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The court handed
Dahlgren, 24, from Palo Alto, California, the maximum penalty
for murdering his Czech aunt, uncle and two male cousins aged 23
and 17 in the city of Brno, then attempting to burn their
bodies.
"He maliciously attacked four members of the family who had been
kind to him, who had given him shelter, who had helped him, who
had done him no wrong ... and murdered all four of them in a
very brutal way," Judge Michal Zamecnik said in his sentencing.
"He wiped out a whole family."
Life sentences are rare in the Czech Republic, which has only 48
prisoners serving the maximum term.
Dahlgren fled to the United States after the murders but was
detained at Prague's request and found to have shorts in his
luggage with traces of blood matching that of the victims.
He was sent back in 2015 in the first-ever extradition of an
American to the Czech Republic.
Prosecutors said Dahlgren, whose parents attended the court
hearings, had stabbed or cut three of his victims between 17 and
29 times.
He then used a stone as well as a knife to kill the younger
cousin, who returned home from school as Dahlgren was attempting
to clean up after the first three murders.
Dahlgren refused to testify in the case. His defense cited
American evaluations that Dahlgren was mentally ill, but the
judge said that, although his cognitive abilities were lower,
Dahlgren was sane.
(Additional reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jason Hovet;
Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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