Why do people get murdered?
Money, sex, and power is the three big themes.
You're my business partner and you're a problem.
I eliminate you.
You know, I want to have a new lover and I eliminate my new one or just money or whatever, revenge.
And it was tough because this scene didn't really fall into any of those categories necessarily.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
The case we're covering today is solved, but in some aspects it doesn't feel that way.
Because there's still a question that nags at me, and that is why the killer did what they did.
We all know that many homicide cases get solved without ever knowing a motive.
And as frustrating as that can be for both the families of victims and for members of law enforcement, today's case seems to take it to another level.
This story starts in Southern California.
It was there that Andra and Brad Sachs met and raised a family.
Andra had spent most of her childhood in the suburbs of Maryland.
After her father retired from the National Security Administration, he moved his family to San Diego.
And while there, the family had times of real financial hardship, and it affected Andra greatly.
It was part of what steered her to business and what fueled her drive for success.
Brad was a California boy with a passion for surfing and playing the drums.
His laid-back persona complemented Andra's adrenaline and drive.
The pair became partners in business and love.
Their ventures ran the gamut.
Real estate, computer companies, a telemarketing firm, even a wine bar.
Their family grew as well.
In a six-year time span, the couple had four children, two boys and then two girls.
And it was in 1998 that the couple found their most lucrative success an internet DSL service named Flashcom.
They had a company called Back in the early 2000s, that was providing high-speed DSL to residences.
A lot of people don't remember when you had dial-up to get high-speed service.
That was a big deal.
They were making quite a bit of money.
That's former Orange County investigator Mike Thompson, who we spoke with about today's case.
When I hear the dot-com craze, I just remember thinking that everyone in California was making big money.
At least that's what it felt like to me here on the East Coast.
It was a phenomenon in the late 1990s.
It was driven by the rapid growth of the internet and there were a lot of people flocking to create online businesses, believing that the old, traditional business models would become obsolete.
But I remember it happening, and then I remember it falling and exploding.
And so the Sachs were enjoying the financial benefits from Flashcom.
But in 1999, things took a devastating turn in their personal lives.
Their youngest daughter accidentally drowned in the pool.
And the whole family was deeply impacted, but it was especially destabilizing for Andra and Brad's marriage.
They had divorced in the early 2000s.
And it was not amicable.
Beyond the angst of custody agreements relating to their children, they also had their various business ventures, so there was a lot of entanglements to sort through.
Ownership of Flashcom was an especially big sticking point for them, since it was a really successful company that had made millions.
That is, until later that year.
I think you're old enough to remember the dot-com boom and the crash that followed that.
The company had to file for bankruptcy.
The Sachs.
They ended up in litigation relating to Flashcom and some other businesses that they had at the time.
You know, dealing with business concerns as a couple together really is tough enough, especially when litigation is involved in it.
But remember they were also dealing with personal tragedy the loss of their daughter in a drowning.
And to hear that the couple divorced.
Well, unfortunately that is not an uncommon occurrence after the loss of a child.
After a couple of years, they reconciled and they had gotten back together.
It did seem like this was a new chapter for the Sachses, because by this point the couple had also decided to grow their family.
They adopted two children from Russia, a boy and a girl.
Now the Sachs children numbered five two older sons and a daughter, plus the newly adopted siblings.
Despite all the monetary uncertainty of the times, this family seemed to still be doing well.
They had multiple real estate holdings and they could afford to move into the upscale neighborhood of San Juan Capistrano, California.
San Juan Capistrano is one of the older areas in South Orange County.
There are some working class neighborhoods in San Juan Capistrano, and then there are some extremely affluent residences that are multiple millions of dollars, even some gated communities.
The house is in a wealthy part of town.
Let's just say this home was massive.
A mansion that was more than 8,000 square feet and valued at almost $4 million.
And it was the place where the family would experience the worst night of their lives.
It was February 8th, 2014, a normal Saturday night for the Sacks.
Their eldest two sons, Ashton and Miles, were off at college in Seattle.
So it was Ander, Brad and their three youngest at home.
They ate dinner together, watched TV, and turned in.
But in the middle of the night, a desperate 911 call was made from the home.
I believe it was a Sunday morning, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
We got a call that there had been a homicide in San Juan Capistrano.
It was one of Andrew and Brad's daughters that had called 911.
I think she just said somebody had been shot.
She had been woken out of sleep and I think the kid on the phone was still trying to grasp completely what had happened.
When police got to the scene and entered the home, they found someone lying face down in an upstairs hallway.
It was the Sachs' eight-year-old son.
He had been shot in the torso, but he was still alive.
