[Ashley] Elena experienced a lot of heartbreak.
[Linda] She wanted a family unit,
and she wanted a husband or a partner.
Brandon definitely appeared to have fallen for Elena.
[Nathan] I noticed my mom becoming
increasingly isolated from everybody else.
[Ashley] He was very good at putting up an act.
[Linda] Elena was walking on eggshells.
Anything ticked him off.
Brandon made that decision with her kids in the next room.
[audio from police body cam]
The interviewer asked him to draw pictures of what he saw.
[ominous theme music plays]
[Elena on home video]
[narrator] It's 2018, and 32-year-old Elena Wysong
and her husband, Brandon, spend the day at Virginia Beach.
[Nathan] My mom was very kind and loving.
She had had her fair share of bad relationships.
So I think that when she did find Brandon,
she definitely thought that, you know, this was the guy
that she was going to be with for the rest of her life.
[Linda speaking]
Elena was born October 22, 1985.
She was a very, very, very healthy, happy baby.
[mellow piano music plays]
[indistinct chatting and laughing]
Elena had two older brothers.
My oldest son was Robert, and my youngest son was Darren.
They were kind of thrilled when she joined the family.
[Linda] She was like a doll to them.
[narrator] Two years later, the family get another addition.
[Ashley] We lived in Staten Island, New York.
Elena was actually somebody I considered, like,
a hero at the time, somebody I could look up to,
and I admired her greatly.
[indistinct singing]
[narrator] In August 2000, when Elena is 14,
the Arena family moved to Chesapeake, Virginia.
[Linda] When Elena's hormones kicked in,
I think they kicked in full blast.
Elena fell in love,
and she got pregnant when she was 17.
[narrator] On October 9th, 2003, just 13 days before her 18th birthday,
Elena gives birth to a baby girl she names Natalie.
It meant the world to Elena, just being a mom
and just trying to be the best mom that she could be.
[narrator] But the relationship with Natalie's father doesn't last.
They were just too young. Elena was upset.
She wanted a family unit.
She wanted a husband or a partner.
[narrator] In 2005, Elena starts dating someone new.
A year after they started dating, Elena got pregnant.
And Angel was born on August 22nd, 2007.
[narrator] But when Angel is just two years old,
Elena and her father split.
[Ashley] It affected Elena pretty badly.
She really wanted to end up
keeping the whole family unit together.
And I know she tried her hardest to make it work.
[narrator] In 2013, Elena and her daughters, now ten and six,
moved to an apartment in Virginia Beach.
[Nathan] Things started looking up for my mom.
She became vegan, she became very spiritual.
It was a very happy time.
[narrator] In August that year, 27-year-old Elena meets
24-year-old Brandon Wysong through mutual friends.
At the time, Brandon was a construction worker.
[Nathan] My mom definitely seemed to fall very quickly
in love with him.
He was extremely attentive with her and very loving.
[narrator] Within three months of meeting,
Elena and Brandon are engaged and living together.
[Linda] Brandon had a son around the same age as Angel.
[Nathan] I was pretty excited.
He had a kid of his own, and my mom had two kids.
And we were very excited to just be one big family.
I don't think I had seen my mom this happy in a while.
He seemed to be very good for her.
My sister liked him a lot.
My mom's friends seemed to like him a lot.
My grandma liked him a lot. So I was hopeful for it.
[clapping and cheering]
[narrator] In the fall of 2013,
Elena attends a Buddhist ceremony.
My mom was very involved in Buddhism,
and she practiced it daily.
Brandon definitely did seem
like this very supportive man for my mom.
He was very invested in her religion
and her spiritual journey.
It seems like he was gonna be this super awesome,
great stepdad.
Brandon would take us to the beach a lot.
He'd buy us, you know, ice cream on the boardwalk
and pizza for dinner while my mom was at work.
Brandon was a really big part of Angel's life,
a very big father figure for her.
