On a cold November night in 1987, just days before Thanksgiving, a senseless act of violence shattered a family and shocked the small city of Glendive, Montana. The Brooks family had moved to the eastern Montana town just over two years earlier after the Burlington Northern Railroad where James Brooks Jr. worked as a machinist shuttered its shops in their hometown of Livingston.
Though reluctant to move, James and his wife, Sharon Brooks, were making the best of it in their new home on the edge of town, a rancher with a big yard where they were raising their children.
On the evening of November 19, 1987, James and Sharon, along with James's mother, Ora Brooks, were in the stands of a regional basketball tournament, cheering on their 14-year-old daughter. Later that night, around midnight, the family was home when a 16-year-old neighbor, Douglas Duane "Doug" Turner, showed up at their unlocked front door. Turner, who had just been released from a juvenile alcohol treatment program, had been drinking and telling people he was going to kill someone, though no one took him seriously. He was a stranger to the Brooks family.
A neighbor heard someone yell, "God damn it, let me in," followed by James Brooks saying, "Put the gun away." Turner, armed with a.30-30 rifle, forced his way in and shot James dead in the living room. He then moved through the house, fatally shooting Sharon and Ora. Ora was shot as she tried to run from the house screaming. In the basement, the Brooks' young son, who was eight or nine, and his friend, Scott Miller, were getting ready for bed when they heard the gunshots. They ran upstairs and saw Turner in the kitchen. When Turner's rifle misfired as he aimed at the boys, he brutally beat them on the head with the butt of the gun.
After Turner left, the young Brooks boy ran outside and found his mother, Sharon, dying in the street. A passing neighbor pulled the boy into her car and called the police, who arrived minutes later and arrested Turner at the scene. The horrific and random nature of the crime sent ripples of fear through Glendive and the entire state of Montana, a place where many people had felt safe leaving their doors unlocked.
Douglas Duane Turner, though a juvenile, was tried as an adult. In April 1988, he pleaded guilty to three counts of deliberate homicide for the deaths of Sharon, James Jr., and Ora Brooks. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault for the attacks on the two boys and one count of aggravated burglary. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison. His rampage, however, did not end there. Turner went on to become one of Montana's most prolific murderers, killing six more people while incarcerated, including one inmate beaten to death with a baseball bat and five others during a violent prison riot in 1991.
For these additional crimes, Turner was convicted of multiple counts of deliberate homicide and sentenced to death. His criminal history included nine proven murders, along with convictions for felony assault, aggravated burglary, and kidnapping. Before the state could carry out his execution, Douglas Turner committed suicide in his maximum-security cell on July 8, 2003. He was 31 years old and had spent nearly half his life behind bars. He never offered a reason for the slaughter of the Brooks family and claimed not to remember it. The violence left four children without their parents and grandmother, and a community forever changed. The surviving son, who witnessed the horrific events of that night, suffered from severe brain injury and psychological trauma that followed him for the rest of his life, a tragic continuation of the violence that reverberated for decades.
