LOS ANGELES _ Paul Gamache saw the first body when the Corona police sergeant stepped into the two-story house with pink and yellow flowers decorating the front porch and views of the Santa Ana Mountains.
So much blood coated the man sprawled on the carpet and tile in the living room that the officer couldn't tell his race. Somehow he was still alive. To the right, the body of a man in a workman's uniform lay between a kitchen table and an island. A clipboard with ADT security paperwork sat on the table. He was there to install a security system.
Gamache and two other officers followed a trail of blood from the first man to the three-car garage. Another body.
The men had been beaten with a black baseball bat, left in a hallway near the garage.
A name was engraved on the blood-covered wood: Brandon Martin.
Corona police had responded to the house on Winthrop Drive before the 911 call for a man not breathing on the evening of Sept. 17, 2015. Two days earlier, they were summoned after Martin, a former supplemental first-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Rays, threatened his mother, Melody, and brother, Sean, with a pair of scissors. Sean Martin held him off with a golf club. Brandon Martin ranted that he couldn't play baseball as long as his parents were alive.
Problems had built in the house for months. Martin, then 22, punched holes in the walls. Assaulted his father. Raced 120 mph down the 91 Freeway in his bright green BMW M3. Mumbled words no one understood. Claimed to read minds.
He struggled with alcohol and drugs. But close friends wondered if something more was behind the erratic behavior. One believed Martin was possessed. Another dreamed he drove them off a cliff.
But Martin's parents lived in the most fear.
