Newly released interrogation video shows Chad Doerman telling detectives he executed his three young sons “for God” in the hours after the June 2023 massacre.
Doerman, 33, who is currently serving life in prison after pleading guilty to the murders, appears in blood-stained clothes during the two-hour interview obtained by Fox 19, rambling about Bible passages and divine tests while still disoriented from the killings. The footage was recorded at the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio on the evening of June 15, 2023, moments after deputies arrested him outside his rural Monroe Township home.
“[God] tests you and you have to do it. You can’t deny it. You have to do it. You can’t stop,” Doerman told detectives while discussing what he described as sacrifices demanded by God.
“And you did?” An investigator asked.
“For God. And now I’m in Hell. And he’s gonna come down and it’s gonna be a mess,” he continued.
Doerman claimed he had been seeking help because he believed he was already living in hell, and he said he “knew what he had to do” after attending a church service the morning of the murders. He had spent the afternoon reading Bible passages to his sons and mumbling “Chad knows what’s right” while pacing through the house with the Bible in his hands.
“There were signs all over the f–king place,” he bizarrely ranted during the interrogation. “They were walking like zombies. It’s gonna be a nightmare down here. It’s gonna be a mess. And I’m not gonna have my family anywhere near harm.”
“I was going to go to hell, let them go to heaven,” he said at another point — while also lamenting that he had killed his kids in the wrong order.
The newly released video adds to the extensive body of evidence and footage from the case, including police bodycam recordings that captured Doerman’s calm surrender and his ex-wife Laura’s anguished screams. When deputies arrived at the home, they found Doerman sitting barefoot on his stoop while his three sons lay dead in the yard. He offered no resistance, telling officers “I ain’t gonna hurt ya” and “I ain’t going to run away” before asking if an officer could remove his wallet from his back pocket.
“Shut up,” an officer told him. “You got the right to remain silent, f–king use it.”
In the patrol car, bodycam audio captured Doerman saying, “Tell them I did it. Take me to jail.”
In the viral moment that preceded the interrogation, Doerman had lined up his three boys — Clayton, 7, Hunter, 4, and Chase, 3 — outside their Ohio home after reading them Bible passages and telling them they were “the best boys ever.” He then grabbed a rifle from his safe and executed them one by one, even chasing down Chase who initially escaped into a nearby field before being “hunted” down, hauled back, and shot dead. He also shot Laura in the hand as she tried to block the barrel with her thumb to save her youngest son, and left his 14-year-old stepdaughter running down the road yelling that her “father was killing everyone.” The teen had tried to carry Chase to safety but was forced at gunpoint to put him down, with Ring camera footage capturing her pleading “Please don’t shoot me.”
Doerman pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder and two counts of felonious assault in August 2024, with prosecutors agreeing to drop the death penalty. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole plus 16 years. At his sentencing, Laura told the court she would “remember them as the three little boys who loved fishing, go-carting and swimming.”
“Remember them as the boys who love to have fun and were inseparable from one another. Their lives are not only about what happened to them — they are so much more than that. I love you Clayton, Hunter and Chase,” she said.
Laura also wrote in a victim impact statement that she agreed with the plea deal to bring “finality” to the case, noting that “where there used to be so much laughter, happiness, noise of rowdy little boys, there is now silence and emptiness.”
Doerman’s stepdaughter, now 16, wrote that she had trusted him as her father figure: “Most of all, I saw you as my dad—not just a stepdad.”
Prosecutor Mark Tekulve revealed that Doerman had planned the murders for months, telling his father on the phone that “Clayton is going to be the hardest one” and warning Laura at lunch that “this will be my last good meal.” A psychiatric evaluation found Doerman did not suffer from any mental illness that would have hindered his moral judgment, and he later told his brother he compared himself to Adolf Hitler for making worldwide news. When asked from prison if he felt bad about what he did, he said no.
Doerman is currently incarcerated at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.