A man who stabbed his mother, brother and stepfather to death at their home in Sydney's west in July 2012 has been found not guilty of murder by reason of mental illness.
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Carlos Lopez was also found not guilty of two counts of animal cruelty causing death, in respect of two dogs.
Mr Lopez's trial was held in the NSW Supreme Court before Justice Peter Garling without a jury.
The Crown case was that Mr Lopez, then aged 44, killed his mother, Olga Novosadek, 61, his brother, Raul Novosadek, 42, and his stepfather, Pablo Novosadek, 71, and the two Chihuahuas at their home in St Johns Park on either the evening of July 28, 2012, or in the early hours of July 29, 2012.
On Friday, Justice Garling found that Mr Lopez did fatally stab his three family members and that he did so with the intention of killing them.
But he accepted the unanimous expert opinions of Dr Richard Furst and Professor David Greenberg that at the time of the offences Mr Lopez was suffering from a schizophrenic disorder.
Justice Garling said that, on the balance of probabilities, because of the mental illness, Mr Lopez "was suffering from a defect of reason such that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong".
Mr Lopez will be detained at the psychiatric ward of the Long Bay prison hospital, or at a location specified by the Mental Health Review Tribunal, for an indefinite period.
At the Novosadeks' funeral in August 2012, the congregation was told Pablo migrated to Australia from Buenos Aires with his wife in the 1970s and loved soccer and cooking.
Mr Lopez was Mrs Novosadek's son from a previous marriage.
