BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS‑ Jury selection began Monday in Palatka in the trial of a man accused of killing two teenagers in Melrose in 2020.
Prosecutors say Mark Howard Wilson used a knife and a hammer to murder 14-year-old Tayten Baker and his 12-year-old brother Robert in a Shiloh Road residence.
Attorneys and Circuit Judge Howard McGillin began working through a jury pool of 225 Putnam County residents on Monday, October 4. Additional prospective jurors will be summoned on October 10 if necessary.
The State is seeking the death penalty for the 32-year-old defendant.
Wilson, through his attorneys, offered to plead guilty to the killings in exchange for a life sentence, but prosecutors refused the offer, opting to go forward with the death penalty trial.
Putnam County Sheriff Gator DeLoach said the victims’ family moved from Polk County to their Shiloh Road home two weeks before the murders. Soon after they arrived in the Melrose area, they invited Wilson and his girlfriend to stay in a shed on the property. Wilson’s girlfriend is the sister of the victims’ mother.
According to a warrant affidavit, on the day after the murders, a witness told detectives that Wilson confessed to him the previous night that he killed the teenagers.
Detectives wrote that they arranged a meeting with Wilson and the witness later that day, which they recorded.
“During the recorded conversation between (the witness) and Mark, Mark admitted to killing the boys because he felt the boys’ family was trying to put ‘stress’ on his family by reporting them to DCF,” detectives wrote in the affidavit.
The affidavit also states that Wilson and his girlfriend, identified in the document as Cindy, plotted to murder the entire family, with Wilson killing the teenagers and the girlfriend killing the boys’ mother and four-year-old brother.
“Mark went on to say that he was angry because Cindy did not follow through after he killed the two boys,” detectives wrote.
