to go to the hospital. and he said, no, emily, we don t. 911. what s the location. reporter: their mother s car had swerved in to the oncoming traffic. she had hit the gravel troubling head on a rural road. so your mother was suddenly dead. right. reporter: may have been distraction or turn away from trouble. we really don t know, do we? no idea. she had just bought a little yorkie and for the past couple of weeks she had been happy. reporter: what did the investigators make up happened. they said it was an accident. reporter: the investigators couldn t ignore that jennifer s head-on highway death was the sixth in eight years from the same family commune. does that change your interest in the case? are you amped up more? i think we were. we saw a pattern.
there s no way. reporter: emily might have gone to live with their father, but she remained with the commune. i wasn t going to leave what i considered my family. and your dad was part of another family back when but i mean i still visited my dad and i still loved my dad, but that s just not where i was going to live. reporter: so as the family and emily moved to a beautiful colonial home on acreage in columbia, tennessee, sara stood her ground in wichita. she could exhale at last. and one evening, she went out and met a guy. his name was daniel an expert marksman in the kansas national guard. and as they fell in love, she began to spill the buried secrets of her past. you d think nobody could have these dark stories that are part of your life. but you had just awful, awful things to tell? uh-huh. yes. reporter: sara was still in touch with the family commune, now living in tennessee. and daniel wanted to know more about this lou character sara was telling him
and mouse. reporter: and after a decade-long obsession, the detective s hunch would be proved right. it turned out to be far more sinister than anyone could imagine. we had kept this a secret for 10 years and no one knew. reporter: he would uncover a supernatural tale of angels and demons. an investigation into the saga of a travelling family that dabbled in most of the seven deadly sins. amber was the angel of death. did you believe it? he could see the future. reporter: lies? plenty. lust, greed, murder? angels landing had all of that and more. all i could think about was how are they going to believe me? you know, this is such a crazy story. what if they don t believe me? reporter: growing up near kansas city, missouri, the two sisters sara and emily had about as normal a life as any suburban girls in the midwest.
and then, you re, what, goin back to school and yep. exactly. reporter: still it was hard for the family to put trish s death behind them. and something else was troubling. emily and sara had a fuzzy recollection that trish wasn t the first person in the family commune to die. they d recently met a teenager who d also once been on the fringes of the commune. and he told a story with painful echoes. coming up, a tale of tragedy and mystery. i knew something wasn t right and he told me, your mom and sister have been missing. two members of the commune vanish in thin air. when dateline continues. and the 12-hour pain relieving strength of aleve. so.magic mornings happen. there s a better choice. aleve pm.
they never fought in front of us or anything. reporter: that s always tough for kids. that summer, 2001, their mom jennifer was showing houses to a new client, a man named lou castro who, with his long hair, and western hat, looked for all the world like a well-heeled young cowboy. he seemed really charismatic and outgoing and friendly and like he had a lot of money. he would tell everybody that he had cattle in south dakota, and that he was trading stocks he told me he had a bunch of cars in texas somewhere, and that he owned a mansion down there. reporter: this soft-spoken reporter: this soft-spoken man was looking for a country property for his somewhat new age family commune just down from south dakota: a young married couple, trish and brian hughes their baby girl and a young woman from north dakota. jennifer found them just the right parcel, but even after turning over the keys, there was something about that lou castro guy, that emily s mom found