Killer of Brother-In-Law Gets 85 Years : Courts: Robert Kozy, 40, is guaranteed to serve 72 years for being convicted of a ‘third-strike’ felony.

A Huntington Beach man convicted of fatally stabbing and shooting his brother-in-law was sentenced Friday to 85 years to life in state prison.

Because the conviction for first-degree murder was Robert Kozy’s “third strike,” he will not be eligible for parole until he has served 72 years of the sentence, Santa Ana Superior Court officials said.

According to court documents, the tensions between Kozy, 40, and his brother-in-law, Rodney McAvoy, 49, had been longstanding and involved minor disagreements such as who should pay for groceries.

Kozy lived with his wife, Arlene, in an apartment upstairs from McAvoy, a disabled Vietnam veteran. For a year and a half leading up to the Jan. 14 killing, Kozy was unemployed, according to court records.

The day of the killing, Arlene Kozy told police, she and her husband had gone shopping. She then left for an office party.

Kozy told police he then drank two 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor and became enraged when he began thinking about the string of disagreements with his brother-in-law.

Kozy then put a serrated kitchen knife in his back pocket and entered his brother-in-law’s apartment, according to court documents. After stabbing McAvoy in the chest and stomach, he flipped over a couch, where McAvoy kept a blue steel, .38-caliber revolver, according to trial testimony.

McAvoy kept the gun there to protect himself from Kozy, because he knew Kozy could “beat him up,” Kozy testified.

After the killing, Kozy fled to his parents’ home in Riverside before turning himself in to police.

“I screwed up; I did what I had to do,” Kozy told police. “There’s been trouble for a long time. He shouldn’t have waved that gun around. He asked for it.”

In August, a jury found Kozy guilty of first-degree murder. He had previously served time in state prison for a string of robberies committed in 1977 and for an attempted robbery in 1984.