Family Of Convicted Torturer To Fight His Release

EL DORADO HILLS (CBS13) -- She says her husband terrorized her family and beat her mercilessly for years. Richard Hamlin's now serving life in prison but could be paroled as early as next week. His family wants to make sure that doesn't happen.

Their childhoods were spent living in terror.

"He was fond of hitting us all with books," his son Alec told CBS13's Checkey Beckford on Tuesday.

"A couple of times I was afraid he was going to shoot my mom," said daughter Jenn.

"It was just every day constantly living in fear," said daughter Clare.

A one-time prominent prosecutor and defense attorney, Richard Hamlin was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 after his tortured family broke their silence.

"He took me to the sheriff's office to confess to molesting my children and I saw that as an opportunity to get out," his wife, Susan Hamlin, said.

But police didn't buy her bizarre story, one that included satanic cults, prostitution and molestation -- all thought up by a delusional Richard Hamlin.

"He'd had me doing rehearsal sessions of this confession for months at gunpoint and he audio taped several of them," Susan said.

But after that trip to the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office in 2004, there would be no more terror for this family. Richard was arrested, and their nightmare was over, although the scars still remain.

"I haven't been able to attend school because of anxiety," Jenn, 14 said.

Jenn, Clare, 16, and Alec, 19, say that despite the terror they lived through, they've managed to eek out some semblance of a normal life. But the family now worries that could all change if Richard Hamlin is granted parole on Monday.

"He would always say he would send someone to kill us even if he was in jail," Susan said. "I think the same delusions that motivated the violence is still there. I think he's still dangerous."

Despite the devastating abuse they suffered at Richard's hands, the family plans to attend this parole hearing and every one to come to make sure parole officials know they want Richard Hamlin to stay behind bars.

"I do kinda want to see him, just so that I can see what he looks like now," Clare said. "That question that's always in my mind is like, why he did it to us."

The family says they have no plans of moving if Hamlin is released. If they did that, he would have in fact won, they said.

Richard Hamlin's eldest son, Ryan, recently back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, will also attend the parole hearing to oppose his father's release.