One of the children had to be emergency evacuated out of the house before deputies had just cleared a path so that the paramedics could get in and get out.
And then they continued searching the house for a potential gunman.
And then there were two teenage girls in the house.
They wanted to secure them and make sure they were safe.
Now, make no mistake, this home was a huge complex.
Multiple rooms to clear for first responding officers.
Priority one is eliminating the threat.
And number two, clearly is to recover and treat any potential victims.
And priority three, if you have a crime scene, establish one and make it pristine.
Once officers were sure that there wasn't a shooter still on premises, Mike and his partner could go in and start taking stock of what was there.
The primary crime scene was the top floor of the residence.
I believe it was the third floor where we found the two homicide victims.
They were deceased in bed.
They had been shot.
It was 57-year-old Brad Sachs and his 54-year-old wife, Andra.
No evidence that they had struggled with their attacker, that they were even aware that their attacker was there.
There were multiple shell casings from what appeared obvious to be a 22 rimfire, and I think the count was 16.
Investigators moved through the house, making particular note of its layout in relation to how the shooter attacked the family members.
The youngest son, who had been shot and was fighting for his life at the hospital, was closest to Brad and Andrew's room.
It appeared that the gunman had stood at the door where the one child was and fired a few rounds.
I think it was three, striking the one child.
And then, for whatever reason, the gunman did not disturb the other child on that floor, but went down one flight of stairs.
To the very end of the house was another bedroom where another child was sleeping, kicked the door, fired one round, completely missed that child and fled the scene.
So the shooter shot at two of the children in the home, but completely ignored or missed the third. now we always talk about living witnesses left in a homicide case where they become a very important part early on in a timeline investigation in a victimology investigation because you have somebody who was there who could potentially give you really incredibly important details and important information as you begin your investigation that's of course if they can the one child that was not disturbed, didn't hear anything, didn't see anything until it was basically over.
The other child who was on the second floor at the end.
She wasn't even sure if they had shot at her.
She was kind of awakened by the door getting kicked open and heard a pop.
Wasn't exactly sure what it was but couldn't really provide any type of physical description.
And then the child had been shot and had been taken to the hospital, was shot in his sleep and did not have any information that he could provide us.
He didn't see anything, didn't know anything.
They were obviously traumatized by what happened and just the uncertainty of why it happened.
You can imagine how delicate investigators have to be, both from the physical injury going on, just the emotional turmoil that each one of these children must have been in.
Yet investigators needed to balance that with their immediate sense of needing to know.
So this is one of those situations where investigators are going to talk to the medical staff to see if having a conversation is appropriate at the time.
There were other considerations for these children as well.
Everybody was a minor at the scene and we were trying to find family who was local who could come be with them so that they wouldn't have to go in some type of a county foster system.
Around the same time, Mike learned that there were two older Sachs children who didn't live at the home, and it was the two oldest boys, Miles and Ashton.
We had interviewed the two teenage girls at the scene who had told us about their brothers, and then it was trying to decide do we make notification over the phone?
How do we do that?
Notification to family members about the loss of one of their own to homicide, as we've said before, is one of the most difficult parts within law enforcement.
It is as much about listening as it is about giving information.
And, as Mike noted, there's this big question here, because those notifications are rarely done by phone.
Investigators want that to be face to face whenever possible.
That is a much more empathetic way to tell someone probably the worst news they're ever going to get.
I reached out to Ashton and he didn't answer the phone.
It rang.
It went to voicemail.
I didn't leave a message and I waited a few moments and then called back and I just left somewhat of a generic voicemail identifying myself as a cop and would you please call me when you get this message.
He called back a couple hours later and that's when I informed him about the death of his parents.
He broke down and was hysterical on the phone.
As some of these interviews were being done with the family members, investigators knew that they needed to get more.
And we're talking about canvassing the scene, talking to neighbors, any digital forensics surveillance, anything else that can sort of paint a better picture for investigators of what happened in that house that night.
One of the neighbors had a surveillance system.
There was a camera pointing to a patio and at the far end of the camera you could capture the residential street.
This residential street was a cul-de-sac, I want to say about 1, 1.30 in the morning.
In this surveillance camera, you could see a car driving down the street.
And remember where we are.
It's a residential, pretty out of the way neighborhood.
It's not a high traffic area.
So that car is immediately suspicious.
The problem was that the footage didn't give them a whole lot to go off of.
And we couldn't tell from the camera whether or not the driver made a U-turn and left the cul-de-sac, or if they parked and turned out the lights.
But you couldn't make a whole lot of identification about the car.
You could see the brake lights.
It looked like the investigation was headed nowhere, but then detectives were able to find something very distinctive in the footage, something that would provide them with their first big clues.
