While he and his wife continue to pass by the place where Josh was killed near their home every day, they are also trying to give his brothers a normal life, he said.

Josh Bailey had bipolar and post traumatic stress disorders. The system had failed him time and again, yet he had overcome abandonment and abuse, and after 13 years of treatment, was trying to get into a treatment program before he disappeared, Steve Bailey said.

“I am glad, in this last opportunity, the system didn’t fail Josh. These horrible crimes are being punished in the most severe possible way, and that is just,” he said.

Julie Bailey told the court Tuesday about her son’s passions for sports and the outdoors, his church and volunteering, and his love for his family.

“He had the potential to make a difference in our community,” she said.

Last year, she found a note Josh had left for her, she said. He told her to “have the best day ever,” she said, and signed it from, “your No. 1 son, Josh.”

“Josh was a great hugger. I miss his smile. I miss him,” she said.

She thanked investigators with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and State Bureau of Investigation, many of whom were in the room for the verdict, for their “superior work.”

“What the defendant did and allowed to be done to Josh was a monstrous act,” she said.

She also addressed Minton’s parents, Mishele and Greg Minton, who sat stonefaced stone-faced a few feet from Bailey’s family.

“The reality that the defendant’s parents were involved and advised him what to do so no one would ever find (Bailey) … is a reality I will never come to terms with for the rest of my life,” she said.