18 December 2024 :
December 16, 2024 - Florida. Circuit Judge Angela Cowden formally sentenced Zephen Xaver to five death sentences on Monday for the 2019 murders of 5 women in a SunTrust Bank in Sebring.
Xaver shot the women execution style after ordering them to lie on the floor. The victims were 4 bank employees and a customer: Ana Pinon Williams, Debra Cook, Marisol Lopez, Cynthia Watson and Jessica Montague.
On June 26 (see HoC) a Highlands County jury voted 9-3 for the death penalty in all 5 1st-degree murder charges. Cowden followed the recommendation, a move made possible by a recent change in state law allowing imposition of the death penalty with only an 8-4 jury vote.
Xaver had pleaded guilty to 5 counts of 1st-degree murder in March 2023.
Throughout the trial, defense witnesses testified that Xaver, 28, suffered from mental or emotional stress the day of the shooting. Both sides had called witnesses who testified he suffered from borderline personality disorder, but they differed in their positions about his state of mind the day of the shootings.
During the trial, a 911 call was played for the jury, which contained an admission that he wanted to kill someone before committing suicide and that voices in his head told him to murder someone. He told the call taker he had heard the voices since he was 11 years old.
He had walked into the bank on Jan. 23, 2019, wearing a bulletproof vest and forced the women to lie on the floor. He then shot them, prosecutors said.
