Marshall Granted a Parole Hearing

In general "life is unfair" news, convicted killer Robert O. Marshall has been granted a parole hearing in March.  Marshall, best known from Joe McGinniss' true crime book Blind Faith, was sentenced to death in 1986 for the contract-for-hire killing of his wife, Maria, in September of 1984 but his sentence was overturned in 2006 due to ineffective counsel.  Is counsel ineffective if the guilty are found guilty?  Anyhow, Marshall was resentenced to thirty years to life and New Jersey abolished the death penalty. 

Regardless of how you feel about the death penalty, can there be any more heinous crime than one spouse who kills another?  And for money? 

Marshall was in debt up to his eyeballs and was getting his jollies with another woman.  His solution to his problems was to load his lovely wife up with life insurance and then have her knocked off.  He could then collect the life insurance money, pay off his debts and continue banging his skanky mistress without the pesky interference of his wife.  So Marshall hires a hit man, pulls off at a rest stop after a trip to Atlantic City because he suspects one of his tires is going flat and tells the cops that while checking this annoying tire, gets hit on the head and is knocked unconscious.  When he comes to, his wallet is empty and he finds his wife dead in the car from two gunshots to her back.  Uh-huh.  What amazing luck that a robber chooses an abandoned rest stop to wait for a victim and Rob just happens to have a few thousand in his wallet. 

Thank goodness the New Jersey cops called bullshit on this sorry story from the beginning.  Never mind that the supposedly flat tire had a jagged cut in it, likely from a switchblade and clearly intentional.  Never mind that a supposed thief just happened to be waiting at a deserted rest stop for someone to show up, which Marshall conveniently did.  Never mind that the same thief popped Marshall in the head and left him alive - - Marshall, the bigger threat - - and then killed his wife.  Those facts were bad enough but, like Jeffrey MacDonald more than a decade before him, Marshall sunk himself.  He was more grief stricken over not being able to see his mistress in the days and weeks following the crime than his wife's death and was rushing to collect the insurance money like a Kardashian runs to the media. 

Marshall tried to get early release due to health issues in 2012 but that request was roundly rejected. 

Marshall and Maria had three sons.  The two eldest sons spoke last month against their father's potential release, asking the court to defend their mother and her memory and keep him locked up.  The youngest son has supported his father from the beginning and begged the court to allow his father to come home and be part of his family, that's he's needed. 

I feel terrible for the Marshall boys (now men.)  They were robbed of their mother, especially the youngest who was only 13 or so when she was killed.  Maria missed out on seeing her boys married and have families of their own and the enjoyments of being a grandmother.   

After all these years, Marshall continues to manipulate his youngest son into believing his innocence.  This, despite the fact that alleged trigger man (who was never convicted) admitted in the last few years that he was indeed the one who killed Maria Marshall. 

I think the only way Rob Marshall should leave prison is in a body bag or a box.  He's a POS who put a dollar sign on his wife's head and hatched a lame murder-for-hire scheme to collect a payout . . . even going so far as to tell the killer that he didn't want anything to mar his wife's beauty when she was killed.   And he can spare me all the whining about not being part of his sons' lives.  If he cared about them at all, he never would have done anything to take their mother from them. 

Marshall will go before the parole board in Trenton, New Jersey next month.