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A 9-year-old boy who hid overnight with his younger brother and sister called 911 the next morning to report that his mother and grandmother had been shot to death inside a home in Rineyville, Kentucky, according to police and recordings of the call later released by investigators.

The two women were found dead on September 11, 2007, in a house in the Hardin County community where Tracy Burke, 31, had recently moved in with her three children, news outlets reported at the time. Killed with her was Karen Comer, 53, Burke's former mother-in-law and the children's grandmother. A family dog was also shot.

On the recording, the boy told a dispatcher that "somebody broke into our house last night" and that the intruder "killed everybody here except for my sister, my brother and me." He said a man with "a pistol or some kind of gun" had come in and shot his mother and grandmother, and that the children had been too frightened to call until daylight. He told the dispatcher he did not know who the gunman was.

About five weeks later, Kentucky State Police arrested Brent Burke, 29, a soldier stationed at Fort Campbell and Tracy Burke's estranged husband, according to WAVE-TV. He was charged with two counts of murder, burglary, three counts of wanton endangerment and animal cruelty. Investigators described the evidence as circumstantial, pointing to a receipt showing Burke had bought a holster and 9 mm ammunition months earlier of the same caliber recovered at the scene.

Prosecutors in Hardin County tried Burke four times, and each trial ended in a mistrial, according to court records and news accounts. There was no physical evidence placing him at the scene. State charges were dropped after the fourth mistrial, and the U.S. Army took the case, charging Burke under military law because he was an active-duty soldier at the time of the killings.

On May 8, 2012, a seven-member military panel at Fort Campbell convicted Burke of both murders, along with burglary, child endangerment and obstruction of justice. Two of the children had testified against him. The boy who made the 911 call, then 9, said he did not see the gunman but recognized his stepfather's voice, and Burke's younger son, 4 at the time, said he saw his father in the house with a gun. Burke was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, reduced in rank to private, ordered to forfeit all pay and given a dishonorable discharge.