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Two people sleeping in their bed at night
were murdered by apparent gunshot wounds.
A sunny O.C. Family ripped apart by gunfire.
It was absolutely a brutal crime scene.
They were very successful,
and by all accounts they had a wonderful, loving family.
It-it's heartbreaking. I'm sorry, it's heartbreaking.
Detectives dive in and discover the victims
could have a deep list of enemies.
It was possible the murder
had something to do with the victims' business dealings.
Tenants had disagreements,
civil litigation. -They had investors.
Did they owe somebody money?
A lot of people had potential motivation.
The investigation reveals a suspect close to the victims
found lurking in the shadows.
Greed overtook everyone.
Millionaires litter the hills of orange county
like shells on a beach,
and one such entrepreneurial power couple,
andra and Brad sachs, found each other
and climbed to the top.
Here's andra in her red Mercedes.
Andra is my younger sister.
She is the youngest one in the family.
Here's andra and I when we were younger.
It looks like we were at a party.
Wow, how good I looked.
She looked good, too.
Andra was always a businesswoman,
from I'd say five years old she mentioned it first.
"I'm going to be rich."
Brad: How do you focus this thing?
Andra and I went to a computer trade show
to sell some of her excess inventory.
She was selling computer chips during the computer chip crunch.
Andra and I were super hot
when we were young,
and there was no women working there.
So we got a lot of business. That's the truth.
Opportunities came to her, and she took them.
I remember when andra met Brad
at a computer convention.
They were soul mates
from day one.
They saw each other, and they clicked.
Say hello, Brad.
Brad is rad.
That's all I can really say.
He-he was a drummer.
He liked doing, like, sports, surfing.
Brad was a surfer, but he was also
a very hardworking businessman.
They had all these businesses
and techy ideas making money.
Brad and andra started
an Internet company called flashcom.
They had a lot of investors.
They did business with a lot of people,
and they had real estate.
They were very wealthy.
Say hello.
Andra wanted to have a lot of children,
and they had Myles, Ashton,
Alexis and Sabrina.
Myles had a business brain.
He was always trying to figure out a way
to make a couple dollars.
Ashton was intelligent. A very-very smart child.
Lexi was quiet.
She just watched everything.
And the baby, Sabrina, a little cabbage patch doll,
was cute.
She was a very good mother.
She loved her children very, very much.
While the sachs Rose to their role
as orange county royalty, their picture-perfect family
was suddenly struck by tragedy.
Andra lost her youngest, Sabrina,
in a horrible casualty.
I heard a lot of different stories,
but the story that andra told me is that
she fell in the jacuzzi and got sucked into
the bottom of the jacuzzi.
And Ashton said to me
when I first came, "Sabrina's dead."
It was like he wanted to see my reaction.
I don't think kids knew how to deal with death.
Brad was sitting under a table
crying like a little baby after it happened.
He, like, lost it.
There was so much blame and anger and...
Andra didn't believe in crying.
You stay tough, even in crisis.
It was hard on the family.
Although they had lost
an irreplaceable light in their life,
the sachs found a way to move on
and bring new love into their family.
Andra went over to Russia with Myles
to adopt a little girl, Lana, who would fill
that void I feel they all had.
She had a little brother.
She only planned to get one child,
but she came back with two.
Landon was so cute.
I mean, honestly, I don't think
I could've left him there, either.
They were happy, very happy.
You know, I found it amazing, with tragedy,
that everybody was...
Still going on.
Eventually, Myles and Ashton, when they grew up
and they wanted to go to college,
they moved to Seattle.
Andra was very proud of her kids.
She always talked about, like, getting old,
and she said that we could sit in her house
and watch the boats go by on the dock,
joke about our kids and stuff.
Andra and Brad sachs had found
their perch above it all on peppertree bend
in San Juan capistrano,
a street lined with enormous mansions
and ocean views.
Stories of powerful ascension and hushed betrayal
are woven through these orange county hillsides.
But the sachs enjoyed a perfect O.C. Life upon the crest--
until their castle became a crime scene.
