Sexually abused as a child, Brandon Hutchinson turned to booze and drugs to help him cope with his childhood trauma.
Despite being a father to two young boys while still in his teens, Hutchinson was desperate to escape his destructive life and moved from California and Missouri when he was 19.
It was a decision that would lead to the murder of two brothers and their killer spending the rest of his days behind bars.
Hutchinson is one of the killers featured in Crime+Investigation's I Am A Killer after he shot brothers Ronald and Brian Yates following a row at a New Year's Eve party.
The killer has never revealed why he gunned down the two men, who were badly injured and locked in a car boot, until now.
And despite spending more than 20 years on death row, Hutchinson claims to have only recently felt remorse for his actions.
He said: "I was watched a television programme about a grandmother talking about her daughter being murdered and I felt her pain and all I could think about was the Yates' mother."
When he first moved to Missouri, Hutchinson began working for Freddy Lopez, who was a drug dealer.
He had tried to get himself clean but working around drugs meant Hutchinson was soon addicted again.
Lopez, who was from California, was also friends with Michael Salazar as the pair had been in the same gang together.
The three men were at the same New Year's party at Lopez's house in 1996, which is where Hutchinson met the Yates' brothers.
He said: "We were playing dominoes in the garage and they were referring to Freddy and Michael as Mexican and other terms that I knew were racist.
"I told Michael what they had been saying and he went and started shooting them. I was shocked, I have never seen someone shot like that.
"Michael grabbed a screwdriver and and started stabbing Ron. It was chaos."
Hutchinson said he then fled the garage and went in search of Lopez in the house to tell him what had happened.
When Lopez came to see for himself, his now ex-wife followed and said she could see one of the men who had been shot was "paralysed because he was trying to drag himself along the floor and out of the garage".
Lopez, Salazar and Hutchinson bundled the Yates' brothers into the boot of a car and drove off.
Hutchinson said: "I was driving, Freddy wa sin the passenger seat and Michael was in the back, the someone started making a noise from the trunk.
"Freddy handed me the pistol and I knew what he wanted me to do, he wanted me to get out of the car and shoot them.
"He had given me a silent order. I'm not a murderer in my heart but I was worried about staying alive.
"I knew I was getting out of that car to murder two men."
Five days later, Lopez, Salazar and Hutchinson were arrested and faced separate murder trials.
Meanwhile, Hutchinson's former girlfriend and the mother of his two sons, Michelle, uprooted her family from California to Missouri to be closer to him.
She explained: "Brandon was a gentle giant but he could easily be initmidated. I stopped contact with him, and him with our boys, because of his drug issues but started again when he was in prison.
"I wanted to support him and I wanted the boys to know their father."
Michelle was so certain the father of her children wasn't a killer, she married him while he was in prison.
Hutchinson was charged with first degree murder and the first of the three men to be tried.
He was convicted and sentenced to death.
Salazar was the second of the trio to face the court and was also convicted but instead of the death sentence was ordered to serve life without parole.
However, his version of events is very different to Hutchinson's.
He admits he shot the two brothers in the garage but then claims Hutchinson took the lead in the events that followed than would lead to Ronald and Brian's murders.
Salazar said: "I made a lot of bad decisions that led me to that night. I'm the first to admit that my part in that was messed up but I didn't shoot them in the head or kill them.
"After I shot them, I was in a haze, every decision or action I made I just wasn't thinking.
"I thought we were leaving them by the side of the road so someone could find them and help them."
Lopez was the final of the three to be tried and thanks to a twist of fate he was jailed for just 10 years and served only eight.
His family in California had won the lottery and paid for the best legal team.
They also donated $230,000 to the children of one of the victims, a fact that horrifies one of the two remaining Yates' brothers, Gary.
He said: "I went to the funeral home to identify my brothers and it was horrifying.
I know Brandon did the execution and Salazar initiated it but Lopez was the architect of the rest of it.
"They were all as guilty as each other and they should all get the death penalty."
In 2011, when new evidence emerged about the case, Hutchinson had his sentenced reduced to life without parole.
But his sentence had destroyed his marriage to Michelle and the couple divorced in 2001.
After speaking about what drove him to kill the two Yates brothers on that New Year's Eve 23 years ago, Hutchinson wanted people to know he was "not a monster".
He added: "I decided to explain what had happened because the time felt right to tell the truth.
"I wish the victims' family could understand the grief I go through every day because of what I put them through.
"Something bad happened that night. When I think about regrest, I wish I'd saved those lives instead of taking them."
Hutchinson was diagnosed with liver and stomach cancer and died on November 2 this year.
He was 44-years-old.
- I Am A Killer is on Crime+Investigation at 9pm tonight.
