killing the douglasses and shooting brooks and leslie. >> we had two surviving witnesses. we were able to identify who the people were. we were able to put the bullet in. we somewhat kept it simple. >> reporter: simple? the judge hearing the case, maybe. but certainly not for those surviving witnesses. brooks had already testified once in the preliminary hearing. but both he and his sister would have to relive it all for hatch's trial. >> 13-year-old leslie douglass appeared in court for the first time since the shooting that left her and her brother critically wounded and her parents dead. >> reporter: how did those two kids do on the stand? >> they did excellent. >> reporter: stood up under cross-examination. >> yeah. >> we tried the case in chief in one day. just one witness after another. >> reporter: altogether, the hatch case took three days of the court's time. hatch testified in his own defense. he was convicted, sentenced to death. glen ake's trial didn't take much longer. but in the courtroom they kept him under heavy guard. ake was volatile, unpredictable. >> ake was a mean person. >> reporter: sheriff lynn steadman testified for two hours about ake's thanksgiving confession. but once again, brooks and

leslie were the star witnesses for the prosecution. they both calmly identified glen ake as the man who shot them and murdered their parents. did you watch the children's testimony? >> yes. brooks was very strong in his testimony. leslie was, too. but it bothered her more than it did brooks to testify. >> it was like i had to pretend like i was somebody else just telling a story of what happened. and it's kind of like the night that it happened and i had to remember all this, i have to remember all this. >> reporter: that promise that leslie douglass made to herself the night her parents were killed not to forget anything, that's what carried her through, she said. >> i didn't know why. i just knew that i had to remember every detail. and so whenever it was time to be on the stand, i knew that everything that i said was important. and that i had to be specific and remember. so it's like, i don't know what got in my head, i just have to remove all emotional attachment. >> reporter: the jury needed just two hours to make up its

mind. ake was convicted. he was sentenced to a thousand years for shooting the douglass children. and as for the murder of brooks and leslie's parents -- >> we the jury impaneled and sworn to try the issues in the above-entitled cause do upon our oaths having heretofore found glen ake guilty of murder in the first degree punishment at death. >> reporter: so end of the road for ake and hatch. or so prosecutors assumed. sheriff steadman escorted ake to mcalester penitentiary and death row. >> when i took glen burton ake

to mcalester, oklahoma, to be processed in to the department of corrections, when we got out of the car, i told him, glen, this is the last time i will see you until i come back to see you die. >> reporter: with this monstrous chapter of their lives apparently over, leslie and brooks began to thrive. leslie, living in that new town with her mother's family, became a star high school student, a cheerleader, college bound. how did you go on to do all the things that you did, like any regular teen aged person? >> i think it's because my mom saying one night, if anything ever happened to them, she wanted me to be strong and move on with my life. and i remember crying, going, mom, why are you saying that? nothing's ever going to happen to you. but i think it is one of those things that i just had in the

back of my mind and it helped me push through things. >> the first couple of years, but even now, especially in that first few years, i could hear their voices as, you know, having to make decisions or do things and so i felt like they were still with me and it wasn't until years later somebody said, oh, you're an orphan. >> reporter: oh, yes, he was. and because of what happened to make him one, both the law and life began now to spin in very strange directions. certainly beyond his control. as it began to look like his parents' killers might just escape justice after all. coming up -- >> there was an audible gasp.

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some day it seemed that for every step forward he made brooks douglass took two back. he made it out of high school all right, though orphaned with his sister by the murder of his parents and haunted by the complications of survival, grief, confusion. he was adrift. though scattered might be a better word for those years after brooks headed off to college. >> i went to six or seven different universities because i call it my rhodes scholars days

