A Sacramento County jury convicted Mark Navarrete of murdering his parents in Elk Grove for an inheritance.

Prosecutors said he dodged the doorbell camera and missed everything else. The district attorney's office laid out a kick scooter found in his garage, his DNA under his mother's fingernails, and Flock and traffic cameras that tracked his car. The jury's special-circumstance findings mean the only sentence on the table is the maximum the office named: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office announced on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, that on Friday, Oct. 16, a jury convicted Mark Andre Tomas Navarrete of two counts of first-degree murder. The jury also found true allegations that he committed multiple murders and that the killings were carried out for financial gain. The Sacramento Bee reported Navarrete is 46 and that the victims were his father, Augusto Tacsuan Navarrete, 73, and his mother, Marjorie Jane Tomas Navarrete, 70. Principal Criminal Attorney Aaron Miller of the homicide unit prosecuted the case, according to the district attorney's office. The verdict is the jury's answer. Sentencing is next.

Prosecutors said that on June 28, 2024, Navarrete drove from his Elk Grove home to his parents' neighborhood, parked a few blocks away, put on a mask and gloves, and rode a kick scooter to their house on Crosscourt Way, according to the district attorney's office. He went through a side gate to avoid the front porch Ring camera, met his parents at the backyard door, got them into the garage, struck both on the head with an object, and strangled them, prosecutors said. He then drove off in his parents' car, parked it near where he had left his own and rode the scooter back, the office said. Later that morning, prosecutors said, he texted his dead parents inviting them to dinner. When his sister grew worried, he drove to the house with his children and "discovered" the bodies, the office said.

The Elk Grove Police Department said in July 2024 that Navarrete, then 44, had reported finding his parents dead and told officers one of their cars was missing, and that a canvass turned up video of him parking a few blocks away, going to the house and leaving in their car. Detectives served a search warrant at his home on June 30, 2024, and booked him on two counts of murder, police said. The district attorney's office said detectives found the kick scooter in his garage, DNA analysis put his DNA under his mother's fingernails, and Flock cameras and other traffic cameras captured his movements that day. Elk Grove News reported the verdict was delivered Oct. 16 and described the case the same way.

Prosecutors said the motive was money. The district attorney's office said Navarrete had been scamming friends and family with fake investments, promising repayment at exorbitant interest, that his parents paid back other relatives for his debts, and that he came to resent them. At the time of the killings he stood to inherit half of his parents' estate, the office said. The Sacramento Bee reported he remained in custody Monday at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility near Elk Grove. Navarrete faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and sentencing is set for Nov. 13, 2026, at 9 a.m. before Judge Michael Bowman, according to the district attorney's office. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.