Florida Man Sentenced To Death After His Mother Turns Him In For Double Murder
Peter Avsenew told a judge before sentencing he wanted to “cull the weak and timid from existence.”
Mugshot of Peter Avsenew [via Florida Department of Corrections]
On December 23, 2010, the bodies of a married couple were discovered in their home in Wilton Manors, Florida.
Kevin Powell, 52, and Stephen Adams, 47, had been bludgeoned and shot multiple times in what a judge would later note were “cold, calculated and premeditated” murders.
On Christmas, two days after the men’s deaths, Peter Avsenew, who allegedly had been staying with the pair, showed up at his mother Jeanne Avsenew’s home in Polk County, Florida.
“He said he had done something and needed to get away for six months and everything would be all right,” she later testified, according to Miami’s WFOR-TV.
Jeanne said her son was often checking the computer and when she eventually discovered he was a person of interest in the double murders of Powell and Adams she rushed to a friend’s house.
“I told her what was going on and what I had seen on the computer and she said the only thing I could do was call the police,” the mother recalled, telling the court she then contacted 911 and turned her son in to authorities.
In November 2017, Peter Avsenew was found guilty of murdering Adams and Powell. He was also convicted on charges of grand theft auto, credit card fraud, armed robbery and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in connection with the case.
After his conviction and before sentencing, Avsenew sent Broward County Judge Ilona Holmes a letter.
“It is my duty as a white man to cull the weak and timid from existence,” Avsenew wrote, according to Miami’s WPLG. “I will always stand up for what I believe in and eradicate anything in my way. Homosexuals are a disgrace to mankind and must be put down. These weren't the first and won't be the last.”
During a hearing in June 2018, the station reported, he reiterated his feelings and showed no remorse, telling the court: “I wholeheartedly have nothing to lose and I'm going to take it out on everybody I can.”
Months later, Judge Holmes upheld the jury’s unanimous death-penalty recommendation and sentenced Avsenew to die, writing in her sentencing order that the slayings of the couple of nearly 30 years were “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel,” NBC News reported.
Online records show Avsenew, now 36, is currently on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida.
For more on this story, stream the “My Son Is Damaged Goods” episode of Evil Lives Here now on discovery+.