because i'd go for eight weeks and either get kicked out or leave and go to the next school and enroll there for six or eight weeks. and so i was having a hard time, you know, i'd get in, had a hard time focusing. >> reporter: and legal developments over the next few years didn't make it any easier. the appeals of the two men convicted of killing brooks' parents seemed to be drifting, too, deflected, scattered, confusing. a u.s. supreme court ruling on the death penalty in a far-off case in florida led to hatch's death sentence being vacated twice. and therefore, more uncertainty for the douglass kids, more legal hearings. >> if this case doesn't fit the aggravating circumstances that it was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, i can't imagine a case that would. >> reporter: his sentence reinstated, steven hatch went back to death row. and meanwhile, glen ake, the triggerman, had been filing appeals from a nearby cell. in february of 1985, six years after the douglasses were murdered, the united states supreme court ruled in ake

versus oklahoma that he deserved a new trial. prosecutors had failed to provide a psychiatrist at state expense. kathy stoker was the d.a. >> i contacted brooks and leslie and indicated that we would have to retry ake. i'm sure they just thought, will this ever end? >> reporter: that is exactly the stunned siblings' reaction. once again they opened their psychic and emotional wounds for inspection by the court. and this is the thing that is so remarkable is that you're able to go there again and again. >> right. >> reporter: to places that are daunting and difficult and yet you clearly feel that same emotional turmoil every time it comes up. >> i do. >> reporter: here you are sitting with us. you're feeling it all again. >> you would think 31 years

later it would be different. i always get a little emotional and start remembering and think, wow, you know, i can't believe it's been this long. >> reporter: as ake's second trial began in february, 1986, his lawyer laid out the defense's case. >> we entered a plea of not guilty by the reason of insanity. and that -- we'll maintain that defense throughout the trial. >> reporter: after six years in maximum security, glen ake was nearly unrecognizable. sheriff lynn steadman was in charge of security. >> and the second trial, he made not a sound during the trial. he had let his hair grow long and he sat there with his head down looking at the table the entire trial. >> reporter: but jurors heard from other witnesses. despite the passage of time, details of the crime remain chilling. >> reverend douglass was again laying on his back.

his feet were also tied together with a cord. >> reporter: although ake never took the stand, never even said a word to his lawyers, the jury heard his thanksgiving statement. >> who did you shoot first? >> the man. boy. daughter. mom. man again. i think i shot the boy twice. >> reporter: then came the eyewitnesses to the carnage that night, leslie douglass, now 20 years old, a college student, calmly explained it all to the jury. >> then i heard two more shots which hit my father and then another shot, and i screamed and he shot me again. and then i heard him run out the door. >> i was amazed by her courage. she had to go back there in her mind and tell you exactly what happened, what she did. she did not falter. >> reporter: and she was rock solid. >> yes.

>> reporter: brooks douglass wasn't spared his turn on the stand. >> i felt the bullet hit me. i heard another one go off and my mother scream. >> reporter: the core of the defense case was the testimony of psychiatrists. three of them. >> do you believe that he was insane on the 15th of october, 1979? >> yes, sir. i'm convinced that on that date, mr. ake did not know right from wrong. >> reporter: and throughout it all in court, glen burton ake remained silent. presented himself more like a mental patient than a convicted murderer. sheriff steadman watched and decided it had to be a ploy. he was feigning insanity. >> he had about five years or so to come up with this act. >> reporter: but did the jury see what the sheriff believed he saw? the decision when it came was

quite a surprise. >> i remember when the verdicts were read in the courtroom. there was an audible gasp. >> we the jury impaneled and sworn in the above-entitled cause have been here to find the defendant glen burton ake guilty of murder in the first degree for the death of richard douglass and fix his punishment at life in the state penitentiary. >> reporter: no death penalty. this time the jury spared his life. he would come off death row. >> the jury came back and sentenced ake to life for each of the murders and to 200 years each for the shootings of the children. >> reporter: but wait a minute.

steven hatch, who did not fire a weapon, faced execution, but ake, the triggerman, got life. brooks was floored. >> as i heard the decision head r read, what was going through my mind was that i can just see my parents dying and knowing that they would never be fully avenged. that they died, that this person took their life and yet he's going to be allowed to continue living and at our expense. >> reporter: as brooks saw it, after all this time, all the suffering, his parents', his, his sister's, glen ake had cheated -- cheated the executioner. that evening a shellshocked brooks shrunk into a hallway. as sheriffs took ake to a prison cell. there they were feet apart.

