Speaker 1: A wealthy couple spent an evening gambling in Atlantic City,
Speaker 1: but found trouble on their way home.
Speaker 2: It was a problem with this tire. He stopped at
Speaker 2: rest stop and then he was knocked out from behind,
Speaker 2: and his wife was shot twice in the back and
Speaker 2: died almost immediately.
Speaker 1: The mystery over what happened led investigators to a telephone
Speaker 1: some fourteen hundred miles away.
Speaker 2: They had no motive, they had no opportunity, they had
Speaker 2: no money trailed. They only had those punge calls.
Speaker 1: Today, we're in New Jersey for part one of Murder
Speaker 1: on the Parkway. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American
Speaker 1: homicide and just a warning that what you're about to
Speaker 1: hear is graphic.
Speaker 3: Please take care while listening.
Speaker 1: When New Jersey legalized gambling in the late seventies, Atlantic
Speaker 1: City came roaring back to life.
Speaker 3: By the eighties.
Speaker 1: It was the East coast version of Las Vegas, and
Speaker 1: for locals like Robert and Maria Marshall, it was where
Speaker 1: they went for their weekly date night.
Speaker 4: She liked Atlantic City, She'd liked going out to dinner there.
Speaker 5: They had friends down there.
Speaker 1: Jim Churchill investigated major crimes for the Ocean County Prosecutor's office.
Speaker 4: They noted a chef down there where they went, and
Speaker 4: he would come out and make a big fuss over
Speaker 4: her and him.
Speaker 1: Maria and Robert were a popular couple who many called
Speaker 1: Barbie and Ken. Maria was a stunning blonde. They were
Speaker 1: high school sweethearts. The two were a nineteen eighties version
Speaker 1: of a power couple.
Speaker 5: I suppose it would be an ideal American family.
Speaker 1: Robert was a successful insurance salesman. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: he sold more than fifty million dollars worth of insurance
Speaker 1: that afforded the Marshalls a lavish lifestyle filled with expensive cars,
Speaker 1: a boat, and a fancy house in the New Jersey
Speaker 1: suburb of Tom River.
Speaker 4: They were members of the Thomsriver Country Club. Most of
Speaker 4: their social life surrounded that particular place. They had three
Speaker 4: boys who were very active in swimming and tennis and
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 5: At the country club.
Speaker 1: Maria was known as the mom of the swim team.
Speaker 1: At every swim meet, you'd find her and Robert cheering
Speaker 1: on their kids in the stands.
Speaker 3: The couple made family time a priority.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, they used to take off
Speaker 4: every Friday to be with the family, and many people
Speaker 4: at the country club admired him for that and other things.
Speaker 1: On the night of September sixth, nineteen eighty four, Robert
Speaker 1: and Maria had dinner and drinks in Atlantic City. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: they played some blackjack and called it a night just
Speaker 1: before midnight.
Speaker 4: It was a school night, so she said she had
Speaker 4: to be home early because the kids had to get
Speaker 4: ready for school the next morning.
Speaker 1: Maria always treated her boys to pancakes breakfast, and since
Speaker 1: it was a Thursday night, she had to be up
Speaker 1: early the next morning, so Robert cashed out his blackjack
Speaker 1: winnings and the two headed home.
Speaker 4: It was a short drive, maybe an hour or so
Speaker 4: from Tom's River.
Speaker 1: As their Cadillac headed north on the Garden State Parkway,
Speaker 1: Maria slid off her shoes and earrings and laid back
Speaker 1: in her seat to get a little sleep, but Robert
Speaker 1: was concerned with how his Cadillac was handling the road.
Speaker 4: He was having trouble with the tire almost immediately when
Speaker 4: he left Atlantic City, but it got progressively worse as
Speaker 4: he came up the area.
Speaker 1: It was a forty five mile drive from Atlantic City
Speaker 1: to Tom's River and Robert tried his best to make
Speaker 1: it all the way home, but the tire had other plans.
Speaker 1: The faster he drove, the more it would shimmy and weave.
Speaker 5: He thought it might have been a slow leak, but
Speaker 5: he had to pull off and see what it was.
Speaker 1: Robert's exit was still fifteen miles away when he decided
Speaker 1: to pull over at the Oyster Creek picnic area. Back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, these picnic areas along highways were
Speaker 1: popular for travelers who needed a place to stop, stretch
Speaker 1: their legs, and use the restroom.
