Phoenix (AP) — An Arizona jury convicted a man Thursday on eight murder charges for a string of fatal shootings in metro Phoenix that targeted random victims and the defendant's mother and stepfather over a three-week span in 2017.
The jury in Phoenix also found Cleophus Cooksey Jr., 43, guilty of crimes including kidnapping, sexual assault and armed robbery. The sentencing portion of the trial begins Monday. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The victims in Phoenix and nearby Glendale included Cooksey’s mother and stepfather, a security guard walking to his girlfriend’s apartment and a woman whose body was 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 verdict was read. He'd maintained his innocence throughout the trial that began in May.
‘He took my mom’
Adriana Rodriguez, the daughter of victim Maria Villanueva, broke into tears after the verdict.
“He took my mom, the only support system that I had,” Rodriguez said outside court. “We were afraid that this day was never going to come and it's finally came. So we’re very, we’re very happy about it,”
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.
In 2015 and 2016, two other serial shooting cases sparked fear in metro Phoenix, prompting some people to stay indoors after dark or to stay off freeways where they occurred. Unlike those cases, the killings Cooksey was accused of did not occur over a matter of months and generated no publicity until his arrest.
A friend of Cooksey's mother, Rene Cooksey, and stepfather, Edward Nunn, said the defendant deserved a death sentence. Eric Hampton said he had watched Cooksey grow up and attended Thursday's hearing to see if the defendant showed any 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.
A trail of victims
The first victims, Parker Smith, 21, and Andrew Remillard, 27, were found Nov. 27, 2017, and 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 say Villanueva was sexually assaulted and that 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 and told officers who had noticed a large amount of blood there that he had cut his hand and that he 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.”
Earlier serial shootings in Phoenix
Cooksey's arrest followed two other serial shooting cases in metro Phoenix.
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.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Saucedo with a trial scheduled for December. He has declared his innocence.
