A Maricopa County jury has reached a sentencing verdict in the high-profile case of Cleophus Emmanuel Cooksey Jr., who was convicted in September of killing eight people across the Valley in 2017.
The jury was tasked with deciding whether an aggravated circumstance existed that would warrant the death penalty. They began deliberating last week and reached a verdict on Wednesday afternoon.
The verdict will be read on Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
Maricopa County Superior Court records showed Cooksey was sentenced on Nov. 14 for the non-murder charges, including robberies, kidnappings and attempted sexual assaults tied to the extensive crime spree.
Cooksey was an aspiring musician who 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 when the murder verdicts were read at the conclusion of his trial. He has maintained his innocence.
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 sleep,” he added.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Cooksey, declined to comment on the verdict.
The Associated Press left phone and email messages for Robert Reinhardt, an attorney for Cooksey.
The first victims, Parker Smith, 21, and Andrew Remillard, 27, were found Nov. 27, 2017. They had been fatally shot while sitting in a vehicle in a parking lot. Five days later, security guard Salim Richards, 31, was shot to death while walking to his girlfriend’s apartment
Over the next two weeks, Latorrie Beckford, 29, and Kristopher Cameron, 21, were killed in separate shootings at apartment complexes in Glendale, and the body of Villanueva, 43, was found naked from the waist down in an alley in Phoenix. Authorities said Cooksey’s DNA was found on her body.
Finally, on Dec. 17, 2017, Cooksey answered the door when officers responded to a shots-fired call at his mother’s apartment. He told officers who had noticed a large amount of blood that he had cut his hand and was the only one home. Police say when an officer tried to detain him, Cooksey threatened to slit the officer’s throat. Rene Cooksey, 56, and Nunn, 54, were found dead.
On the sofa in the living room, investigators said they found Richards’ gun, which was later linked to the killings of Beckford, Cameron and Villanueva. The keys to Villanueva’s vehicle also were found there, and police say Cooksey was wearing Richards’ necklace when he was arrested.
Police also suspected Cooksey of a ninth killing — that of his ex-girlfriend’s brother. But prosecutors ultimately declined to charge him in the December 2017 shooting death of Jesus Real at his home in Avondale.
Cooksey’s trial was repeatedly delayed by the pandemic. In a January 2020 handwritten letter to a judge, Cooksey said he was in a hurry to prove “my charges are no more than false accusations.” He said he was not a rapist or murderer: “I am a music artist.”
In 2015, 11 shootings occurred on Phoenix-area freeways between late August and early September. No one was seriously injured, and charges were later dismissed against the only person charged.
The next case occurred over nearly a one-year period ending in July 2016. Bus driver Aaron Juan Saucedo was arrested in April 2017 and charged with first-degree murder in attacks that killed nine people.
