Eddie Mosley

Eddie Lee Mosley (March 31, 1947 – May 28, 2020) was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eight women in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, between 1973 and 1987. He was arrested in 2001 following the results of a DNA profiling test, after being the prime suspect in several murders for many years. Before his arrest, two other men were wrongly convicted of several murders later attributed to Mosley: Frank Lee Smith, who spent 15 years in prison and died behind bars before he could be exonerated, and Jerry Townsend, who spent 22 years in prison before being released. Mosley's true victim count is unknown, with authorities speculating that he committed at least 16 murders and dozens of rapes.

Biography Eddie Mosley was born on March 31, 1947, as the third of ten children of a Fort Lauderdale family. Complications during his birth later led to him developing an acute respiratory disease as a child, causing him a slew of issues. In addition, from an early age he began to show signs of an intellectual disability and mental instability, had problems learning and experiencing anterograde amnesia, because of which he repeated his second year of elementary school several times. In 1960, at the age of 13, Eddie was forced to leave school for good as a third grade student. During his teenage years, he lived in poor conditions, and began to show signs of an antisocial personality. Owing to lack of formal education, he was forced to engage in low-skilled labor, but soon, due to financial difficulties, he turned towards crime. Since 1965, he had been arrested 9 times on varying charges, including indecent behavior, robbery, assault, attempted rape and murder, for which he spent years in prison and almost 6 years in various psychiatric wards.

Crimes In the period between November 1971 and July 1973, almost 150 rapes of girls and women were recorded in the northwestern part of Fort Lauderdale. In all cases, the perpetrator was described as a young, tall black man with an athletic build and a scar on his left cheek, who, under the threat of physical violence, lured them to wastelands and other isolated areas, where he choked and sexually abused the victims. On July 23, 1973, three rape victims identified Mosley as their assailant, who, due to his physique and tall stature, well matched the composite of the rapist. After his arrest, his photographs were shown to other victims, resulting in more than 40 women identifying him as the rapist. During this period, Mosley was also the prime suspect in the rape-murders of two black girls in Fort Lauderdale, killed in early 1973, but since there was not enough evidence, he was only charged with the assaults and subsequent rape. However, following a mental evaluation, he was found to be insane, and was ordered involuntary commitment to the Florida State Hospital, where he spent five years. During his imprisonment, no other similar rapes or murders were recorded. and 54-year-old Emma Cook were found in northwestern Fort Lauderdale, raped and subsequently killed by suffocation. On May 17, 1984, he was arrested for raping a 22-year-old woman. At trial, he pleaded not guilty, claiming that the sexual intercourse had been with mutual agreement. His lawyers managed to successfully portray the rape as consensual sex, in which Mosley had promised the victim drugs, and in October of that same year, Mosley was acquitted and released. After committing two more murders in the vicinity of Fort Lauderdale, the Broward County Sheriff's Office contacted the FBI, which, based on provided data, compiled an offender profile which was very consistent with Eddie Mosley's. In the spring of 1987, Mosley came under police scrutiny again, for the February 24th rape and strangulation of 24-year-old Sentreyl Love.

On May 17, 1987, Mosley was arrested for theft. By that time, his blood group was matched with the semen samples taken from the bodies of the murder victims, and it was found to be a match. In the interrogations, Mosley showed evidence of his involvement in numerous crimes committed over almost two decades, all committed in the city or near his home. Faced with detailed descriptions of where the bodies were found, their names and descriptions, Mosley tried to make up an alibi, but began to confuse his testimony, getting dates, geographic data and even seasons wrong. In the end, he confessed to the murders of Teresa Giles and Emma Cook, with which he was charged. His trial began on July 22, 1987, with a number of sex workers working at the Fort Lauderdale red-light districts testifying that Mosley had repeatedly demonstrated aggressive behavior towards women in front of crowds of witnesses. Based on various tests, the defendant's IQ was measured at 51 points, below the average intelligence rate. Because of this, it was ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial, and on October 23, he was sentenced to compulsory treatment at the Florida State Hospital. After his arrest, he confessed to killing Gamble, as well as five other girls and women, among them Barbara Brown (killed in Broward County in 1973) and Sonja Yvette Marion. The charges against Townsend were later dropped, and he was released on June 15, 2001, after spending 22 years behind bars. Like Eddie Mosley, Townsend had been diagnosed as intellectually disabled from a young age.

Aside from his proven murders, the investigators tried to connect Mosley to other murders: among them were that of 24-year-old Santrail Lowe; 19-year-old Arnette Tukes, killed on February 22, 1980; 21-year-old Susan Boynton, killed in December 1979 and 16-year-old Gloria Irving, found murdered in 1980. However, Mosley's and the killer's DNA were deemed to be mismatched. Despite this, he hasn't been excluded from the list of suspects.

After establishing his guilt, the Fort Lauderdale police issued an arrest warrant for Mosley. However, according to the results of two independent psychiatric tests, conducted at the end of 2001, Mosley was again declared insane and thus couldn't be imprisoned. Over the years of treatment, he earned a reputation as an exemplary patient, was never disciplined and acted friendly towards management and staff members. As a result of this, in the late 1990s, he was transferred to the low-risk unit and was allowed to leave the hospital under supervision of staff, so he could make purchases in a nearby Walmart.

Death In the 2010s, due to his ailing health, Eddie Mosley was transferred to the Sunland Center in Marianna. In the spring of 2020, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and moved to the Jackson Hospital in Marianna, where he died on May 28, 2020, at the age of 73. Shortly before his death, he tested positive for COVID-19, which was later listed as the cause of death.