He killed Jahmeel Spence because he didn’t like Greenbrae Circuit and the father of two just happened to be walking down a laneway in that neighbourhood one fateful night.
He killed Courthney Facey and Mike James because they were standing by their car in an alley across the street from 1765 Weston Rd., the building where he’d been shot in the face a decade earlier and left permanently disfigured. So he didn’t like that address either.
He killed Carl Cole because there had been a brief history between them at some point previously, but that slaying, too, occurred just off Greenbrae.
As Mark Moore texted a friend, an hour after Spence was gunned down, he was no mere gangsta-rapping poseur, but someone who “speaks what he lives,” a man whose “name shakes the streets.”
And he did shake those streets, in a killing spree that painted Toronto’s suburbs with red blood splatter — four murders in 75 days.
Spence, Facey and James were complete strangers to Moore. He’d never met them before pumping their bodies full of bullets.
Now he’ll spend at least the next 25 years in prison.
Late Saturday afternoon, after deliberating for less than 48 hours, a jury convicted Moore of first-degree murder across the board.
Count 1: Guilty.
Count 2: Guilty.
Count 3: Guilty
Count 4: Guilty.
The 31-year-old showed no emotion as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts. He spoke not a word, standing there in his white jacket and black trousers.
Then he sat down, elbow on one knee, rubbing his forehead with his right hand, staring first at the floor, then at the ceiling.
No sooner had Justice Michael Dambrot thanked and dismissed the jury than Moore calmly removed his tie, as half a dozen court constables surged forward to place cuffs on his wrist.
The courtroom was nearly empty of spectators, save for a handful of Spence’s relatives, who’d wept as the verdict was read. One of them, the victim’s brother, hissed at Moore: “p*ssy.”
There’s no fathoming precisely why Moore, an aspiring rap artist who went by the stage name “Presidenteh” or “Prezi,” committed these cold-blooded crimes between Sept. 10 and Nov. 24, 2010. But motive is irrelevant for a finding of guilt.
It was a three-month trial based on overwhelming circumstantial evidence: the black SUV Moore drove; the ballistic tests that tied all four murders together though Cole was also shot with a .45; the wire-tapped phone call he made under an alias from the range at the Don Jail to Crime Stoppers, claiming police had the wrong suspect for the murder and that “Mark Moore” guy hadn’t been involved, he was “one hundred and one per cent sure’’ of it; the DNA retrieved from a splotch of spit an alert cop spotted on the ground outside a school where the prosecution said Moore had earlier fired off a recently purchased handgun, just because he couldn’t resist playing with it; and, most crucially, the eye-witness testimony of an associate, Kevin Williams — a.k.a. Mayhem Morearty, one-time rap performance mentor to Moore and accomplice in a jewelry store robbery — who was in the SUV with the defendant on the night he wiped out Facey and James.
Williams, who’s serving time for that robbery in which the Arax Jewelry store clerk was wounded, was a key witness for the prosecution mounted by Crown attorneys Sean Hickey and Kim Motyl.
Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga was the lead investigator on Project Summit, so-named for the double Ms: Mark Moore. It was Idsinga’s decision not to charge Williams in the murders of Facey and James.
“He could have been charged,” Idsinga told the Star Saturday. “It took us quite a lot of work and time to get to the point where we could prove that Kevin was in that car when Moore shot Facey and James. So when I put it to Kevin that, frankly, I’ve got you and Mark Moore in this car, two gang-banging street-type want-to-be thugs who gunned down two guys, as far as I’m concerned you’re a party to the offence.
“His explanation, which made a lot of sense, was he didn’t know Moore was going to do that. And he doesn’t know why Moore did that. When he told that to me, I said, ‘you know what? That does make a lot of sense.’ So if he didn’t know Moore was about to do that, that really lessens the threshold for laying the charge against him.”
There was no deal, Idsinga insists, although Williams was given credit on the robbery sentencing for co-operating in the Moore investigation. And Williams did suffer for his troubles — beaten several times in prison, once allegedly by Moore when they were put in the same cell at the courthouse, with long-term brain trauma as a result.
