Note: This story contains violent content that may be upsetting to some readers.
BOISE -- A Nampa man who beat an elderly couple and their disabled son to death in March will spend the rest of his life behind bars, a judge ruled Friday.
Adam Dees, 22, sat in silence as the verdict was read.
Dees used a baseball bat, a gun and a knife to slaughter 80-year-old Ted Welp, 77-year-old Elaine Welp and 52-year-old Tom Welp at their home in the Boise foothills.
He will not be eligible for parole and waived his right to appeal as part of a plea agreement, guaranteeing Dees will die in prison.
"You took my mother's life, you took my father's life, and you took my brother's life," Katherine Nesci told Dees during the sentencing. "Now we take yours, one minute at a time."
Law enforcement described a gruesome scene inside the Welps' Cartwright Road home: Blood was pooled on floors and spattered on walls, ceilings and furniture. Ada County Detective Jared Watson said Ted and Elaine Welp's heads were bashed in with a wooden baseball bat, and they each had been shot with a nine-millimeter. Tom Welp, who was deaf and nearly blind, was beaten, shot and stabbed in the neck.
A tearful Dees apologized to the Welps' family before the sentence was handed down, saying he was unable to overcome a darkness in his mind.
"I was in a dark place emotionally - I was considering suicide daily," he said. "Life seems pretty grim when you're facing down the barrel of your own gun. It was then, at that point, I decided I would live crazy before I died."
Prosecutor Brian Naugle said the elderly couple was tortured before their deaths. Both were found bound with scarves taken from their own home.
Dees broke into the Welps' garage, waiting until the family fell asleep before letting himself into the home with keys he found inside Ted Welp's car. Naugle said the defendant went first to Tom Welp's bedroom, bludgeoning him so hard and so many times that wood chips from the bat were found scattered across the bed.
When detectives found Tom's body, the man was still in bed. A blanket had been pulled up over his head.
"The defendant went into this house and he tortured these people for some time," Naugle said. "They were tied up. They had to be tied up for a reason."
At one point, Naugle said, Dees forced Elaine to walk through the pool of her husband's blood back to the master bedroom, where she was killed.
"We know they both fought for their lives," Naugle said. "Ted and Elaine had tears to their fingernails that show that they both lived through enough of this to be able to fight and try to fight for their own lives and the life of their son."
Elaine Welp, like her son, was found in her bed with the blankets pulled up over her. Blood had soaked completely through the mattress, pooling on the ground below. Ted Welp was on the floor with a rug pulled over his body, a bloody handprint visible on the back of his shirt.
"It appeared to me that somebody had tried to grab his shirt," Watson said. "It looked like a palm impression, a bloody palm impression."
Detectives found the home ransacked. Dees rifled through purses and drawers, taking credit cards and jewelry, including Elaine Welp's engagement ring. He tried to pull the Welp's television set off the wall and threw or hammered a wooden cross into a wall so hard it was sticking out of the plaster, Watson said.
Dees also dumped cleaning solutions around the house in an attempt to clean up evidence, Watson said.
The grisly scene was discovered March 10; investigators say the Welps were killed either one or two days before.
Surveillance video shows Dees purchasing a wooden baseball bat, black gloves and zip ties at Walmart March 8. Watson said the defendant had asked his father for money the day before; Dees's father later told detectives his son seemed "desperate, or in despair."
Dees was arrested on March 11 when he returned to a Best Buy store in Boise to pick up a car stereo he had bought with the Welps' credit cards. Investigators say the killer also used the cards to make purchases at a cigar shop, the Boise Towne Square Mall and Cabela's. In several of the cases, he used Ted Welp's name, but gave the stores his own cellphone number.
Dees also bought himself dinner at Barbacoa before dumping a suitcase containing a broken baseball bat, Ted and Elaine Welp's drivers licenses and a set of keys in a Dumpster behind the restaurant. Elaine Welp's jewelry and cotton swabs he had used to clean blood from the gun were found at Dees' home after his arrest.
Naugle pointed to Dees' apparent lack of remorse, playing recorded calls from jail in which Dees seems to joke about the murders.
"My day has been a little trying," he told his parents in an April 1 call. "There's a new creature in the vicinity - he's right below me, actually, in my cell. The creature sounds like a baboon basically, and it doesn't stop yelling."
Dees said the "creature" was a floor below him, but he could hear it through the vents. He told his father he had told it to shut up, to no avail.
"He probably needs help," his father replied.
"He needs a baseball bat to the head," Dees said, breaking into laughter.
But defense attorney Tony Geddes argued the medication Dees was taking for his bipolar disorder and depression was to blame for his inappropriate laughter and lack of outward emotion.
Geddes said Dees has taken responsibility for his actions, even agreeing to debrief with detectives after sentencing to help them in any way he can.
"He's accountable for what he's done, he's horrified by what he's done, and I believe there's a very deep, deep sorrow at what has happened," Geddes said.
It's still unclear why Dees targeted the Welps, or why he chose to kill them during the robbery. Prosecutors say they have still found no evidence Dees and the Welps ever met before the murders. Dees' defense attorney said during the sentencing that his client was still grappling to come to terms with what he had done.
"Some things are simply inexplicable,"Geddes said.
