FREDERICTON, New Brunswick (AP) – A New Brunswick judge has found Gregory Despres guilty of causing the deaths of an elderly couple, but not criminally responsible in their gruesome slaying.

The verdict Wednesday follows the second trial of Despres, 25, in the April 2005 deaths of Fred Fulton, 74, and Verna Decarie, 70.

Justice William Grant of the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench said the prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Despres caused the deaths of the couple, but the defense successfully argued that he was not criminally responsible for his actions.

“The sheer brutality of the murders causes me to question whether they could have been done by a person who appreciated the wrongfulness of his actions,” Grant told the court.

The judge said Despres was not criminally responsible “because he is suffering from a disease of the mind that prevented him from knowing his actions were wrong.”

When Grant said he had found Despres guilty in the deaths, one female relative of the couple said “Hallelujah” in court, and another uttered “Thank God.”

The court heard that Despres will be sent to the mental institution at New Brunswick’s medium-security Dorchester Penitentiary where a disposition hearing will be held within 45 days to determine how he will be dealt with.

Despres was originally charged with first-degree murder.

Fulton and Decarie, who were found dead in their home in Minto, were stabbed numerous times and Fulton was decapitated.

Despres, a former neighbor of the couple, was described in his second trial as a paranoid schizophrenic who suffers from delusions.

His first trial ended abruptly last year when the judge ruled he was unfit to understand the proceedings.

That ruling came after several courtroom outbursts in which Despres ranted about the Hells Angels, the Ku Klux Klan, and an organization he called the “super space patrol.”

Following treatment, Despres was found fit to stand trial this year, but his mental stability has remained a major issue throughout the legal proceedings.

The double murder stunned the residents of Minto, a sleepy coal-mining village about 30 miles from Fredericton where even petty crime is unusual.

“This has affected the whole community,” Mike Richardson, Fulton’s nephew, said recently, adding that villagers now routinely lock their doors at night.

While prosecutors produced evidence linking Despres to the crime, including articles of his clothing stained with the victims’ blood, the defense focused exclusively on the question of criminal responsibility.

Several psychiatrists testified that Despres appears to have been in the grip of delusions both before and after the murders.

Dr. Louis Theriault told the court Despres believed he was carrying out a covert military mission.

“He thought he was a soldier,” the psychiatrist said.

Defense lawyer Ed Derrah told the court that Despres could not appreciate the nature of his actions, or tell right from wrong, at the time of the offenses.

“The accused was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions,” he said.

Despres was arrested in Massachusetts shortly after the bodies were found on April 26, 2005.

He had been allowed to enter the United States because he holds dual citizenship.

U.S. border officials at Calais, Maine, confiscated a small arsenal of weapons and sharp objects he was carrying when he arrived at the border, including a chainsaw, a sword, a knife, brass knuckles and an axe.

Wild-eyed at the time of his arrest in 2005, with a Mohawk-style haircut, Despres called himself a sniper and an assassin and boasted at one point that he had just finished a job, the court was told.

AP-ES-03-05-08 1125EST