While Orange County investigators couldn't see the car particularly well in the surveillance footage, there was still a significant detail they could extract.
Ultimately, we formed the belief that this brake light pattern belonged possibly to a Toyota Prius.
The hunch was eventually confirmed by what traffic cameras recorded in the nearby town of Dana Point.
You see a Prius going northbound direction of the crime scene 30 minutes before the murders.
And then, at the timestamp of the 911 call.
This traffic camera, which is activated by motion, only captures the back deck lid of the car, because the car is going so fast.
It's a car fleeing a crime scene.
This is obviously a solid lead but Scott, I don't think it takes our backgrounds in this field to know that a white Prius, especially in those times, so it isn't going to get them to the who, at least not that easily.
I agree with you.
Without seeing any identifying marks on the car.
The fact that we know it's a white Prius, let's just say, as you mentioned, it's a popular car, especially in California.
But it's a piece of the evidence puzzle that will hopefully confirm other evidence when it becomes available down the road.
So while they're looking for and through the surveillance footage, investigators are also combing the house for any other clues or crime scene details that might point them in the right direction.
And this was quite literally a huge endeavor.
We have a reserve search and rescue unit.
We called them out and they came out with metal detectors and walked in the bushes.
We actually called out investigators from other details to assist us, in addition to the crime lab personnel to forensically process the scene.
When you have a crime scene that is this large and multiple rooms where the suspect spent time in, you really need to go through it with a fine-tooth comb.
And then you have to think about the exterior of the home.
Did the killer or killers drop something along the way?
And what was their method of ingress or egress?
Footprints?
Touched DNA on a fence?
You know, in order to process that in a timely fashion because obviously time is of the essence you need a team of people to do it, especially in the exterior portions of the home, because potential changes in weather conditions could affect the viability of a potential sample.
And doing things like this with such detail, well, isn't that unusual in a homicide investigation?
Again, it is never one size fits all.
And as Scott pointed out, it is the size of the home.
They also have no idea where the attack is coming from.
Is it someone inside that house?
Is it someone outside the house?
So they really do need to go through room by room, inch by inch, before they lose any potential evidence.
I believe it went over the course of two days because it was a large house and there was a lot of stuff in there.
We found valuables, we found some cash, we found jewelry and other types of things where it appeared that robbery was not the motive business records, a bunch of other stuff that we collected.
It was one of the largest, most extensive searches that I had been a part of, And searching for forensic evidence doesn't necessarily just mean DNA fingerprints footprints projectiles, things that we normally talk about in homicide cases.
But it also has to do, especially in this case, with business records.
We know already the Saks were very litigious and also had lawsuits against them.
They had some potential enemies.
One of the lawsuits had to do with their company Flashcom, which they had sold right before it had declared bankruptcy.
So the lawsuit was about the money that the Sachs had received before the company was sold.
It was kind of surprising that that litigation was continuing on so many years later.
But there was a very aggressive attorney that was pursuing that.
Also, they were involved in some real estate with renting homes.
And there were some unhappy clients that had been involved in some civil litigation on that end.
One person had been kind of public in the media and there were a couple people negative reviews online that were aggressive.
So those were people that we started looking at, trying to see could they have a potential to commit this murder.
Mike's team assembled what we would call a POI list, which is a person of interest list that they felt may have animosity towards Andrew and or Brad based on these various business dealings they had with a couple over the years.
One by one, they were ruled out with solid alibis.
But that didn't mean investigators could totally discount this type of thinking.
We entertained the hypothesis several times that perhaps somebody hired a hitman to kill Brad and Andra for some type of business purpose.
But at the same time, that didn't totally add up either.
And here you have to, of course, look also at the victimology.
Understanding why it is that these particular victims were targeted just might point towards motivation.
But that's also where this particular crime gets the muddiest the young boy and the sister.
What's the motivation for them, and why was one child completely left alone?
Again, there's no evidence of forced entry.
This is not a house that you would just happen upon.
The one child who is on the second floor at the end.
If you were just somebody doing a burglary, robbery thing, it would not be intuitive that there was somebody at the end of this floor that you might want to eliminate as a witness.
Again, this is a very large house.
The fact the victims were sleeping in their bed and assassinated.
Brad was shot 12 times, one of those shots in the face and Andrew was shot a total of 10 times.
Now, that is not something you would see in a typical robbery or burglary.
And yes, quickly moving throughout this maze of a house is also another telling sign.
And so, looking at the various factors investigators are saying, does that mean that this attack was personal, or at least someone that knew the layout of the house or had previously been inside?
And, at least for the moment, the bullets that have been found at the crime scene seem to suggest just that.
