VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A 47-year-old man will serve 30 years in prison after admitting to killing his parents in Virginia Beach back in 2019.

However, the most troubling question of all could forever remain unanswered: Why did he do it?

Judge James Lewis sentenced Christopher Brady to 40 years on each of two second-degree murder charges, and suspended all but 22 years. He also received eight additional years mandatory for two gun charges. It was the maximum sentence prosecutors asked for as part of the plea agreement.

Brady shot his father Roy Brady Sr., once in the head and shot his mother Sheila multiple times at their home on Kellam Road in Virginia Beach on July 12, 2019. He then fled with his teenage daughter — who lived with him and his parents — to a motel in Richmond, but returned days later to turn himself in to police.

His daughter was home at the time of the shootings and heard loud voices and then gunshots, according to the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. She tried to go downstairs, but he father told her to go back upstairs. He came upstairs himself with a gun and said they needed to leave the home.

She saw her grandmother laying on the flood in blood as they left, the commonwealth’s attorneys office said.

Christopher Brady’s daugher told police they briefly went back to the house on the night the killings happened. She stayed in the car while her father went inside to pick up shell casings and make it look like a robbery had happened.

The daughter said her father took the gun used in the shooting apart and threw the barrel into the water while they drove across the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.

Police found the remaining parts of the gun in Christopher Brady’s truck, prosecutors said.

When given the opportunity by Lewis to speak immediately prior to sentencing, Brady remained silent.

“In his initial interview with the police [in July 2019], he does tell the police, ‘I don’t know why I did it.’ It was his decision not to elaborate on that,” said Brady’s attorney Kristin Paulding, although back on the day of the plea agreement in October she had anticipated he might be willing to explain Monday morning what happened.

At that time, Paulding said Brady was “absolutely remorseful” for the killings, and did not have a violent criminal past.

In a victim impact statement, Brady’s sister-in-law Rebecca told the court Monday how she now gets sick and feels lost whenever she sees the home — how her husband, Roy Brady Jr., suffers from nightmares, and how he has saved his mother’s last voicemail before she was killed as a way of maintaining some connection to her.

Roy Brady Jr. said off camera following the sentencing that even though his brother never gave a reason for killing their parents, it really doesn’t matter because no reason would justify what had happened.