Six years after a 13-year-old killed his girlfriend’s parents in Garland, a judge will decide his fate as an adult

Six years after a 13-year-old killed his girlfriend’s parents in Garland, a judge will decide his fate as an adult Ray Leszcynski

 

Nevil family members, from left, Fran Cawley and her brother Ricky Nevil, their mother Dorothy Nevil, and Ricky’s wife Charlotte Nevil at the gravesite of Alan Nevil and his wife Darlene in Allen. Alan Nevil and his wife were murdered in August 2010 and a transfer/release hearing for the shooter is scheduled Wednesday. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News)

Five years after a 13-year-old boy and his 13-year-old girlfriend were convicted of killing her mother and stepfather in Garland, the victims’ families have many unanswered questions.

But they are sure of one thing: The killers haven’t finished paying for their crime.

The boyfriend — the gunman — returns to court Wednesday for a judge to determine whether he should be transferred to the adult justice system to serve the remainder of his 28-year sentence now that he is 18.

He and his girlfriend pleaded guilty to capital murder in 2011. The girl was sentenced to 20 years. Her transfer hearing will be later this year.

The Dallas Morning News does not typically identify youths in juvenile custody. The boy’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Family photo of Alan Nevil and his wife Darlene. (Courtesy)

The horrific murders garnered national attention. Darlene Nevil, 46, was fatally shot after returning home from work. The teenagers waited for her husband Alan, 48, to get home, police said, shot him five times, and then escaped over a back fence. Soon after, when police found the teenagers at a nearby apartment, they were having sex.

“Two people were brutally murdered, ruthlessly,” said Steve Frazier, Alan Nevil’s childhood friend and a retired Garland officer. “To be honest, I don’t care how old the suspects were. They should be held accountable.”

Family members wish the case had gone to trial to secure Texas’ maximum 40-year sentence for juveniles.

Options now available to the judge include returning the boy to the juvenile system until his 21st birthday or releasing him on parole.

Terry Smith, executive director of Dallas County Juvenile Services, said transfer/release hearings review age at offense, maturity, behavior, mental health concerns, supervision and mitigating circumstances.

Detective Tony Godwin, who has worked this and other juvenile cases in Garland for 10 years, said the sentences were hefty and that he doesn’t think the teens will be released any time soon. 

“The system in itself, if it works the way we hope it works, this is probably not something that society in general should be concerned with for some time,” Godwin said.

Shot with his own weapon

The girl knew her parents’ work schedules and how to unlock her stepfather’s small-caliber handgun from its hiding place.

When Darlene came home sometime after noon Aug. 17, 2010, she was shot twice, in the back and the head.

Then the teenagers waited for Alan – perhaps as long as two hours.

“He had a chance to leave when he had killed one person,” Alan Nevil Jr., 34, said.

After Alan was shot, he managed to escape out a window to summon help. Before collapsing into a coma that lasted nearly all of his final 16 days, he identified the shooters to  police.

Cases of murderers so young are rare nationally, and Garland police still refer to the case in officer training.

“There’s a little shock and awe, not only from the public’s perspective, but from the Police Department’s perspective,” Godwin said.

After hearing TV reports about the crime scene, Alan Jr. sped to the house.

Garland police ushered him into a police car, saying it was for his protection. Alan Jr. said he thinks police were afraid he’d get to the criminals before they did.

“I see the ambulance drive off and ask ‘Who’s in there?’ Then I saw them bringing out a body bag. And they wouldn’t let me out of the car. I was going nuts,” he said.

Four generations, one house

Four generations of the Nevil family had lived in the house on Rilla Drive since the 1950s. Susan Nevil, Alan’s 35-year-old daughter, gave it up a few years ago, in part because of the crime.

“People would come over and there would be an awkwardness,” she said.

Susan also didn’t like the letters arriving from her stepsister, sent from a juvenile detention facility.

None of the Nevils live in Garland anymore. Alan had been the reason for them all to stay close by.

He had serious kidney problems since high school, and had a transplant in 1993 – about the time his first marriage ended.

“There would be times you’d take him to go have his dialysis done, take him to go to work, the phone calls to pick him up to get him to the hospital to get an IV, but it was normal to us,” said his sister, Fran Nevil Cawley. “You do what you have to do.”

Alan had left the home at 19, but came back and took the house over when his mother moved to an apartment.

Grave of Alan Nevil and his wife Darlene in Allen. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News)

“He was so precious to everybody,” said Dorothy Nevil, Alan’s 82-year-old mother. “We named him Angel when we brought him home. Now we call him Angel again.”

Alan married Darlene in late 2006. They met over their computers, 1,000 miles apart.  Alan’s family thought that was a bit strange, but also knew because of his health and shy demeanor, Alan didn’t go to nightclubs or meet people in more traditional places.

They never questioned that Alan loved Darlene. In the fleeting moments he regained consciousness after the shooting, he would ask for her.

“We’d tell him Darlene was dead and he’d start fighting and they would put him under again,” Alan Jr. said.

A caregiver

Darlene was a good fit for Alan, perhaps because she was a caregiver. Years before she worked for a health care agency in Garland, she had kept her father at her home in Ohio as he battled cancer. And she had always been every bit the big sister to Tracy Remmick.

“She always took care of me, always bought me things. She was a good person, had a lot of friends, was well-liked and part of the National Honor Society,” said Remmick, who lives in Ohio.

“She was a good mother.”

Darlene’s daughter lived with her father in Ohio until summer 2009, when the custody agreement was changed so she could move to Garland to live with her mother and stepfather.

Susan was a bit envious that her new stepsister had a computer and telephone.

“We were his kids and we didn’t have none of that growing up,” she said.

The girl’s boyfriend came into the picture the next school year.

Because the case never went to trial, details about what led to the murders remain unclear. But Alan’s family said he got along fine with his stepdaughter’s boyfriend.

“Dad liked him. He would fix his bike,” said Alan Nevil Jr. “And he fixed the fence for dad because the dog was getting out.”

Shortly after the school year ended, Alan and Darlene took her daughter on vacation — in one photo, she and her mom are smiling in front of a waterfall. But in July, the 12-year-old ran away. Aug. 9, a day before she was killed, Darlene told a friend in Ohio that her daughter had a boyfriend and that he wasn’t a bad kid.

Accepting a plea

Family members feel they gave up too much in the plea bargain that followed the couple’s deaths. Dorothy said meeting with the prosecutors was a waste of time.

“I kind of feel like we were railroaded,” said Ricky Nevil, Alan’s brother. “They made us feel like we were going to lose. That even with all the evidence, they were going to get less time.”

Susan said she wanted the case to go to trial just to hear all the evidence. Now she fears what could happen next. Like Cawley, her aunt, Susan has dreams the boy will track her down and kill her.

The last time they saw him was 2011, when he walked past them after his sentencing hearing.

“He had, like, a smirk,” Susan said. “I wanted to smack that off his damned face.”

“He couldn’t wait to get that smile in,” Ricky said. “He’s killed before and it’s not going to bother him to do it again.”

 

Steve Frazier was childhood running buddies with neighbor Alan Nevil on Rilla Drive in Garland. Frazier later patrolled the neighborhood as a Garland police officer. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)

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