Mesac Damas was sentenced to death by the State of Florida for the murder of his wife and five children
According to court documents Mesac Damas would murder Guerline Dieu Damas, and their five young children — Michzach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and Morgan, 1 by slitting their throats.
Mesac Damas would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Where Is Mesac Damas Now
Mesac Damas is incarcerated at Union Correctional Institute
Mesac Damas Case
Mesac Damas and Guerline dated for many years before they married in April 2006. Meshach, Maven, Marven, and Megan were born prior to the marriage, while Morgan was born after the marriage. According to Damas, he and Guerline began to argue after the marriage. He became jealous and suspected Guerline of having an affair. He visited her job and checked her cellular telephone. On January 2, 2009, during an argument about her purported unfaithfulness, Damas slapped Guerline while she was holding infant Morgan, and Guerline dropped the child on the floor. Guerline called the police, and Damas was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery. He was given a bond, but was ordered to have no contact with Guerline as a condition of his release.5 Nonetheless, he sent her flowers almost every day. Further, he would use his key to enter the residence so that he could apologize to Guerline and see the children.
According to Mesac Damas, as time passed, Guerline became concerned because the Department of Children and Families (DCF) “got involved” as a result of the domestic violence incident and was “trying to take the kids away from her.” Guerline changed the locks so that Damas could no longer enter the residence, but Damas would drive by after his restaurant shift ended at 3 a.m., using a friend’s car so the police would not know he was violating the no-contact order. He would sit in the car, watching Guerline and thinking about the children. One day, when he “couldn’t take it no more,” he broke a window while Guerline was home and entered the residence to see the children. Guerline and the children eventually moved out of the residence where the domestic violence incident occurred and into the townhouse where the murders occurred.
The no-contact order was subsequently lifted and, toward the end of March 2009, Guerline allowed Mesac Damas to move in with her and the children.6 Damas pleaded no contest to the battery charge and was placed on twelve months’ probation. Although Guerline allowed Damas to move in, she told him she did not forgive him and she planned to divorce him. Guerline informed Damas that her mother stated that if she ever took Damas back, she (the mother) would never speak to Guerline again. When Damas asked Guerline if she would leave him, she stated, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My mom [is] probably right ․ like I told you before I’m going to leave you. I’m going to divorce you.” Damas responded, “Baby let me tell you something․ If you ever say that again I will kill your mom. I will kill you. I will kill myself.” 7
On Wednesday, September 16, 2009, Guerline informed Mesac Damas that if he struck her again, she would make sure he spent the rest of his life in prison and he would never see the children again. Contemplating Guerline leaving him for someone else and not being allowed to see his children, Damas thought about killing himself and her:
[A]nd then that’s when the devil start coming out of me. He was like, “Oh, why don’t you just kill yourself? Kill her and then kill yourself” you know, “Let your parents, whatever, take care of the kids.” But I was like, “But I love the kids and when I die how am I going to know if they [are] okay.”
Also that day, a DCF employee visited and met with Guerline without Damas. Mesac Damas recounted to the special agent his belief that “[t]hey were setting me up for failure. [Guerline] was asking her how she can divorce me․ I was so pissed off ․ the fact [that] she betrayed me like that.” (fourth alteration in original). That night, Guerline informed Damas she would help him finish the probation classes, and then she would divorce him.
On the morning of Thursday, September 17, 2009, Mesac Damas followed Guerline to her job, leaving the children at home alone. Guerline and the store manager threatened to call the police, but Damas said, “If you call the cops they’re going to arrest me, they’re going to arrest you too because both of us left the kids alone at the house. They’re going to take the kids away from us. I know you love the kids too, right?” Guerline returned home after working less than four hours. She asked Damas to sign some papers that had arrived in the mail. Before she left the townhouse to return to work, she stated she would not come home that evening because she feared Damas “might push me or whatever, beat ․ me.” Damas responded, “Baby, I’m not going to do anything to you. I love you. You know? It’s okay․ It’s alright. If I touch you I go to jail; you know.”