Speaker 3: The only problem with.
Speaker 1: The Oyster Creek picnic area was that it was tucked
Speaker 1: among a bunch of trees.
Speaker 5: It was very dark. There was no lights.
Speaker 4: The only thing there is a cinder block building that
Speaker 4: has restrooms in it. The only light in that area
Speaker 4: is about three hundred yards down.
Speaker 5: Where the rest area is.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 4: He pulled an air to check on the tire, went
Speaker 4: to the back, told his wife to pop the trunk
Speaker 4: from the glove compartment inside the cadillac. There's a switch
Speaker 4: you can hit and it pops the trunk in the back.
Speaker 1: The light from the trunk lit up the nearly pitch
Speaker 1: black picnic area. As Robert bent down to examine the
Speaker 1: rear passenger tire, he noticed another car pull in behind them.
Speaker 1: Seconds later, someone hit Robert over the head and he
Speaker 1: fell to the ground.
Speaker 5: Next thing you knew, he was waking up from being
Speaker 5: hit on the head.
Speaker 1: Unconscious, Robert felt woozy, his head was pounding, and a
Speaker 1: warm stream of blood ran from his forehead and down
Speaker 1: his cheek. He managed to get back on his feet,
Speaker 1: put his hands into the pockets of his tan khaki.
Speaker 3: Pants and found them empty.
Speaker 1: His wallet and the two grand he won from playing
Speaker 1: blackjack were gone.
Speaker 3: One thing ran through his mind.
Speaker 4: Somebody must have followed him from Atlantic City and did this.
Speaker 1: That's when Robert ran towards the front of his Cadillac
Speaker 1: to check on Maria.
Speaker 4: Missus Marshall was found in the front seat of the car.
Speaker 4: She died of two gunshot wounds to the back that
Speaker 4: eventually hit her heart.
Speaker 1: Robert's wife of twenty years was gone. He cried out
Speaker 1: into the dark ness for help, but there was no
Speaker 1: one around.
Speaker 4: He then ran out in the parkway, flagged down a
Speaker 4: couple of people who were coming back from Atlantic City,
Speaker 4: and they got help.
Speaker 7: My name is Dan mahoney and I was an investigator
Speaker 7: with the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Major Crime Unit.
Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of September seventh, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Dan Mahoney responded to the picnic area.
Speaker 7: We got to call that there was a homicide, robbery,
Speaker 7: homicide at that location and there was one victim. Missus
Speaker 7: Marshall had been shot twice. The two wounds were almost
Speaker 7: on top of each other. She wasn't giving any resistance,
Speaker 7: she wasn't fighting. She probably never knew what happened.
Speaker 1: The killer executed Maria with a forty five. They took
Speaker 1: her purse, but her gold jewelry and wedding ring were.
Speaker 3: Left untouched, which is odd.
Speaker 1: So whoever did this seemed to be after their ca
Speaker 1: and they picked a perfect place for the crime.
Speaker 7: There was no restaurants, gas stations, or anything like that.
Speaker 7: It was secluded. It was secluded. It was about I'd
Speaker 7: say two miles from the larger rest area.
Speaker 1: Detectives found a pool of blood at the rear of
Speaker 1: the car where Robert Marshall fell after being hit on
Speaker 1: the head. The gash on his head required a handful
Speaker 1: of stitches at a local hospital. He was released around
Speaker 1: sunrise and immediately met with the police.
Speaker 5: He wanted to know who who killed his wife.
Speaker 7: He wanted this to get to the bottom of this tragedy.
Speaker 3: The investigation took off from there.
Speaker 7: We had a lot of questions and most of them
Speaker 7: had to be answered by mister Marshall. When did he
Speaker 7: plan to go to Atlantic City? Did he see anybody
Speaker 7: down there that he knew? Did he think he was
Speaker 7: being followed? Will you rob or you're missing anything.
Speaker 1: Robert told the police that he left Atlantic City with
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars and explained how the tire was acting
Speaker 1: up on their way home.
Speaker 7: And I guess when he got out to take a
Speaker 7: look at the tire he was attacked. The lost consciousness
Speaker 7: I believe.
