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MOBILE, Alabama — A judge today sentenced Aubrey Lynn Shaw to die by lethal injection for stabbing to death his great aunt and uncle in their St. Elmo farmhouse.

Mobile County Circuit Judge Michael Youngpeter handed down the death penalty sentence in a quiet courtroom as Shaw, 36, looked on wearing shackles and a jail uniform.

In 2007, Shaw used a steak knife to stab Bob and Doris Gilbert, 79 and 83, a total of 50 times before he searched his great uncle’s pockets for money and grabbed 2 guns inside the house.

“Aubrey Shaw, I understand you have a faith in God,” Youngpeter said at the end of the hearing. “I hope that you seek and receive forgiveness.”

His family has said he is a Christian who from his jail cell has encouraged his wife and children to attend church.

“Two very elderly and infirm persons were brutally stabbed and slashed to death,” Youngpeter said. “It is clear from the numerous defensive wounds on the victims that their deaths were not instantaneous, but likely were drawn out and painful.

“Additionally, each suffered the mental terror and agony of having to watch a spouse being brutally assaulted with a knife while being physically powerless to stop it,” the judge said.

The Gilberts’ land in south Mobile County had once been a horse farm where many people visited for recreational rides.

Shaw, meanwhile, had become addicted to crack cocaine as a teenager and was subjected to sexual abuse as a child by his grandmother, according to court testimony.

Youngpeter said those factors weren’t enough to grant Shaw life in prison without parole.

After the hearing, a friend of the Gilberts, Mary Parker, read a short statement on behalf of the couples’ family. She said the death sentence was justified.

“Aubrey Shaw caused his own demise,” she said

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