FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — Candace Walton stood before a judge Wednesday morning where she pled guilty to several counts, and in that courtroom, there was complete silence but an overwhelming amount of emotion as details of what happened to her brother and her mother came to light.
"We can’t bring Tasha and Gerald back, but we can stand up and pray that Candace and her boyfriend are charged with these crimes," the prosecution said.
That's what Crystal Vandiver told her niece Candace Walton before she was sentenced for arson and murder.
The victims were Candace's mother and brother.
“Around 2:56 a.m. on February 27, the defendant messaged the boyfriend Kaleo saying, 'I've done it.' She asked for directions to Oregon and then says, 'I set it to fire,'" the prosecution said in court.
Prosecutors say Candace and her boyfriend Kaleo Pangelian exchanged more than 80,000 text messages planning the murder.
"They discussed how the defendant had been putting a mix of medications in her mother and brother's drinks and it was making them throw up, but it wasn't killing them. They discussed different options on how she could kill them at one point. The defendant said, 'Poison, knife, gun, or suffocate,'" the prosecution said.
But Walton's lawyer told the judge that she was just a child.
"Just barely 16, a child, and as she stands here today, she's barely 18 -- still a child," her lawyer said, and he said the case was more complicated than it looked.
"But worry that she's in that house, there were some things going on -- some physical abuse by some people that were coming in and out of that house that she dealt with," her lawyer said.
Then Walton herself spoke to the judge.
"If there was a way to go back and change what I did, I would," Walton said.
She said she thinks about her mom and brother constantly and asked her family for forgiveness, but her aunt said they want to cut all ties.
"I don't want nothing to do with her," the victim’s sister said.
Both Jade Gordy and Crystal Vandiver say it’s painful and no sentence can bring their loved ones back.
"I’m not really happy with the outcome, due to the fact she killed my special needs nephew and my sister and we can never get them back," Vandiver said.
Walton was granted life with the possibility of parole despite the prosecution asking that she get two life sentences, saying that when she could make parole she would be 48, an age her mother nor her brother would ever reach.