Children And Violence: The Search for a Murder Gene

With their thick, wavy hair parted neatly on the side, cherubic faces and unfailingly polite manners, Derek King, 14, and his brother Alex, 13, come across like choirboys. But the Florida teenagers were sentenced last November to eight and seven years in prison, respectively, after admitting that they had bludgeoned their father to death with a baseball bat. The previous year brought two other trials of Florida kids who had committed murder: Lionel Tate, also 14, got a life sentence for beating a 6-year-old playmate to death, and Nathaniel Brazill, another 14-year-old, was sent to prison for 28 years for killing...

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