Who is Mark Wilson? Man who brutally killed 2 boys is Florida's first death penalty case since Nikolas Cruz
Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers' discretion advised
MELROSE, FLORIDA: Florida jurors will decide on its first death penalty case after a jury opted against the punishment for Parkland killer Nikolas Cruz. Prosecutors are demanding execution for a man convicted of one of the grisliest crimes in the killing of two adolescent brothers, aged 14 and 12.
Mark Wilson is charged with the brutal murder of his girlfriend's nephews, Tayten Baker, 14, and his brother, Robert, 12. The local sheriff has described the killing as one of the grisliest crimes he’d ever encountered, after the suspect beat the defenseless victims to death with a hammer and cut their throats in August 2020. Wilson is also a methamphetamine addict and was convicted of the crime in September after he confessed to the crimes to his mother Chrissy Adkins, in a recorded phone call set up by police.
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(Putnam County Sheriff's Office)
After his mother, Chrissy Adkins begged him to reveal the crime, Wilson confessed he killed the boys because he had delusional thoughts that their family planned to call child protective services on him and his girlfriend for mistreating their daughter and that they had planned to harm her. Nevertheless, the family of the victims demanded Wilson’s execution. "We don’t want to work and pay taxes for him to live [in prison]. Point blank. Period,” said cousin Kelli Coco, according to New York Post.
Wilson and his girlfriend were living with the victim's family Baker. The victim's mother Sarah Baker recalled at the trial last month and testified that she saw Wilson sharpen a knife - the same knife which was later confiscated by the police as a murder weapon. A jury is expected to begin their deliberations today, whether to sentence Wilson to life imprisonment or condemn him to death. The defense attorney pushing for life in prison has argued that Wilson had a psychotic episode during the bloody attack and that the crime was not premeditated.
This will be the first death penalty case since Nikolas Cruz's ruling after the jurors opted for life in imprisonment in the horrifying killing of 14 students and three teachers at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, one of the worst mass school shootings dated in the US history. A death penalty in Florida requires that all 12 jurors must unanimously vote for the death penalty to be applied.