Speaker 1: Robert told police he remembered a dark colored sedan pulled
Speaker 1: in behind him at the rest stop, but.
Speaker 3: He didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1: He thought the driver had either pulled in to take
Speaker 1: a nap or had stopped to help him with his tire.
Speaker 7: I believe it was the passenger rear that was flat,
Speaker 7: and it looked like it suffered damage to the wall
Speaker 7: of the tire, not the tread like a nail would
Speaker 7: do or you picked up a piece of debris on
Speaker 7: the road cut the tire.
Speaker 5: This was on the side of the tire.
Speaker 1: By the end of the weekend, Robert had hired a
Speaker 1: top notch investigator from nearby Philadelphia and offered a ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars reward for information related to his wife's murder.
Speaker 7: To me, it's always been about the victim. The victim
Speaker 7: needs justice. I know you've heard it before, but they
Speaker 7: can't speak for themselves.
Speaker 3: Well, Maria mar Shell could not talk.
Speaker 1: The private investigator she had hired that summer would be
Speaker 1: the first to talk with detectives. The newspaper headline set
Speaker 1: it all. Woman slain at rest area on New Jersey Parkway.
Speaker 1: That woman was a forty two year old mother of
Speaker 1: three named Maria Marshall.
Speaker 6: She was a wonderful, wonderful person that everybody loved. I
Speaker 6: mean everybody was shocked.
Speaker 1: Maria's friend, Linda Fenwick, heard the tragic news from her son.
Speaker 6: I remember standing by the refrigerator and he said, guess
Speaker 6: what happened. Mom.
Speaker 1: Linda was shocked to hear her friend and carpool partner
Speaker 1: had been murdered.
Speaker 6: Our children went to swim camp in the middle of
Speaker 6: Pennsylvania and we would drive back and forth. I would
Speaker 6: drive one way, she would drive the other way. There
Speaker 6: were meets several times a week, and we always went
Speaker 6: to their house afterwards because they always entertained the team.
Speaker 1: The Marshalls would videotape the swim meets and then hosts
Speaker 1: the team for a viewing party, where Maria would serve pizza,
Speaker 1: which is why they called her the mom of the
Speaker 1: swim team.
Speaker 6: Center of her world were her boys. There was no
Speaker 6: doubt about it. They were the center of her world.
Speaker 6: Everything revolved around them and swimming.
Speaker 1: Nearly all of Tom's River showed up at Maria's funeral
Speaker 1: to support the three Marshall boys and Maria's husband, Robert.
Speaker 6: He had a bandage on the back of his head
Speaker 6: and he was crying the whole way down the aisle,
Speaker 6: and everybody was sympathizing with him. It was very difficult
Speaker 6: for everybody that knew them. Well, you know that this
Speaker 6: could have happened to Maria because she was such a
Speaker 6: kind person. You know, nobody quite could get a handle on.
Speaker 6: Was it for money? Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: A few days after the murder, investigators were still looking
Speaker 1: for suspects and a motive.
Speaker 7: It just didn't didn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Dan Mahoney investigated.
Speaker 7: Well, if you're rob being, why incapacitate mister Marshall with
Speaker 7: a bump on the head and then shoot missus Marshall
Speaker 7: twice who was not resisting. And so I think the
Speaker 7: main thing was to speak to mister Marshall.
Speaker 1: With Robert Marshall's help, law enforcement recreated the events of
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 7: He told us that it was a celebration to go
Speaker 7: to Atlantic City. They had a dinner at a certain
Speaker 7: restaurant that he always went to he liked. He was
Speaker 7: driving back, felt that there was something wrong with the
Speaker 7: way the car was performing the way he could make
Speaker 7: it to the rest area. We pulled over just to
Speaker 7: take a look at it, and he suffered a glow.
Speaker 5: To the head.
Speaker 1: Investigators focused on the Marshall's rear tire and the picnic
Speaker 1: area Robert pulled into.
Speaker 7: It really didn't make sense to me to stop there.
Speaker 7: If you haven't hire trouble. Anybody who didn't frequent Atlantic
Speaker 7: City would know that rest area and know it is dark,
Speaker 7: and you wouldn't get any light or any help or
Speaker 7: people that pull off the road to try to help
Speaker 7: you if you needed help, you would pulled off to
Speaker 7: decide and put your flashers on.
