"This was a brutal, horrific crime.”

That’s how Circuit Judge Robert Makemson in 2014 described Tyler Hadley’s actions as he ordered the convicted killer to serve two life prison terms for beating his parents to death three years earlier.

Hadley was 17 on July 16, 2011, when he used a claw hammer to slay his 54-year-old father, Blake, and his 47-year-old mother, Mary Jo Hadley.

He pleaded no contest to two counts of first-degree murder and avoided going on trial.

“These attacks on the defendant’s parents were very painful, both physically and emotionally,” Makemson announced to a packed courtroom March 20, 2014. “And I say emotionally because they realized that their own son was killing them.”

Sentencing do-over

In 2016, Hadley won an appeal that threw out his two life terms and sent the case back for a resentencing, which begins Monday.

Now 24, Hadley returns to a courtroom in Fort Pierce to ask a new judge to reduce his life sentences to the state minimum of 40 years.

More:Why are Florida judges resentencing 600 kids who killed?

More: Of the 23 Treasure/Space Coast killers, one's already been released

In sentencing Hadley in 2014, Makemson noted his mother was attacked as she sat at a computer and suffered 36 blows to the head and back. Hadley’s father, who interrupted his son’s attack when he heard screams, was struck 39 times, mostly to his head and chest.

Before and after the murders, Hadley used Facebook to invite friends to a party at his Port St. Lucie home in the 300 block of Northeast Granduer Avenue.

He first cleaned up the blood and hid his parents’ bodies in a bedroom, where police found them before dawn the next day.

New Hadley admissions

Hadley didn’t testify four years ago and there’s no indication he will next week, but he had plenty to say in October 2017 to Boston behavior psychologist Robert Kinscherff, an associate professor in a clinical psychology doctoral program at William James College in Newton, Massachusetts.

More: Hadley's maternal grandmother gives tearful testimony in 2014 sentencing

Hadley’s defense team hired Kinscherff to evaluate him and testify about a range of issues related to his behavior and his capacity for rehabilitation.

In his recorded depositions, Kinscherff stated Hadley admitted exaggerating symptoms of mental illness to experts hired in 2014 to evaluate him. Hadley talked with Kinscherff about his thoughts and behavior before and during the murders.

Related: Tyler Hadley has troubles in prison

Hadley’s admissions to Kinscherff have not been previously reported. Here’s highlights from their conversations:

Hadley’s drug history

Hadley stated he first got drunk at age 12 and by 14 or 15 he was smoking pot and later began taking pills, including Xanax, Percocet, Oxycodone. By 16, he was taking ecstasy and Di-Methly Tryptamine, a short-acting hallucinogen.

Criminal history

Kinscherff said Hadley reported that as a kid, he’d set small fires and watch them and “accidentally set whole woods on fire around ages 11 through 13.

“Used to break things in people’s yards, break windows, deface public bathrooms with Sharpies, take people’s Christmas lights, shoe paint people’s cars, onset 12 or 13.”

Pot use in prison

Kinscherff first met Hadley Oct. 25, 2017, at the Okeechobee Correctional Institution and he admitted to recently smoking marijuana.

“Last Monday marijuana; Sunday marijuana; smoked marijuana in the past week off and on, so like in the past week off and on since incarceration, no alcohol or other since incarceration.”

“’The COs, correctional officers, ‘don’t care that much,’ Hadley said, 'if minor amounts; they’ll flush it, especially if you tell them before they search for it.’ ”

Thoughts of harming parents

Kinscherff: Did he have thoughts generally about killing people or was it just his parents?

Hadley: Just killing them in particular.

Kinscherff: Do you have any idea what may have precipitated those thoughts?

Hadley: I was probably mad about getting in trouble and everything that was going on … They started a little bit, but increased frequency, became an obsession that I couldn’t get out of my mind, pretty intense, I thought about it every day.

It was more like a movie in my head, but I didn’t plan or how not to get caught, um, I didn’t even give, I didn’t even give that a thought; it was do it and then kill myself.

Kinscherff: And that would bring everything to an end?

Hadley: Yeah.

Kinscherff: Did you tell anybody about these thoughts?

Hadley: I blatantly told people about it … It started off almost as a joke, but it became recurring in my mind and it wouldn’t leave … they laughed about them, Michael, Danny, Morgan, um, at my house hours from when it happened, and I said it again and it was like a joke to them, I was actually compulsively thinking about it. I sat there, and I thought ‘why am I even thinking these thoughts,’ basically.

