KEY POINTS:
The bare details of the killing were enough to make it one of the most shocking murders in American history.
An 8-year-old boy in a small, isolated town picked up a rifle and deliberately shot dead his father and another man as they returned home from work.
It left the Arizona community of St Johns traumatised and set the nation looking for answers to explain the actions of the homicidal child.
Now those answers may never be known. Last week the child, now 9, who cannot be named, pleaded guilty in a court deal that will avoid a public trial and ensure that most of the details of the case remain secret.
The move has denied millions of Americans a full account of the baffling crime in which the boy apparently methodically prepared a double murder, carried out with a hunting rifle.
Under the plea deal, the boy will have extensive counselling and therapy but will avoid being jailed in the state juvenile corrections system or tried as an adult.
But it leaves many lingering questions. Almost nothing is known of the exact circumstances or motivation for the shooting that left the boy's father, Vincent Romero, and his lodger, Timothy Romans, dead.
"That information is probably never going to come out," said defence lawyer Benjamin Brewer.
The crime came to light last November after the boy knocked on a neighbour's door to report the two men dead. He was initially not a suspect, but was later interviewed by police.
In that interview the boy admitted pulling the trigger himself. He also later told a social worker that he had vowed his 1000th spanking would be his last.
There have been child killers in America before but few have been so young, so deliberate and so seemingly without motive. It focused a harsh spotlight on St Johns, a dusty, isolated town of about 4000 people.
But what stood out was the town's ordinariness. The community is poor and has a drugs problem, but neither fact made it unique. It could have been Anywhere, USA.
The boy had been a good pupil at school with no disciplinary record, and neighbours described him to police as respectful, quiet and well-behaved. His parents were divorced, with his mother living in a different state, and the boy stayed with his father, who had recently remarried. But this, seemingly like everything else about the boy, is hardly unusual.
Nor was the boy's familiarity with the murder weapon especially sinister. His father had taught him to hunt and shoot a rifle but hunting is a common pastime all over the US and such a thing is relatively common, even at the age of 8.
As part of the agreement, prosecutors decided it would be too mentally damaging for the boy to be forced to admit in court to killing his father. So he instead pleaded guilty to one charge of negligent homicide in the case of Romans.
In return, he will be offered a chance at rehabilitation.
The deal was opposed by relatives of Romans, who complained to journalists that the prosecutors had seemed more concerned for the boy's welfare than for that of his victim.
Barring unforeseeable developments, there will never be an explanation for the murder.
- OBSERVER
