A 35-year-old man faces 41 years to life in prison after pleading no contest in court on Thursday to killing his grandparents in their Glendale home two years ago.

Nathaniel Scheiern entered no-contest pleas for one count each of first-degree murder and second-degree murder. According to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Scheiern had killed his grandparents sometime between June 24 and 25, 2015, in the single-family home he shared with them in the 600 block of Alexander Street.

The district attorney’s office said he first attacked his 82-year-old grandmother Verna Scheiern with an ax before striking his 77-year-old grandfather William Scheiern with a hammer when he tried to intervene.

In testimony given during a preliminary hearing in 2016, their bodies weren’t discovered until June 28 when Nathaniel Scheiern’s sister called for a well-being check of her grandparents.

When an officer arrived at the home, he found the front door open and a foul odor coming from inside.

An officer testified last year to finding the decomposing bodies of the elderly couple in one of the home’s bedrooms. They were on a twin-sized bed with a blanket covering them.

Police found a bloodied hammer a few feet away from the bodies and an ax embedded into a wall caked with dried blood.

Police were able to track down Nathaniel Scheiern at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia, where he was being treated for injuries he suffered in a car crash the day after the killings.

Glendale Police Det. Jeff Davis testified in 2016 that Nathaniel Scheiern confessed to the killings after his arrest and that he tried to behead the bodies.

The couple had lived in the Glendale home for over two decades.

Nathaniel Scheiern is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc

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