Our forensics was able to tell us that the firearm used was a .22 rifle, a Ruger 10-22 rifle.
You always have to follow where the evidence leads you.
And that can come from witness statements, tips from the public and, of course, forensic evidence that's collected at a crime scene.
So the police are really working with the things that they do know so far.
That it was a wealthy family attacked in their home.
The two parents were dead.
The one child who'd been wounded was now forever paralyzed.
And they have a specific type of firearm that had been used in the shooting.
They had surveillance footage of the white Toyota Prius at the scene and also knowledge that the deceased victims had been involved in various lawsuits.
And so Scott, just putting all those things together, I mean, to me it just sounds like something targeted and personal versus anything random.
I agree.
We've all heard the term that a crime scene speaks to you.
And as an investigator walking through a scene like this, you have to imagine the level of rage that must have been behind the event.
The amount of shots that were fired into the bedroom, the shooting of a child, and the fact that this is a multi-million dollar home with very expensive items and nothing was taken.
This has the earmark of a crime of rage and it feels very personal.
And so, while investigators are mulling all this, trying to see if it can lead them to the who was responsible for this carnage, they're also tracking where the children are currently in all of this.
The two oldest Sachs brothers, Ashton and Miles, came back from Seattle to be with their siblings.
They sat with their youngest brother in the hospital and arranged their parents' funeral.
Ashton delivered an emotional eulogy and the siblings mourned together.
Eventually, the elder brothers moved their sisters into a three-bedroom home near San Diego that the family owned.
Even hearing you go through that, Scott.
Right now I'm shaking my head because you just think about it from the perspective of these children.
They have lost their parents.
They've also lost their home.
So just everything is completely upside down for every one of them.
But it does seem like they are banding together, at least physically, to hopefully take care of one another.
The boys shouldered a tremendous responsibility at Asiga, providing not only their practical necessities, such as food clothing shelter, but also you know you would have to imagine the emotional support to help the family heal from this incredible, tragic loss.
And so while the family is reeling from this devastation, it was unnerving for the community too.
This is a very safe and, as we've already said, wealthy community.
It's quiet with a low violent crime rate.
And, besides one person having been killed there before, in 2013, There was fortunately not much to speak of in terms of violent crime in the area.
This is a really shocking event and it dominated the neighborhood's attention completely.
So you can just imagine the pressure to get it solved.
There's not a lot of murders in Orange County.
Certainly, there's no murders in neighborhoods like this.
Some of the people who live in this neighborhood have their own private security details.
We receive calls from people asking, you know, is there any threat to my client?
You know, in the early stage of the investigation, we had no idea.
There was a lot of intense media coverage in the first several days.
But inside the investigation they had eliminated several potential suspects from the list of the lawsuits they were involved in.
Investigators would go back to digital forensics.
They would look at the family cell phone records.
And also all of that work.
As you know, Anastasia required them to get a whole bunch of search warrants.
While they could ask the various family members for consent, it's definitely a better course to get the search warrant.
Because remember, they have no idea who committed the crime or who might have knowledge or maybe have been involved.
And why worry about any potential litigation in the courtroom about whether that consent was valid or not, versus just going with the safest bet and getting a warrant to get all the various cell phone records to search through?
We sought in that search warrant to forensically examine all the computers and phones that we collected in the scene and to get the call detail records from the cellular provider, the various family members.
But that type of data is usually not received right away.
And in this case, that was no exception.
It took two or three weeks to get those records from the cell provider.
And in that time I was really starting to get nervous because we had eliminated so many people from consideration.
We had an investigator who really had a niche understanding called detail records and mapping those out and all of that stuff.
And when the cell phone company provided those records they went straight to Alex and Alex went to work on them.
Once investigators get their hands on those records.
It is a tedious process going through pages and pages of inbound and outbound telephone calls, text messages, all looking for some type of pattern to develop.
A certain number or a certain time of day a call was made.
And it was as they were digging into the phone records that Mike realized they had a suspect, a suspect who'd been right under their noses all along.
Alex came to us and said hey, looks like Ashton traveled from Seattle to San Juan, Capistrano on the day of the murders.
Ashton is the second eldest of the Sachs children.
He was living in Seattle with his older brother Miles, attending college at the time of the murders.
So he had an alibi, or so everyone had thought.
I had made the death notification to him.
He was in Seattle when I told him his parents had been murdered.
So in our minds, we kind of eliminated him.
We didn't think there was time to commit the murder and fly back.
And it was only later, when we got cell phone records and we started doing the timeline, that we found out yeah, there was plenty of time.