He'd do just about anything for her.
[narrator] At the end of 2013,
just four months into their relationship,
Elena discovers she is pregnant.
[Ashley] Elena was extremely excited.
She was all ready to have another little one
back in the house.
[Nathan] My mom was very much a family person.
And I think that them having a baby together
kind of just brought the families together.
[narrator] Elena and Brandon tie the knot
in a courthouse in Virginia Beach.
[Nathan] A few months after my mom and Brandon got married,
Brandon had a accident at work
that completely crushed his leg.
He was not able to work anymore.
My mom was very stressed out.
She was freaking out trying to figure out how they were gonna
get money now, how they're gonna make rent and, you know,
how they're gonna put food on the table.
[narrator] The family are forced to move into a cheaper home,
and in August 2014, Elena gives birth to a son named Bobby.
[cooing and laughing]
When Bobby was born,
me, Angel, Brandon's son, Brandon, and my mom
were all living in the house.
Everything was pretty good,
when we brought Bobby back home from the hospital.
Everybody seemed to be in good spirits.
- [mocking gobbling sounds] - [baby laughs]
[Nathan] Brandon was really excited, especially to have another son.
[Linda] Bobby was three months old when Elena fell pregnant again.
I think she was in shock.
It was going to be a lot of work to have, like,
a one-year-old and then a newborn.
[narrator] Shortly after, Natalie shares some news with her mom.
When I was about 12 or 13, I came out to my mom as trans.
My mom was very supportive,
and she had picked out the name Nathan Andrew Nagle,
and that's just kind of what stuck.
I noticed that Brandon had started to change
a few weeks after Bobby was born.
Brandon had had surgery on his leg,
and he was kind of a little more mad than usual.
He just seemed very irritated, even at the smallest things.
[Linda] Laura was born on September 28th, 2015.
[Linda on video]
At this point Elena and Brandon had just been together
for about two years,
and now they had two children who were very close in age.
[Elena on video]
[babbling]
Brandon seemed to be a lot more agitated, more on edge.
A lot of the smaller things
seemed to bother him a lot more than they usually did.
When Alura was about a month old,
my mom and Brandon had
gotten into an argument in front of all of us,
and he had thrown a chair.
That chair had hit Alura's bassinet.
That was the first time I had seen him get aggressive.
That was the start.
[Elena on video]
[Brandon on video]
Brandon was under the impression that because of the accident,
he was gonna make a huge amount of a settlement.
That did not happen.
[Brandon on home video]
OK, Dada.
[Nathan] He would sell business classes to people on how to make
a bunch of money through Bitcoin.
He'd find, like, images off of Google of, like,
money spreads on the table,
and he'd post it and be like,
"Look how much money I'm making."
Like, "You can make this money too."
[narrator] When Brandon's new business venture isn't delivering,
Elena steps in to try and help.
[Nathan] My mom and Brandon were arguing frequently
about sales and how much money they were making.
[Linda] He was very irritable at times.
[babbling]
[Linda] There was a lot of things going on
that he just kind of dumped on Elena.
And I think things started to unravel even faster between
the two of them.
[narrator] Brandon's temper escalates, and by the summer of 2017,
Elena becomes deeply depressed.
[Nathan] When I was about 14,
I noticed my mom becoming increasingly isolated
from everybody else.
It was kind of hard for her
to do a lot of stuff around the house.
We didn't really go out anywhere.
[Linda] Elena was walking on eggshells,
because anything ticked him off.
She would do anything just to keep him, you know, happy,
so he would not start with her.
Elena was desperately trying to keep the family together,
even though Brandon was really making it fall apart.
[Elena on video]
[narrator] On social media, Elena portrays Brandon
to be a perfect husband and father.
[children laughing]
I do think that she just did ignore a lot of the abuse
because, you know, for the most part he was very good
at putting up an act.
I think she was ashamed to let anybody know
what was really going on and how hard she was struggling
just to keep her family together.