Speaker 1: Robert said he had a family friend who was struck
Speaker 1: and killed while changing a tire on the shoulder, so
Speaker 1: he chose the picnic area because he believed it was
Speaker 1: the safest place to pull over.
Speaker 3: But then there was the tire itself.
Speaker 7: The inspection of the tire was sort of a turning
Speaker 7: point for us.
Speaker 1: In the daylight, detectives noticed that the rear tire of
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall's Cadillac wasn't just an ordinary flat.
Speaker 5: As the tire had been cut.
Speaker 7: I think it was about an inch maybe an inch
Speaker 7: and a half on the tire wall the side of
Speaker 7: the tire.
Speaker 1: Investigators believed the tire was intentionally slashed.
Speaker 7: That sort of give us a direction to go, because
Speaker 7: you could not drive that car with that amount of
Speaker 7: damage to that tire for any length of time.
Speaker 1: The tire was intentionally slashed. Did it happen before they
Speaker 1: left the casino or was something else going on here?
Speaker 7: It was totally dark, so it didn't make sense to
Speaker 7: me to pull in there. It didn't make sense to
Speaker 7: me that did somebody happen to be in there? A
Speaker 7: crime of opportunity at that time in the morning, in
Speaker 7: that desolated area, it just didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: And then investigators were surprised when a private detective that
Speaker 1: Maria Marshall hired came forward.
Speaker 4: I spoke with him about two days after the homicide
Speaker 4: was discovered.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Jim Churchill learned Maria hired a PI to look
Speaker 1: into her husband's supposed extracurricular activities.
Speaker 4: She hired a private investigator to follow Marshall on two
Speaker 4: separate occasions, once in the spring, once during the beginning
Speaker 4: of the summer of nineteen eighty four. During the course
Speaker 4: of the investigation, we found out that he was carrying
Speaker 4: on an affair with a woman who was in their
Speaker 4: social circle, and the private investigator reported that he had
Speaker 4: seen mister Marshall and had photographs of he and her
Speaker 4: together in the motel rooms.
Speaker 1: A vice principal at the local high school named Saran
Speaker 1: crash Hour was the other woman in Robert Marshall's life.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure how she found out, but I know
Speaker 6: that she hired a private investigator or follow him.
Speaker 1: Maria's friend Linda Fenwick was shocked when she heard Robert
Speaker 1: had been cheating on Maria.
Speaker 6: I mean, nobody would ever have suspected there was a
Speaker 6: problem in that marriage. The relationship between the two of
Speaker 6: them seemed perfect to me.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 1: Saran was a member of the same country club as
Speaker 1: the Marshalls.
Speaker 3: In fact, they all played tennis together.
Speaker 1: Sarann and her husband were tennis partners with Robert and
Speaker 1: Maria Marshall.
Speaker 6: I didn't know Sir Anne. She was at an unhappy
Speaker 6: mo marriage, and apparently he was too.
Speaker 1: The police learned Maria planned to confront Robert about the
Speaker 1: affair and seek a divorce, but she kept stalling.
Speaker 4: After we heard from the private investigator that brought miss
Speaker 4: cross Hour into the arena here, we thought possibly maybe
Speaker 4: she might have had something to do with it, so
Speaker 4: we stopped growing a way to work.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Jim Churchill brought Soran in for questioning.
Speaker 4: She wasn't happy about the relationship she had with Marshall,
Speaker 4: but she didn't apologize to us or give us a
Speaker 4: feeling she.
Speaker 5: Was sorry for. She didn't like the idea it put
Speaker 5: herself in a position she was in.
Speaker 1: Saran told the detectives she and Robert had been sleeping
Speaker 1: together for fourteen months. The two hat plans to rent
Speaker 1: a home together and leave their spouses. And the affair
Speaker 1: was no secret to Maria because she found a phone
Speaker 1: bill with a series of calls I'm Robert to the
Speaker 1: high school where Saran worked.
Speaker 4: But I think she was most concerned. We thought she
Speaker 4: had some part in this.
Speaker 1: A look into Robert Marshall's phone records confirmed what Saran
Speaker 1: told them, But something in those phone records jumped out.
Speaker 4: Certain numbers caught our eye because they were to a
Speaker 4: hardware store in a place is called Boser City, which
Speaker 4: is right across the Red River from Shreveport.
