FORT PIERCE — Mike Hadley struggled with strong feelings Thursday as a judge ordered his nephew, Tyler Hadley, to prison for life for the grisly beating deaths of his parents in 2011.

Mike Hadley’s wife, Cindy, and his sister, Linda Ankrom, quietly sobbed as St. Lucie County Circuit Judge Gary Sweet resentenced Tyler Hadley to two terms of life in prison during a brief hearing.

“We hope we never have to do this again,” said Mike Hadley, whose brother, Blake Hadley, 54, and sister-in-law, MaryJo, 47, were killed by their son with a claw hammer on July 16, inside their Port St. Lucie home.

“We’re happy with the judge’s decision. It was the right decision to make, and as far as we’re concerned, the only decision,” Mike Hadley, of Deland, said after court. “We’re very pleased that it’s done; we feel like we’ve gone to another funeral today."

Mike Hadley's father, Maurice Hadley, of Stuart, was also in court.

The dead couple was found in a master bedroom, the bloodied claw hammer placed between their bodies.

After the frenzied attack, Tyler Hadley threw a party for dozens of people he invited via Facebook — all while his bludgeoned parents' bodies remained hidden behind a locked door.

A friend later reported Hadley to authorities and he was arrested the next morning.

In court, Hadley was chained at the hands and feet and stared ahead at the defense table as the judge spoke. He showed no emotion when he was told he’d be serving life.

This is the second time he’s been sentenced to life in prison. The first time was in 2014 when he pleaded no contest to two counts of first-degree murder with a weapon, but that punishment was overturned on appeal.

The judge Thursday ordered the new life terms to be served at the same time. By law, the sentence automatically will be reviewed after 25 years. For Hadley, who turned 25 Sunday, that will be in about 17 years.

The judge read aloud his sentencing order that listed in gruesome detail the homicides and how Hadley plotted for months before initiating his deadly attack.

The judge rejected all defense arguments, raised during Hadley’s October hearing, that his age, immaturity or troubled youth — marked by anxiety, depression and drug use — influenced his decision to kill.

“While casually talking to his friends about killing his parents a month and a half before the actual crimes, he revealed that he would wait until after his brother moved to North Carolina,” the judge noted. “And wait he did.”

The judge noted Hadley took his parents’ phones and hid them, “so if his plan went awry, they couldn’t call for help.”

The judge seemed incensed that after the murders, Hadley hid the bodies, tried to clean up the blood “and sent word out that the party was on.”

“The defendant displayed perverse premeditation, heartless cruelty and savagery, extreme violence, a willingness to mutilate and absolute depravity,” the judge declared. “Considering the victims were blood relatives and were killed up close and personally with a handheld tool, it’s obvious the defendant was fueled by a long, simmering, passionate hatred toward those who loved him the most.”

The judge said the crimes were not done on impulse, weren’t triggered by any one event and were carefully planned.

“Hadley did what he had long wanted to do,” the judge concluded.

After court, Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl and Assistant State Attorney Steve Gosnell seemed more than satisfied with the ruling.

“Today, the hammer of justice falls upon Tyler Hadley,” Bakkedahl said. “I’ve never heard a judge more precisely and more succinctly summarize the facts and circumstances of a case. That order is simply bulletproof.”

He dismissed any idea the life terms might be overturned on appeal.

“I’ve said this for the eight years: If Tyler Hadley doesn’t deserve life in prison, then no one does,” Bakkedahl said. "I pray to God the Hadley family finds some peace, although I doubt that’s ever likely to occur. But there has to be finality … we cannot tolerate another resentencing of this nature. It’s simply unfair to the victims.”

Related:In his own words | Tyler Hadley talks about killing his parents in 2011.

Shortly after Hadley was escorted out of court, his lawyer, Public Defender Diamond Litty, confirmed she will appeal.

“I’m pleased he (Hadley) got concurrent sentences rather than consecutive life sentences,” she said. “However, we were hoping he would get a term of years, and we are going to appeal the sentence.”

The appeal, she said, will argue that under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, for Hadley to be sentenced to life, the judge “must find the juvenile irreparably depraved and irretrievably corrupt.”

“Although he went through the specifics of the crime, which are horrific … he did not make a determination that (Hadley) was, in fact, irretrievably depraved or irreparably corrupt,” Litty said. “Clearly, the Supreme Court has said… no matter how terrible the facts, that isn’t enough.”

The judge had the option of sentencing Hadley from the state’s minimum of 40 years up to life.

Hadley was fingerprinted before being returned to the St. Lucie County jail. He’s expected to be returned immediately to the Okeechobee Correctional Institution.