[narrator] Despite the issues in her marriage,
Elena makes time for her children whenever she can.
[Nathan] This is when my mom took me to my first Pride.
We had walked around for a bit,
and my mom had bought me my first Pride flag.
She had danced around with me and Alura.
And I remember that at the end of the day,
me, her, and Alura had all sat down on the grass,
and it was just happy.
There was no stress.
There was no Brandon ruining the moment.
It was just me, my mom, and Alura, and it felt great.
[mellow piano music]
[narrator] In the summer of 2018,
Linda invites Elena and her family to Florida.
When they arrived, the kids got ready
and they went to the pool.
And some type of an incident happened at the pool,
where Brandon struck Bobby.
And the children were very upset.
The kids came back and they told their mother,
and of course, she was very upset.
She was telling him off, you know,
"Why are you hitting him?
Why are you putting your hands on him?"
Brandon was angry.
He went outside.
He called someone on the phone, screaming and yelling.
I was extremely concerned.
I said, "Elena, this is a bad situation.
You need to get out of this situation."
I told her that I would get her an apartment.
She just couldn't tell him where she lived.
If he wanted to see the children,
it would have to be at my house.
And she wanted to do it, and then she was afraid.
She said, you know,
"I don't want the kids to grow up without a father."
She wanted them to be together.
She was trying to make it better,
even as it was falling apart.
[cellphone rings]
[narrator] Six months later, Elena calls her mom.
Brandon had actually smashed the window of the family car
and slashed the tires.
So I volunteered to go over there.
And the police were already there when we arrived.
The officers were telling her that they couldn't remove
Brandon out of the house.
The only way they would be able to do that
is if she got a restraining order against him.
Elena was devastated.
I was going to keep an eye on the kids,
and my sister was going to take the car
to go get the restraining order.
So my sister left shortly after the police.
Brandon continued to get more irate, started grabbing
the toys and smashing them into pieces on the ground.
And then he went to the back porch area
and grabbed the machete.
I went downstairs and stood in the hallway,
so he couldn't get upstairs where the children were.
He held the machete in his hand.
I put him in a bear hug, and he head-butted me.
I hear...
yelling and screaming coming from downstairs.
My siblings are now crying because this is happening,
literally on the other side of the door.
I'm freaking out, because I don't know what to do.
I don't know what's happening downstairs,
and I'm scared if I don't call 911,
it'll be too late.
So Nathan called the police.
And then I had said to Brandon,
"This is assault with a deadly weapon."
Just something to get him to snap out of it,
because I was terrified.
I was completely terrified,
but I couldn't afford to be terrified,
because there were children involved.
Something, I must have said, must have snapped in his brain,
because he took off with the machete and fled.
[Nathan] So I call 911,
and I...
am crying
through the phone call,
telling them that my stepfather
is hurting my aunt.
And I tell them my address.
[police sirens wailing]
[Nathan] And my mom came back into the house,
and she said, "They're gonna take Brandon away,
"and he's going to go to jail.
You need to hang up right now."
[sirens wailing]
[Ashley] And then the police arrived.
Elena had asked if I would just not say anything,
because she didn't want the kids to lose their father,
and she didn't want to lose her kids to CPS,
because she wasn't there for the incident.
No matter how many times I'd try to tell her, I'm like,
"No, this is a good thing. We can get him away."
She didn't wanna hear it.
She just thought that CPS was gonna take her kids away.
So I chose to remain silent to try to protect my sister.
I hated him. I absolutely hated him.
And I saw how dangerous and how violent he could end up being.
And I tried to warn my family,
"If we don't let me press charges,
"he's gonna kill her.
He is going to kill her."
[narrator] Elena is granted a 72-hour emergency protective order.
[Linda] I hated Brandon.
I was just hoping that he just wouldn't come back.
[narrator] But just three days later, Brandon is back in the home.
