Original subtitles

Salut.Hey, everyone.

It's me Cult Empire. Hey...

You found me by accident.

Oh, you were expecting someone else.

Why would you do that? Why would you do that?

Anyway. I'll go and make my first skit soon.

Can't show you sneak preview or it would ruin it.

It'll be like, a minute long,

it's gonna be some good stuff.

I think it's gonna be hilarious.

It's gonna have a few props and, which is the only delay.

So, props for crops.

A non-profitory organization...

I don't... I just came up with that.

[Matt] North-Eastern Oklahoma

is the buckle of the Bible Belt.

When I was growing up,

it was like, "Come home when the street lights come on."

People didn't have to lock their doors.

It was safe.

Neighbors looked out for one another.

Just a nice, kind of quiet place to...

have a good time with the kids and raise 'em right.

So, this was the property...

where it all occurred.

We lived just right outside the front door,

right across the street here at 704.

And when we first met the Bevers,

they were odd, but kind of a normal lot.

And I'd see 'em and I'd just come over and strike a...

...conversation.

And then just different pointers...

They had a pretty good infestation of poison ivy.

I'd just given them pointers on how to eliminate it and...

you definitely don't want poison ivy

getting loose in a house with seven kids.

[sirens blaring]

Yeah, this is where it all started.

[line disconnects]

[Jackie] The call came in right around midnight.

I was at home.

I was the crime scene investigator on call...

So, I was responsible for taking any

after-hours or all-night hours calls.

And I needed to respond to the scene.

-[siren blaring] -[Jackie] Driving to the scene...

I'm hearing a lot of different radio chatter.

[woman speaking indistinctly on radio]

It was sounding more and more chaotic,

the longer it went on.

[Julie] Upon arrival, police officers

noticed that there was blood

outside of the home on the walkway

up to the front door.

At that point, obviously they know...

they're on a scene of something terrible.

They assume, they've got a victim inside.

But is it someone that lives in this home?

Is it a perpetrator?

The house is just smacked up

in the middle of a street in the middle of America.

When they see blood on the front porch,

it is real.

[woman speaking indistinctly on radio]

And they can barely hear, just beyond the door...

...a female voice just saying, "Help me."

[Jackie] Something or someone is bleeding and...

you have this cry for help from the inside.

The front door was locked.

[thudding]

They kicked the door in

and they found a young teenage girl...

laying in a puddle of blood in the entryway.

Her throat was slit.

When she's trying to speak,

you can hear the actual blood in her voice.

They get her out of that house as soon as they can.

[siren blaring]

[Julie] They get her immediately to EMTs that have arrived.

And they turn her over to them.

After making sure

that the injured teenager is being taken care of...

the officers have to go back into that house.

They're thinking at that point,

are there more victims?

Where are our perpetrators?

What is going on here?

[Matt] That night, I was...

putting together my daughter's bike and...

went into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

And I noticed the ambulance coming

into the neighborhood

and I just kinda thought, "Huh..."

It wasn't uncommon for an ambulance

to be in our neighborhood due to ageing residents.

And usually at night, they won't turn on the sirens,

they'll just turn on the lights.

So, I just went outside to kinda see where they were headed.

And could immediately tell that

it was for the Bever household.

I asked one of the officers,

"What's going on?"

And they said they had a report

of a guy with a knife in the neighborhood.

And that's all they gave me.

And at that point, a police officer was

telling me to get back in the house.

And I told them,

"There's seven kids in there."

They had no idea how many people were in that home.

And I remember him saying, "Seven, total?

Including the mom and dad?" And I said,

"No, there's seven kids."

There were nine total members of the Bever family.

There were April and David, the two parents.

And then there were seven total children...

starting with Robert, he was 18.

Michael was 16.

Then you've got the sister who was 13,

Daniel was 12,

Christopher was seven, Victoria was five

all the way down to the baby sister that was...

about to turn two-years-old.

[Julie] The Bever family...

were certainly a Christian family.

They were afraid of what influences

their children might get in public schools.

And so, based on those Christian beliefs and those feelings,

they made the decision to home-school their children.

[Taylor] Their parents would talk about

how the world was really a scary place.

And that was one of the reasons

why they didn't go out very much,

is because there were scary people out there

and they needed to just kind of...

stay amongst themselves and follow the Bible.

That was very much how they were raised.

