on May 25.
Delays mount
Doerman's trial was initially scheduled for July. By April, the court had already sent 750 juror summons with extensive questionnaires required for death penalty cases. But that month, Doerman's defense team filed a motion to have the death penalty taken off the table.
An Ohio law enacted in 2021 bars the state from executing people who were suffering from a serious mental illness at the time of their offense.
Ferenc described the hearing needed to determine if Doerman was mentally ill as a "mini-trial" and set aside three days to hear expert testimony and other evidence.
To further complicate things, Ferenc’s term as judge is up at the end of this year. Due to this, the prosecution and defense agreed to explore bringing in a visiting judge. All of this would likely have pushed the trial into 2025.
The serious mental illness hearing was scheduled to start Monday, but on Wednesday, both the prosecution and defense filed a joint motion to delay that hearing.
