More than three years after Chad Doerman killed his three young sons at the family home in Monroe Township, Clermont County, Ohio, newly released police interview footage has made public the most detailed account of what he told detectives in the hours after the crime. In the recordings, Doerman said he acted “for God” and believed he was carrying out a divine test.

The killings occurred on the afternoon of June 15, 2023. Court records and the interrogation video indicate that Doerman came home from work earlier than usual, walked through the house with a Bible, and repeatedly said phrases such as “Chad knows what’s right.” He later took a rifle from a gun safe and fatally shot his sons: Clayton, 7; Hunter, 4; and Chase, 3. When deputies arrived, the boys were found outside the house and Doerman was sitting nearby with the weapon. Their mother was injured while trying to protect them. A stepdaughter escaped and sought help.

In the interview that evening, Doerman at first gave short or evasive answers. As questioning continued, he said he believed he and those around him were in Hell and that the world was ending. He said he had been frightened and had asked for help with disturbing thoughts in the period before that day. He referred to a Bible story about sacrifice that his father had once read to him and said the idea stayed with him after a church service in nearby Amelia.

Doerman told detectives that God tests people and that such a command cannot be refused. When an investigator asked whether he had followed through, he answered that he had done so “for God.” He also said he had thought about a specific order involving family members and expressed regret about the sequence that occurred. A toxicology report later found alcohol in his system but no other substances.

Prosecutors described the killings as planned and said Doerman had been thinking about them for months. In August 2024 he pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder and two counts of felonious assault. Under a plea agreement that took the death penalty off the table, he received three consecutive life sentences without parole, plus additional time on the assault counts involving his former wife and stepdaughter. Until the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office released the interrogation videos in August 2026, a clear statement of motive in his own words had not been widely available.

The recordings have drawn new attention to a case that shocked the Cincinnati area. They show Doerman tying his actions to religious ideas and to a belief that his family needed to be removed from what he called Hell. Court records and prosecutors have described the events as deliberate. Doerman remains in prison serving the sentences imposed in 2024.

Anyone with additional information is asked to contact the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office.

Sources

• FOX19 NOW, “Chad Doerman says he killed his 3 sons ‘for God’ in newly released Clermont County sheriff’s video” (August 2026)
• Local 12 / WKRC reporting on the released interrogation
• WLWT / Cincinnati Enquirer coverage of the August 2024 guilty plea and sentencing
• Clermont County court records summarized in contemporaneous news reports