Father who tried to kill his twin daughters by driving them off a cliff pleads guilty to attempted murder

A father who deliberately drove his twin daughters off a cliff to “send them to heaven” has pleaded guilty to attempted murder.

Robert Duane Brians, 51, will be sentenced to 31 years in prison next month after a plea agreement four years after they jumped from Sunset Cliffs in San Diego. Brians had initially pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The major change in the petition came after Brians and his daughters were rescued by police officer Jonathan Wiese, who rappelled down the cliff and swam to the sinking car to pull them from the water.

Brian kidnapped Hailey and Aubrey from his parents’ home during a planned visit and drove away with them on June 12, 2020.

His wife, Jenna Brians, called police around 4:30 a.m. on June 13 after receiving a series of text messages and phone calls from Brians “clearly indicating she might never see her children again.”

“The girls are going to heaven and I’m going to hell to wait for you,” read one of the letters.

Brians previously posted a message on Facebook in which he wrote, “Tonight I’m sending my babies to heaven.”

Jenna thought her estranged husband was going to drive off the Coronado Bridge, but police spotted him driving near Sunset Cliffs around 5 a.m.

Suddenly his pickup truck veered off the road and landed on the curb as the police following him watched in horror.

Brians had Hailey and Aubrey sitting on his lap while he drove, which saved their lives because if they had been in the backseat, they would have died.

Wiese, a K9 officer, used a 100-foot dog leash as a makeshift rope to rappel down the cliff while five other officers held the other end.

He then dove into the ocean to save them, where he found Brian holding the girls in his arms, while Aubrey was crying on his neck, trying to save his life.

Hailey looked weak and nearly dead, and Brians spoke angrily about his estranged wife.

Brians told Wiese that “he was going to die and the girls were going with him.”

Other officers on the cliff lowered a backpack to carry the girls back to the ambulance, while Wiese pushed Brians to the side.

Both girls suffered minor scrapes and cuts, but Hailey suffered a brain hemorrhage and compression fractures in her vertebrae and was unable to breathe on her own for a time.

They were admitted to intensive care, but within a few weeks they were happily playing on the beach again and put the ordeal behind them.

A GoFundMe was set up for the twins’ future and has raised $18,260 toward its $25,000 goal.

Brian and Jenna were married on November 6, 2017, and seemed to have a happy family life until a few months before the horrific crime.

“My little family is the best team I could ever have!” Jenna wrote alongside an Instagram photo on March 5, 2020 — the last photo he appeared in.

Other photos showed them on family vacations, celebrating birthdays and holidays, and playing on the beach, in parks and by swimming pools.

But it all went terribly wrong and one of Brian’s long list of charges was domestic violence against Jenna.

Wiese described in 2020 how he saw the pickup truck go off the cliff and how he saved the twins and the father who tried to kill them.

“Literally, my heart sank. Please tell me the girls weren’t in the car,” Wiese said as he thought to himself San Diego Tribune.

“I could see him and he had one of the girls in his arms, and I have a two-year-old daughter at home, so I was thinking, what if that was my wife and child down there? You’re not going to stand there on the cliff and see it happen,” Wiese told ABC10 while he went to rescue them.

Wiese tried to think of a way to climb down the cliff and remembered that he had a 30-meter long line with him.

He handed one end of the rope to five other officers who had come to help and jumped over the edge.

“I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I’m going,’” Wiese told the Tribune.

Wiese was eventually brought to the rocks below and the ocean, where he then swam, still in his police uniform, to the father who now held the children in his arms.

The rescue operation was made more difficult by the waves coming ashore harder and harder, but Wiese seemed the right man for the job, having served in the Marine Corps.

“They teach you how to do water rescues and I had a little flashback of, OK, grab him under the armpit and push him away, so I swam, held them above the water and brought them to shore,” he said.

While he was down, Wiese had time to talk to the father as the couple waited for a rescue helicopter. He decided not to leave him alone in case he made another attempt to end his life.

Brians pleaded guilty to a dozen crimes, including murder, kidnapping, burglary, child abuse and domestic violence, only to drop other crimes.