West Palm man charged in marijuana-deal slayings
Suspect planned the shootings and brought weapons, police say.
GREENACRES — A West Palm Beach man who police say conspired to rob a Greenacres marijuana dealer and his best friend is facing charges of premeditated first-degree murder in their April 27 fatal shootings.
Scott Cinevert, 24, and another man who had not been charged as of Wednesday “organized a plan to rob” Matthew Makarits, 22, and Marcus Stukes, 21, during the transaction at Bowman Park and “came prepared with multiple firearms,” according to a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office probable-cause affidavit made public Wednesday.
Their plan was documented in a Snapchat conversation between user names associated with them between 10 and 11:30 p.m. April 26, the night before the shootings, the affidavit said. The conversation was one of several social-media exchanges that investigators turned into evidence.
Cinevert also faces two counts of robbery with a firearm. He was arrested late Tuesday, and Judge Dina Keever-Agrama ordered him held at the Palm Beach County Jail until his next court appearance during a brief hearing Wednesday morning. Cinevert refused to speak with sheriff ’s investigators when they questioned him in early May.
The affidavit does not explicitly say Cinevert is the man who got out of a gray 1995 Lexus and shot Makarits and Stukes multiple times. A total of four men were in the car when it drove into the park at Haverhill and Lake Worth roads at about 1 p.m.
April 27. Cinevert told some of the 13 cooperating witnesses detailed in the report that he had stayed in the car and that he only went along because he needed money and “no one was supposed to get hurt.”
However, investigators found that Cinevert had arranged to buy one-quarter pound of marijuana from Makarits, who became such inseparable friends with Stukes at John I. Leonard High School that some considered them brothers.
Besides the 13 witnesses, investigators used park security cameras, Facebook message records and Snapchat exchanges to trace Cinevert and the other man to the park at the time of the slayings, the affidavit said.
Eight of the witnesses described the Lexus driving into the park and one of its occupants getting out and shooting into the blue Nissan Sentra in which Makarits and Stukes sat. Surveillance cameras at the park showed people at the park scatter and then a dark four-door vehicle head westbound on Bowman Street afterward.
Stukes was armed with a .25-caliber handgun, and another gun was found on the driver’s seat, where Makarits sat, the affidavit said. Investigators found 100 grams of marijuana in the car, the Nissan’s rear-passenger door open and 13 shell casings from a Draco 7.62 semiautomatic rifle at the scene. All were from one gun, which has not been located, the affidavit said. Also recovered was a cellphone belonging to Makarits, on which investigators found Facebook Messenger contacts with Cinevert about buying marijuana.
The affidavit said officers obtained Cinevert’s cellphone when they tried to question him May 5. Analysts recovered an April 26 Snapchat conversation with the second man describing plans for the robbery, according to the affidavit.
The homicides were the first confirmed slayings in Greenacres during 2017 and among 51 in Palm Beach County, according to a Palm Beach Post database. They took the lives of two friends who were as close as twins but who had different personalities. Makarits, who was studying to become a certified mechanic, did most of the talking for the two and was full of energy. Stukes was quiet and perpetually calm.
“Matt loved his cars and Marcus was his co-pilot,” Charlene Makarits, Matthew’s mother, said at a vigil the night after the shootings. “You can’t remember one without the other.”