the sheriff s office and we sent a deputy up there. bill franklin is sheriff of elmore county, and the deputy sent to the house that day happened to be his son. when deputy franklin arrived, michael had something to say. mr. holton had actually greeted him in the yard and told him, hey, when you come in, you re going to see my son is handcuffed, and he said i m trying to discipline my son. sheriff franklin said he s seen parents discipline their kids in all sorts of ways. i don t think that his intent was to harm or hurt the kid. he was merely trying to see twht he could do to get his attention. to me putting the kid in handcuffs says either i m disciplining you and i m serious about this, or i m afraid of you. possible that s what was going on there? could have been. could have been. the deputy reported april was in the living room, madison solemn on the couch. his hands cuffed behind his back. michael asked the deputy how as parents they could get the juvenile courts in
and said my kid came home from your house under the influence of something, and i want to know why. so michael was embarrassed at that point. michael calls april and says you need to get to my house. we ve got to deal with this. chris has a twin brother mike who thought madison s dad had good reason to be embarrassed. michael had a reputation to protect in eclectic. he was the former mayor, former fire chief, very well-known. how dare you embarrass me in this community, so i m sure he was (bleep). i don t blame him. when michael holton walked into the house, he found the remnants of a teenage party, homemade bongs were scattered throughout the house, a box that smelled suspicious. that was it. and what he did, he called
did you shoot your parent? no. either one of them? no. did you hear any gunshots when you were on the way to the neighbors? on advice of counsel, madison wouldn t talk specifics about the day of the shootings. he did tell us his story about how his family started to fall apart. whenever things started to fall down, it just got worse and worse. could you tell there was tension in the house? yeah, sometimes i could. sometimes i couldn t. sometimes they would be giving each other the silent treatment. sometimes they would be arguing in front of us. most of the time it was more of like behind closed doors. he says the holton house became an unpleasant place to live. i wanted to go do my own thing and that included partying and smoking pot and stuff like that, so i mean, i couldn t do it at home when my parents were around, so i decided to go other places. after his parents separated, madison lived with his dad and was present when his father discovered april had a n
left hand. the thing about that is michael holton was right-handed. normally when men commit suicide, they use their dominant hand. sure. not their weaker hand. that s right. to the sheriff and the investigators that made suicide improbable, and the pathologist agreed. he classified michael holton s death a homicide. he does not believe that that man would have killed himself or would have been able to kill himself in that manner. and so you go forward with a homicide investigation. it s not a head scratcher. you get a piece of paper that says homicide. this was now a murder investigation, and if there were three people in that house and two were victims, that simple arithmetic made madison the prime suspect. what happened in those 11 minutes? the interrogation begins. coming up i jumped up, i ran to the master bedroom door. i kicked it open. my dad was holding her