He dumped his slain daughter near a Connecticut mall and his dead wife in a forest, then disappeared. But justice came for Robert Honsch.

For nearly two decades, New Britain police detectives searched for whoever shot 17-year-old Elizabeth Honsch in the head, wrapped her in garbage bags and dumped her body like trash near Westfarms Mall.

The killer, the police learned after scouring the country for clues, was Elizabeth’s father, Robert Honsch, who would also be charged with the murder of Elizabeth’s mother, his wife Marcia. On Thursday, Honsch — crippled by a stroke, confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak clearly and partially deaf — was sentenced to what is effectively a life sentence for Elizabeth’s murder.

The 60-year sentence is the second, if largely symbolic life sentence imposed on Honsch, now 78. He is currently serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for the murder of Marcia Honsch. Honsch is accused of pressing a gun barrel to the heads of both women and pulling the trigger. Medical evidence suggests death in both cases was immediate. But instantaneous death certainly did not spare Elizabeth what Superior Court Judge Laura F. Baldini said in court Thursday was a moment of “immediate terror.”

“Her body was dumped like a piece of garbage behind a liquor store,” Baldini said.

Police officers on patrol discovered Elizabeth’s body on Sept. 28, 1995. Her body was warm, leading investigators to conclude she had been shot only hours earlier. A week later, a hiker discovered the body that would later be identified as Marcia Honsch in Tolland State Forest in western Massachusetts. Marcia had been dead about a week.

DNA testing showed the women were related, probably mother and daughter. But police would learn little more about the women for another 19 years, including who they were.

The break came in 2014 from leads developed in New York State through a missing persons report filed by relatives of Marcia and Elizabeth Honsch. Additional genetic testing linked the two murdered women to family in upstate New York. The family pointed to Honsch, who they described as an abusive husband and father and who they had long suspected.

The investigators learned Honsch had remarried and was living under an assumed name with his new wife and their three new sons in Dalton, Ohio.

Relatives of Marcia and Elizabeth told detectives that, after they lost contact with the mother and daughter, Honsch claimed he had taken a job in Australia and had sent them ahead to await him. Honsch then traveled to South Africa. When he returned to the U.S., he met his new wife in Louisiana and he was using her name, Tyree, when he was found in Ohio.

New Britain police tied him to Elizabeth’s murder though a DNA match and his palm print, which they found on one of the plastic garbage bags.

Honsch has refused to speak with authorities; he claimed at one point to suffer from amnesia. Elizabeth’s older sister, Diana Mirabel, testified at the sentencing hearing by remote video connection, hoping “that someday Robert Honsch will find it in his heart to write a letter or something to explain why he did what he did.”

Public defender Justin Smith said Honsch insists he is innocent and intends to appeal his conviction in Connecticut and the sentence.

Honsch was pushed into court in a wheelchair. He was wearing a rumpled pin stripe suit and what remains of his white hair was tied in a pony tail. He was given a set of amplifying headphones so he could hear when Baldini made her sentencing remarks. His mumbled responses to her questions and the way he fiddled with the volume control suggested it was not clear he understood completely.

Juries convicted Honsch of murder in Massachusetts in 2017 and in Connecticut in March.

As Honsch slumped in his wheelchair in the courtroom guarded by three judicial marshals, Baldini said he is guilty of intentional, premediated murder. She said he made “a series of deliberate choices” and committed a “cruel, inhuman and unconscionable” crime. The fact that he has killed twice makes Elizabeth’s murder exceptionally heinous, she said.

She ordered that her 60-year sentence be served concurrent with the life sentence in Massachusetts.

After the sentencing, because of his debilitating stroke, Honsch was unable to sign a form acknowledging his right to appeal, so he was allowed to mark the signature box with an “X.”