It soon became clear that on the night his parents were killed, Ashton had driven southbound on the 5 freeway from Washington all the way to San Juan Capistrano.
And his car?
A white Toyota Prius.
The day of the murder, you could see the cell phone history.
I can't remember what time he left Seattle.
But his cell phone is showing activity at a commercial property that his parents owned in San Juan Capistrano.
He was there by 8, 9 o'clock at night and then he proceeds northbound in the direction of the crime scene at midnight or so.
Now there was evidence that he was in California on his way to the crime scene around the time that Andra and Brad were murdered.
That's already enough to at least consider Ashton a suspect.
But he left behind more evidence later that night as he was theoretically leaving the crime scene.
He had actually gotten stuck in the mud or somewhere and called a tow truck driver in central California to pull him out.
But two big things were the taxicab driver and an auto transportation service that picked up his car and moved it up to Seattle.
So his Prius was currently sitting somewhere in Seattle.
But before we get to that, let's talk about the cab driver.
One of my partners went and interviewed the taxi cab driver.
And he said yeah, he remembered picking up a fare at this commercial property owned by his parents and taking him to John Wayne Airport here.
We got the security footage that showed Ashton in the airport in the mornings after the murder getting on a plane flying back to Seattle.
I mean for me, Anastasia.
This clearly checks off a few of the boxes I have at this point of him being the top suspect.
His alibi falls apart.
He knew the layout of the home, obviously, and he would have access to the home as well.
And also, he was driving a white Toyota Prius.
When I was hearing them start to break down what they were figuring out.
I just came out with like three S words and they were shocking, sloppy and solid.
Shocking, that it's the sun.
Sloppy, because it's becoming so easy at this point to figure it out.
And solid, based on the evidence that's being collected.
But there was still even more evidence Ashton had left behind.
His Toyota Prius, which was currently in the custody of a Seattle auto transport service.
This other phone number to an auto transport service.
One of my partners called that guy and he says, hey, did you transport a car from Ashton Sachs?
And he kind of gets excited because I've got his car up here in Seattle.
He will not come up and get his car.
Do you know where he's at?
And so the clock is still very much ticking because, while they know where the car is, you want to get to the car before any potential evidence somehow disappears, gets washed away or in any way compromised at all.
It's not until they get inside that we know what, if any, value is there.
I'd want to know if Ashton made those arrangements in person.
Would they be able to identify him, pick him out of a lineup, be able to say that he was the one who made those arrangements?
Because it's possible that down the road, someone may claim that he was just being set up.
The first thing they now did was go get the car.
We got a hold of Seattle Homicides.
They picked up the car, took it to their crime lab, popped the trunk and found the murder weapon in the car.
Scott, it really is the debate with the gun.
Leaving it in the car.
Is that a strategic decision, or is it just a sloppy accident or a bit of both?
Again, I'm always trying to think about how I'm going to present this to a jury.
Is it going to be that this was strategic and it goes to the cunningness of trying to make sure that?
He's in control of the weapon and even though it's still in his car, it's very far away and that might go to the premeditation or preplanning of the attack, if they get that far.
Or is it just sloppy?
The evidence is going to be the evidence, but trying to figure out the mindset behind it just might help them with motive and various factors later.
I mean, they have it.
They have a ballistics match.
Ashton is their number one person of interest.
And now they have to start moving towards finding him, locating him, and making their move.
And even though they now believe that it's him, based on the various factors, you can imagine this different sense of urgency at this point.
Because it isn't just about whether he's going to flee.
It's about who he's with while they're looking at him.
We need to, A, make sure that he doesn't flee, but number two.
And they were enrolling the younger kids still in school and doing all of that stuff.
You know, it comes up to your mind, here's somebody who's already killed and severely injured.
Two members of his family are the others at risk.
So police put a plan into action.
We had a narcotics team go down there and begin surveillance on him while we put together the final pieces.
You have your prime suspect living in the same home with his family members.
Definitely a reason for concern.
But your surveillance needs to be strategic because if your suspect believes that the cat's, so to speak, out of the bag, he may do something desperate.
He may take hostages.
There are so many things that could happen in this situation, and investigators must move strategically and quickly.
And within a matter of two or three days, everything fell into place, where we obtained arrest warrants and search warrants to take him into custody.
And so, during that time, investigators are being prudent and dotting their I's and crossing their T's.
I believe it was a Thursday morning.
My partner and I and another team went down there and we knocked on the door and we said hey, we would like to talk to you.
Can we just update you about the case?
It didn't initiate as an interrogation, but we wanted to give him another opportunity to either lie to us or tell us the truth.
Mike had been with the county sheriff's office for about 28 years.
In fact, this was actually one of his last cases of his career.