he looked at ake and something snapped. he saw the deputy passing by, his revolver close. and in that moment, brooks contemplated murder. he reached for the officer's weapon. you saw at one point him being led somewhere and there was a deputy with a gun. >> just by chance i walked out one door and he came out in front of me. and it was actually kathy stoker that grabbed my arm. >> reporter: she saw what you wanted to do. >> yeah. >> reporter: you might have done it. >> i might have done it. i thought two can play that game. you know? if he can play crazy, i can, too. >> reporter: wow. so that crime had done a lot to you after all? >> yeah. >> reporter: but brooks knew, he said, that he wouldn't, couldn't have done it. even if the prosecutor had not stayed his hand. he told us it went back to the night he was shot and bleeding and made his decision to try to save himself. >> why did i get off that floor? did i get off the floor to go kill them? no. is that what my parents would have wanted for me? i'd have been much better off to have died that night. i needed to live my life. i'd never be able to do it as long as i was holding that like

that. >> reporter: but of course at that moment he could have no idea that this was not the last time he'd encounter the man who killed his parents. no. they were destined to meet again. coming up -- a confrontation with a killer. what did you see in him? powerful emotions and long buried demons. >> what i really wanted was for it to be over. these sweet honey clustery things have fiber? fiber one. almost tastes like one of jack's cereals. uh, forgot jack's cereal.

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as the years rolled by, it seemed as if the emotional and psychic wounds inflicted the night that brooks and leslie were shot might never heal. but they did learn to live. and any outsider might think they had learned that lesson well. leslie, the cheerleader and high school homecoming queen went on to college and graduate school. became first a teacher, later an assistant principle. had a family, two children of her own. >> i never wanted to seem like this person that hid and fell apart and be the stereotypical

person that went through all this kind of tough. i wanted to make something of myself. somebody said, well, she's never going to be okay. she's not ever going to go to college. i went to college and got a master's degree. it's just one of those things that i don't like people to tell me i can't accomplish things because they think i'm going to allow everything that's happened affect my whole life. >> reporter: brooks finally struggled through college, took an army rotc commission and went to law school and got married. but again and again, both put their lives on hold to unpack their awful memories for trials and appeals and parole and clemency hearings for glen ake and steven hatch. how many times did you have to testify?

>> i think it was a total of nine. >> reporter: what did that do to you? >> as soon as i would hear that i was going to need to go testify again, my mind would go to that place, and it would just be -- it was a month of or however long leading up to it and the apprehension and the fear, plain old fear. >> reporter: in 1990, 11 years after the murders, just out of law school, just about broke, frankly, with a marriage headed south, brooks decided, almost on a whim, to run for the oklahoma state senate. was it that frustration with the system that made you decide to go and finish your law degree and to get involved in politics? >> i remember feeling helpless and looking for what are ways

that i can begin to gain a little bit of control over what's happening to me. >> reporter: didn't it seem absolutely ludicrous to you? >> i think i was really sort of oblivious. >> reporter: you didn't know what was impossible? >> nobody told me i couldn't do it, so why not? let's do it. let's try. >> reporter: he won. it was, you would say, an upset. it made him at 27, the youngest senator in oklahoma history. russ mccasky then a tv reporter recovering the capitol became a close friend. >> his teenage years were pretty rough. they struggled for a long time, but he was starting to put the pieces back together. and i think that, you know, at that point, he was ready to start moving forward with his life. you could see a transformation in him. >> reporter: he met another young senator, later governor, brad henry. >> it was just kind of natural that we gravitated toward one another because we were the youngest by a long shot, and even though he is a republican and i'm a democrat, we just became very, very good friends. >> reporter: it was in his