[siren blaring]

As the officers entered into the Bever home,

there was blood, literally everywhere.

Walls were covered in blood,

floors were covered in blood...

The furniture pieces were covered in blood,

the kitchen was covered in blood.

They arrived into the living room.

That's where they found the bodies of mother, April

and the body of 12-year-old, Daniel.

They were close together, laying in the floor.

April had one of her arms reaching out

towards Daniel.

David Bever was found...

he was in the floor...

obviously deceased...

suffering from stab wounds

and laying in a puddle of blood.

When the hallway bathroom door was breached...

...the scene was something that, none of us, I think,

are ever gonna be able to forget.

Christopher's little body was found just inside the door

laying in a pool of blood, deceased from stab wounds.

And Victoria...

...was a few feet behind him by the toilet

in the fetal position.

And she also, was obviously deceased.

At that point,

they had found the 13-year-old gravely injured

and the deceased bodies of the five other family members...

All of them were stabbed to death.

It's just, like, your stomach drops.

Because you're coming to the realization

that this kind of evil

can exist even in a place

like Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

[sirens blaring]

[Julie] After the officers finished clearing

the bottom floor of the Bever home,

they then had to go upstairs.

And several officers found in the back bedroom,

a little nursery,

walked over to the crib

and found perfectly unharmed and sweetly sleeping,

a beautiful little 23-month girl.

[Matt] When the paramedics said that they had...

the infant and she was unharmed, was...

I mean, you needed a breath of fresh air

and that was huge. Huge!

So, that was really good news.

But there were a lot of unknowns.

I can't even speak to what was going through my mind.

You know, I think I thought, "Maybe...

like, "Did they have a friend over?

Did a friend go nuts?"

There were more people gathering,

wanting questions answered.

Nobody knew who this guy with the knife was.

So, I came and quickly spoke to my wife,

"We're locking all the doors and don't open it for anybody but me."

[reporter] Five family members have been killed,

stabbed to death in their Broken Arrow home.

Police responded to a 911 call

made from the home, but could only hear noises in the background.

[Julie] Everybody that was at the scene that night...

was feeling complete and total shock.

This can't happen in our town.

Who did this?

Did someone break in this home?

What is going on?

Do we have some kind of serial killer out here?

[officer] It's a traumatic call

for the police officers

and also our fire department and EMS crews.

It weighs a lot on us,

especially when the victims involved are juveniles.

[Matt] April Bever...

I just always keep circling back to, like, a mother hen...

who knew she wanted a flock and...

even get pulled seven different ways.

She never showed signs of being overwhelmed.

And you could tell there was exhaustion there,

but she just... she carried it very well.

[Taylor] She was a stay-at-home mom.

She did a lot of blogging

and talking to her friends on the internet.

Scrolling through her Reddit page,

this was the most impactful one that I saw.

"I have seven children

"and we've always lived on one income

"and have never had any government assistance or needed it.

"I would never give up having any of my children,

"so I could have more money.

"They are amazing people

"and the world will benefit by having them in it.

"And nothing I could buy or invest in

"can compare to giving a person a chance to have a life."

You know, I believe her.

And I believe that she believed...

what she was saying.

She absolutely loved her children.

The world will never know the benefit that we might've had,

if all of her children had lived.

So, that's tough to see.

[sighs]

[inaudible]

YouTube, can you not?

I uploaded my first video of the Dark Forces playgroup

for Cult Empire Classic

and there was like, no audio, which completely ruined it.

I had commentary, it was hilarious.

It was 20 minutes...

of my life.

[Taylor] Robert Bever was 18-years-old.

He was a home-schooled student

and he was working at a Christian call center.

He was very much the oldest brother.

I don't know if the children themselves

were ever even really given

specific examples of...

why the world was scary.

And I'm not sure exactly what it was that...

April and David were so concerned about.

I just know that all the other kids really trusted him

being their oldest brother,

that he was there to protect them

and to take care of them.

Second of all, new hairstyle. Check it.

It's called a fohawk.

where I don't have to shave the rest of my head

but I still... fohawk.

I hope that it still looks like a fohawk.

I did it before... I saw my long hair...

I just shaped it to look like a fohawk.

And in the next couple of days,

I'm gonna try to get an actual fohawk.

I think that the internets,

for Michael and for Robert

and really for everyone in the family,

that was their only key to the outside...

was posting YouTube videos,

chatting with people in chatrooms.

