A judge sentenced a man in 20 minutes for beating an 8-year-old boy to death and leaving his body in his apartment for a year with his siblings.

A Texas man will spend the remainder of his life in prison for murdering his girlfriend’s son and leaving his decomposing body in the apartment where his three brothers were forced to live.

On Monday, 34-year-old Brian Coulter was found guilty of murder in the death of 8-year-old Kendrick Lee.

Prosecutors narrowed Kendrick’s date of death to between October and November 2020. His skeletal stays weren’t found until October 2021.

Coulter opted for a non-jury trial, which lasted 4 days while arguments continued between defense lawyers and prosecutors, nevertheless it took the judge only 20 minutes to consider his fate.

Coulter will serve life in prison without the potential of parole.

“These children harassed me last week – they disrupted my safe space as I left this building,” Judge Kelli Johnson said. “I hope that in prison, those boys who haunted my mind will haunt yours, too.”

Kendrick’s brothers, now 17, 12 and 10, testified concerning the extent of Coulter’s abuse.

Two brothers described how Coulter often locked them in a bedroom where they were forced to use the lavatory. They also recalled instances of Coulter punching, punching and kicking Kendrick in the months leading up to his death.

Prosecutors characterised Coulter as a mean, jealous and indignant boy who increasingly competed with the youngsters for their mother’s attention.

The 10-year-old brother testified that he was in the room when Coulter beat his brother to death.

“I saw (Coulter) beating (Kendrick). (Coulter) used his fists,” the boy said, adding that he saw Kendrick stop moving and blink at one point through the beating before Coulter “put a blue blanket over him.”

Kendrick’s oldest brother is the one who called 911 concerning the body. At this point, the boys had been living in the apartment with Kendrick’s decomposing body for an entire year. He told dispatchers that his brother had been “dead for some time” and that he and his younger brothers were alone in the apartment.

On October 24, 2021, officers found a body with broken ribs and broken pelvis under a blue blanket. Investigators described the scene contained in the apartment as terrifying. One person stated that the home was infested with cockroaches and had a distinct odor.

“The apartment was in terrible condition. We saw a dirty carpet, no furniture. No bedding or blankets that we saw. We saw cockroaches and flies and very poor living conditions,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said when Kendrick’s body was found.

Coulter and Kendrick’s mother, Gloria Williams, was arrested at a local library two days after authorities found Kendrick’s body. They were found while searching for newspaper articles concerning the case. Williams was charged with injuring a child and tampering with a corpse.

She and Coulter moved out of the apartment about five months after Kendrick’s death and abandoned the remaining boys to live in squalor, without electricity or beds to sleep in.

The boys testified that they returned every few weeks to bring food. During these visits, Coulter beat the younger boys. When investigators were finally called to the house, they said one in all the boys had a swollen jaw and had been beaten so severely that he required surgery.

Williams and Coulter exchanged text messages about Kendrick’s body immediately after his death. Williams sent Coulter a message that he had feces on him and “looked dead,” to which Coulter responded that “it’s in God’s hands” and “don’t worry.”

A search warrant revealed that Williams knew Kendrick had died but didn’t want to call the police to avoid going to jail and losing custody of her sons.

Her trial begins on Friday.