BARRE, Vt. — A Vermont woman who shot and killed a state social worker and three of her own relatives as revenge for losing custody of her then 9-year-old daughter was sentenced Wednesday to life without parole.

Vermont Superior Court Judge John Pacht announced the sentence at the end of three-day hearing for 43-year-old Jody Herring.

Herring shot and killed Lara Sobel, a social worker as she was leaving work at the state’s Department for Children and Families in Barre on Aug. 7, 2015. Police later discovered that she also had killed her two cousins, sisters Rhonda and Regina Herring, and an aunt, Julie Falzarano, in their Berlin home.

The shootings rattled the small state of Vermont, which has been among the safest states in the country, and led to fears among social workers, threats against them and changes in security measures at state office buildings.

‘‘The case had consequences far beyond the severe damage it has done to the four individuals who were killed and their extended families,’’ said Matthew Levine, an assistant state attorney general who helped prosecute the case.