And I think that the internet was a huge part of their lives.

And really one of the only ways

that they felt like they could get outside their own home.

[Matt] Michael and Robert...

I could tell through the body language

and just how they interacted,

they'd spent a lot of time together.

And they were probably the closest siblings...

um...

out of the seven.

Close brothers.

Different, different, but close brothers.

Michael was soft and Robert was hard.

[female reporter] Broken Arrow police

release new details about the family.

The five victims who were killed were

two adults and their three children.

The seriously injured 13-year-old girl

is still in the hospital.

She has horrific wounds to her neck.

She has horrific wounds to her abdomen.

Lot of blood everywhere.

I think the easiest word to use is, "Carnage".

I don't even know if she's gonna live.

If she comes out of surgery, do I have an officer there,

that can take a statement from her?

Because if she dies, maybe I can get a dying declaration

and that just makes me mad as I'm telling you that.

The officers ask, "Who did this? Who did this?"

And she's...

getting close to dying and so she...

she is giving almost a dying declaration

at that point.

Then the very next thing is the 13-year-old saying,

"My brothers did this to me."

This wasn't a home invasion.

This wasn't some, you know, crazed

serial killer that broke into the house

and hurt everyone.

It was someone that lived in that house

with those people everyday.

[Julie] Police officers saw

a door ajar...

...at the back of the house.

[Jackie] They immediately got a canine officer there.

And they began tracking out of the back of the house

and into the woods.

[Matt] It was warm.

Shorts and t-shirt weather.

It was... It was a nice night.

I was there when they released the dogs.

I overheard them on the radio saying...

"They went out the back."

[man] ...Backdoor towards southwest

out of the back of the house through the park

and into the woods...

[Matt] This was their escape route...

...through a dry creak that leads out to the river...

...to an area that surely was familiar to them.

All the kids just used to love

coming down here, I mean this...

this huge hill leading down into...

a little playground.

You could have a family picnic down here.

Several people did. We did.

The younger kids and my kids

would play down here quite often.

Um...

Yeah.

For that to happen to young children

who played with your children...

That's as dark as it gets, right?

-[siren blaring] -[dog barking]

[Jackie] Canine officers were actively searching

the woods...

...for two suspects.

About 300 yards from the house...

...patrol officers and the canine found

the suspects.

One of the young men,

is determined to be Robert Bever.

And he surrenders to police immediately.

Michael, the other person that is found,

continues to stay in the bushes

and is making some hand-movements that are causing...

the officers to become concerned

based on what they had just found in that home.

So, they release the dog.

The dog goes towards Michael,

is able to get him in custody

and Michael is brought out of the bushes at that point.

Robert and Michael have been apprehended.

They're dressed for war.

They have body armor.

They are covered in blood.

And detectives are now bringing them back.

They're literally walking by the house

in which the rest of their family is dead.

Jaw-drop.

When I saw those two boys come out,

it was shocking.

And I saw Robert with his...

body-armor on and I just...

was trying to piece everything together

and couldn't believe it was...

I can't even speak to what was going through my mind.

All right, new V-log.

I uploaded my first video of the Dark Forces playgroup

and there was, like, no audio

which completely ruined it.

I had commentary, it was hilarious.

It was 20 minutes...

of my life.

I don't know, it's just so weird

watching these videos.

You know, yeah, you can look back at this now

and be like, "Wow, this is creepy to watch."

But...

if I didn't know anything about him

or what he had done,

I would just think, "This is just kind of a...

"you know, kinda nerdy, quirky...

"kid talking about his hobbies."

Going to make my first skit soon.

Can't show you a sneak preview or it would ruin it.

[Taylor] You can look at him and say,

"You're a psychopath. You have no heart."

But I think it's a very classic case of...

you don't know what's happening behind closed doors.

People may look perfectly happy and perfectly normal

and perfectly functioning from the outside but...

on the inside, there is...

darkness and dysfunction and...

...no one really knew that...

except for Robert and Michael.

[siren blaring]

[Jackie] After Robert and Michael had been apprehended,

I'm trying to photograph them,

get them to jail,

so they can be properly documented.

There was a lot of dirt, a lot of blood...

on both of them. But I saw that Michael...

had been bitten by one of the canines.

He had an injury on one of his shoulders.

