Man with local ties to appear on Investigation Discovery episode

A young man whose family has roots in the Jackson and Cape Girardeau areas will be starring in a crime show set to air Saturday on Investigation Discovery.

"Hell House" will be shown at 8 p.m. on the sister station of the Discovery Channel. Investigation Discovery's shows use actors to portray real crimes.

Carter Oakley, 23, recently landed the starring role of Billy Rouse, the teenage son of a couple who were brutally murdered in their Libertyville, Illinois, mansion in 1980.

"It's hard to do, you know?" said Oakley's mother, Jane McCarty Oakley, a graduate of Jackson High School. "It' a hard part to land."

She said her son recently graduated from New York's Syracuse University with a degree in broadcast journalism but decided he wanted to go into acting instead. So he found an agent on the East Coast and began auditioning for roles.

Rouse, who was 15 at the time of his parents' slayings in the wealthy suburb of Chicago, was convicted several years later of shooting his mother, Darlene, in the face while she slept and then shooting his father, Bruce, in the head and repeatedly stabbing him in the chest. The younger Rouse wasn't convicted until finally admitting his crime in 1996, after he had squandered his $1 million inheritance, according to news reports.

The Rouses' wealth came from owning a chain of gas stations as well as some cable and real-estate holdings.

The elder Oakley said she is proud of her son's accomplishment -- and his movie-star looks.

Oakley is the grandson of the late Edward and Elizabeth McClary of Jackson. His aunt Mary still lives in Cape Girardeau.

He now lives outside Washington, D.C.

ljones@semissourian.com

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