“I really am sorry for what I have done. There’s no excuses,” said Mosley, a 2013 graduate of Northmont High School in Clayton.
But Mosley was unable to explain why he stabbed Back 21 times, then joined co-defendant Austin Myers in disposing of Back’s body in Preble County and some of the evidence at locations including the Great Miami River in Miami County.
“I keep asking myself why I did it. I just can’t give you that answer right now,” Mosley said. “There’s not a day that goes by that it doesn’t haunt me.”
In hopes of making it look as if Back had run away, Mosley and Myers also cleaned up the house. They stole some of Back’s possessions and a safe with $70 and a gun, as well as work property of Mark Cates, Back’s stepfather and a long-time prison guard who has never returned to work.
Myers shot the body with the gun, after it was doused with septic enzymes designed to speed decomposition, in woods near a location known as Crybaby Bridge, according to testimony.
Last month, Judge Donald Oda II sentenced Myers to the death penalty after a two-week trial. Mosley avoided a trial and the death penalty by testifying against Myers,19, now the youngest person on Ohio’s Death Row.
Myers’ plea, reached in September, the week before Myers’ trial began, prevented the families and prosecutors from having to endure another long court proceeding.
“We would have still been going,” Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said after the sentencing. “I think it was important for them to not have to go through another trial.”
Fornshell and Back’s family indicated they also accepted the lesser penalty for Mosley because he accepted responsibility.
While it was Mosley that choked, then stabbed, Back - who was about to enter the U.S. Navy - Myers was credited as the lead planner of the crime, conceived over about two days. Authorities also criticized Myers for lacking remorse.
The families of Back and Mosley were brought together last month when Mosley’s sister, Devyn, contacted Back’s mother, Sandy Cates, via Facebook, according to family members.
Cates hugged Mosley’s mother after Mosley’s plea hearing, and the families were planning where to go out to eat after the sentencing.
“It saddens me too for the Mosleys’ family,” Cates said after the sentencing. “They’ve lost their son too.”
Although finished in the local court, Myers’ case will continue with a mandatory appeal already filed in the Ohio Supreme Court.
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