I Just Killed My Dad – Where's Anthony Templet now?
starts with a horrific, but a seeming cut-and-dried, murder. A privileged 17-year-old boy gets in a fight with his father and shoots him dead before calling the police and handing himself in.But it took the murder of Burt Templet at the hands of his withdrawn and quiet teenage son Anthony for investigators to finally uncover more than a decade of neglect, psychological and physical abuse.
As news spread around the usually quiet neighbourhood, police and journalists were unable to get any information on the Templets, with everyone unwilling to talk because they didn’t know Burt or Anthony, who kept mostly to themselves. In part this was to make the growing youngster untraceable to Teresa, in another it was to exert power over his son, fearing he would reveal the truth of his treatment at home should people get too close to him. He wasn’t even allowed to play with other kids outside or leave the house by himself.While all this happened Burt continued to put on the facade of a normal family man, with a woman named Susan and her son Peyton moving into the family home as well.
Incredibly, Burt initially survived the shooting and was rushed to hospital, but after three days he was taken off life support and succumbed to his injuries.The case proved a difficult one as, while Anthony made no secret of the fact that he had shot his father, he was insistent it wasn’t a murder – rather an act of self-defence.The second-degree murder charge saw the case moved from a juvenile to adult case, and could have resulted in him facing a life sentence for what he had done.
Eventually, the district attorney’s office bowed to the pressure and mounting evidence that Anthony was a young boy who had been dealt with a harrowing hardship, and began to give him some leniency rather than face a trial.