I have never seen a television program like it. It was a documentary which provides narration with dramatization and interviews with those personally which, when combined, will tell a powerful true story broadcast on ID Discovery. It's going to be a broadcast that one's memory will not be able to erase.
The program opens with the viewer seeing a television camera in the dining room of a home. The camera stands ready to record the coming program. The viewer sees that camera at the ready and a man standing in front of it about to signal the beginning of the filming with the sound of a clapper board.
Seated at a table in their dining room are an old man and his wife; he's holding her hand as the filming begins. They bow their heads and close their eyes as he begins to pray out loud. His voice is steady as he addresses his heavenly father. He prays that what they are about to do, the story they are about to tell will be of help to others. As he concludes, he does so in the name of "Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior." There is nothing ostentatious about his praying, nothing stilted; it's unrehearsed, heartfelt and genuine.
After praying the old man looks down at the table and on it the viewer sees a well-preserved front page of a newspaper on which appears a composite drawing of a man's face. As the old man looks at the face he says, "This is what started it all." He tries to say a few more words, but breaks down, sobbing. He says to the TV people in his home, "That's it. I can't go on." He's not acting.
The narration begins as his wife tells about giving birth to their firstborn, a son they named Frank who was their pride and joy as new parents. She too begins to tear up, saying that it was early on that they both realized something was wrong with their son. When he was about five or so years old, his mother was looking out the window and saw him knock his little sister down in the Seattle snow; the fall hurt her.
The mother rushes out, picks the little girl up and holds her as Frank stands nearby. She asks, "Why did you do that? Why did you knock Ruth down?
Frank says nothing. He just stands there staring at both of them. (For the viewer to see the expression on the boy's face is unnerving--no emotion, nothing. It's both eerie and creepy rolled into one. The expression on the mother's face is one of fear.
Then, a few years later, while the mother is upstairs, she hears her second son, four or five years old, screaming. She rushes to the top of the stairs and looks down to the first floor to see the little boy lying on his stomach in severe pain. She also sees golf balls all over the floor and Frank standing nearby staring at his brother.
Frank has scattered golf balls all over the downstairs area; his little brother has slipped on them and has fallen so hard his broken bone requires a cast from his ankle to his chest. The father sits Frank down and asks, "Why? Why did you do this to your brother?" There's no response. Frank just stares straight ahead as if his father isn't there. Finally, the boy answers, "Because it was fun."
Because of this and other strange incidents, the parents have concluded that their son enjoys hurting people, that he derives pleasure from it. They take him to a neurological specialist, who after co
conducting a series of tests concludes, "Your son is hyperactive."
The mother asks, "What can we do about it?" The doctor tells them, "Nothing. Just watch him."
Both parents are now desperate. Another doctor prescribes medication. On some occasions, the father spanks Frank, but nothing, absolutely nothing is working.
The parents realize that they have to watch their little son every waking moment; there's no telling what he will do. The father is doing just that one afternoon, looking out the window as he watches Frank in the swimming pool with his little sister Ruth. Suddenly, Frank comes up to Ruth, takes her by both shoulders, pushes her under the water and holds her there.
The father rushes out of the house, yelling at Frank. When he gets to the pool, Frank lets the terrified girl go and she huddles up against her father on the bank of the pool as Frank sits on the side of the pool, staring at them. To this day, the father tells us that his adult daughter is terrified of water and has never been swimming since that day. When the father asks, "Why?" Frank again says, "It's fun."
The load on Frank's parents is crushing. Every day, the mother says, is a hell on earth with their son. She's spiraling into depression. She goes to her church, sits in the pew in the empty auditorium and tells God that she can't take it anymore, not one more day.
As Frank gets older, he comes up with a new fascination: fire. He's a teenager now and he buys himself a police scanner, listening every day for calls about a fire. He takes his camera and photographs the fire trucks as they arrive. Sometimes, because of his scanner, he arrives at the burning site before the firemen do. Frank proudly shows his father the scrapbooks he's made of his pictures of fire trucks, fires, and firemen. His father notes that his son has thousands of pictures, all about fire.
Frank's father is in advertising and successfully so. As his children become adults, he hires his daughter Ruth as an employee in his agency. Then he calls his wife to tell her what he's done--thinking that one day Frank will inherit his business, he hires him as well. When he tells her the news, her heart sinks and in a few days, she learns that the sinking feeling was justified.
One day, she came to her husband's agency and as she was turning the corner in the building, there was Frank in the hallway with his sister Ruth pushed up against the wall and his hands are around her throat, choking her. She yells at him. He stops and walks past her. Calmly. Back to his office. He says nothing.
During this time, the parents notice that the slightest little nothing will send Frank into a rage--a pencil where it's not supposed to be, any little thing triggers Frank and he's in a white-hot rage.
Then, in Seattle, strange events start being reported on the local news and in the paper-someone is setting fires all over the city, not small ones, but big, out-of-control fires. Within a few months, an arsonist has set 74. Seattle is scared. One man whose house was set on fire says to the TV camera, "If I had caught him, I'd have killed him."
The father asks the mother, "Do you suppose Frank is doing this?" Then on the front page of the Seattle paper, a composite drawing of a suspect is published. The father is shocked: that picture looks like Frank. That's the article to which the old man was referring at the beginning of the program.
He shows the drawing to his wife; she concurs. It looks like Frank. They retreat to their bedroom. They face each other. They get down on their knees. The father prays for wisdom. He later tells us that as he got up, the answer came--they have to go to the police. He does and a few days later, Frank is under arrest.
The police video the interview with Frank as he confesses and they show it to his parents. The mother is heartsick because she hears and sees her son confessing as if what he's done is nothing. No emotion. No sorrow. All matter of fact. Nothing. Psychologists call it "flat affect." She's horrified.
As he goes to trial, the father gets on TV and apologizes to the city and tells them that they did all they could as Frank was growing up to prevent this--counseling, medication, punishment, but nothing worked.
His mom and dad console themselves with one thought, at least: no one died in all the 70+ fires. Then word comes; the police have tied Frank to setting a retirement home ablaze and a 92-year-old woman and one other lady burned to death. Frank's mother has a new hell to contend with: her son is responsible for the murder of a woman so old she couldn't even try to get out of the burning building. She imagines that woman's horror as the flames came nearer and nearer. Now the police charge Frank with two counts of murder.
At the sentencing, the judge is stern, telling Frank there is no way he can be turned loose in any community ever again. He gets a life sentence. He has sat through everything in the courtroom with an icy stare.
Every day his mother has awoken with a burdened and crushed heart. But then, she said, she woke up one morning and thought, "Something is different. It's not the same." She tells us, "God lifted the burden; He set me free and I praise him for it." She smiles through tears of joy.
His parents are old now. Because of what their son did, his father lost all of his clients, lost all of his friends, lost all of his savings accounts, and they lost their house. As the program concludes, the old man and the old woman are again sitting at the table. He takes her hand. He prays. With no rancor, with not a hint of bitterness, the old man thanks God for the opportunity they've had to tell their story, asking that in the telling, it will be of some help to those who heard. He concludes with, "In Jesus' name, we pray."
Our sins do not occur in a vacuum. They can hurt, ruin, and destroy. Frank goes to jail for the rest of his life. His father, mother, brother, and sister are scarred for the rest of theirs.
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