Man gets 300 years in prison for killing wife, 2 others

RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — A Montana judge on Friday sentenced a 41-year-old man to 300 years in prison for the shooting deaths of his wife, her sister and his brother-in-law, a prosecutor said.

District Court Judge Blair Jones sentenced Robert James LeCou to three consecutive 100-year terms for the 2016 deaths of Karen Hill-LeCou, 54; Sharon Hill-Lamb, 72; and Lloyd Lamb, 76, said Carbon County Attorney Alex Nixon.

The judge "called it one of the most unbelievably vile and unbelievably horrifying offenses he'd seen," Nixon told the Billings Gazette . "The worst homicide he had ever had the chance to be involved with."

LeCou was convicted in June of three counts of deliberate homicide. He didn't testify at trial.

According to court records, LeCou and his wife had moved in with the older couple in the small agricultural community of Belfrey near the Wyoming border about six months before the April 2016 slayings.

Authorities discovered the bodies after a neighbor grew suspicious about a lack of activity at the home. LeCou was arrested in Washington state several days after the killings. All three victims had suffered gunshot wounds.

LeCou was paroled from a Texas prison in 2009 after serving a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He and others were charged in the 1999 baseball bat beating death of a homeless man.