An unpaid prostitute and a drug deal gone bad: Man gets 2 life sentences for pair of 2014 slayings in Newport News

A federal judge sentenced a 35-year-old New York man to two life prison terms this week for killing two Newport News men in separate incidents seven years ago.

Mark Anthony Skeete once faced the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of the slayings — prostitution and drug deals gone bad — committed within an 18-day span in the summer of 2014.

But federal prosecutors took capital punishment off the table in June. Skeete then pleaded guilty to killing 33-year-old Jamar Clarke and 36-year-old James Arthur Miller Jr.

Skeete, also known as “Mark Anthony Brown,” already was serving a 75-year prison sentence for killing a South Richmond couple in September 2014. While Skeete was arrested and charged in the Richmond murders within two months of those killings, it was another five years before he was charged in the Newport News cases.

At a sentencing hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Newport News, Skeete’s attorneys, Fernando Groene and James Ellenson, hoped to persuade U.S. District Judge David Novak to sentence their client to less than life, and to give him a chance of “geriatric parole.”

“It is amazing the level of neglect and abuse and trauma that Mr. Skeete suffered when he was growing up, very young,” Groene said in an interview Friday.

Groene said a team of specialists obtained jail, prison and education records and interviewed family members and friends to demonstrate how Skeete’s traumatic upbringing contributed to his actions.

That included several interviews with Skeete’s father, now serving a life sentence in Philadelphia for a gang killing and arson. The team submitted videos of interviews with the father and a neighbor who cared for Skeete as a boy.

Groene said he and Ellenson told the judge that with proper medication and therapy for Skeete’s anger and mental health issues, “that he would age out of his criminal behavior.”

Skeete also spoke at the hearing, expressing his “deepest regret for my actions and the pain and harm I have caused — both to the victims and their families.”

He said he was in a “very dark place” for many years without mental health treatment, but now hoped to have a closer relationship with his son to ensure he never ends up in jail.

“I know I can’t undo the bad I’ve done, but I want to do something good with my life, both in prison and when I get out,” said Skeete, according to a copy of written remarks he read at the hearing. “I want to help people, I want to be a leader in the community, to make sure people don’t make the same mistakes that I did.”

But federal prosecutors sought two life sentences, and contended the mitigation evidence raised by Skeete’s lawyers didn’t warrant consideration.

Novak said he considered the mitigation evidence, but agreed with the prosecution on the two life prison terms, saying “there’s way too much in here” to overcome.

“The judge said ... there’s no question that he had been abused, mistreated, traumatized,” Groene said. “There’s no dispute that he has bipolar or anything like that. But the judge found that despite that, these two acts of murder — in addition to the (Richmond killings) — was just too much, and that there is no excuse.”

Novak gave Skeete consecutive life sentences with no opportunity for geriatric release.

The two Newport News slayings had gone unsolved for more than six years before Skeete’s federal indictment in August 2020. The murders stemmed from disputes over sex and drugs, according to court documents filed in the case.

Clarke was killed in the early morning of June 29, 2014 — his body found in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor of his Southeast Newport News apartment. He had been shot multiple times at close range.

A statement of facts filed with the June guilty plea said Skeete was a leader in the Nine Trey Gangsters, affiliated with the Bloods organization.

Skeete and three women — one from New York and two Newport News sisters — got together in Newport News in June 2014 and began to operate a prostitution scheme, the statement said. They stayed at a Southeast Newport News boarding house and sought “to make money by prostituting (the New York woman) to customers in the area,” the statement said.

Clarke was one of those customers. On the night he was killed, the woman went to his apartment on Ridley Circle to sell sex. But afterwards, the statement said, “he was unwilling or unable to pay.”

That led to a heated phone conversation between Skeete and a New York gang leader about what to do.

“Following this telephone call, Skeete abruptly shot Clarke multiple times from close range,” the statement of facts said.

Federal prosecutors contend Skeete carried out the slaying “to maintain his position as part of the Nine Trey enterprise.” After killing Clarke, the statement said, the group continued to try to find more prostitution customers that night before fleeing the next morning.

The second murder stemmed from a robbery. Skeete wanted to buy drugs, so one of the Newport News women made an arrangement with Miller, a local drug dealer. They met on July 16, 2014, in Miller’s car on Ash Avenue, off 25th Street near Salters Creek in Newport News.

But before getting into Miller’s car, Skeete pulled out a gun and told the woman he was going to rob Miller, the statement of facts said.

Skeete got into the back seat, while the woman got into the passenger seat. Miller apparently resisted the robbery. “Within seconds of entering the vehicle, Skeete shot Miller in the back of the head,” the statement of facts said.

Skeete then stole several hundred dollars, drugs and a cellphone from Miller before he and the woman ran away and caught a cab back to the boarding house.

Miller was found dead at the steering wheel.

Two months later, in September 2014, Saquenta Dixon and Andrea Todd, both 26, were found dead in a parking lot outside their South Richmond apartment, with their 1-year-old daughter unharmed nearby.

Skeete was arrested in North Carolina two months after that and charged with the couple’s killing and another Richmond double shooting that wounded two men that September.

He was sentenced in Richmond Circuit Court in June 2015 to 75 years in the killing of the Richmond couple. Charges in the other shooting were dropped.

Prosecutors said the .45-caliber handgun recovered after the Richmond killings was also used in both Newport News homicides, and that cartridge casings found at all three scenes were fired from the same gun.

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com