So suffice to say, he knew exactly how to handle this upcoming interrogation with Ashton.
And that came from all the years of Mike's experience and also a skill set that he had learned partially during an early assignment working in the local jails.
You certainly knew how to talk to people who'd been in custody before.
You know, you'd look at tattoos.
That's a prison tattoo.
You talk to them about what they've been to jail for in the past and you knew if they were lying or not.
You knew if they were as hardcore as they were claiming or not.
You learned how to talk to people who had had previous interaction with law enforcement just because you spent so much time dealing with people in the jail.
Mike is holding a great deal of forensic evidence that ties Ashton to the murder.
And while that is a really big advantage, walking in, it's something that being accused of killing their parents and shooting another sibling you may want to put aside in the beginning of it.
And often there's two ways to approach your person of interest.
When you start to reveal what you know, or when you hold it back.
And in this case they wanted their prime suspect to know in their opening questions that his alibi had crumbled.
We asked him, when was the last time you were in Orange County?
And he was adamant that he had not been down since Christmas.
And then at that point, we started laying out some evidence that we had had.
Hey man, do you know there are security cameras in airports?
You know, there was a terrorist incident in 2001 and security in airports has been heightened.
And Ashton's demeanor began to change.
And you really saw him as we started posing questions. questions to him like, hey, where's your car?
And he goes, oh, it's at the broker's house in Seattle.
It's like, no, it's at the police department in Seattle.
You can see somebody who is totally confident and engaging.
And it's like slowly letting the air out of a balloon as his shoulders begin to slump, as his head begins to drop, as his voice begins to trail off.
This feels like a turning point in the interrogation the moment Ashton knew police were onto him.
He said something to the effect that he didn't want to answer any more questions at the moment.
And so at that point, we stopped asking questions and we placed him under arrest.
As the questioning took a momentary break, police continued their investigation.
We had already obtained a search warrant for the house where he was living.
We seized his cell phone, his computer.
Then we made the long drive back to sheriff's headquarters where we read him his Miranda rights, where he waved, and then he ultimately confessed to committing the murder.
I truly do think that the old saying, confession is good for the soul.
I think people want to tell people what they did, good, bad, or indifferent.
So now authorities have apprehended the person that, based on the evidence, they believe through and through is their killer, and they also now have his confession.
So now they can really start to fill in the gap, some of those step-by-step moments trying to figure out what led up to the murder of Andrew and Brad and the attempted murder of two of their children.
He told us where he bought the gun.
We ultimately flew up to Seattle and we went to the gun store and he didn't grow up shooting guns.
He bought the gun and he went to a range where he did some practice with that.
And all I can think about is just pre-planned.
I think this is going to be deep, deep, deep when we talk about motive.
But certainly what this showed us is that he had been thinking about it, planning it for some time.
Tragic selfish, you know, a tragedy taken to a whole other level knowing how many other family members had to deal with that news.
He admitted to driving down and stopping along the way at various stops, getting stuck in the mud to waiting at his parents' commercial property.
And he also admitted to driving and waiting the 30 minutes outside his parents' house.
When you entered the front door, there's kind of a foyer-type area.
And he admitted to driving up there and being in dark clothing and waiting in that foyer area where he said probably that he deliberated.
Should he do it?
Should he not do it?
He deliberated for about 10 to 15 minutes.
And, well, we all know what his decision was.
There's actually a few minutes of footage from Ashton's actual confession that you can find online.
And in watching his interview with police, a few things stand out.
He tearfully recounts.
You know walking up to the home, his heart beating.
You know carrying that gun that he had used to kill his parents.
He goes on to describe shooting his parents in their bed and then shooting at his two siblings as he ran from his home.
Scott, you know watching it there's the obvious, just sick to your stomach feeling of what it is that he's talking about.
You know here as a child admitting to killing their family and trying to kill other family members.
But I also looked at it from the standpoint of watching the investigators and the way that they handled it.
There is a...
A gentleness, a calmness, really almost an empathetic way that the investigator is going about talking with him, which is really pretty artful, because it is that persona that is helping Ashton to finally let down the walls and really just talk about what he did.
For the investigators, it was staying on mission.
I mean confirming the crime scene and the evidence.
He was able to describe the moments of when he made the decisions he made.
But also when it comes to prosecution side of this case.
You know, having that other evidence line up and back up the statements that he made makes it a complete package.
He admitted driving back to the commercial property and getting in a cab and going to the airport and flying back.
I don't think he had an exit plan, so to speak.
While he had planned to do it purchasing the gun and going down and doing it he clearly didn't have a plan for getting rid of the evidence, getting rid of the firearm, how he was going to explain getting on an airplane.