Guerline returned to the townhouse that afternoon on her work break. A friend who was visiting Mesac Damas at the time witnessed an argument between the two before Damas left for his work shift, using the friend’s vehicle rather than taking his own.8 The friend agreed to stay and watch the children because Guerline also left to return to work. At approximately 7 p.m., Guerline arrived home, and the friend remained to speak with her. During his shift, Damas complained of a headache and was allowed to leave early. He “clocked out” at 8:42 p.m. Damas informed the special agent that once he left the restaurant, he was considering various scenarios:
I said I would go and kill her and myself. But if I kill her[,] custody of the kids would go [to] her mom. So I wanted to kill her mom so my mom would have custody. I [was] talking to myself in my car. I said what if I kill my kids and myself? But what about her? She will marry again! What if I just kill her? But if they find me[,] they will take my kids away from me.
Around 9 p.m., Damas’s friend observed his own vehicle drive past the townhouse, turn around, and leave. The friend entered Damas’s Yukon and followed Damas, flashing the lights of the Yukon. When Damas stopped, the friend asked Damas what was wrong, and Mesac Damas replied that he thought Guerline was with another man. The friend and Damas swapped vehicles, and the friend observed Damas drive away. At approximately 10:30 p.m., Damas purchased duct tape, a filet knife, and chewing gum.
On Saturday, September 19, 2009, Guerline’s family filed a missing person report with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office and requested a welfare check for Guerline and the children. The family was concerned due to the history of domestic violence between Mesac Damas and Guerline and the children, and the fact that Guerline had not reported to work, which was out of character for her. The children also missed school on Friday. Officers met Guerline’s family at the townhouse to conduct a welfare check, and the landlord unlocked the front door. Upon entry, the officers observed a red substance that appeared to be blood leaking from the closed door of a room under the stairway. Believing a violent crime had been committed and the suspect might still be present, the officers withdrew and requested backup.
Upon reentry by law enforcement, they opened the door under the stairs and found Guerline deceased, laying on the floor of a small bathroom with a large area of dried blood beneath the upper part of her body. Her head was covered with a black trash bag. Underneath the bag, her neck and mouth had been bound with duct tape. The upper half of her body was bound with so much duct tape that it was impossible to discern what she was wearing from the waist up. Her arms were behind her back and her wrists and hands, palms facing outward, were bound extensively with duct tape. Her legs were bound with duct tape from just above her knees to just above her ankles. Her torso and hands were also loosely wrapped in an electrical cord. Her throat had been cut through the duct tape.
Law enforcement proceeded to the second floor of the townhouse to check on the welfare of the children. In one bedroom, law enforcement found Meshach—the oldest child—deceased on the bed with his throat cut. The knife wounds nearly encircled his neck. The bed was broken. In another bedroom, law enforcement found the four remaining children deceased, also with their throats cut. The lacerations to five-year-old Marven’s throat were so deep that he was nearly decapitated. Neither Damas nor his vehicle was at the townhouse.
Law enforcement eventually tracked Damas’s vehicle to Miami International Airport, where he had entered the airport parking garage at 6:40 a.m. on September 18, 2009. Damas paid cash for a one-way ticket to Port-au-Prince, Haiti; the flight departed at 9:50 a.m. on September 18. He was subsequently apprehended in Port-au-Prince by the Haitian National Police. While being escorted by law enforcement, a reporter from the Naples Daily News who was in Haiti asked Mesac Damas, “Did you kill your family?” Damas replied in the affirmative. Damas also stated that he wanted “death right away” so that he could be buried with his family. When asked what led him to kill his family, Damas stated that Guerline’s mother made him do it, referencing “her mom’s spirit, whatever she’s—she’s serving, whatever she worships.” Damas said he planned to commit suicide after the killings, but he did not have the courage to do so. Damas also stated that he intended to turn himself in, but went to Haiti to say goodbye to his family.