second year in the senate when brooks found the cause close to his heart. >> victims rights was simply one of those things that nobody talked about. >> reporter: but of course, that was the core experience of his life. did he know how the system treats victims of crime? oh, yes, he did. so he introduced oklahoma's first victims rights act. >> the jury never hears one word about the family. not considering how brutal that crime was. this person took another individual's life. >> reporter: the victims rights movement was in its infancy then. it met resistance from judges and prosecutors. >> he was very passionate and focused on victims rights. and who could argue with him? nobody in the senate or in the house, for that matter, who had been through that kind of a

traumatic experience. >> reporter: the law's passage was a huge victory for brooks and his allies in the legislature. and personally for him? well, it happened during his second term in the senate. revelation. and not a happy one. for all he had accomplished, all he'd overcome, the grief, the fury, the confusion, it wasn't enough. perhaps it was his long dead father still whispering in his ear, something he needed to do. he found himself on the legislative tour of oklahoma's infamous maximum security prison in mcalester. it housed the state's most dangerous prisoners, including glen ake, the triggerman in his parents' murder and, in an even more secure wing, steven hatch, ake's accomplice, waiting out his final days on death row. at first brooks was afraid he might run into glen ake behind the wall here at the penitentiary. he was nervous about that. wanted to avoid it. but then something started gnawing at him and eventually he realized he knew what he had to

do. he had to confront the man who had murdered his parents, the man he'd contemplated killing outside that courtroom years before. so he went to see the warden. being a senator does have its perks. his final days on death row. at first brooks was afraid he might run into glen ake behind the wall here at the penitentiary. he was nervous about that. wanted to avoid it. but then something started gnawing at him and eventually he realized he knew what he had to do. he had to confront the man who had murdered his parents, the man he'd contemplated killing outside that courtroom years before. so he went to see the warden. being a senator does have its perks. and the warden sent a note to the prisoner. and much to everyone's amazement, glen ake agreed to a meeting.

it was february, 1995. brooks douglass found himself sitting across a table from the man who had murdered his parents and shot him and his sister. >> for 15 years i've wanted nothing more than to see you dead. and i still want it. and, you know, hearing that, hearing myself say that was very, very strange. >> reporter: you had to confront the fact that you just said that to this man. >> yeah. >> reporter: you wanted him dead. >> i wanted him dead. >> reporter: and by saying it, something went click inside. >> yeah. that -- that what i really wanted was for it to be over. and i didn't realize how much i think that that was dominating my life.

>> reporter: it was not what he intended to do. didn't know what he would do when he found himself sitting face-to-face with his parents' killer. but now the words came out, and he realized he meant them completely. he forgave glen ake. and inside him, he said the reaction was almost physical. and you are now the one in position for having to forgive the unforgivable and were confronted at the same time with your desire to see these guys die for what they did to your parents. >> right. >> reporter: what reaction did you see in him? >> he was completely remorseful, which surprised me right off the bat. and when that moment came was when he was, you know, messing with cuffs and was trying to

wipe away tears. >> reporter: brooks confided in his friends. >> he calls me after the meeting. and i said, how did it go? and he said, i forgave him. and there's just silence on the phone for a minute. my jaw is on the floor. >> the thing that really purged his soul was this forgiveness that washed forward and that he really couldn't explain. and i think he surprised himself that he actually would affirmatively forgive his parents' murderer. i think because of the teachings of his father and his mother was able to find that forgiveness inside somehow. and i think it has been a tremendous, tremendous load off of his shoulders.

>> reporter: leslie's reaction was more muted. >> he had told me about meeting with ake and him forgiving him and me having a hard time understanding it. >> reporter: is forgiving part of moving on like that? part of getting past it? >> i think it is. i mean, i feel like i've forgiven -- you can forgive, but it just doesn't change the circumstances sometimes. >> reporter: but there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting. the state of oklahoma, along with brooks and leslie douglass, had some unfinished business with steven hatch. not the triggerman, no. but a murderer? yes. coming up -- >> i'm afraid to sleep at night. i was afraid somebody was coming to get me. >> reporter: another legal confrontation and another staggering surprise. a new part of the story. after all these years.

