Jury recommends death penalty for former prison guard trainee who murdered 5 women at Florida bank

A jury on Wednesday recommended that a former prison guard trainee be sentenced to death for the execution-style murders of five women at a Florida bank five years ago. It was a massacre that fulfilled his long-expressed desire to kill.

Jurors voted 9 to 3 to recommend that Zephen Xaver receive the death penalty for the murders that occurred on Jan. 23, 2019, at SunTrust Bank in Sebring, about 80 miles (135 kilometers) southeast of Tampa.

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 District Judge Angela Cowden, who can reject the jury’s recommendation and sentence Xaver to life in prison without parole. She said she would set a sentencing date after a hearing next month.

Under Florida’s 2023 law, the jury had to vote only 8-4 for 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 Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature changed that after a 9-3 jury vote spared the shooter who murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018 r.

Last year, Xaver pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, denying a scheduled trial that was delayed for years by the Covid-19 pandemic, legal wrangling and a lawyer’s illness.

Xaver’s victims included client Cynthia Watson (65), who got married less than a month ago; bank teller coordinator Marisol Lopez, 55, mother of two; bank intern Ana Pinon-Williams, a 38-year-old mother of seven children; bank teller Debra Cook, a 54-year-old mother of two and grandmother; and banker Jessica Montague, 31, mother of one and stepmother of four.

He ordered them to lie on the floor and then shot each of them in the head as they screamed, “Why?”

Earlier Wednesday, prosecutor Bonde Johnson said in closing arguments that Xaver deserved the death penalty because the massacre was long planned, “shockingly evil” and fulfilled his lifelong desire to experience killing.

“He didn’t murder one person to really know what it would be like to kill. He killed five. He watched them lying on the floor. They were under his control, for his pleasure, as he shot each of them,” she said.

But defense attorney Jane McNeill urged jurors to spare Xaver, saying he was mentally ill and had heard voices since childhood telling him to kill himself and others. She added that he was looking for help, but he didn’t actually get it.

“We are asking you to show Zephen the least he deserves – compassion, grace and mercy,” McNeill told the panel, her voice breaking as she said that “sentencing Zephen to life in prison is the right decision.”

During the two-week trial, prosecutors portrayed Xaver as a cold, calculating killer who pretended to hear voices to mask his violent impulses. His lawyers countered that he had long suffered from psychotic episodes.

In 2014, the principal of Xavera High School in Indiana contacted police after he told a counselor he dreamed of killing his classmates. His mother, Misty Hendricks, promised to provide him with psychological help. At trial, she testified that she stopped taking medication at age 17 because she seemed to feel better.

He joined the army but was discharged during boot camp in 2016 because of thoughts of murder. These thoughts continued.

“It’s all that comes to my mind, it’s all I hear every day and it’s all I see every day. This is all I feel and taste every day: blood, death and murder. This is all that happens to me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Xaver wrote to a friend. He posted similar entries on the Internet.

In 2018, he moved to Sebring and was hired at the local prison, but quit after two months. It was the day after he bought the gun and two weeks before the massacre.

On the morning of the murder, he had a long text conversation with his girlfriend in which he told her it would be “the best day of his life” but would not say why.

Finally, just before entering the bank, he told her that he would die soon. Then he added the “fun part.”

“I’m taking a few people with me because I’ve always wanted to kill,” he wrote via text message.

Later, Xaver threatened suicide, but eventually gave in.

Defense witnesses testified that Xaver was a quiet and nice child, but he struggled in school and his life took a dark turn during adolescence.

Melissa Manges, his high school counselor, testified that Xaver needed more help for his troubling thoughts, but no long-term residential program would accept him.

“The system failed Zephen,” she said.

Brian Haas, the local state’s attorney, welcomed the verdict but said in a statement that the focus should be on the victims, “not the monster who committed these crimes.”

“Five women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and more to so many people lost their lives on that fateful day in January 2019. Their families suffered so much without them as they waited for justice,” he said.