Kinscherff: He had said that he had wanted everything to be over, the – whatever it was that if he would kill his parents and then kill himself, then everything would be over. And I said, ‘what would be over, what was the problem that you thought you were solving?’

Hadley: Wouldn’t be a problem solved, but maybe it would all stop. Maybe I wouldn’t be living the way I was living … I was just getting in trouble, maybe me just getting into trouble and me overreacting and over-analyzing things.

Murderous rage

Kinscherff: Do you remember your emotions at the time of the attack?

Hadley: Angry, like a blind rage came out.

Kinscherff: How long did it last?

Hadley: However long to do that, they said maybe 17 seconds to the minute. I remember my face being distorted, my teeth were clenched, I must have looked like a psycho killer. I could feel my eyes, uh, the rage coming out, uh.

Kinscherff: I identified that was a mirror that he had seen himself in.

Hadley: Yes, I was covered in blood, I was detached, I went into this sort of psychotic state or trance. I had some sense of finality that it’s over, all that compulsive thinking in my head was just gone.

Kinscherff: How did you feel when that dissipated?

Hadley: I felt relief, I felt better.

Kinscherff: How long did that last, that, that sense of detachment, the sense of relief before the sense of detachment set in?

Hadley: Maybe a minute, I really don’t know.

More:Testimony at Hadley's 2014 sentencing: "We all thought he was fine."

Kinscherff: Why did you cover their bodies?

Hadley: I know I covered their faces with towels because I couldn’t look at their faces.

Kinscherff: Why did you put items on top of them?

Hadley: I don’t know what possessed me, but the pictures, everything had to go, everything in the house had to go. It was not about hiding their bodies, it was about thinking about having to go with their bodies, the pictures, um, my mother’s board of spoons, bread box, things on the counter, everything had to go, things in their dresser, the TV, I broke the mirror, the broken mirror.

Kinscherff: What do you remember about that?

Hadley: As time goes on, um, I know it gets vague, I’m still feeling rage, but not as intense and then into detachment numbness. While cleaning up the blood, um, I put on Facebook … that maybe there’d be a party at my house. The whole compulsion thing was the attack prior, then have a party, then kill myself.

Kinscherff: What were you going, did you think about how you would kill yourself?

Hadley: Yes, I’d back up the car into the garage, carbon monoxide poisoning.

Kinscherff: What did you tell other people?

Hadley: I was telling people there would be a party the next day, but that’s not even rational because I was supposed to go to church that day. Someone, somebody would come and question me.

Kinscherff: Why did your parents need to die as part of this compulsive thinking?

Hadley: I don’t know, maybe because I was angry.

Kinscherff: Had you had that level of rage before?

Hadley: That violent rage, I never felt that before about them, not about anybody.

Kinscherff: Was one or the other parent the key target?

Hadley: I can’t answer that, um, I don’t know, I think it was both.

Kinscherff: Has the detachment worn off since?

Hadley: I was detached a couple of months while I was in jail, it took a while to come to my senses … like it didn’t seem real.

Regrets

Kinscherff: So, what do you understand that this crime meant about yourself?

Hadley: I don’t understand it, really. I feel like if I try to understand this, it would be justifying it. Uh, things weren’t that bad, it just wasn’t, I can’t justify it, why would I want to try … I was messing up, but I don’t think I can ever justify it. I don’t want to be able to justify it.

Kinscherff: Do you regret having killed your parents?

Hadley: Yeah, I regret it and not just for myself, uh, for who else, for everybody involved.

Kinscherff: Why a party on the day of the offense?

Hadley: I never had a party like that, it was the biggest gathering, only had a couple of people over.

Kinscherff: Why did you cover their face?

Hadley: I didn’t think I could look at them, I couldn’t look at them as persons that I just did this to … to make them anonymous.

Kinscherff: Do you think your sentences have been fair, lenient or harsh?

Hadley: Uh, pretty fair. The lawyers did as good as they could. I’m hoping for a little bit of relief, maybe 40, 50, 60 years.

Kinscherff: Have you ever done anything for which you have felt sorry?

Hadley: This whole incident, yes. Stealing from them and putting them through a whole lot of (expletive) … it was like the vandalism and so forth. I’m sure they didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t think about it. I was being a dumb … kid.

Kinscherff: How do you feel about yourself?

Hadley: I don’t really like myself too much, about a five.

Kinscherff: What would you describe as your main failure?

Hadley: Probably everything, my whole life.

Kinscherff: If you could say something to one of your victims, what would you say?

Hadley: Tell them I’m sorry, that’s all I can think of right now.