Cleophus Cooksey: The 2017 Phoenix-Area Killing Spree
Cleophus Emmanuel Cooksey Jr. is an American serial killer whose three-week murder spree terrorized the Phoenix metropolitan area of Arizona in late 2017. Between November 27 and December 17, 2017, Cooksey killed people in Phoenix and Glendale, with investigators also linking him to a ninth homicide in Avondale. His victims included strangers, acquaintances, a man connected to his former girlfriend, and ultimately Cooksey's own mother and stepfather. The murders appeared to have no single motive, and authorities struggled to understand why such different people had been targeted.
Cooksey was eventually prosecuted for eight murders. In September 2025, after a lengthy trial, a jury convicted him of eight counts of first-degree murder along with armed robbery, kidnapping, and attempted sexual assault charges. He was sentenced to death for six of the murders in December 2025. Police also linked Cooksey to the December 11, 2017 murder of Jesus Real, but prosecutors did not include Real's death among the eight murders taken to trial because they determined there was insufficient evidence to prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Background and Release From Prison
Cooksey was born on March 25, 1982. Long before the 2017 murders, he had accumulated a serious criminal history. He had been imprisoned following convictions connected to a 2001 armed robbery in which one of his accomplices was killed. Cooksey was convicted of manslaughter and armed robbery offenses and spent years in the Arizona prison system.
He was released from prison in 2017, approximately four months before the first murders in the later killing spree. Cooksey also pursued music and performed under names that included "King Playbola" and "Playboy." Nothing publicly established during the murder trial revealed a coherent motive for the violence that began in November 2017.
The Beginning of the Murders
The first known killings occurred on November 27, 2017. Andrew Remillard and Parker Smith were together in a parked vehicle in Phoenix when both men were shot in the head. Investigators found no obvious motive connecting the two victims to their killer, and at the time there was little reason for detectives to suspect that their deaths were the opening crimes of a much larger series.
Five days later, Salim Richards was killed in west Phoenix. Richards, a private security guard, was walking near his girlfriend's apartment when he was shot. His 9mm Glock handgun and a gold necklace were taken. The theft of Richards's firearm became one of the most important developments in the investigation because authorities later connected the weapon to several of the murders that followed.
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