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new evacuations have been ordered for communities along arizona's eastern edge as a huge wildfire threatens more homes. it's moving closer to a group of homes closer to the border. a standoff is continuing near the border with syria. at least 20 protesters were killed when they tried to enter and israel responded with gunfire. now back to "the haunted." it was 18 months after that extraordinary meeting with glen ake, the one at which brooks douglass forgive his parents' killer. the other man convicted in their murder, steven hatch, was scheduled to die. brooks had tried to meet with hatch on death row. he was rebuffed.

appeals exhausted, hatch's execution date was set in the summer of 1996. there was a final clemency hearing. brooks and leslie would have to testify against him one last time. hatch pleaded for his life. >> i'm sorry for the pain the children, brooks and mr. douglass, continue to feel. i can say sorry for the rest of time and that would not be enough. i could die a hundred times and it would never be enough to make up for what had happened. >> reporter: but then testimony that astounded leslie douglass and brought back all the horror. >> i had found out some things at the clemency hearing that i was not aware of. and so it kind of shattered my world. >> reporter: it happened at the very beginning, when the state brought those murder charges against ake and hatch in first place. they chose not to put leslie

through the additional trauma of testifying about the rapes. after all, they could prove murder easily. and leslie never knew, not in all those years, that the killers denied raping her all along. then, hatch's clemency hearing. when with his life on the line, he stuck to his story that he had not sexually assaulted her. >> they had denied raping me. and so i think right then it just really threw me for a loop. i was only supposed to talk like 30 seconds and it ended up being three or four minutes because i was so upset. and remembered every minute of it like it was happening right then. not only did i have nightmares, i was afraid to go to restaurants, i was afraid to sleep at night. i heard noises that would wake me up because i was afraid that somebody was coming to get me. not only did i not get to go to my parents' funeral, i denied that they had died.

to deny that still after all these years just seemed like there was no remorse. >> reporter: not only denying the murder but calling you a liar. >> right. like i could see where that poor 12-year-old girl could have thought that i did or this happened. and i was like, there's no thought. it did. >> reporter: the clemency appeal was denied. and so on august 9th, 1996, leslie and brooks douglass drove from oklahoma city to mcalester prison, to witness steven hatch's death. >> all of the filings of the supreme court have been denied and we have a green light to proceed with the execution shortly after midnight. >> reporter: a brother and sister among the first family members ever to witness the execution of a murderer. that they could do so at all was because of additional victims rights legislation brooks helped pass that year.

>> the night of the execution, and they give them an option of making a last statement. he didn't even say anything. >> reporter: he knew you were there. >> right. that just kind of left me kind of numb, kind of sad and just like, wow, isn't that what we all want to do? is change the things that we've done in life that we regret? and go back and amend those things or ask for forgiveness? because he took a big, huge part of me. >> reporter: just after midnight, 17 painful years after their parents were killed, leslie and brooks watched steven hatch, strapped to a gurney, die by lethal injection. hatch left behind a written statement. in it, he called those who sat in judgment of him evil and barbaric and politicians. an hour after hatch was pronounced dead brooks spoke to the press. >> leslie and i have again witnessed the taking of a life. the first time we did so we were young people who were present when our mother and father were viciously killed.

