A jury in Bartow spared the life of killer Stanley Eric Mossburg on Wednesday by recommending he spend the rest of his life in prison for the killings of two people in Winter Haven in October 2019.

Mossburg, a South Carolina man, had been arrested by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office after a shootout with police in Winter Haven ended his two-week crime rampage that also left a man dead in Tennessee.

In February, Mossburg pled guilty to all the charges he faced in the Polk County case against him. In all, an indictment shows he faced 27 charges. In addition to the murder charges, he faced two counts of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer with a firearm that carried a mandatory life sentence. Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

Other charges ranged from robbery and kidnapping, both involving a firearm, as well as stealing and using a credit card belonging to a deceased person, possession of a firearm by a felon and battery on a police dog, among others.

Mossburg, 40, also known as “Woo Woo,” was accused of breaking into a house occupied by Kenneth Rex Bever, 66, and Marguerite Ethel Morey, 61, and stabbing them to death with a kitchen knife.

A charging affidavit shows he used electric cords and duct tape to tie up the victims in kitchen chairs and yelled for them to turn over money and valuables. When Bever resisted, he was stabbed. Morey was also later stabbed after giving him a key to a safe.

A third victim in the home whose name is redacted from the affidavit had engaged with Mossburg, and he too was tied to a chair in the office area of the home. Mossburg then emptied the safe of passports and Social Security cards and packed clothing and various items into a several bags before leaving in the couple’s 2013 Hyundai Tucson. Mossburg had told the other victim he had killed Bever and Morey.

Mossburg returned and began cleaning the home with bleach after turning down the air conditioning to reduce the smell of the deceased, the affidavit said. He also told victim No. 3 that the couple were his seventh and eighth murder victims. He untied the third victim and told him God told him not to kill him.

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Eventually, the third victim was able to call 911 and reported that two people were dead in the house. The Sheriff’s Office affidavit said Mossburg had pawned items in Auburndale and the Polk County agency was aware that an arrest warrant had been issued for Mossburg by Tennessee law enforcement.

The Arrest

Polk County Sheriff’s Office SWAT deputies arrested Mossburg Oct. 15, 2019, after Mossburg had barricaded himself in a home on Avenue C Northeast near 16th Street in Winter Haven, The Ledger previously reported.

Sheriff Grady Judd described Mossburg as a “spree” killer and said the killing started in Tennessee in early October. Judd said all three killings for which Mossburg is a suspect were done with knives.

The Prosecution

At sentencing on Wednesday, the verdict form shows the jury did not agree with the aggravating conditions surrounding the first-degree murders that the prosecution sought to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. They were that Mossburg’s murders were for financial gain; the crimes were especially heinous, atrocious or cruel; and the actions were cold, calculated and premeditated and without moral or legal justification.

After the jury’s verdict, Circuit Judge J. Kevin Abdoney imposed the maximum statutory sentences of two consecutive life sentences on the first-degree murder charges. For the other felony charges that mandated life in prison, Mossburg received concurrent life sentences.

The Defense

During a phone interview on Thursday, Mossburg’s defense attorney, J. Jervis Wise, said he was very happy with the jury’s decision on the sentencing and offered condolences to the victims’ families.

“It was a case with substantial mitigation, and we’re happy the jury recognized that and imposed a life sentence,” Wise said.

The defense took two days of the trial to present expert testimony that included Mossburg growing up selling drugs from his childhood home and witnessing severe domestic violence, he said.

“A lot of it was mental health,” Wise said. “He had a very traumatic childhood and then there was substance abuse. So those were the main issues and most of the mitigation tied back to those issues.”

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Stanley Mossburg, who killed 2 in Winter Haven, gets life in prison