FFK Blog Fehmeeda Farid Khan Blog for Unsolved Miseries
Robin Doan stirred from her slumber to the piercing wails of her mother and the echoing discharge of gunfire, within the confines of her ancestral abode nestled in the Texas Panhandle. Moments later, she beheld a brilliant flare.
A gentleman, wielding an AK-47, directed his malevolent intent towards her resting place, yet fate intervened, sparing her from harm’s way.
‘I maintained the guise of lifelessness throughout,’ she confided to the emergency responder in a frantic plea on the 30th of September, 2005. ‘Merely ten years of age, adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Fear has seized me.’
Almost a decade removed from that fateful eve when she orchestrated her survival through the ruse of death, Robin, now aged nineteen, continues to grapple with the specter of Levi King’s atrocities, as he callously marauded through her homestead, extinguishing lives at whim.
‘Each passing day, the reverberations of my mother’s cries persist within,’ lamented her aunt, Christy Powell, in a poignant discourse with the Associated Press in 2009.
This forthcoming Saturday, CBS will unveil a special feature titled ‘Sole Survivor,’ chronicling the macabre saga of that ill-fated night, wherein King infiltrated their sanctuary, leaving in his wake the lifeless forms of Robin’s mother, the expectant thirty-five-year-old Michell Conrad, her father, the thirty-one-year-old Brian Conrad, and her fourteen-year-old sibling, Zach.
Viewers shall witness Robin recount the harrowing sequence of events: the jarring awakening to her mother’s anguished cries, the tense vigil by her chamber door punctuated by the deafening discharge of firearms, and the ominous footsteps echoing down the corridors.
She recounted retreating beneath her covers, as a fleeting projectile grazed past her form. Subsequently, the intruder’s progression towards her brother Zach’s quarters was marked by a succession of gunshots and a mournful exhalation.
Robin recounted the interloper’s sojourn to the kitchen, accompanied by the clamor of disarray. She maintained her vigil, ensconced in silence until deeming it safe to venture forth. Without inspecting the other chambers, she seized a wireless communication device and sought refuge outside, whereupon she dialed 911.
‘I fervently pray my mother yet draws breath,’ Robin uttered between convulsive sobs. ‘I yearn for her embrace. I crave maternal solace.’
As dawn broke, and the intruder’s presence dissipated, Robin seized the household’s communication device and sought sanctuary within her stepfather’s vehicle. A frigid autumnal morn enveloped her, fraught with apprehension.
‘I fear I stand as the sole survivor,’ she conveyed to the dispatcher.
The harrowing transcripts of the 911 distress calls stand testament to the terror Robin endured when King besieged their Pampa domicile during his two-day rampage in September 2005, spanning from Missouri to Texas.
Convicted in 2009 to a life of incarceration for the annihilation of Robin’s kin, King also pleaded guilty to the fatal shooting of Orlie McCool, aged seventy, and his daughter-in-law Dawn McCool, aged forty-seven, in the rural confines of Pineville, Missouri.
King traversed state lines in Orlie McCool’s pickup, from Missouri to the Conrads’ homestead in Texas.
His capture ensued on the same eve as he attempted reentry into the United States at the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas. He professed a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by psychotic episodes.
During his trial, the prosecuting attorney, Lynn Switzer, elucidated to the jury the utter oblivion of Robin and her kin to the impending cataclysm.
She depicted King, swathed in darkness and brandishing the AK-47, breaching the rear ingress before converging upon the master chambers. There, he inflicted three fatal wounds upon Brian Conrad and ruthlessly dispatched Molly, the family’s faithful companion, prior to silencing Michell Conrad amidst her screams.
‘Her cries were stifled by the defendant’s onslaught, as five rounds pierced her form,’ Switzer recounted. ‘Imagine the sheer terror of awakening to such horrors.’
King proceeded to Robin’s haven, discharging his weapon before proceeding to Zach’s quarters, where he discharged his firearm thrice.
Johnny Doan, father to Robin and Zach, attested to the heart-wrenching call from his daughter, beseeching, ‘Daddy, Daddy, they’re all within the dwelling, and they have all been felled.’ To this day, birthdays serve as a poignant reminder.
‘Even the anniversary of my birth invokes anguish, for I cannot fathom celebrating it bereft of them,’ Robin divulged to CBS. ‘There exist moments when I long for maternal solace, paternal guidance, fraternal camaraderie, yearning for the semblance of normalcy, yet inexorably succumbing to the deluge of tears.’
Pursuant to an agreement with Missouri authorities, King confessed to the slaying of Orlie McCool and his daughter-in-law Dawn McCool, in exchange for consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole.
Their remains were discovered by a kinsman within a rural Pineville abode on the 30th of September, 2005 – the very day Texan authorities unearthed the tragedy within the Conrads’ domicile. Missouri officials revealed King’s egress from the state in Orlie McCool’s conveyance, embarking on a southwesterly trajectory culminating at the Conrads’ residence.