today is the end of a very long ordeal that has dominated our lives. >> reporter: the family witnessing an execution was so unusual, leslie appeared on the "today" show. >> how has this crime haunted you and followed you since it happened? >> i dealt with it a lot better then, but as i've become older and have had children, it has become so much harder to try to explain to my children that they're never going to get to know their grandparents, they're never going to see them. >> reporter: so was it what you expected it would be? >> i now know that i'm never going to get a call, whether i'm in california or wherever it is that i'm living, outer mongolia, and be told, guess what? i hate to tell you this, but you're going to have to come

back and testify against steven hatch again. it was over. >> reporter: but was it? he had forgiven ake, felt that he had put that behind him, accepted things the way they were. but according to brooks' friends he was troubled after the execution and not long afterward his second marriage ended. >> he was depressed for a while. it brings everything back up. you know, when you have to go to the prison and so forth and witness it, it takes you back to that place. and i think that that made it tough for him. >> reporter: indeed it took him right back there. >> one of the more bizarre things was i felt like as i was watching him die, that i was also watching the events of that night all over again. part of us died back there. and i'll never forget it. leslie will never forget it. >> reporter: no. and nor could either of them

have known then that one day he was going to choose his own decision to relive the worst night of his life in living color. >> and he was just gut wrenching bawling saying i just feel so bad for my mom and dad. he knew that that was their last day. and he's so young and has so much to live for, and that whole night was really excruciating for everyone. more real than you would have imagined. coming up -- >> forgiveness and mercy and love. >> i think my parents would be proud. >> freeing his ghosts. the surprising move that helped brooks heal the past at last. when "the haunting" continues. is more naturally with your colon than stimulant laxatives, for effective relief of constipation without cramps. thanks. good morning, students. today we're gonna continue...

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brooks douglass was restless. the man who had helped, executed, the shooter behind bars for life and brooks seemed unsure where he belonged. three terms in the oklahoma senate was enough. he started a business, sold it. served as an army officer in the middle east. enrolled in harvard's kennedy school of government where he met and married julia. the crime that so infected his life, he did make speeches from time to time about victims rights. >> it took 14 years for us to get the wedding rings back that these guys had stolen and taken with them. one of them actually had to saw it off of him when they caught him. >> reporter: life was different now. he and julia had two children, settled down in california. then brooks decided, not unlike a horde of high grant in hollywood, that he could do some acting and writing.

>> i was teaching a writing workshop and brooks came to class and he pitched three ideas. one a sitcom, one a drama and he proceeded to tell me about his life. >> reporter: paul brown is a hollywood writer and director. >> i couldn't believe what i was hearing. a story about justice and vengeance becomes a story about forgiveness. i thought that was unique and important. >> he said, that's the one you need to write. i said, i don't think i can write it. it's too personal. and it's too painful. but he convinced me that i should try it. and so i wrote a few scenes. parts of it were very difficult. i mean, extraordinarily difficult. >> reporter: oh, yes. difficult. but before long, as important as anything in his life had ever been. could he actually make the movie? he'd never done anything like this before, not even close. and egos are destroyed, fortunes made to vanish with amazing regularity here.

still, this, he believed, was the answer. he hired brown to co-write and direct his movie. he raided his bank account. then went fund-raising among friends and family. scraped together a couple million dollars. for three yes into his labor of love cast hollywood actors as well as some of his friends. and then called it "heaven's rain", for reasons his father would have understood. "heaven's rain" opened late last year. and leslie, who had survived the whole long ordeal in her private way, had to watch someone else very publicly be her. >> do you realize that every time we go through this, i have to relive everything again? and i don't know who's going to show up in my dreams? >> reporter: the thing that kept coming to my head, i wonder how

she feels about this. >> it made me look back at where my head was and what i was thinking, and she actually did a great job portraying me. because i thought, i can say exactly word for word everything that she said because those things all came out of my mouth. and you just kind of go on with your life, and then you look back and go, wow, i really did live through that, you know? it's different. >> reporter: it is. it is kind of like seeing yourself as others see you, which is something we normally can't do. >> that can be scary sometimes. but no, i think my brother has told a beautiful story and, you know, i think my parents would be proud of how he's portrayed our family. >> reporter: leslie herself has a small part, a tribute of sorts to her mother, marilyn douglass, who taught her to sing a lifetime ago. ♪ it's been seven long years since i last saw you ♪ ♪ away rolling river

