A Sacramento County judge has sentenced an Elk Grove man to two consecutive terms of life without parole after a jury convicted him of murdering both of his parents in a scheme driven by inheritance money.
Judge Michael Bowman handed down the sentence to Mark Andre Tomas Navarrete following his Oct. 16, 2026, conviction on two counts of first-degree murder. Jurors also found special circumstances applied: that Navarrete committed multiple murders and that the killings were carried out for financial gain.
According to Principal Criminal Attorney Aaron Miller of the Homicide Unit, Navarrete stood to inherit half of his parents’ estate when he killed them on June 28, 2024.
Investigators say the motive traced back to fake investment schemes Navarrete had been running against friends and relatives, in which he promised repayment at steep interest rates. When he couldn’t make good on the debts, his parents stepped in and repaid other family members on his behalf — an arrangement prosecutors say bred resentment that ultimately turned deadly.
A Planned Attack
Prosecutors laid out a methodical sequence of events. Navarrete drove from his Elk Grove home toward his parents’ neighborhood but parked several blocks away. He then put on a mask and gloves and used a kick scooter to approach the house, slipping through a side gate rather than the front porch, which was covered by a Ring camera.
He met his parents at the back entrance and led them into the garage, where he struck them both on the head before strangling them while facing them directly.
Afterward, he fled the scene in his parents’ car, moved it a short distance away, and retrieved his scooter to return to his own vehicle.
Children Used in the Cover-Up
In an attempt to deflect suspicion, Navarrete texted his already-dead parents to ask if they wanted to come over for dinner. When his sister later became alarmed that she couldn’t reach them, Navarrete drove to the house — bringing his own children along — and staged the discovery of the bodies.
That cover story collapsed under physical evidence. Detectives recovered the kick scooter in Navarrete’s garage, and DNA testing matched his DNA to material found under his mother’s fingernails. Elk Grove police also used Flock camera networks and other traffic surveillance footage to reconstruct his movements on the day of the killings.
With the jury’s special-circumstance findings and the court’s sentence, Navarrete will spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Add comment