Speaker 1: Shreveport as in Shreveport, Louisiana. The police found more than
Speaker 1: thirty phone calls from Robert Marshall to that number. So
Speaker 1: why was Robert calling a hardware store some fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: miles away.
Speaker 4: I asked that the local police department down there going
Speaker 4: to interview anybody who could give us information.
Speaker 5: On Robert Marshall.
Speaker 4: And they came back to me and said that a
Speaker 4: clerk who worked in the store, retired from the US
Speaker 4: Air Force, said that he met Marshall at a party
Speaker 4: during the beginning of the summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Police learned that during that party in May of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, the hardware store clerk named Bobby Cumber spent
Speaker 1: the night talking with Maria and Robert. He was even
Speaker 1: spotted dancing with Maria. And after that party is when
Speaker 1: all the phone calls began.
Speaker 4: So we're trying to find out why these calls were made.
Speaker 1: Most suspiciously, the final phone call between Robert Marshall and
Speaker 1: Bobby Cumber occurred just before Maria's murder, and investigators wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about their relationship between Bobby Cumber and
Speaker 1: the Marshalls.
Speaker 5: So Cumber now became a person of interest.
Speaker 1: Also, that night of dancing with Maria Marshall would forever
Speaker 1: change the life of Bobby Cumber. In the early morning
Speaker 1: hours of September seventh, nineteen eighty four, Maria Marshall was
Speaker 1: murdered at a rest stop along the Gordon State Parkway
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. Police learned her husband, Robert, was cheating
Speaker 1: on her. They also found a bunch of phone calls
Speaker 1: from Robert to a man named Bobby Cumber. Bobby worked
Speaker 1: at a hardware store in Louisiana.
Speaker 2: Within two weeks of the murder, the police glombed onto
Speaker 2: the Louisiana connection by the phone calls.
Speaker 3: Journalist Judy Peat covered the story.
Speaker 2: There were thirty one calls between Marshall and Bobby Cumber,
Speaker 2: which is what the police found.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, forty seven year old Bobby Cumber answered the
Speaker 1: phone at that small Louisiana hardware store.
Speaker 2: Bobby, at the time was living in Louisiana, even though
Speaker 2: Bobby was originally from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Of soft spoken Bobby confirmed to investigators that he met
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall during the summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Bobby never knew Robert Marshall really. He decided to go
Speaker 2: visit some family in North Jersey where they still lived,
Speaker 2: and he ran into his high school girlfriend, who invited
Speaker 2: him to her daughter's graduation in Tom's River. She happened
Speaker 2: to be the next door neighbor of Robert Marshall.
Speaker 1: At that party, Bobby Cumber noticed Robert was having a
Speaker 1: hard time getting a drink, so he flagged down the bartender.
Speaker 1: It sparked a conversation between Robert and Bobby that soon
Speaker 1: included Maria Marshall.
Speaker 2: He was stunned about how pretty Maria Marshall was, and
Speaker 2: he was very flattered that a big shot in his
Speaker 2: mind like Robert Marshall would pay attention to him at all.
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall was wealthy, well dressed, and handsome, whereas Bobby
Speaker 1: was a simple guy who enjoyed long drives in the country,
Speaker 1: nana splits, and bowling.
Speaker 2: It was very flattered that a tie and jacket kind
Speaker 2: of guy would pay attention to him, because Bobby was
Speaker 2: not a ty and jacket.
Speaker 7: Kind of guy.
Speaker 1: At that party, Bobby Cummer and Robert and Maria Marshall
Speaker 1: spent that night talking. Bobby even hit the dance floor
Speaker 1: with Maria.
Speaker 2: But only fast dances. The Marshalls danced all the slow dances.
Speaker 1: Together, and that was the extent of his face time
Speaker 1: with Robert and Maria. Bobby told investigators he never saw
Speaker 1: the Marshals after that party, but he did talk with
Speaker 1: Robert by phone over the summer.
Speaker 2: And Marshall asked Bobby if he could find him a
Speaker 2: private detective, somebody to trace his wife he thought she
Speaker 2: was cheating on him.
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall, who was cheating on Maria, said Tom's River
Speaker 1: was a small town.
Speaker 3: And people talked.
