Phoenix (AP) — An Arizona man was convicted Thursday on eight murder charges for a string of fatal shootings that targeted random victims and his own mother and stepfather over a three-week span.
The crimes in late 2017 happened during a time of unease in metro Phoenix when people were scared to go out at night or drive on freeways because of two other serial shooting cases in the summer of 2015.
While details trickled out on those cases, the killings Cleophus Cooksey Jr. was accused of generated no publicity until his arrest in 2018 — a surprising development given that the public hadn’t been told about investigators trying to find a serial killer.
Cooksey, 43, is now facing the death penalty when he is sentenced Monday on murder convictions, as well as on kidnapping, sexual assault and armed robbery in a trial that has spanned months.
Cooksey’s victims in Phoenix and nearby Glendale included two men found dead in a parked car, a security guard shot while walking to his girlfriend’s apartment and a woman who was kidnapped, her body found in an alley after she was sexually assaulted.
Cooksey, an aspiring musician, knew some of the victims but wasn’t acquainted with others, police said. Authorities never offered a motive.
Cooksey looked down at the defense table as the verdicts were read. He has maintained his innocence.
‘He took my mom’
Adriana Rodriguez, the daughter of victim Maria Villanueva, said after the verdict that her family was finally getting closure, a day they had feared would never come.
“He took my mom, the only support system that I had,” Rodriguez added as she broke into tears.
The killings started four months after Cooksey was released from prison on a manslaughter conviction for his participation in a 2001 strip club robbery in which an accomplice was fatally shot.
A friend of Cooksey’s mother, Rene Cooksey, and stepfather, Edward Nunn, said the defendant deserved a death sentence. Eric Hampton said he watched Cooksey grow up and attended Thursday’s hearing to see if the defendant showed sympathy for his victims.
“I thought maybe he had a little heart. But he doesn’t have any heart at all, you know, to actually do these things to people and actually the worst part, kill your own mom,” Hampton said outside the courthouse.
“He’s a monster, and I’m just hoping that when the sentencing phase of this is over that, you know, that they put him to…