February 9, 2014,
at about 2:30 in the morning, I was at home asleep in bed
and received a telephone call of a murder
that had happened in the city of San Juan capistrano,
and they requested
the homicide unit to respond to the scene.
I didn't just want to see the pictures
of the crime scene,
I wanted to see the crime scene.
When I arrived, it looked like a mansion.
It has a private gate.
It's a large residence, multiple-story home.
The master bedroom is at the end of a long walkway.
Two people were deceased in the master bedroom...
...by apparent gunshot wounds.
It was clear that the two people dead
inside the home were the owners of the home,
the parents, andra and Brad sachs.
Apparently, they were asleep in their bed,
and then they had three of their kids
asleep in their home, too-- Landon, Lexi and Lana.
There were numerous shell casings
about the floor in the master bedroom.
I think there were eight gunshot wounds
for the father, and I think seven for the mother.
There were shell casings
outside of the little boy's room.
A little boy had been shot and injured.
The eight-year-old victim
had already been transported out of the residence
and to the hospital, because obviously he was still alive
but in grave, serious condition,
and I am hoping and praying that he's gonna survive.
This is gonna be a double-murder or a triple-murder case.
The two uninjured people in the house
were two teenage girls.
Landon's sister Lana
was actually asleep in the bedroom
in between Landon's bedroom and the parents' bedroom,
and then the older sister,
Lexi, was in another bedroom on another floor.
The older teenage girl,
she had been asleep in the middle of the night
and was woken up by a kicked door
and a very dark, shadowy figure firing a gun at her.
And she heard the cries of her... brother for help
that she went and then discovered what had happened.
The other teenage girl did not hear the gunshots.
The older sister woke her up.
It was absolutely a brutal crime scene.
It did not appear
as if this was an interrupted burglary to US.
There was no evidence of a robbery.
There was no evidence of ransacking at all.
It didn't appear to me
that it was a completely random act.
Based on where the house was located,
the victims, how they were shot,
the shooting of the little boy,
whoever committed this murder,
it seemed like they had to know where they were going.
The crime lab personnel
were out there for an extended period of time,
and the forensic evidence didn't immediately produce
any suspects of note,
and so we really had a whodunit.
She talked about having a lot of debt
and everybody coming after her money.
There are a lot of people
that don't like the way they do business.
There was a lawyer they owed
huge amounts of legal fees.
They're calling all of US. It was scary.
The O.C. Mighty had fallen,
as Brad and andra sachs
were slain in their sleep,
and the sachs' youngest son,
Landon, lay fighting for his life
after the horrific midnight massacre.
We knew by that time that the two decedent victims
had two adult children
that did not live in California.
Ashton, the younger one,
was in Seattle going to a community college,
and then the oldest son, Myles,
was in Pullman, at Washington state university.
We made the decision
to make a death notification via telephone to them.
It was approximately 10:30 in the morning, I believe.
My partner called the older boy,
and I called Ashton.
It went to voice mail,
and he returned that message after 12:00.
I told him that, um, I regretted to inform him
that his parents had been murdered,
that his brother had been wounded.
He became hysterical on the phone.
I mean, I-I was genuinely concerned
if he might harm himself.
Eventually he was able to collect himself,
and we had a very limited conversation.
He made arrangements with his brother
to fly down that day to orange county.
Death notifications are... Are terrible.
We don't deliver good news when we call.
So, they're hard. They're heartbreaking.
The detectives knocked on my door.
They said, "your sister is deceased."
And I'm like, "what?"
I go, "no, I just talked to her."
They told me that they were shot in their bed,
and I pretty much didn't want to hear it, okay?
I was trying to shut-- I didn't want to hear it.
I was-- I go, "no. Don't tell me. Don't tell me."
And...
It was very hard to come to terms with what was going on.
Not one, but two murders?...
It was a life cut short, two lives,
two successful people who love each other.
They love their family and their children.
They were the closest family I had.
I was just crying hysterically.
I didn't know who could do that.
I didn't know why they would go after the kids either.
Landon was shot in the back.
He was laying on the floor
and he was grabbing for his toy.
