BATON ROUGE - A handyman accused of killing a couple who used to employ him on their property was found guilty of murder Thursday, over six years after the victims were found dead in an abandoned vehicle. 

The jury's decision to convict Ernesto Alonso on two counts of first-degree murder came just a couple hours after closing statements in the trial. The trial had been put on hold for years, largely due to a language barrier.

Alonso worked for Denis and Suzanne Duplantier and lived on their property at the time of the murders back in 2015. Investigators said the pair was robbed and kidnapped from their Highland Road home. They were later found dead, beaten and bound, inside their vehicle at a Hammond truck stop.

"In the nearly fifty years of doing this type of work, this was the most brutal, vicious attack that I have ever seen on any human being," District Attorney Hillar Moore said.

Alonso and his cousin, Frank Garcia, were arrested in the killings. Last year, Garcia took a deal from prosecutors and pleaded guilty to lesser charges of manslaughter. Defense attorneys for Alonso argued that he only helped dispose of the bodies and that Garcia carried out the killings.