BEND — Tears, relief, quiet acceptance. Those were the emotions that flowed through the courtroom Friday as Judge Annette Hillman sentenced Randall Kilby, 38, to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.

The sentencing in Deschutes County Circuit Court followed a weeklong trial, which detailed how Kilby murdered his roommates Jeffrey and Benjamin Taylor with a hatchet in 2021. The jury weighed evidence that included Kilby’s confession tape, graphic autopsy images and the testimony of Kilby’s mother, Darlene Allen, who witnessed the murders. Jurors found him guilty of first-degree murder.

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Sisters Laci and Rio Killian were also present. They are not related to the Taylors but are connected to Kilby — he is also charged with killing their mother, Daphne Banks.

“We’re still waiting for my mom’s case, but he’s never going to get out again,” Laci Killian told The Bulletin. “I want to thank everybody who has watched the cases and followed it and been a part of it — the whole community for always supporting me and my sister.”

The verdict gives the sisters a small sense of peace as they approach the three-year anniversary of their mother’s death.

Two months before Kilby killed Jeffrey and Benjamin Taylor, he was arrested after police found Banks, 43, unconscious in a detached garage on Christmas Day 2020. The garage belonged to the same house on Granite Drive where she, Kilby, Allen and the Taylors had been living. Banks was hospitalized with a serious head injury and later died when her family took her off life support.

Kilby’s alleged killing of Banks is just one in a long line of arrests and convictions prosecutors used to convince the judge that Kilby did not deserve parole.

“I think he has shown that he cannot comply with laws. He cannot, in essence, be in society without harming someone,” said Aaron Brenneman, a Deschutes County deputy district attorney. “He does not have the ability to comply with parole … whether it be use of controlled substances or be it engaging in further criminal conduct.”

Kilby’s repeated use of methamphetamine did play a role in the sentencing. In their argument for a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, the defense argued that Kilby had not had an easy life and that it would be pre-emptive of the court to deny him the opportunity to rehabilitate over the course of his sentence.

The judge did not agree.

“We face a review of the criminal history with no indication of rehabilitation, a showing of ongoing force of criminal conduct despite supervision, a repeated decline to engage in any treatment and a threat to public safety,” Hillman said as she addressed the courtroom. “The court is going to make a finding of life in prison without the possibility of parole.”

Even though Kilby is now serving a life sentence, the Killian sisters still want justice for their mother, separate from the crimes he committed against the Taylors.

Last week, prosecutors submitted a notice of appeal to The Oregon Department of Justice seeking to make statements made by Kilby about Banks’ death, obtained in the investigation of the Taylor case, admissible in Kilby’s trial for allegedly murdering Banks. The appeal will likely delay the upcoming murder trial, but the statements could make a difference.

In the statement, Kilby admitted to hitting Banks over the head with a hammer, but that information was declared inadmissible by Hillman because police had been notified not to speak to Kilby about Banks without a lawyer present.

“It’s always difficult this time of year,” Laci Killian told The Bulletin after Kilby’s sentencing. “We’re just hoping that it will go forward and then he’ll be convicted in my mom’s case as well.”