>> she has a beautiful voice. and that voice got silenced. and in the movie she sings. and people that heard her voice were just astonished by how beautiful it is. so i'm hoping that this will be a new chapter for her, to start singing again. >> reporter: and brooks? >> i did local theater here in oklahoma city. i knew i wanted to act in this movie. >> reporter: act? oh, yes. but in fact, there was really only one role he wanted to play. one he may have been born to. brooks decided he would portray his own father. coming up -- >> we have to get rid of the bad blood with forgiveness, mercy, and love. >> potentially put that sermon in that movie. >> a lot of that was the sermon he preached the morning that he

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i knew there i wanted to act and at the oklahoma senate and american family and the father's very last sermon, delivered, of course, by brooks as his preaching dad. >> you see, the joy of life is

poisoned by the resentment of past grudges. we have to get rid of the bad blood with forgiveness and mercy and love. >> reporter: you intentionally put that particular sermon in the movie. >> yeah. a lot of that was the sermon he preached the morning before he died. >> reporter: but the theme certainly was -- >> forgiveness, yeah. >> reporter: and something he preached and believed in. thus that title "heaven's rain." it's from shakespeare "merchant of venice," "the quality of mercy is not strained. it droppeth as the general rain from heaven on the place beneath. it is twice blessed. it blesseth him that gives and him that takes." >> i'm so, so sorry for what i did to you and your family. >> i want you to tell me why. >> the truth is there was no reason. it was just -- it was just senseless.

they took me off drugs and i realized what i did. it made me sick. >> reporter: it's the reason he made the movie, this scene. why is that moment one that still makes the emotion come into your eyes. >> sitting in front of ake? >> reporter: yes. >> i think it was so revealing. i look back and just building this coat of armor and that was killing me and it was killing my marriages, my, you know, whatever, friendships. at the end of the day, it was protecting me, but it was keeping me away from people that i love. >> reporter: there's another scene in the movie. a flashback to the night of the crime and maybe this was the

scene he needed to play, to finally move on. [ gunshots ] [ screams ] >> reporter: i wondered how it must have been, you're portraying him when he died. >> that was one of the very few instances in my life where it was actually much harder and much more painful than i started out thinking it was going to be. >> reporter: his wife was with him on set for that one. >> before we filmed, he was just gut wrenching bawling saying i just feel so bad for my mom and dad because, you know, he knew that that was their last day. and he's so young and has so much to live for. and that whole night was really excruciating for everyone. more real than you would have imagined.

>> dad, mom's dead. >> he had to relive that night, and i know how hard that was for him. and he talked about it and how hard that was going to be and that it was glad that was him going instead of me because i couldn't have dealt with it. >> reporter: after a los angeles opening, "heaven's rain" is in release in oklahoma and texas and the southwest with a national release in february. brooks spends much of his time now promoting the movie. often speaking at the group screenings. it's found its early audience among oklahoma churchgoers.

>> you know, brooks, i'm not sure people can fully appreciate the power that the grace of god has had in your life in granting the forgiveness for the people who had murdered your parents. >> reporter: an old wound. he could have left it alone, scarred over as it was. more than once he turned down book and movie deals proposed by others. chose to let the dead lie. but not now, not any more. and by opening the wound again himself, he might finally have healed it. could have just said no, forget about it. >> you know, forgive someone or something that's happened or be forgiven. and these are old, very old lessons. it's not anything i came up with. this is what my dad and my mom

taught me. and, you know, what my faith has taught me. and i wanted people to see who my dad was, who both of my parents were. and the work that they did and the lessons that they taught me. >> reporter: what do you want people to take away from this movie of yours? >> the power of forgiveness and the importance of it, even the visuals, as people. if we're going to move on past the things of our past, we've got to find a way to forgive or be forgiven. >> i just look at it as you have to forgive. your heart's not clean, and you just can't move on. you dwell on it and dwell on it. especially when people have hate for people. i couldn't go on hating these men because that reflects on your own life. if you have hate for people, it makes you a hateful person. and i don't want to live