Florida Jury Recommends Death Penalty for Man Convicted of Murdering Two Brothers, Aged 12 and 14

It took jurors less than an hour to decide a Florida man should be put to death for the exceptionally brutal murders of two brothers, one age 12 and the other 14.

Mark Wilson, 32, was found guilty last month on two first-degree murder charges for the slayings of Tayten Baker and his younger brother, Robert. 

The boys had been beaten to death with a hammer in their Florida home and then had their throats slit, police said.

Their battered and bloodied bodies were discovered by their mother, Sarah Baker, who testified she found Tayten first.

“You could tell that his throat was severed completely through, almost to the bone, because that’s when I realized there was no pulse,” she said during Wilson's trial. 

“I ran over to Robert, and I’m screaming at him to call 911, and I rip his blanket off and all I can remember is his head flipped forward and then it banged back up against the wall," the mother testified. "He was the same thing, soaked in blood, and I didn’t get a good look at what his injuries looked like, but I did as far as Tayten’s. In that moment, I started screaming, like, at the top of my lungs.”

The boys' aunt was the girlfriend of Wilson at the time, police said. The couple had been living on the Bakers' property.

The mother testified that her sister and Wilson had stayed with the family from time to time over a period of years.

She said she noticed nothing out of the ordinary on the night before the killings in 2020. But she testified Wilson had been sharpening a knife during what she described as a seemingly normal conversation.

Under Florida law, Wilson can be executed only if jurors unanimously recommend the death penalty, which they did in this case.

A judge will make the ultimate decision in a hearing scheduled for December.

Authorities described the murders as particularly violent and heinous. Investigators said Wilson told them he hadn't slept for three days before the murders and had been steadily using meth.

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