A jury recommended Wednesday that a former prison guard trainee be sentenced to death for his execution-style killings of five women in a bank in Florida five years ago, a massacre that fulfilled his long-expressed desire to kill.
Jurors voted 9-3 to recommend that Zephen
Xaver, 27, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdicts were read after the Highlands County jury deliberated for less than three hours.
The final decision rests with Circuit Judge Angela Cowden, who could reject the jury’s recommendation and sentence Xaver to life in prison without parole. She said she will set a sentencing date next month after a hearing.
below a 2023 Florida lawthe jury only had to vote 8-4 in favor of the death penalty for Cowden to impose that sentence. State law required a unanimous jury recommendation for a judge to impose the death penalty, but Governor Ron DeSantis and the Legislature changed this after a 9-3 jury vote. spared the shooter who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018.
Xavier pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder last year, overturning a planned trial that was delayed for years by the COVID-19 pandemic, legal arguments and an attorney’s illness.
Xaver’s victims included customer Cynthia Watson, 65, who had been married for less than a month; bank clerk Marisol Lopez, 55, a mother of two; banking intern Ana Pinon-Williams, a 38-year-old mother of seven; bank clerk Debra Cook, a 54-year-old mother of two and a grandmother; and banker Jessica Montague, 31, a mother of one and stepmother of four.
He ordered them to lie on the ground and then shot them all in the head while they shouted, “Why?”
Earlier Wednesday, prosecutor Bonde Johnson said in his closing arguments that Xaver deserved the death penalty because the massacre was long planned, “shockingly evil” and fulfilled his long-standing desire to experience murder.
“He didn’t kill one person to really know what it would be like to kill. He killed five. He saw them lying there on the ground. They were under his control, for his pleasure, as he shot them all,” she said.
But defense lawyer Jane McNeill had urged jurors to spare Xaver because he is mentally ill and has heard voices urging him to kill himself and others since childhood. He sought help, she said, but never really got it.
“We ask you to show Zephen what he perhaps least deserves: compassion, grace and mercy,” McNeill told the panel. Her voice broke as she said, “Sentencing Zephen to life in prison is the right thing to do.”
During the two-week trial, prosecutors portrayed Xaver as a cold and calculating killer who pretended to hear voices to hide his violent impulses. His lawyers countered that he had long suffered from psychotic episodes.
In 2014, Xaver’s high school principal in Indiana contacted police after telling a counselor that he dreamed of killing classmates. His mother, Misty Hendricks, promised to provide him with psychological help. She testified at trial that she stopped taking his medications at age 17 because he seemed to be doing better.
He joined the military but was discharged during boot camp in 2016 due to homicidal thoughts. Those thoughts continued.
“It’s all I can think of, it’s all I hear every day and it’s all I see every day. It’s everything I smell and taste every day: blood, death and murder. It’s the only thing I let happen 24/7,” Xaver wrote to a friend. He posted similar messages online.
He moved to Sebring in 2018, was hired by the local jail, but quit after two months. That was the day after he bought his gun and two weeks before the massacre.
The morning of the murders, he had a long text conversation with a girlfriend, telling her it would be the “best day of his life” but refusing to say why.
Just before entering the bank, he finally told her that he was about to die. Then he added “the fun part.”
“I’m taking some people with me because I’ve always wanted to kill,” he texted.
After this, Xaver threatened to commit suicide, but eventually he surrendered.
Defense witnesses testified that Xaver was a quiet, kind child, but struggled in school and then took a dark turn in adolescence.
Melissa Manges, his high school counselor, testified that Xaver wanted more extensive help for his disturbing thoughts, but no long-term residential programs accepted him.
“The system has failed Zephen,” she said.
Brian Haas, the local prosecutor, welcomed the verdict but said in his statement that the focus should be on the victims, “not on the monster who committed these crimes.”
“Five women, who were mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and so much more to so many people, had their lives ended on that fateful day in January 2019. Their families suffered so much without them as they waited for justice. ” he said.