I know. It-it's heartbreaking.
I'm sorry, it's heartbreaking.
Landon didn't die from the gunshot.
He was in critical condition in the hospital.
And I remember that the funeral for andra and Brad
was very hard.
Alexis seemed devastated.
Lana was trying to comfort Alexis.
And then, when I saw the caskets there with the flowers,
I saw the reality of it,
and I just started crying like crazy.
I couldn't stop crying.
Growing up, my mom was always a hero to me.
She was just an incredible person.
Everyone who knew andra and Brad
knew how much they loved each other.
They're still together,
and they'll be together forever.
She didn't work her whole life,
and have all those beautiful children,
and accumulate whatever she did to lose it all in the end.
It's not fair.
These people did not deserve this,
and I'm gonna do everything I can to find out who did it
and hold them responsible for it.
So at that point, we're trying to find out
who might have a motive to hurt or kill
a member of this family.
Everybody is open for consideration.
You can't immediately eliminate family members.
Detectives first looked
at whether the other sachs children
were victims or suspects.
We had to get a search warrant
to search the cell phone records
of every member of the family who had a cell phone--
including the two older boys,
the two teenage girls,
and Brad and andra.
There's a time delay in getting those.
You don't get those immediately.
You're waiting for that for a few weeks.
Detectives wanted to check in
with Myles and Ashton and see if they had,
you know, any suspicions
about who might've committed the murders.
You figure, right, if the victims,
the mom and dad, have some dispute with somebody,
maybe they talk to their adult sons about it.
Do they know about any disputes, right?
So, you know, do they know about anybody
that their parents were in business with?
Myles and Ashton were quick
to aid the investigation,
offering exactly the kind of insider info
the detectives hoped would break the case.
We received a list from one of the boys
with names that they believed
were people of interest that we should be looking at.
There are a lot of people that don't like
the way they do business.
They had a lot of lawsuits involved
in the way they do business.
We found a number of people,
either through civil litigation,
through business disputes, who were not upset
at the deaths of Brad and andra.
Within a very short period of time,
there appeared to be a lot of people who may have had
a potential motivation to kill the sachs.
While investigators chased the trail
of the sachs' critics across the county,
a possible piece of hard evidence emerged
right next door.
We also did a neighborhood canvass,
trying to talk to every neighbor
to see what, if anything, they knew.
In the early stages of the investigation, we determined
that one of the neighbors had surveillance video footage.
The point of focus on the video was a-a patio
of a neighboring house.
At the far end of the camera,
you had a view of peppertree bend.
It's not the kind of street
where people can just drive by.
This was on a kind of a cul-de-sac kind of a street.
The victims' house was right near the end of the cul-de-sac.
And approximately 30 minutes before the 911 call,
a vehicle is seen traveling down peppertree bend
in the direction of the cul-de-sac.
There are no other cars in the neighborhood
for any appreciable time before or after the murder.
What is this car doing at 1:30 in the morning
in this neighborhood?
We know now we have a car of interest.
The person driving towards the crime scene
is a potential suspect. That's a lead.
Essentially, we're gonna take it from there
to find out who did this.
The children of Brad and andra sachs were left
holding the ashes of a perfect orange county life
after their parents' murder
and the shooting of their little brother.
Fortunately, a neighbor's security camera offered
a new break for detectives--
footage that may have captured the killer's car.
Because of the lack of lighting,
it-it's basically a black-and-white video.
There was no license plate that we're able to get.
All we could really say was it's a light-colored car.
At that point, we took the video
to a local Toyota dealership.
Spoke to the service manager.
He thought the brake light pattern
belonged to a prius.
In southern California, a prius is a very common vehicle.
There was nothing about it that said,
okay, this is what's gonna break the case for US,
but it was a relevant factor for US.
When we found that video surveillance footage
of the prius in the location of the residence,
part of what we did is to try to go back
and try to see if we can find any videos
from a major intersection that close by.
And you wait and you see what other pieces are you gonna get
to be able to connect them together.
At the same time,
the eight-year-old son of the two victims was shot,
and he was in grave condition.
