An Arizona man was found guilty of eight counts of murder for a series of fatal shootings that targeted random victims, including his own mother and stepfather, over a three-week period.

The crimes of late 2017 occurred during a time of unrest in metro Phoenix, where people were afraid to go out at night or drive on freeways because of two other serial shootings that occurred in the summer of 2015.

While details about those cases leaked, the murders Cleophus Cooksey Jr. was accused of generating no publicity until his arrest in 2018, a surprising development given that the public had not been informed about investigators’ search for a serial killer.

Cooksey, 43, now faces the death penalty when he is sentenced Monday for murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and armed robbery in a trial that has lasted months.

Cooksey’s victims in Phoenix and nearby Glendale included two men found dead in a parked car, a security guard who was shot while walking to his girlfriend’s apartment, and an abducted woman whose body was found in an alley after being sexually assaulted.

She had previously served time

Cooksey, an aspiring musician, knew some of the victims but not others, police said. Authorities never revealed a motive.

The killings began four months after Cooksey was released from prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for his role in a 2001 strip club robbery in which an accomplice was fatally shot.

A friend of Cooksey's mother, Rene Cooksey, and stepfather, Edward Nunn, said the defendant deserved the death penalty. Eric Hampton said he watched Cooksey grow up and attended Thursday's hearing to see if the defendant showed compassion for his victims.

“I thought maybe he had a little bit of heart. But he doesn’t have any heart, you know, to do these things to people and, in fact, the worst part, to kill his own mother,” Hampton said outside the courthouse.

“He’s a monster, and I just hope that when the penalty phase is over, you know, they put him to death,” she added.

Police also suspected Cooksey in a ninth murder: 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 Avondale home.

Cooksey’s trial was repeatedly delayed because of the pandemic. In a January 2020 handwritten letter to a judge, Cooksey said he was in a hurry to prove that “my charges are nothing more than false accusations.” He claimed he was neither a rapist nor a murderer: “I’m a musical artist.”

The Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Cooksey, declined to comment on the verdict.