So not a very well thought out crime.
So Mike and the entire team have caught their killer, but there is still this huge looming question.
Why?
It's a handful of times where I have been an interview where somebody confessed to killing somebody.
Usually their confessions are self-serving to some degree or another.
Ashton's was not.
He didn't try to defend himself, didn't try to defend his actions.
The handful of times we asked him why he did it, he would just start crying and say, I don't know.
He would go on to say something along the lines, I don't know why just a lot of problems, which still really isn't much more to go on.
And here, really everything he is saying is being looked at.
Certainly I am viewing it through the lens of why.
You know, what has driven him to kill his parents and attempt to kill some of his siblings?
And really I think we need to go and learn a bit more about Ashton and his background while we try to put those motive pieces together.
He was a very intelligent person.
He had done really well in school.
I think he had a side business of preparing cell phones and gaming consoles.
He had a knack on the software and hardware and digital devices and was going to pursue that in school.
He had never been in trouble with the law before, had never been arrested.
I don't even think he had any tickets.
Seemed like a very normal kid from a wealthy family who was going off to college and trying to grow into being an adult.
And there really was nothing on the surface that pointed there being any major issues with Ashton.
He was very bright.
He helped his parents with the businesses and the lawsuits.
But it's really only as you start to peel the layers of the onion back that cracks start to emerge.
There was some tension about him living on his own.
His parents had him on allowance.
They were asking him about what he had spent certain funds on, and he was trying to stand on his own.
Parents were very clear if you don't tell us how you're spending your money, we're just not going to give you any more money.
And let's remember how the parents were killed, the multiple shots over and over, including one to the father's face, as the couple slept in their bed.
That suggests just intense, deep-seated rage.
He said he had a good relationship with his parents and everybody thought he had a good relationship with his parents.
He gave off that impression.
His eulogy at his parents' funeral talked about how perfect they were and how they always did everything for their children.
Ashton did eventually address some of those negative feelings towards his parents.
He says he trusted his mother but did not think she cared for him, and that his father never loved him and would exclude him from things and essentially blame them for his troubles.
And he felt that he needed to end their lives before he ended his own.
By no way am I an expert in the field of psychology, but certainly, having spoken to many of them and seen unfortunately, these type of cases, it's where you start to see the familial relationship, at least in Ashton's mind, I think begin to unravel.
So you really start to chip it away at what is working in this young adult's mind throughout time.
But can all of that really lead or drive somebody to kill their parents?
You know, thinking about a potential motive brings us back to when we talked about in the beginning of this podcast, which is, you know money, sex power.
How do those all play out?
I think people are quick to assume that it was a financial motive, but I don't think finances were his primary motive.
There was a trust and a will, obviously.
They had a number of real estate properties throughout Orange County, even some in the surrounding counties.
They had everything from middle-class residences to commercial properties to apartments.
Properties that were in very wealthy neighborhoods.
They had quite a substantial net worth in real estate.
I don't recall there being a lot of liquid assets.
You certainly have all read or heard about the cases where it is the child wants the money.
But there's nothing that pointed to that issue.
And so, while we have these clues about the strained relationship, you have to believe that there was something deeper.
Also, was it where he felt that he fell in the sibling lineup as far as his parents' affection?
Was it jealousy over the other children and he believed they got more attention or love?
These are various hypotheses that we're putting in, based on little things said, and that we've learned.
But there still is that question that we just don't know.
Ashton never provided a reason why he attacked his siblings.
When pressed on those details, he would start crying and say, I don't know.
Detectives still wanted to know more about what drove him and for good reason.
One of the things about working murder cases you just don't prove your case in chief, but you have to eliminate defenses as well.
His mental health status could be a potential defense.
And, you know, it could be a legitimate defense.
We went into that.
He did not have any history of any mental illness.
Not paranoid schizophrenic, not delusional, not suffering hallucinations.
Clearly understood the wrongfulness of his act.
In his confession we established that he wasn't mentally ill, that he had not been the victim of physical or sexual abuse by any of his parents or siblings, or anything of that nature.
So let's go over some of the big pieces of evidence in this case.
Phone records and surveillance from the John Wayne Airport placed Ashton in the area of the Sachs home on the night of the murder.
There was a white Prius seen driving away from the scene of the crime, a car that Ashton owns.
And the murder weapon.
That's a pretty big one, a ballistically matched murder weapon in the trunk of that Prius.
Even so, and you can understand this, the family had a hard time initially wrapping their heads around the idea that Ashton could have done this.
He initially pled not guilty.
The family retained private counsel.
