A jury on Wednesday recommended that a former prison guard trainee be executed for killing five women inside a bank in Florida five years prior, carrying out his long-standing wish to kill.
In a 9-3 decision, the jurors recommended that Zephen Xaver be executed for the killings that occurred on January 23, 2019, at the SunTrust Bank in Sebring, which is located about 85 miles southeast of Tampa.
Xaver, 27, was emotionless when the Highlands County jury’s judgment was announced, gazing straight ahead for the whole three-hour deliberation.
Circuit Judge Angela Cowden has the last say in the matter. She has the authority to disregard the jury’s recommendation and give Xaver a life sentence without the possibility of release.
Next month, she stated, a sentence date will be determined following the hearing. Cowden could have sentenced the defendant to death with just an 8-4 vote from the jury in accordance with a 2023 Florida statute.
When a jury voted 9-3 to spare the gunman who killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, state law required a unanimous recommendation from the jury before a judge could execute the sentence. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature removed this requirement.
A scheduled trial was postponed for years due to the Covid-19 outbreak, court disputes, and attorney illness. However, Xaver entered a guilty plea to five charges of first-degree murder last year.
The victims of Xaver’s actions included customer Cynthia Watson, 65, who had only been married for a month; Marisol Lopez, 55, a mother of two; Ana Pinon-Williams, 38, a mother of seven; Debra Cook, 54, a grandmother and mother of two; and banker Jessica Montague, 31, a mother of one and stepmother of four.
They shouted out, “Why?” as he shot them all in the head after giving them the order to lie on the ground.
During the prosecution’s closing statements on Wednesday, prosecutor Bonde Johnson stated that Xaver should be executed because the massacre was premeditated, “shockingly evil,” and satisfied his lifelong wish to commit a murder.
“He didn’t murder one person to truly know what it would be like to kill. He killed five. He watched them laying there on the floor. They were under his control, for his enjoyment, as he shot each one,” she stated.
However, Xaver’s defense lawyer Jane McNeill had asked the jury to spare him, claiming he was mentally ill and had heard voices telling him to kill himself and others since he was a little child. She said he asked for help but never really received it.
Sentencing Zephen to life is the correct thing to do, McNeill told the panel, her voice shaking as she said, “We ask you to show Zephen what he may least deserve — compassion, grace and mercy.”
Prosecutors painted Xaver as a cold, calculating killer who feigned to hear voices in order to suppress his violent urges during the two-week trial. Attorneys for him claimed that he has a history of psychotic episodes.
2014 saw Xaver telling a counselor he had dreams of killing classmates, which prompted his high school principal in Indiana to call the police. Misty Hendricks, his mother, pledged to get him psychiatric assistance. At the trial, she stated that she had stopped him on his meds at the age of 17, as he appeared to be improving.
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He enlisted in the Army, but his suicidal ideas led to his dismissal during boot camp in 2016. Those ideas persisted.
“It’s all I can think of, it’s all I hear every day and it’s all I see every day. It’s all I smell and taste every day: blood, death and murder. It’s all I have happening 24/7,” Xaver stated to a friend.
He relocated to Sebring in 2018, got a job in the jail there, but left after just two months. That was two weeks prior to the slaughter and the day after he purchased his firearm.
He texted his girlfriend for a long time the morning of the killings, telling her it would be the “best day of his life,” but he wouldn’t explain why.
Finally, right before he went into the bank, he told her he was going to die. “The fun part,” he continued.
After that, Xaver made suicide threats before giving up.
Xaver was a calm, compassionate boy, according to defense witnesses, but he struggled in school and eventually had a troubled adolescence.
His high school counselor, Melissa Manges, said that although Xaver sought longer-term residential programs for his troubling thoughts, they were unable to accommodate him.
The state attorney for the area, Brian Haas, accepted the verdict but stated in his statement that the victims should receive more attention than “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 cut short on that fateful day in January 2019. Their families have suffered so much without them while they waited for justice,” he stated.