[Linda] I was very concerned for Elena.
I begged her to move in with me,
and she would say yes.
And then I guess he would talk to her,
tell her things were gonna get better.
And then she would say,
"No, things are working out.
I'm gonna stay here."
It was like a cycle.
[Nathan] One night I was spending a night at home,
and my mom and Brandon
had gotten into a pretty big argument.
My mom said, "I'm gonna take the kids
to a hotel for a night."
So we all get into our car,
and she drives us out to the ocean front.
And I remember it was like,
one of the first times in a long time
that I had even seen my mom take a deep breath.
So the following day,
she gets a phone call, and it's from Brandon. - [phone ringing]
He's just basically saying,
"You can't take my kids away from me.
"I'm gonna get you arrested.
You need to come back home."
She went back to him the very next day.
And I remember talking to her, just you know,
"It's OK to start new,
"and, you know, Mom will help you.
"You know, we'll do anything to end up helping you
to get away from this."
But she didn't want to take the kids away from their dad.
[narrator] Unable to cope with Brandon's violent temper,
Nathan spends most of his time at a friend's home.
[Ashley] I went to the magistrate and pressed charges against him,
but my sister had second thoughts.
I was torn because I had
one daughter screaming and carrying on.
She did not want her husband in jail.
And then I had another daughter, who said,
"He needs to go to jail. He's dangerous."
It caused a lot of family issues.
[Ashley] My sister was by his side,
and I remember outside of the courtroom,
Elena tried to come up to me to try to talk to me.
[melancholic piano music]
I actually walked away from them.
You're willing to go ahead and back him,
and not your sister,
who has been there with you through everything.
I was completely devastated.
Once everything was going to the second trial date,
I tried to stick it out, but in the end,
it cost me so much mentally and emotionally,
I couldn't do it, and I dropped the charges.
[narrator] Six months later,
Linda receives a Facebook message from Elena.
[Linda] She told me first that she tripped,
and then I told her,
"Elena, I don't believe you."
I said, "He must be hitting you.
And then, you know, she finally told me,
"Oh, well, he got mad, but he didn't mean it.
He was sorry."
But she always had an excuse for him.
On November 4th, 2019,
I got home to my mom and Brandon's house.
And I walk in, and the entire place is trashed.
10, 15 minutes after,
my mom pulled up in front of the house.
It was her, Brandon, all of my siblings.
And it looked like my mom and Brandon were arguing
outside of their car.
[crickets chirping]
And she said, "Just get in the car.
I'll take you to your friend's house."
[ominous music playing]
[Nathan] We pulled into the parking garage
of my friend's apartment complex.
And she had told me that she'd see me tomorrow
and that she loves me.
And I told her I love her too.
[narrator] Two hours later,
Nathan receives news about a disturbance at home.
So, I called my sister.
And as soon as I answer the phone,
all I hear is screaming.
[Officer Brenya] On November 4th, 2019,
around 6:34 p.m.,
we got a call from dispatch,
letting us know that we had a gunshot wound.
[police sirens wailing]
The victim was a female,
and the suspect was not on scene.
So immediately as I arrived on scene,
I saw three younger children running towards me, screaming,
"She's back there, she's back there.
You need to help her."
[banging]
[Officer Brenya] Started going towards the house.
My partner, Officer Wadsworth,
was in the back laundry room of the house
with the victim and was attempting CPR.
It looked like somebody had purposefully upturned,
uprooted everything in the house onto the floor.
And when I got to the door of the laundry room,
I could see the victim laying down in a pool of blood,
with my partner conducting the CPR.
[Officer Brenya] So when I went back outside,
that's when I made contact with the eldest child, Angel.
And I learned that the victim was their mother, Elena Wysong.
various voices overlapping]
[Officer Brenya] He's armed and dangerous,
so it was important for us to locate and apprehend him.
[Nathan] My friend and his mom,
we pull up to the house.
