Arizona Is Preparing to Execute Rapper Cleopus Cookie Jr. After He Murdered His Mother, Stepdad & 6.
In the winter of 2017, the sprawling streets of Phoenix, Arizona, became the hunting ground for a phantom. Over the course of three terrifying weeks, multiple lives were ruthlessly extinguished across the metropolitan area. The victims shared no obvious connection. They spanned different ages, backgrounds, and neighborhoods. Some were going to work, others were simply sitting in parked cars, and one was abducted right from her own doorstep. For weeks, the city remained completely unaware that a serial killer was operating in the shadows. The monster behind this bloodbath was hiding in plain sight, masquerading as a reformed man of God and an aspiring rapper. His name was Cleopus Cookie Jr.
Fresh out of prison after serving 16 years for a felony murder conviction stemming from a botched armed robbery, Cookie returned to society with a fabricated persona. He called himself “King Playbola,” recording rap videos in local studios and writing soft love songs for the women in his life. He bragged about his thousands of social media friends and told anyone who would listen that his years behind bars had changed him for the better. He lived rent-free with his mother, Renee Cookie, and his stepfather, Edward Nun, frequently referring to his mother as his “rock.” But behind this carefully constructed facade of a misunderstood man chasing the American dream lurked a ruthless, cold-blooded executioner.
The carnage officially began on November 27, 2017. Two young friends, Parker Smith and Andrew Remlard, were shot to death while sitting in a parked car on a busy street. There was no robbery, no argument, and no motive. Just five days later, a 31-year-old security guard named Sy Richards was fatally shot while walking to his girlfriend’s apartment. Cookie stole Richards’s 9mm Glock handgun and a necklace, walking away from the scene as if nothing had happened. That stolen weapon would become the deadly instrument for an escalating spree that defied all logic.
The violence only accelerated from there. Lator Beckford, a young man training to become an ambulance worker, was gunned down in a shared apartment complex. Two days later, Christopher Cameron, a 21-year-old expecting father, was murdered in an open field. The sheer randomness of the violence left police scrambling. Then came the horrific abduction of Maria Villanuva, a 43-year-old mother of two. Security cameras captured a man kidnapping her from her own doorstep. The next morning, she was found in an alley miles away—assaulted and murdered. Unlike the previous hit-and-run shootings, this crime was prolonged and deeply personal, and the killer made a fatal mistake: he left his DNA behind.
This horrifying reign of terror finally culminated in an act of unimaginable betrayal. On December 17, neighbors heard violent crashing, arguments about “demons,” and screaming coming from the apartment Cookie shared with his family. When police arrived, Cookie met them at the door, trying to conceal his blood-stained hands and aggressively fighting off the responding officer, declaring himself “the strongest man alive.” Inside the apartment, officers found the bodies of his mother and stepfather. They had been shot to death at close range. The very people who had given him a roof over his head became his final victims.
It was the discovery of a handgun sitting on the family’s living room sofa that blew the entire case wide open. Through a federal ballistics database, investigators matched the microscopic markings on the casings from the stolen 9mm Glock to the scattered murders across the city. Suddenly, the isolated tragedies were woven into a single, horrifying narrative. Cell phone records, surveillance footage, and the stolen necklace found draped around Cookie’s own neck cemented his guilt. The man who claimed to love women and preached redemption was formally unmasked as one of the most prolific serial killers in Arizona’s recent history.
Justice was agonizingly slow, delayed by the pandemic and relentless legal battles, but it eventually arrived. In December 2025, exactly eight years after his deadly spree, a Maricopa County jury convicted Cleopus Cookie Jr. of all eight first-degree murders. The jury handed down six separate death sentences for the innocent strangers he slaughtered, though they remained deadlocked on the ultimate penalty for the murders of his parents. Through it all, Cookie displayed zero remorse, offering not a single flicker of sympathy for the families he destroyed. He stole futures simply so he could keep telling himself he was succeeding in life. Instead, he will spend the rest of his days waiting for his final walk to the execution chamber.