Robert had this, you know, thousand-yard stare.

[Julie] And at that point, the older brother

begins to show what one would call a cocky attitude...

about what had occurred.

Turning to his brother, he said...

"It's been a pleasure. I'm proud of what I've done."

[Matt] It makes you wonder if at the time of this photo,

if there were even inklings...

um, in that brain...

of Michael's...

If they fantasized about what they were gonna carry out.

And to people that you,

you know you spent good time with,

um, shared memories with...

I mean, he's...

He's even smiling in this picture.

His version of his smile.

Jesus Christ, like, they were stabbed, like...

The 13-year-old was crawling out on the front lawn

trying to come to our family for help.

There just weren't any signs of anything close to this.

Didn't see it. Didn't even feel it.

I can only imagine what was going through...

April and David's mind...

in those last moments.

There is a lot of this that makes you wonder,

as a parent, like...

you know, "What's my kid capable of?"

[Julie] I remember some of the officers

saying that they were taken by Michael's size,

because he seemed to be

relatively small for a 16-year-old.

[Bentz] Yeah, just wherever you can do best.

When Michael's brought down to the detective division

after they've got him cleaned up and they've got...

you know, the evidence, it's off of him,

now it's just, "What's going on here?'

The question everybody wants to know

in this world was, "Why?"

[Taylor] When this case happened in July of 2015,

I was a baby news reporter.

[Taylor reporting] Today we heard from an OSBI investigator,

the scene inside the house was by far the most blood he'd ever seen.

On the scene, on the story,

at the Tulsa County courthouse,

Taylor Newcomb, News on 6.

When I was in journalism school,

no one prepared me for this.

Nobody told me that I was gonna see dead bodies.

They don't tell you that.

There's Michael holding the baby.

Victoria, Christopher, Daniel, the oldest sister

and you know, in this picture, Michael just looks like a...

an older brother, like, loving and protecting his siblings.

The day of, all the kids have this plan to go bowling,

but...

Michael had said that he just wanted to stay home,

because all he wanted to do was hold the baby.

And that was one of those moments that...

it makes you emotional.

Because they had plans for the baby, too.

Robert and Michael were gonna murder their baby sister.

Which is really hard...

to even fathom.

It just opens up

this whole other dark side of society

that you have been able to just pretend doesn't exist...

...until you hear that.

And then you can never take it back.

[Steve] When Michael's brought down

to the detective division,

the detectives know

there's no way one person could have done all of this.

[Steve] They know he's involved,

but who's done what?

[Steve] As this interview is evolving,

you're hearing of somebody that...

knows exactly what he's doing.

You can already see the wheels are spinning in his head.

He's trying to figure out,

how am I gonna try and make this out,

like I really didn't know what was going on.

[Michael sighs]

His demeanor, his tone,

his mannerisms, that's the same Michael.

But the things he's saying...

But it just seems like he is detached.

And just seeing this all play out,

wondering what to say...

Yeah, it, it's disturbing.

[Julie] At some point,

Daniel locked himself in a room...

where he had found a cellphone.

[Julie] And then called 911...

Michael admitted in his interview

that he went to the door,

knocked on the door,

said something to the effect of, "Daniel, let me in.

He's going to kill me."

And Michael then turned to Robert

and said, "He's all yours."

[siren blaring]

[Taylor] That level of trickery

that Michael was able to use,

I don't need to know that Michael was holding a knife

or that he physically stabbed anyone,

that right there is all I need to know.

[Taylor] Daniel, if he had not made that call,

no on would've survived.

But Daniel made that call.

[sniffles]

[Julie] When the 13 year-old survivor

regained consciousness,

she couldn't speak at the time.

So, she was writing things out.

She told us,

she was actually approached by Michael...

...maybe a year or so, prior to these attacks.

She was asked if she wanted to participate.

And of course, she declined.

Then she actually had went to her parents with that information

telling them that she was concerned about

what her brothers were doing...

Ordering knives, ordering body armor.

The parents, unfortunately,

didn't really take it too seriously.

And it's very ironic and sad.

David and April were concerned for their children to be influenced

by things outside of their home.

That was one of the specific reasons

we believe that they were being home-schooled.

And yet, the ultimate betrayal,

the ultimate horrible act

happened within the walls of their own home.

And it's devastating.