Speaker 1: That's why he wanted a PI from out of town
Speaker 1: to look into Maria.
Speaker 5: There is a series of phone calls to Cumber.
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Jim Churchill investigated.
Speaker 4: During one of the phone calls, he asks him, is
Speaker 4: there somebody you know that can do an investigation. I
Speaker 4: have a very sensitive investigation that I want him done.
Speaker 4: I don't trust anybody in my area to do it.
Speaker 4: And Cumber he tells him there's a gentleman that comes
Speaker 4: into the store all the time that he knows as
Speaker 4: a former sheriff's officer, Billy Wayne mckinnitt, and he knows
Speaker 4: that he does private investigations on the side.
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne was a deputy sheriff in Louisiana who resigned
Speaker 1: in the late seventies after he was accused of stealing.
Speaker 3: He then sold used.
Speaker 1: Cars and did private detective work on the side.
Speaker 4: So Cumber gets in touch with Billy Wayne and says,
Speaker 4: there's this guy in New Jersey wants an investigation.
Speaker 5: Would be interested?
Speaker 4: He said, well yeah, He said, it's going to cost
Speaker 4: him because I have to go up to New Jersey
Speaker 4: to do this, all the way from Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Bobby Cumber said that was the extent of his dealings
Speaker 1: with Billy Wayne and Robert Marshall. Other than passing phone
Speaker 1: calls between the two and these messages they were always
Speaker 1: short and to the point, like tell him to call me.
Speaker 2: He said. At the time, he had no idea really
Speaker 2: what was going on.
Speaker 1: Judy Peet covered the story well.
Speaker 2: The police hammered him, They were sure that he had
Speaker 2: something to do with it, and Bobby mostly cried and
Speaker 2: apparently shook through the entire forty eight hours. Police didn't
Speaker 2: believe that. After forty eight hours, they did arrest him
Speaker 2: for conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Two weeks after Maria Marshall was shot to death along
Speaker 1: the Garden State Parkway, Bobby Cumber was charged with conspiracy
Speaker 1: to commit her murder.
Speaker 4: At this time, we still didn't know who the shooter was.
Speaker 4: We didn't think it was Marshall. We didn't think it
Speaker 4: was Cumber. So it's either Billy Woyne Kennon or somebody
Speaker 4: that we didn't know.
Speaker 1: As Bobby Cumbers sat in jail awaiting his trial and
Speaker 1: investigators were questioning Billy Wayne McKinnon, some mysterious news involving
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall's surfaced.
Speaker 4: When we arrested Cumber. Not too long after that, Marshall
Speaker 4: Enn goes to a motel, the same hotel, I think,
Speaker 4: the same room that he and Saran would go to
Speaker 4: on the rendezvous.
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall turned up at the same hotel room where
Speaker 1: he carried on his affair with Saran crash hour, but
Speaker 1: this time Robert was alone.
Speaker 4: And while he's there, he takes a tape recorder and
Speaker 4: makes three separate tapes, and he puts him in an envelope,
Speaker 4: and on the back of it says only to be
Speaker 4: opened in the event of my death.
Speaker 1: These envelopes with the label to be opened in the
Speaker 1: event of my death concerned the hotel staff.
Speaker 4: It's sitting in a outgoing mailbox that people can use.
Speaker 5: As they got ron.
Speaker 1: The police responded and went to Robert's hotel room, but
Speaker 1: he didn't answer the door. They forced entry and found
Speaker 1: him passed out next to a pile of pills and
Speaker 1: a can of coke. They woke Robert Marshall up, and
Speaker 1: he said he put sleeping pills into his drink and
Speaker 1: planned to take his own life at the exact same
Speaker 1: time Maria had been murdered.
Speaker 4: He said he put it in a coke and swirled
Speaker 4: it around with his finger and licked his finger a
Speaker 4: couple of times in an he fell immediately sleep and
Speaker 4: they took him to a local hospital down there.
Speaker 1: So investigators got a search warrant to play those cassette tapes.
Speaker 1: They heard Robert freely admit to his affair with Saran.
Speaker 1: He also admitted to be massively in debt. Robert also
Speaker 1: said he believed he was a suspect in Maria's murder,
Speaker 1: but claimed he was innocent.