During his statements to the special agent and Collier County law enforcement, Mesac Damas described what happened on the night of the murders, though the stories are not identical. He stated that after swapping vehicles with his friend, Mesac Damas parked his car by the community swimming pool and proceeded to the back of the townhome. He watched Guerline through the screened-in lanai for more than one hour while she spoke on her cellular telephone. According to Damas, she was laughing and looked happy. At approximately 12:30 a.m., he tore off the screen door to the lanai and entered the townhouse through the sliding glass door, which Damas knew he could open because it was not functioning properly. When Guerline saw him, she screamed and told him not to touch her. Damas punched her and, at that time, he knew he “was gonna go to jail.” Damas stated that Guerline was fighting him in the kitchen, “trying to get out [to call] the cops or whatever. Call a neighbor.” According to Damas, at that point, he pulled her hair back and cut her throat from behind with a filet knife.9
Mesac Damas bound Guerline extensively with duct tape so that she could not call out and because she was “trying to make noise with her feet that the neighbor next to us can hear” through the common wall. Because she was still struggling and he had used all the tape, he further bound her with an extension cord. According to Damas’s statement to the special agent:
I said I gonna let you live ․ I won’t kill you but I kill all the kids in front of you! I said I will let you go but I burn the house with me and kids in it. She want to talk. I remove duct tape ․ she said “I love you so much.” I said why you lying to me? She said please don’t hurt the children. I said if you go I looking at 6 years because [you] will call the cops on me.
(First and second alteration in original.) According to Damas’s statement to Collier County law enforcement, he dragged Guerline into the bathroom in order to contain the blood. He then engaged in the following thought process:
And I was trying to, “What am I going to do? Run, call the cops? Say I killed my wife or something.”
․
I love my children to death. I’m going to jail for life.
․
Death penalty, whatever, electric chair. I’m thinking, thinking. One o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning. I’m thinking. I got the knife in my hand still. I said, “Uh I’m to slice my throat too.” I said, “I’m gonna suffer before I f[***]ing die. I can do it.” I wasn’t going to kill the kids, man. I still had them to survive, you know, let them live. So the devil come to me and say, “Who’s going to taking care of kids?”
Mesac Damas proceeded upstairs, where, in his own words, he cut the children’s throats “one by one.” He first killed Megan, the three-year-old. Mesac Damas said that after he killed Megan, he heard a voice saying, “Good job in doing it.” According to Damas, when he said he could not continue, a voice told him, “Yes you can. Keep doing it.” He then killed Marven, the five-year-old, and Maven, the six-year-old. According to Damas, he decided he could not continue, so he started packing, planning to leave Meshach and Morgan alive. However, according to Damas, when he proceeded downstairs:
I see a bunch of blood, my wife laying down. I was like, “Oh my God.” I digged up carpet and I cover the blood. There was blood everywhere on my feet. I was like, “Oh my goodness. I’m going to jail for the rest of my life. They will give me death penalty.” ․ And then the voice said, “You got two more left. You’re going to die anyway. You’re going to leave those two behind? Her mom probably have custody of them.” I said, “Hell no I don’t want her mom get custody. If I have chance to kill her mom I will drive there or, whatever. Go to Haiti, kill her mom.” He was like, “Well her mom is gonna get custody [of] them.” I said, “Hell no” and then I went upstairs and cut the little one.
Mesac Damas stated that nineteen-month-old Morgan was “the easiest one to die.” However, nine-year-old Meshach struggled. After cutting Meshach’s throat, Damas watched him bleed to death.
After the murders, Mesac Damas changed his bloody clothing, placed the knife—now bent—in a nightstand in the master bedroom, finished packing a suitcase, removed money from Guerline’s wallet, and drove to the Miami airport where he purchased the one-way ticket to Port-au-Prince. He stated that before he left the townhouse, he contemplated suicide again, but could not bring himself to cut his own throat. Instead, he planned to drive into the path of another vehicle. However, he ultimately continued to the airport.
Mesac Damas stated to the special agent, “I know what I did was wrong. Bad spirits made me do it.” Mesac Damas stated that his mother-in-law practices Vodou, and that she “has been doing voodoo[10 ] on my ass ever since we been making children.” According to Damas, because he and Guerline were engaging in premarital sex, Damas was no longer allowed to be president of his church youth group, and he left the church. As a result, he did not “have any protection from my God no more. So anything can happen to me.”
The parties stipulated that the cause of Guerline’s and the children’s deaths was sharp force injuries to the neck, and the deaths were ruled homicides. On September 5, 2017, Damas pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree premeditated murder, waived his right to a penalty-phase jury, and waived his right to present evidence in mitigation.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/fl-supreme-court/1970161.html