There's, like, four cop cars.
And my siblings are, all three of them are,
in the back of a cop car.
And Angel is covered in blood.
She's freaking out, and she's crying,
And Alura and Bobby are crying.
They don't have any clothes on.
I could still not grasp what was going on.
And it all...
felt like a dream.
[narrator] Elena Wysong is pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m.
[Sgt. Jerry] When we have a possibly armed and dangerous suspect
who's fled the scene,
it's imperative for us to--
to start tracking that guy down.
If they were just able to commit this horrendous act,
who knows what they'll do.
[narrator] At 6:52 p.m.,
Officer Butler arrives on scene,
with his canine, Nemo.
Most of the search occurred in the residential area.
Just after 7 p.m., a man arrives on scene
and identifies himself as Brandon's stepfather.
So Brandon's stepfather tells the officer
that Brandon wants to turn himself in,
and he wants to lead the officers to Brandon himself.
So K-9 immediately heads to the area,
and the dog picks up a scent.
[dog barking and growling]
Brandon pops up out of the wood line with his hands up.
[police radio] He's in custody on the scene of the accident.
- [dog barking] - [officers speaking over radio]
All right, cool.
[radio beeping]
[Officer Brenya] Whenever we arrest someone, we do an immediate search
of that person in the waist area,
and Brandon didn't have a weapon on him.
Now, the first thing that goes in my head is,
"Where's this weapon at?"
[narrator] The forensic team arrive on scene at 8:35 p.m.
and start collecting evidence.
[Megan Lang] In the laundry room,
they find a box of ammunition,
a.380 pistol magazine,
two deformed bullets, which I believe were found
behind the dryer, by the dryer duct.
and then three shell casings,
which indicate that three shots had been fired.
In the home, there was also three cellphones recovered.
The evidence that the police have at that time
all point to Brandon having a firearm, a.380 pistol.
[Ashley] I had gotten off of work,
and I got a phone call from one of my family members.
And they told me that,
"You were right, he killed her."
I was completely devastated.
Got a phone call from Angel's other grandmother,
and she said to me, "Elena's been shot."
And I knew. I knew she was gone.
I knew it.
Yeah, they wouldn't let me in the house.
They wouldn't let me see her.
The kids were in the police car,
and Angel was screaming,
and the little ones were crying,
and the police took us all to the station house.
Angel tells Detective Hosang that earlier in that evening,
that there was a fight between her mother and Brandon.
And that because of that argument,
Elena packed up her and her children
and left to go to her mother's house.
They ultimately ended up
turning around and going back home
because Angel wanted to get her pregnant cat.
That is when Elena discovers
that Brandon had destroyed the house.
Elena is then headbutted in the face,
in front of the children by Brandon.
At that point she walks into the laundry room.
Brandon Wysong follows her into the laundry room,
slams the door.
[gunshots blast]
The children hear three gunshots
and see Brandon run out of the back of the house.
Angel was able to break through the laundry room
and crawl through the hole in the door.
She then grabs some towels and tries to use them
to put pressure on her mom's head
to stop the bleeding.
It was at that point she used her mother's phone to call 911.
Bobby was five years old at the time,
and the interviewer asked him
to draw pictures of what he saw.
And what he drew was very disturbing.
Bobby drew several photos.
One of them was his mother...
lying in a pool of blood,
Brandon with a firearm.
There was also another photo
that he described as his mother,
which was a photo of someone
with a gunshot wound to the head.
[narrator] At 10:28 p.m.,
Detective Andre Jerry and Detective Jachimiak
interview Brandon Wysong.
[Sgt. Jerry] I had no doubt in my mind that he'd done it,
just from the totality of all the circumstances.
[Sgt. Jerry] So during the interview,
Brandon was just hot and cold.
But then a lot of the times in the interview,
he would put the blame on her.
He would say things like, "She made me do it,"
and "I told her this was coming, it's her fault."