Speaker 4: He said, I love Maria, I couldn't have done this
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. There was another one in there
Speaker 4: that basically said that he was dealing with this private
Speaker 4: investigator from Louisiana, and he mentioned his name on the tape,
Speaker 4: Billy Wayne McKinnon, and he said he probably followed me
Speaker 4: and killed Maria because he had written me off for
Speaker 4: a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Robert admitted to paint thousands of dollars to Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: McKinnon to investigate Maria, including eight hundred dollars on the
Speaker 1: night of her murder early.
Speaker 5: Part of October. Billy Wayne McKinnon, he was arrested and
Speaker 5: we say we want to play something for you, so
Speaker 5: we play the Marshall tape.
Speaker 1: You're about to hear a recreation of the tape that
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall labeled to be opened in the event of
Speaker 1: my death.
Speaker 8: I felt compelled to hire somebody who I thought had
Speaker 8: a good reputation. This was the guy who came recommended
Speaker 8: by a fellow named Bob Cumber, supposed to be a
Speaker 8: very good investigator. He made two trips to New Jersey,
Speaker 8: one in June. After I wired him twenty five hundred dollars,
Speaker 8: he said he was going to be busy for a while,
Speaker 8: but if I wired him additional money, he'd come back.
Speaker 8: So on the second time, the evening Maria was killed,
Speaker 8: I gave him approximately eight hundred dollars. He said he
Speaker 8: would stay around a while do a little checking. I
Speaker 8: found out later that his only purpose was to writ
Speaker 8: me off.
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne McKinnon had a lot of explaining to do
Speaker 1: to investigators, and he quickly admitted that yes, he was
Speaker 1: in Atlantic City the night of Maria's murder, but he
Speaker 1: says he didn't kill Maria. He was merely the getaway driver.
Speaker 4: Over a four day period, we talked with him retrace
Speaker 4: his steps, and we could not find anything that he
Speaker 4: told us.
Speaker 5: That was a deliberate lie or a lie.
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne McKinnon cooperated with investigators and identified the shooter
Speaker 1: as a friend.
Speaker 3: Of his, a man named Larry Thompson.
Speaker 4: Thompson's the kind of guy that does this. This is
Speaker 4: what he does. He kills for money. He won't kill
Speaker 4: for anything else but money.
Speaker 1: Larry Thompson was a short order cook and his run
Speaker 1: ins with the law were well documented.
Speaker 5: Thompson has fingers missing on his hand.
Speaker 4: Dogs bid it off because he used to do dog fighting,
Speaker 4: and some dogs bid it off.
Speaker 3: But Larry Thompson was no help to investigators.
Speaker 5: Thompson pretty much refused to talk to us at all.
Speaker 1: In December of nineteen eighty four, the police arrested and
Speaker 1: charged Larry Thompson with the murder of Maria Marshall. He
Speaker 1: was the third person charged, and there would be one more.
Speaker 7: To the arrest of Larry Thompson. Robert Marshall was arrested
Speaker 7: on December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: The police charged Robert Marshall with being an accomplice to
Speaker 1: his wife's murder.
Speaker 3: But how and why?
Speaker 7: Sometimes it's a relief. This wasn't that way. The family
Speaker 7: believed in Robert Marshall and kept faith with him.
Speaker 1: Did Robert Marshall have something to do with killing his wife.
Speaker 1: His family, including his children, emphatically said no.
Speaker 7: It's a tough thing to wrap your head around that
Speaker 7: your father may have taken a life of your mother.
Speaker 7: So and that's what the tragedy of this thing was.
Speaker 7: Didn't have to be, didn't have to be.
Speaker 1: I'm Sloan Glass. We'll learn who killed Maria Marshall, who
Speaker 1: didn't kill Maria Marshall, and how justice was ultimately served.
Speaker 1: That's next time on American Homicide in part two of
Speaker 1: Murder on the Parkway. You can contact the American Homicide
Speaker 1: Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass
Speaker 1: and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Speaker 1: Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gants. The
Speaker 1: series is also written and produced by Todd Gants, with
Speaker 1: additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry
Speaker 1: and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing, mixing, and mastering by Nico Auruka.
Speaker 3: Voice acting from Trey Morgan.
Speaker 1: American Homicide theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of
Speaker 1: Nouser Music Library provided by my Music. Follow American Homicide
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