BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— A Putnam County jury convicted a 30-year-old Melrose man on two counts of first-degree murder after a three-day trial in Palatka.
Mark Wilson Jr. now faces a sentencing trial where he could be sentenced to death.
Prosecutors said Wilson used a knife and a hammer to kill 12-year-old Robert Baker and his 14-year-old brother Tayten.
The victim’s mother, Sarah Baker, told jury members she found her sons’ bodies covered in blood-soaked blankets.
She added that she found the 14-year-old first.
“You could tell that his throat was severed completely through, almost to the bone,” she said. “That’s when I realized there was no pulse.”
Baker testified that after she discovered her other son in the same blood-soaked condition, she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran to her father’s home for help.
There she found her stepmother.
Debbie Benson told jurors that when Baker ran into her home, she shouted to call 911: “I think my kids are dead.”
A Putnam County Sheriff’s detective testified that Wilson confessed to his mother the day following the murders. The defendant’s mother, Chrisy Adkins, immediately reported the confession to deputies.
Adkins later agreed to talk to her son about the killings while deputies recorded the conversation.
On the witness stand, Adkins told jury members that the night after the murders, her son and his girlfriend spent the night in her home.
She said she encouraged Wilson to cooperate with investigators and take a lie-detector test to clear his name.
“He said, ‘Mom, I can’t do that,’” Adkins told jury members, recalling her talk with Wilson.
“I said, ‘Why, Mark? Did you hurt those babies?’ Mark’s left arm went straight down. His head went sideways. And in a voice that was not his own, he says, ‘Yes, Mom, I did it.’”
