National Post (National Edition)
‘MONSTER WITH NO HEART’
Aspiring rapper sentenced to life for murdering four strangers.
After Mark Moore shot a complete stranger on a Friday night in September, 2010, he texted a friend: “Yea busy terrorizing the borrows watch cp.”
The “borrows” referred to Greenbrae Circuit, a neighbourhood Moore didn’t like, and where he had gone hunting for someone to kill. He spotted 27-year-old Jahmeel Spence in a laneway, and shot him dead. “Cp” referred to the Toronto news channel CP24, where Moore knew his heinous crime would be reported.
It was important to Moore that the friend he texted, Kevin Williams, knew he had just committed a serious crime. It wasn’t important to Moore that his victim was a father of two, or a son to a sick mother, or an innocent man who just happened to be walking by.
Moore wanted to prove to Williams, a music producer with whom he had robbed a jewelry store, that he was a serious rapper who “speaks what he lives.”
And in Moore’s mind, that was motive enough to continue on a killing spree that spanned 75 days, and took three more lives.
Last month, a jury found Moore, 31, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. On Tuesday, a crowded courtroom filled with the family and friends of Moore’s victims as he was sentenced. Sporting a cream dress shirt under a brown sweater vest matched with brown pants, Moore looked more like a dorky schoolboy than a hardened criminal.
While still maintaining his innocence, Moore was sentenced to four terms of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. They will be served concurrently.
Justice Michael Dambrot called Moore “a monster with no heart.”
“The unimaginable triviality of the motive for at least three of the murders, the offender’s determination to show himself to be an authentic gangster who shakes the streets, bespeaks a man who is so morally depraved, and so utterly lacking in humanity, that the 25-year minimum for parole eligibility is more than justified,” Dambrot said.
After Moore murdered Spence, he killed Courthney Facey, 18, and Mike James, 23. The two young men were standing by their car listening to music when Moore shot them with the same gun. They, too, were in an area Moore didn’t care for, as they were hanging out near the building where Moore himself had been shot in the face a decade earlier. Moore’s face was left disfigured from his incident, while Facey and James were left dead.
Moore’s fourth victim was 45-year-old Carl Cole. Although Cole was the only victim who knew Moore, the motive behind his murder was as empty as the rest. He shot Cole in the parking lot of a Scarborough apartment building with a .45. After the killing, Moore once again contacted his rap mentor, Williams, texting: “got him in the Cedar,” which referred to the nearby school Cedarbrae, and “that dude rob us.”
During Moore’s trial, the Crown argued that his motive for the murders was a combination of both his hatred for the Scarborough neighbourhood and his desire to be seen as a genuine gangster.
The jury listened to the majority of Moore’s rap album, Election Year, as the Crown argued lyrics in the songs contained reference to the murders. Lead investigator Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga said, “Some of his rap lyrics, which were introduced as evidence, talked about him being able to in his words, ‘shake the streets.’ ”
“It’s not going to heal, because it doesn’t go away, but it gives you a piece of mind that somebody is held responsible,” said Dorothy Cole, the wife of Carl Cole.
Many members of the victim’s families left the room when Moore was given the customary chance to speak before he was sentenced.
Reading from a speech he held in his hands, Moore said he felt for the families of the victims, but maintained his innocence and claimed: “I am not a psychologically disturbed individual.
“My talents had me on the right track, enabling me to explore possible musical endeavours with Toronto’s own king of hip-hop, Drake.”
Moore added: “I have no choice but to appeal these verdicts.”
Moore is currently serving a 12-year sentence for armed robbery and will serve a fifth life sentence after Dambrot sentenced him to serve 16 years for firearmrelated offences. All his sentences will run concurrently.
But Dambrot said the serial killer will likely never be granted parole. “While it will be for others to say in the fullness of time, at present, I find it hard to imagine that members of society should ever have to bear the risk of this offender being at large among them again,” he said.