After the grand jury indictment at first the family and there was a very close family friend who were a little antagonistic, not believing that we had found the right person and we couldn't get into all the evidence that we had.
So at first they were very supportive of Ashton.
And then later he was indicted.
There's a grand jury and whatever statutory period afterwards in the grand jury transcript can get released.
And that became public with all the evidence that we had.
And at that point, the family realized that there was a lot of evidence.
It seemed whoever was paying for his lawyer stopped and Ashton got a public defender.
He fired his public defender and represented himself.
And then one day, at a court hearing, he walked into court and told the judge he wanted to plead guilty.
In California, we have a law where victims are allowed to address the court.
So you can't just unannounced walk in and plead guilty.
There has to be a period of time to give the family the opportunity to come in and speak.
So they scheduled sentencing.
One of Brad's sisters, I believe, spoke at sentencing.
None of the other family did.
The survivors of homicide have to handle what they can deal with in different ways, and some go to court, some don't.
Just here you have not only to face the person who murdered both your parents, almost murdered your youngest brother, shot at a sister, but it is one of your own siblings sitting there in the defendant's chair, and that must be just gut-wrenching beyond what most people have to face in the courtroom.
These types of cases really complicate the grieving process for families.
On one hand, there's the desire for justice and holding the killer accountable.
But on the other hand, there's a loved one and shared memories of that person.
And it's very difficult to fully vilify the accused.
He did not take a plea deal.
They never put the death penalty on the table for him because he was 19 and had no prior convictions, even though it was a pretty substantial case.
But when the judge was sentencing, as he was laying everything out, the prosecutor said wow, that's the first time I've ever seen that, in that he was sentenced individually on each count, so that if he ever seeks a commutation of a sentence, he wasn't given all of his sentencing in one block.
Really, the reason the judge most likely sentenced Ashton on each count separately was to make sure that each crime was accounted for and to protect the case from any potential future appeals.
He was sentenced to LWOP.
He was LWOP for his mom, LWOP for his dad.
So what Mike is describing by using the term LWOP is life without the possibility of parole.
He was sentenced for the attempted murder of his one sister.
He was sentenced for the attempted murder with great bodily injury on the other sibling.
In California, we have a 25-year enhancement for using a firearm in the commission of a murder.
He received those enhancements, and there was no plea deal.
He took it all.
You know now, at the end of this episode, we can come back to how we started of this question that still nags at us all, which is the why.
Because while we've talked about all the potentials, Remotive just still remains unclear.
You know, was it mental illness?
Maybe.
Is he a sociopath, as a prosecutor said in court?
Perhaps.
Was it jealousy or anger over the family dynamics?
Or some combination of it all?
We can list all of those and still have the question of why is the thing that is perhaps most perplexing in this case?
And if the surviving family members and the community at large really knew what a motive was, would that change the feelings or the perspective they have about this incredible tragedy in San Juan Capistrano?
I don't know if it would make a difference.
It is just an absolute tragedy all the way around.
You know, just at 19 years old you have committed a crime that And all likely you're going to die in prison.
And to throw away your life for... I call it the Cain and Abel murder.
I think he felt he wasn't the favored son.
All of the opportunities just selfishly available to him that he gave away because he felt slighted by his folks.
But then...
The sibling he shot has permanent life-altering injuries that he will deal with for the rest of his life.
There's obviously the trauma to his siblings of just having their parents murdered.
And then, of course, Brad and Andra, the life that he's stuffed out of them.
Every murder's tragic.
This one just struck me on so many different levels.
In doing the research for this story.
One of the articles that stayed with me the most was about the Sachs siblings.
They have spent the years since their parents' death, including today, focusing and raising one another.
Miles, the oldest, took over the family business and became the primary caretaker for all of his siblings, the two sisters and the youngest brother, who, as we've noted, was paralyzed as a result of the attack.
For the four.
Their brother Ashton, ceased to exist on the day that he came into their home with a gun and took their parents from them and forever changed all of their lives.
The siblings remained committed to being there for each other.
The youngest, who was only eight when he was shot by his brother, recently became a standout wheelchair tennis player.
He became the first athlete in Orange County high school history to play a tennis match in a wheelchair against an able-bodied competitor and finished second in the USTA Junior National Wheelchair Championship in Rome, Georgia.
It was also recently accepted to a scholarship to play wheelchair tennis at the University of Arizona.
And for me, this is turning pain into passion.
By the end of 2022, he was actually ranked number 17th in the country for the champion wheelchair tennis player that he is today.
And he says that it is family and fortitude that has helped make it through all these years.
All the siblings say that they have survived and thrived together.
And that is testament to their parents.
Family and fortitude.
Andra and Brad, that.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original.
Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
