The killing spree of a South Carolina man wanted for murder in Tennessee has been stopped after a nightly standoff in Winter Haven, Florida, on Tuesday morning Oct. 15.
The suspect, 35-year-old Stanley Mossburg from Spartanburg, South Carolina, killed an elderly couple in their home in Winter Haven, Florida, on Sunday. He told a third, male resident of the house they were number seven and eight in a series of 11 that he wanted to accomplish, ABC Action News reported.
“I want to be a serial killer,” Mossburg said, “I like killing people,” according to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd at a press conference on Tuesday, the outlet reported.
On Sunday, Oct. 13, the third inhabitant of the home, whose name has not been disclosed, returned home from work at about 10:30 p.m. to find a fellow housemate, a woman, strapped to a chair. Mossburg was there too.
Mossburg said he had guns and knives, and he would kill the man if he would not cooperate. “Don’t look in the master bedroom, you won’t like what you see in there,” Mossburg said, WFLA reported. Mossburg then tied the man up in a separate room and later allegedly slew the woman.
Mossberg told him, “I’m not going to kill you because God told me not to.” He also said to the man he would save him as long as he cooperated.
The next morning, Mossburg untied the captive because he wanted him to help clean up the bodies. Mossburg told the man he had to go but would come back to get rid of the bodies. He told his prisoner not to inform the police, or he would be slain as well. Mossburg then drove off in the woman’s car at around noon.
The victim stayed on the couch for hours, terrified, that Mossburg would still be loitering around somewhere. Eventually, the man dared to rush to a neighbor and call 911.
Mossburg indeed came back on Monday night, but upon his return, police had set up a perimeter and sealed off the area. Mossburg then entrenched himself in the nearby house of an acquaintance of his.
Police besieged the compound and tried to talk the suspect into surrendering himself, he answered with several rounds of gunfire. Eventually, a SWAT team crushed the garage-door and sent a K-9 in. Mossburg was finally apprehended early Tuesday morning.
The suspect was also wanted for the slaying of a man at a laundromat in Tennessee on the night of Oct. 1.
Judd shared the latest findings at the press conference, piecing together the trail of a suspect on a killing spree. The trail went from South Carolina to Tennessee, back to South Carolina to Georgia and back to Florida again.
On Oct. 1, Christopher Scott Short was at the Celebrity Coin Laundry at 2055 East Andrew Johnson Highway, Greeneville, Tennessee, Judd explained.
Surveillance video shows that Scott was approached by Mossburg, who held him at gunpoint and forced him to go into the bathroom at about 11 p.m. and tied him up.
Ten minutes later, the men leave the launderette. The next morning, customers find Short’s body in a pool of blood behind the property. His car had been stolen.
Mossburg allegedly drove back home to Spartanburg and urged his sister to take him to Atlanta and buy a Greyhound ticket to Orlando, Florida.
The suspect is in custody. He was taken into custody around 5:10 a.m. this morning by PCSO SWAT. He has been barricaded alone in a house on Avenue C NE near 16th Street NE that belongs to an acquaintance of his. He will be booked into the Polk County Jail later this morning. https://t.co/NHj4PSivWM
— Polk County Sheriff (@PolkCoSheriff) October 15, 2019
“He has slashed and murdered both of these victims,” Judd said. “He slashed and murdered the victim in Tennessee, with knives.”
Mossburg, or “Woo Woo,” as he likes to call himself, faces multiple charges of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and aggravated kidnapping. Those crimes are serious enough to qualify him for the death penalty.