Idsinga can only speculate about the why of Moore.
“The theory put forward by the Crown as part of the motivation for the murders is that Mr. Moore was trying to establish himself in a gangster-rap type career. Some of his rap lyrics, which were introduced as evidence, talked about him being able to, in his words, “shake the streets.” During a couple of murders, it looked like that was exactly what he was trying to do, just earn himself some credibility and shake the streets.”
Beyond that, Idsinga can only shake his head in dismay.
“It’s hard for me to rationalize an irrational person. The crimes are completely senseless.”
The cop adds: “It was actually quite a concern. How are we going to convince a jury that this guy was just out there doing this?”
When Idsinga charged Moore with the murders — October 2011, Moore already in custody for firing a gun into the ceiling of an Entertainment District nightclub — he described the accused as “evil.” He hasn’t changed his mind.
“I’m not a psychologist. I don’t know why he did what he did. I do think he’s evil. I think he’s a bully. He’s a bully with a gun. He’s a mean guy.”
Idsinga was confounded by Moore’s behaviour in court. “He had some strange reactions. He was staring and glaring at victims’ families. Then he cried when the pathologist was describing wounds to the victims. He was visibly upset when the pathologist was testifying. I don’t know. He might be a very interesting fellow for someone to sit down with and interview and see where he’s coming from.”
During the trial, the Crown argued that the motive for the murders was a combination of his hatred for the Scarborough neighborhood where he’d grown up and a desire to further his career as a genuine gangsta rapper.
Bullets or casings from that 9mm, which was recovered in 2012, in an unrelated police raid, were found at each crime scene. The .45 has never been found.
The prosecution maintained Moore used those same guns before and after the murders to shoot up the home of a prostitute, a woman he’d pimped with Williams, and to fire at the school building. Moore, the Crown alleged, sold the 9mm in late 2010, right after the murders.
Defence lawyers countered there was no way to prove Moore was in possession of the guns throughout that 75-day killing spree.
In his testimony, Williams told court that Moore said “the angel of death” made him kill Facey and James.
Following the Spence murder — felled in a hail of bullets as he was walking back from the variety store — Moore texted Williams: “Yea busy terrorizing the borrows watch cp,’’ referring to news channel CP24.
Days after Cole was shot in the parking lot of a Scarborough apartment building, Moore texted Williams again: “got him in the Cedar’’ (shorthand for Cedarbrae, a nearby school) “that dude that rob us.” Williams also testified that, after the Cole killing, Moore boasted he’d shot someone “in the melon” with his .45.
The defence argued Williams’ testimony could not be trusted, claiming the witness had been pressured by police to implicate Moore or be charged himself, and that it could just as easily have been Williams who shot Facey and James.
At the end of the trial the jury listened to most of Moore’s debut rap album Election Year, which the Crown alleged contained references to the murders in the lyrics.
“This is nothing, ain’t no fiction. This is what it really is,” Moore raps in the track “On My Grind” with Moore mouthing along with the lyrics as it was played in court.
“Load the clip and spray like Lysol
“You don’t really wanna run with the kid no more
“F--k n---ers up at the corner store”
From the track “Turn It Up”: “Die like Andre.”
This, the Crown said, was a reference to the shooting of Facey and James, similar to when Moore’s older brother Andre was shot dead in 2008. (A jury acquitted the accused in that trial. He’d argued it was self-defence.)
Moore also raps about both a 9mm and a .45 that has a golden trim and fires bullets with a red centre, just like the one used in the Cole murder.
“I got golden ones that spit rubies,” he raps in one of the tracks.
“That’s why I keep a .45 by my side, A TEC-9 motherf---er on the other side,” he says in another.
First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. But Justice Dambrot did not pass sentence Saturday. That will formally happen on June 16, after loved ones of the murdered submit their victim impact statements.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/30/mark-moores-murder-binge-remains-unfathomable.html
But 
.
I guess Charles Whitman was an OG then.
off to the next life for this clown.
