A man who bludgeoned his daughter to death in 2014 and shot her girlfriend in the head has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

It was initially thought to be that James Larry Cosby killed the couple because he was upset about his daughter being gay. But prosecutors did not present that as a motive during the trial.

The bodies of Britney Cosby and her girlfriend Crystal Jackson were found near a dumpster behind a convenience store in Houston. Both were just 24.

Cosby’s father was formally charged with the murders in June 2015 after more than a year in jail on other charges.

The murders took place in March 2014, less than six months after Cosby had been released from prison. He had been serving time for failing to register as a sex offender. His daughter and her grandmother allowed him to move in and live in the garage.

‘He deserves the death penalty,’ Cosby’s own cousin, Scott Cavitt, tells the Houston Chronicle.

Prosecutor Paul Love convinced the jury of Cosby’s guilt with this scenario: Angry at his daughter, he punched her in the eye and used an unknown object to strike her on her forehead and behind her left ear.

Love said the killer left her to die in a pool of blood on the floor of his bedroom then ‘choked that last bit of life out of her body.’

Another prosecutor, Bill Reed, told the jury that Jackson then arrived and Cosby shot her in the right side of the head.