Um, I asked to be completely updated
on the condition of the eight-year-old.
We start getting the good news
that it appears that he's gonna survive.
It is a sense of urgency
to give the victims the justice they deserve,
so you got to try to figure out some potential evidence
pointing at the potential perpetrator.
Climbing to the top of the orange county ladder
doesn't come without stepping on the fingers
of those on the rungs below.
The investigators had a lot of roads to go down.
Every single one of these roads had something to do
with the victims' business dealings.
We had to look at: Did they owe somebody money?
There was a really major lawsuit against the sachs
that was spearheaded by a lawyer named David weinstein,
who was basically tasked
with overseeing the bankruptcy of flashcom.
Flashcom was the Internet business
that Brad and andra started.
Was it a success?
It bombed large.
They had investors.
She talked about having a lot of debt
and everybody coming after her money and stuff.
Initially, I thought one of the investors from flashcom
had committed the murders.
That was scary.
So, weinstein had been litigating this bankruptcy case
for years, basically going after the sachs,
saying that they'd illegally saved themselves
from financial ruin by keeping money for themselves
that should've gone to the creditors
of their bankrupted company.
Weinstein was owed huge amounts of legal fees.
He'd been told that there was gonna be
a big payout at the end,
but in the end he was still owed money on this.
And he'd made it really clear that he disliked the sachs.
And we did consider the possibility
of a professional contract killer.
So, at this point, we're looking for this individual
to try to go interview,
to see... would he talk to US?
Detectives worked their way down a list
of potential suspects provided by the sachs' sons
and learned that the sachs' empire
reached beyond the tech sector
and into a whole new realm of potential suspects.
Brad and andra had both
commercial and residential real estate.
For one reason or another,
several of those tenants had disputes with the sachs
over conditions at the different properties.
We found a site on the Internet where people can post reviews.
Kind of like a consumer-type site.
There were some negative reviews.
Some were... very blunt.
So we went through those sites.
We tried to identify the parties involved,
and sought to interview them.
As detectives followed leads
prompter by the older sachs sons,
the two boys stayed close by with their sisters
at a family home in coronado, doing whatever they could
to help their family through this nightmare.
After the murders, Landon was mostly on medication.
Myles and Ashton were bringing him video games to play with.
He had a lot of good attention from the nurses.
But they said the bullet went right through his spine.
And they said that Landon was paralyzed.
It's awful. This child was shot,
and be... that much in pain.
And paralyzed-- it's awful.
There's no words for it.
There's just no words for it.
We all rallied around each other.
I was very hopeful that they would resolve the crime,
and get to the bottom of it and figure this out.
As detectives dove deeper
into the orange county business contacts of the sachs,
suspects continued to rise to the surface.
According to the case file,
investigators talked to weinstein,
and he's very up front about the fact
that he was trying to get money from the sachs
and that he didn't like them.
But he is adamant that he would never cross the line.
Investigators can't really find
any evidence connecting him to any of this,
so he's eventually just labeled a nonsuspect.
We continued interviewing people,
chasing down sometimes the most obscure leads we could find,
because you-you just don't know.
And you don't know what you don't know.
According to the case file,
there was a former marine sniper that was actually staying
at one of the sachs' rental properties.
He had actually written something
on a consumer report website,
kind of celebrating the fact that Brad and andra were dead.
The fact that he was a sniper in the marines
obviously caught the police attention,
because they're like, "there's somebody who knows how to use
an assault rifle and could possibly shoot someone."
We talked to him,
and we couldn't establish that he was in the area
at the time of the crime.
And he was eliminated as a potential suspect.
At this point in the investigation,
there were a number of people who were considered,
but all my prime targets aren't...
Aren't working out for me.
For me personally, I was starting to feel concerned
about solving the case.
And then, the turning point came.
We obtained video from traffic lights
just south of the sachs' residence.
And in reviewing the video footage,
we uncovered a new lead to track down and follow up on.
Every time he made a phone call, we're able to show the location,
a road map for the travel of the suspect.
Why is he driving down here?
Why is he misleading US in the investigation a-a month before?
