UPDATED: Missouri Killer Pleads Guilty To Killing Texas Family:

UPDATE AND SENTENCE AT BOTTOM OF STORY:

A convicted killer from Missouri has pleaded guilty to killing a family in Pampa, Texas in 2005.

Twenty six year-old Levi King (a.) changed his plea this morning in a Lubbock, Tx, courtroom. But King's story started hundreds of miles away near Anderson, Mo.

A relative of 70 year-old Orlie McCool and his 47 year-old daughter-in-law Dawn Burr McCool found them shot to death in a rural Pineville, MO., home on Sept. 30, 2005.

Orlie McCool was shot once with a 9 mm weapon, while Dawn McCool suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Ballistics tests determined that shell casings found at the scene matched a 9 mm Smith and Wesson handgun taken from the home of Scott King, Levi King's father.

In the commission of the McCool's murders, Orlie McCool's red 1995 Dodge Dakota pickup truck was stolen. About 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2005, agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency near El Paso arrested Levi King after stopping a red 1995 Dodge Dakota pickup that was being driven erratically and attempting to re-enter the US from the Mexican side of the border.

Cops found four loaded weapons in the stolen truck. Three of the guns belonged to his father...one of the guns belonged to Orlie McCool.

A name tag bearing the name Brian Conrad was found in stolen pickup when King was arrested. That name tag led investigators to a similar crime in the Texas Panhandle.

The same day that the McCool's were found murdered, about 375 miles away authorities in the Texas Panhandle were called to a farmhouse in rural Pampa, Texas. Brian Conrad, 31, his wife, Michell Conrad, 35, and her 14-year-old son Zach Doan and the family's dog, Molly were shot to death. Michelle Conrad was six months pregnant at the time of her death.

Michell Conrad's 10 year-old daughter, Robin, was the only survivor of the family massacre. The 9-1-1 call that she made following the shotgun slayings of her family members had never been heard by the public until today when it was played for the jury. It's not clear whether or not she will be called upon to testify during the penalty phase of King's trial.

Investigators say ballistics tests link one of the guns that King was in possession of at the time of his arrest to the Missouri and Texas murders.

King was released in July of 2005 from prison to a halfway house in St. Louis after he served 17 months of a 14-year sentence on a 2003 arson and burglary conviction.

King left the halfway house on Sept. 23, 2005 saying he was going to work, and never came back. No one at the halfway house called cops to tell them that King had violated conditions of his parole.

On April 18, 2008, King pleaded guilty to the McCools murders after prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. He was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life without the possibility of parole for the murders of Orlie and Dawn McCool.

UPDATE 10-07-09:

Levi King has been sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of the Conrads and their son.

Robin Doan, the lone survivor of Kings murederous rampage told him during the penalty phase that, "she forgives him."

She also said she felt guilty about not being able to save her family, The Pampa News reported. "Why did God pick me to be here and not them?" she said.

The jury foreperson says that one lone juror was the holdout on King receiving the death penalty, and that he was "flabbergasted" that a death sentence was not the outcome in the case.