At one point in time, he said,
"I did it, there's no question."
[gunshots blast]
Going into this interview,
it was two major goals.
It was, one was to find out why he did what he did,
and the second one was to find out where
the murder weapon was.
[Sgt. Jerry] You could tell he was just thinking about himself.
He was trying to cut a deal.
I told him that if you show us where the weapon is,
they're willing to work with you.
[Megan] Brandon believes that he is making this deal.
And in exchange,
he says he will lead them to the murder weapon.
[Officer Brenya] So on the way to find the murder weapon,
he just acted like he didn't have a care in the world.
There was no remorse.
You could tell he was just thinking about himself.
I mean, to be able to shoot and kill your wife,
and then not have a care in the world,
especially when you got kids with that person,
it just, I mean, he had no soul,
no-- no conscience.
So Brandon leads us to the wooded area,
maybe 20 feet from where he surrendered.
We find a black Ruger.380,
which matched the cell casings that we found on scene
and the box of ammo that was in the house.
Once the gun is found, we turn it over forensics.
They'll dust it for prints,
and then it gets run through our NIBIN,
where they'll do a test fire,
and they'll match the casing,
and that's where they're able to tell
it's a direct match.
[narrator] Brandon is charged with the second-degree murder
of Elena Wysong and transported to Virginia Beach City Jail.
[Megan] The next day, an autopsy of Elena was performed
at the office of the chief medical examiner in Norfolk.
And the medical examiner determined
that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.
When we receive our case file,
we received a cellphone dump of Brandon's phone.
And what I found on the phone was disturbing.
There were text messages that showed
the abuse that was occurring.
He had photos saved of Elena's black eyes and bruises.
There was some very, very disturbing things in that phone.
When determining whether we should take something to trial,
there are so many different considerations
that go into play.
And one of the main ones in this case
was saving Angel from having to testify,
because I truly believe I would have been re-victimizing Angel,
to put her on a stand,
in front of 14 strangers she doesn't know,
to explain in excruciating detail
the worst day of her life.
After speaking with Elena's family,
we ultimately came to the decision
to offer the-- the defendant a plea agreement.
Under the plea agreement,
the maximum active time
Brandon could get to serve was 30 years.
After Brandon accepts the plea for 30 years,
I start pulling up jail calls.
And I do that because, a lot of times,
people are more willing to talk
after they know that they have a plea agreement
and their case is not going to trial.
[gunshots blasting]
[Megan Lang] I can't say that I've ever heard anything like that.
And he made that decision at that moment,
to shoot her execution-style,
with her kids in the next room,
was shocking.
[narrator] Four years after Elena's murder,
her family attend Brandon's sentencing hearing.
I remember me and Angel were holding on to each other.
I don't think I've ever had held her hand
that tightly before.
And I remember both of us were shaking.
We were waiting for him to step out from behind that door
and look at us both in the face.
[Megan Lang] At the sentencing hearing,
we put on a lot of evidence,
because we wanted to convince the judge
that he should sentence Brandon
to the maximum amount of time allowable under
the plea agreement and sentence him to 30 years.
I also offered into evidence the jail calls,
where he describes in excruciating detail
how he execution-style shot Elena in the back of her head
as she's cowering in the corner.
[narrator] The judge sentences Brandon Wysong
to serve the full 30 years under the plea agreement
for the second-degree murder of Elena Wysong.
I would have loved it if he had gotten a life sentence,
because that's what I think he deserves.
I miss her laugh. I miss her phone calls.
I miss her coming over, and we just laugh and talk.
I miss going out with her to do things with the kids.
[Nathan] She wasn't there for a lot of the big things in my life.
When I first got my license, when I got my name legally changed,
when I graduated high school,
when I took my first testosterone shot.
[Elena on home video] So how are you doing today?
There's no substitution for that loss.
The hole is always there.
Sometimes you just have to say,
"Screw it all, let's just go do something fun."