Why would you do that?
The orange county sheriff's department
was scouring for evidence through the abundance
of surveillance cameras in upscale San Juan capistrano,
seeking a new suspect in the murder of the sachs.
A neighbor's video had revealed
that a white prius could be the killer's vehicle,
and a traffic cam captured the same car.
Approximately a half hour prior
to the 911 call,
a white prius is seen going northbound
in the direction of the sachs' residence.
Approximately 30 minutes later,
a white prius is going southbound.
The car is traveling so fast-- approximately
60, 70 miles an hour, maybe even faster.
That was immediately of interest to US,
because that struck US.
That's somebody who's running from the crime scene.
That seemed to correspond with what we had seen
in the surveillance video at peppertree bend.
So, at this point, we know we're definitely looking
for somebody who drives a white prius.
During the course of the investigation,
we learn of the sachs' former businesses.
One of their tech adventures
was a company called plug-in solutions,
which made modifications to a Toyota prius, I believe.
So, at that point, an investigator
calls Myles, the older brother,
asking him to give US an inventory
of who's driving what car.
And it was at that point that we learned
that Ashton, his brother, was driving a white prius.
And that was huge.
So, then it becomes this focus on Ashton.
Ashton was clearly in Seattle when detectives called
to notify him of his parents' death.
But was it possible that his prius
was the car caught on video?
Could the sachs' good, grieving son
have somehow been involved in their murder?
At that point, Ashton seemed to be very helpful.
It gave the appearance of cooperation,
that Ashton wanted to see this murder solved.
While investigators awaited evidence
from the family's subpoenaed cell phone records,
they examined Ashton sachs in a whole new light
and a terrifying possibility began to emerge.
And here's Ashton. My god.
He was such an adorable baby.
See? And that was Ashton. Devious little Ashton.
His shoe... Lexi's shoe.
He threw it in the fountain.
Ashton was a handful.
He had energy.
Maybe sometimes too much.
He could get away with a lot because he was so cute.
The signs of depression and mental issues
didn't come till way later.
After the death of his sister, Ashton's family watched
his darkness blossom with each passing year.
Andra expressed to some of the family members
she was on edge with Ashton around.
Brad and Ashton had friction.
Ashton wouldn't listen to him many times,
so she asked him to move to Seattle.
It's not like she just kicked him out.
She gave him a condo, she gave him a car,
she set him up, she was flying back and forth to see him.
She kept in constant contact with him
and was sending him money to go to school.
She had an idea, I think, that if he was in Seattle,
he would do better.
He'd be in school.
He was not going, though.
And andra got very upset with him.
She wasn't gonna funnel them money;
they weren't on a free ride.
I think he got into drugs.
I think-- I-I know for a fact there was marijuana involved,
and I think maybe he was taking meth.
No one could expect the afflicted O.C. Son
to turn on those who loved him the most.
Had Ashton's dark side finally consumed
any part of him that was good?
Could he have pulled the trigger himself?
I clearly remember realizing that maybe
we have a son who murdered his mother, his father,
and tried to murder his brother and his sister.
A question that we did not have the answer to, which is "why?"
Why would you do that?
Detectives hoped that new evidence
would serve as Ashton's alibi for better or worse.
We had gotten a search warrant
for cell phone records on the day of the murder.
And about the time that we were learning
that we were looking at a white prius
and Ashton drove a white prius,
the cell phone records came in for Ashton.
Cell phone records can be
a treasure trove of information about people.
Cell phone evidence is, the beauty of technology.
It gives you a road map.
It tells you where somebody was located
at a specific period of time.
And there's software,
you can map cell phone towers,
and it paints a perfect picture of where they've been.
And so, looking through the call detail records,
there was evidence that Ashton drove southbound...
...from Seattle to San Juan capistrano.
Beginning 12 hours or so before the murders.
It gives US an amazing amount of information
that helps US hopefully be able to solve this crime.
We hadn't taken a closer look at the boys
because they appeared to be out of the area.
We knew with certainty that they were in Washington
at the time that we made the death notifications.
