An Alabama teen has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for executing five members of his family — including an infant and two young children — in a shocking murder described by the judge as “draped in unmitigated evil.”
Mason Sisk, now 18, learned his fate Thursday, after an Alabama jury convicted him in April of multiple counts of capital murder for the 2019 cold-blooded killings of his father, stepmother and three younger siblings.
Sisk was not facing the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the crimes.
Circuit Judge Chadwick Wise wrote that Sisk’s crime was “ghastly, disturbing, and draped in unmitigated evil” and deserved the harshest punishment allowed by law.
Sisk reportedly did not have any visible reaction to the sentence and did not make a statement in court, reported the station WHNT.
Limestone County District Attorney Brian C.T. Jones shared a written statement with reporters after the sentencing, which read in part: “I’ve prosecuted a lot of people in my career, and I can tell you that out of all of those people, only four out of five people scare the hell out of me and he’s at the top of my list.”
“Mason Sisk is clearly one of the most dangerous people who will ever be sentenced in Limestone County,” Jones continued.
Sisk was just 14 years old when he shot each of his family members in the head at their home in Elkmont, prosecutors said.
John Wayne Sisk, 38, his wife, Mary Sisk, 35, and three of their children — 6-year-old Grayson, 4-year-old Aurora and 6-month-old Colson — all died in the massacre.
Sisk initially told police that on September 2, 2019, he was in the basement playing video games when he heard gunshots and ran outside to see a vehicle pulling away, but he later admitted that he had killed his family members.
An audio recording played during a pretrial hearing revealed that Sisk told investigators about a possible motive for the killings.
“Yeah, they argue a lot, and I got fed up with it,” Sisk said. “And the kids were going through a lot.”
Prosecutors argued that Sisk had anger control issues and had threatened the entire family.
In court documents, they alleged that the teen previously laced his stepmother’s coffee with peanut butter in an attempt to poison the woman, who had a severe peanut allergy.
Wise wrote that the Sisk murders were the rare case where a life sentence without parole was warranted for a juvenile defendant.
The judge noted the victims had been killed as they were lying in bed. He wrote that the “circumstances of the Sisk case are much more appalling” than other cases where life sentences have been upheld for juvenile defendants.
Sisk’s juvenile probation officer wrote in a November 2020 report that “he has not shown any sign of remorse” and has not mentioned his family during his detention.
With Post wires