[Matt] The last time I saw Michael before

the incident occurred was

when he came to the front door...

um, which was very rare...

He seemed perfectly calm.

I mean, this is hindsight.

He said, "Hey, we're leaving.

"There's gonna be a package being delivered.

"Can you just make sure nobody takes it?"

And turns out that,

that was ammunition being sent to the house.

It made the hair on the back of my head stand up.

They were building a narrative for themselves.

They didn't want to be known for,

"We're just gonna kill a whole bunch of people at on spot."

The narrative was,

"We want to be more famous than other people."

They wanted to be serial killers.

[Steve] Each one of them would've shot somebody at random

and they'd just move on into the next location,

because they felt like greater notoriety

for those people than the people who just

killed a lot of people one moment at a time.

I knew I was dealing with evil.

[Steve] What Robert and Michael had been doing

over the past year or so was...

plotting a fantasy

all built upon this desire for fame.

And it was a complete betrayal

of the family dynamic.

While birthdays were being celebrated

and Christmases being celebrated,

these two guys, in the background, are calculating out...

"How are we going to go on our adventure to kill

"random people across the country."

[Julie] Robert Bever...

showed absolutely no remorse in his interview whatsoever.

He was very willing

to talk about everything he did

and everything Michael did.

While Michael was in the Tulsa County jail, he kept a journal.

And in that journal

were various depictions of death.

There was one picture that he drew, that was he and Robert

surrounded by five dead bodies.

But the most chilling thing

was towards the end of that journal.

"Once upon a time, there were brothers

named Michael and Robert."

Looks like it's done in crayon.

"They hated their family.

"So, they killed them.

"The end."

I get the strong sense that this isn't even organic.

And this nonsense at the end...

Like, "Hail Satan", like...

Still wanna... Like he's [bleep] with them.

Like, "No, stop with the questions.

"Stop with this. Like, I did this.

"I regret it. Maybe, I don't regret it.

"Maybe I planned it, but, like, I'm in here now.

"Like, what do you guys want? I don't know."

But I don't get organic Michael from this.

I just don't.

How many people show you all of them?

I mean...

Do you ever really know anybody?

[reporter] Robert and Michael Bever

are scheduled to enter a plea at their arraignment

on Monday at 09:00 am.

District attorney, Steve Kunzweiler

charged the brother with murder for each family member.

The DA's office charged both

with one count of murder for the five people

they're accused of stabbing to death.

The Bever trial was the most emotional

and heart-wrenching trial that

I've ever been involved in.

The trial itself...

...had this heavy, heavy cloud

over it through the entire time.

The surviving sister was critical

because she shouldn't have even been alive

to tell her story.

[Taylor] There was a point during the testimony

where the prosecutor had said,

"Do you want to see Michael and Robert ever again?"

She said, "No," and Michael started crying.

People like her...

[sniffles]

People like her just deserve the world.

[sniffles]

And...

I just want her to live the life that she deserves.

And the life that she wants.

[sniffles]

[reporter] Both sides argued

jury instructions this afternoon.

Those instructions will be read

to the jurors before deliberations.

The jury is expected to deliberate

on this case tomorrow afternoon.

[Taylor] As hard as it was and as mentally taxing as it was...

I was so impressed by the attorneys on both sides.

By both the defense and the prosecution and...

I was saying to myself,

"They're the ones really changing people's lives.

"They're the ones bringing justice to these sisters

"that have had to live through the unimaginable."

And...

It was really in that moment that I thought,

"As much as I love being a reporter and I did,

I think there's something more that I could be doing."

And so, I knew...

...um, that I was gonna be pursuing law instead.

[presenter] Breaking news this morning,

a fire destroyed the home in Broken Arrow

where five members of the Bever family were killed.

[Matt] It was fully engulfed.

And I tried to talk the firefighters

into just letting it completely go.

My name is Matt Jacobsen

and Broken Arrow has been my hometown.

When we were faced with that tragic night,

it was amazing to see

everybody who was involved, come together

and start taking action.

It didn't take long deciding,

"We should put something in its place."

We wanted to make it beautiful for everyone who was lost.

We're proud to say,

we have their blessing on this.

It is the right thing to do.

I'm glad we were able to put something up,

very beautiful and part of the healing process,

for not just the family but the community.

I know...

...it might be different for some other folks,

but having the park here is a massive...

...just forward healing process

for this entire event.