I didn't think it was possible for Ashton
to make it back to Seattle and make it back to his condo
in the time that was necessary to answer my call.
But now, he became the 100% focus of our efforts.
A wealthy orange county family had been gunned down
in a spray of bullets, and troubled son Ashton sachs
told police he was a thousand miles away.
But his cell phone told a darkly different story,
as it pinged all the way home on the night of the murder.
Why is he driving down here?
Why is he misleading US in the investigation a-a month before?
Things started coming together pointing to Ashton.
But could there be an innocent explanation to all of this?
It's starting to look like not.
But you want to have the best case that you can.
We need to make sure that we have all of our i's dotted,
all of our t's crossed before we go down and make the arrest.
Ashton's phone records didn't lie
and corroborated the two videos placing his car at the scene.
But if he had driven all the way to orange county
to commit the crime, how was he in Seattle just hours later
to take the detective's call?
And where was his car now?
Every time he made a phone call,
every time he accessed information on his phone,
we were able to show the location
where that information happened.
We've kind of done
a cursory look at cell phone records,
but now we need to figure out, on the day of the murder,
who is Ashton talking to on his phone?
And we find out that he calls American airlines.
I obtained a search warrant
to get records from American airlines
and learned that Ashton had, in fact, purchased a flight
on February 9, to fly from John Wayne airport
in orange county to Seattle.
We obtained surveillance video from John Wayne airport
that showed Ashton being dropped off by a taxi cab
in the early morning hours of February 9
until eventually boarding his flight
going back to Seattle.
He told US a bunch of baloney. He lied to US.
And we find out he calls a transportation company
to move his car in San Juan capistrano
shortly after the murders.
A member of the sheriff's homicide unit contacts the owner
of this transportation company,
says, "hey, do you know anything about Ashton sachs?"
And he says, "yes, as a matter of fact.
"I've got his car,
and he's not coming to get it, and he owes me money."
It is a white prius.
He goes, "it's at my property in Seattle."
And so it's like, "hold that thought."
We asked him not to tell Ashton,
and we reached out to Seattle pd homicide
to secure a search warrant.
Ashton was still playing the part
of the "good brother" in orange county,
completely unaware that he was now the number one suspect
in the murder of his parents,
and that the evidence was betraying his lies.
Using that cell phone,
it allowed US to show a road map
for the travel of the suspect.
Now we have enough evidence to prove Ashton sachs
had traveled down from Seattle to orange county
at a time when the murders had happened.
He made arrangements for his prius to be shipped back
to Washington state, called a cab,
ended up in the airport.
Flew back to Washington state,
took the phone call from the detectives,
pretending to be...
The sad, poor, poor son
of two victims that were murdered.
The picture on the board
was becoming clearer and clearer and clearer.
Subsequently,
when we did all the investigation,
we were able to locate that prius
back in Washington state.
We were able to get a search warrant for that prius.
We were able to have that prius searched.
I distinctly remember being on the phone and being told,
"you're not gonna believe what we found in the prius."
In the back seat of the car,
we have a ruger .22-caliber weapon.
What are the odds?
I mean, this is almost like a perfect Hollywood moment.
Ballistics determined
that that's the murder weapon.
And we were able to do an examination
on the murder weapon and find out that it was purchased
by Ashton sachs.
What he did became very, very clear to US.
A horrifying series of truths
revealed themselves to detectives,
exposing a dark betrayal and an indelible stain
on sunny orange county.
In my mind,
there was no innocent explanation
to all the facts that we'd accumulated at that point.
Ashton had lingered closer to home
in the three weeks since his parents' murder,
having holed up with his siblings
at a second family home near San Diego.
So, on march 6 of 2014,
we drove down to coronado
down in San Diego county
in southern California, about an hour and a half south
of orange county,
where Ashton was living with his siblings.
We were able to speak to Ashton alone at his residence.
He is very...
Animated as he talks.
He's sitting up straight.
And Ashton didn't know what we knew at the time.
As we asked him these very narrowing questions,
his body posture, and even his voice,
became very crouched and defeated.
He eventually came to a point where he said,
"I don't want to answer those questions."
And at that point, we told him
we were placing him under arrest.
And from there, we transported him
to sheriff's headquarters in Santa Ana.
We went down there with the hopes of interviewing him
and possibly getting a confession from him.
Every step of the way, the evidence that we had
allowed US to be able to say, "Ashton sachs
is not just a suspect-- this is the perpetrator,
this is the person who committed
these horrendous crimes.
A trail of evidence had led investigators
far from the O.C. To find the weapon that killed
Brad and andra sachs
in the trunk of devious son Ashton's car.
It was time for Ashton to face the facts,
with the hope he would shed some light
on his very dark turn.
When we arrived at sheriff's headquarters,
he waived his Miranda rights and agreed to talk to US.
You want to get a confession to see,
is he gonna give you a motive for what he did,
why he did it.
So from that standpoint, a confession,
or at least a statement from the suspect,
is very, very important.
I think he'd come to the realization
of what was happening to him, that he was...
Gonna be going to prison for a very long time.
I remember just being surprised
that he actually was confessing to the crime.
He obviously wasn't trying to talk his way out of it.
The only child who wasn't shot at that night
was Lana.
Ashton knew she had dogs in her room and that if...
Something happened, the dogs could start barking.
He admitted that he was inside the house
for 30 minutes, going back and forth,
trying to weigh in his own mind on...
Whether to do it or not to do it.
He obviously knew what he was doing.
I think the reason he did it
was because he had dropped out of school
and he was gonna have to face his parents for that.
He felt slighted by his parents.
I think that's what drove him.
This is a copy of the initial complaint
that I filed, um, day after he was arrested.
This is him writing down,
admitting the conduct of killing his mother and his father
with premeditation and deliberation.
It was horrendous, it was tragic,
but it was very, very clear.
Ashton sachs executed his mother and his father
while they were asleep.
He also cowardly shot at his eight-year-old brother,
and then sat by the bedside holding his hand,
telling him how much he loved him,
knowing very well that he was the one who paralyzed him.
Never in my experience have I seen a case
with such overwhelming evidence of a person's guilt.
And he came in, entered a guilty plea,
admitted to every single element of the charges
that I indicted him on, he admitted those,
and he was sentenced to life
without the possibility of parole.
It was very hard to come to terms
with what he had done,
because we just couldn't believe it.
His own parents, that raised him.
I just couldn't understand it.
It's just disbelief, like you go into some altered state.
You don't believe it.
We don't know how to feel, to be honest.
We loved him, so we still love him.
It's an odd place to be.
I feel...
He wasted his life.
This kid, this smart child that was...
Had so much going for him.
During the funeral, I sat next to him,
and I kept looking at him, and he was crying like crazy.
He was crying probably as much as I was.
So maybe he was remorseful.
Whether he was crying because of what he did,
or the fact that he just ruined his whole life,
I don't know.
I think he got what he deserves.
I think he should be in there forever
to think about what he did.
It's unfortunate, this case,
what's telling for me, this case, is...
How tragic it is when people take things for granted.
Ashton sachs, a one-time heir
to the riches of orange county,
now has nothing to leave to the future
but a legacy of torment and tragedy.
There have been reports in the last couple of years
that, the kids are doing well,
that Myles has kind of stepped into a patriarchal role
in the family, and that he's taken on
the parents' businesses.
Eight-year-old Landon, he was paralyzed,
but reports are, from Myles, that he-he's doing well today.
Andra and Brad were in love, truly.
I think they would have grown old together.
I remember Brad was always smiling.
He was a happy-go-lucky guy.
Easygoing. But creative.
He was amazing.
He didn't deserve this.
It's sad.
Andra and I had the closest relationship
because of our children.
I lost a friend and a sister.
She called me Izzy and I called her Fred.
Those were our nicknames for each other.
Andra was funny
and warm-hearted.
She did have a heart of gold.
I just remember her in a swimming pool.
I think she was holding Landon up in the air in the pool
and, you know, playing with him,
and he was giggling and she was laughing.
She really absolutely loved her children.
She did at least have those good times in her life.
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