The 1986 Excedrin Murders

Did Washington State Have a Copycat or Did the Chicago Tylenol Poisoner Move West? 

Bruce Nickell (photo source)

Sue Snow (photo source) 

In Chicago in 1982, seven people died after ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol (see my article about the poisonings here).  Although the guilty party or parties were never charged and brought to trial, the acts led to a product tampering legislation which would make any deaths that resulted from product tampering a federal offense. 


King County, Washington in June of 1986 was a world away from Chicago and, like the rest of the country, four years past the Tylenol murders.  Singer Randy Travis had just released his debut album, Danielle Steel was sitting atop the fiction bestseller lists, devastating details about the Chernobyl disaster were being released and the United Kingdom was preparing to celebrate the wedding of commoner Sarah Ferguson to Queen Elizabeth's second son.   A month earlier, in May, King County residents had turned on their TVs to NBC to watch Mark Harmon portray Ted Bundy in a two-part miniseries.  Outside of the Green River Killer, Bundy was the area's most notorious serial killer and in the early summer of 1986 was residing on Florida's Death Row.  

Sue (photo source)

Sue

The city of Auburn is a suburb of metropolitan Seattle, roughly 20 miles south, liberally dotted with parks, open spaces and urban trails.  Housing both farming communities and business and industry, it boasts Boeing as its largest employer.  It has turned out its fair share of athletes and Olympians and even an astronaut  - Dick Scobee, who was killed in January of 1986 in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.   While Auburn is considered a friendly city with only a fraction of Seattle's population, crime is not unheard of -  although the majority of crimes are property related.  

One of Auburn's residents was the popular and outgoing Sue Snow, a 40-year-old mother of two and manager of a local bank.  Sue had become a wife and mother at sixteen and dropped out of school.  The marriage, unsurprisingly, did not last and she married a second time, to her former brother-in-law, Connie Snow.  It was Snow that had brought the New Mexico native to Washington State and quickly, Sue adapted and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.  Finding job opportunities scarce as a twenty-year old high school dropout, she earned her GED and started her banking career as a teller, working her way up eventually to vice president.  She and Snow had a daughter, Hayley, together but the marriage did not last.  Sue did love her name with the surname of "Snow" and so she decided to keep it.   She met her third husband, Paul Webking, in the late 70s, thanks to her daughter being friends with one of Paul's kids.  Paul was a long-haul trucker and had been married four times.  He seemed to be the opposite of the optimistic, happy Sue - but the two fell in love and moved in together.  They lived together for over five years before eloping on Thanksgiving Day 1985.  

In that early summer of 1986, Paul, Sue, Paul's son from a previous marriage, and Hayley shared a home in Auburn.   The morning of Wednesday, June 11, 1986 should have been like any other. 

The call for help came in at 6:43 a.m.   Dispatcher Brenda Deeds heard the calm and steady voice of a young girl who said that her mother had fallen in the bathroom.  

Hayley Snow had seen her mother that morning as Sue went down the hall, headed for the master bedroom and bath.  Hayley herself was headed to her own bathroom for a morning shower.  She heard Sue turn on the faucet to the sink in the master bathroom as she stepped into her shower.  She thought it was just after 6:30 a.m. when she heard a noise, like something dropping.  When she got out of the shower to dress, she realized the faucet in her mother's bathroom was still running.  Sue was a creature of habit and Hayley knew her mother's morning routine.  For the water to still be running from the tap was a signal something wasn't right.  

Hayley found her mother laying on the bathroom floor, still wearing her zippered purple robe.  Seeing that water was about to overflow from the sink, she turned the tap off before dropping to her knees to see to Sue.  Sue's head rested on the track of the shower door, her eyes fixed.  One hand was across her breast and the fingers curled backward unnaturally.  Hayley checked her mother for a pulse and found one, although it was faint.  Thinking that Sue's fingers must hurt, she bent them back into a normal position.  Sue gasped for air but did not exhale.  Hayley recalled learning from her health classes at school that if a person was breathing on their own you should not perform CPR and so she called a friend of her mother's named Karen, who directed the teen to call 911.  

Within four minutes of the call for help, the fire department arrived and found Sue in agonal respiration with her eyes open, fixed, and dilated.  They attempted to ventilate her with a bag mask but she was quickly deteriorating.  Two more EMTs arrived as the firefighters moved Sue from the bathroom floor to the bedroom, where they would have more room to work.  They found she presented as if she had a head injury but nothing else fell in line with that.  They wondered if she had slipped while getting in or out of the shower but Hayley assured them that Sue's routine was to shower in the evening, not in the morning.   

An airlift was arranged to transport Sue to Harborview Medical Center, the area's best trauma center, as Hayley called Sue's bank to inform them that her mother had fallen and would not be in that day.  Hayley arrived at Harborview around 7:30, after Sue's friend Karen came by the home to pick her up.

Doctors in Harborview's emergency room determined after their initial examination of Sue that her brain was swelling and she was in a coma.  Within four hours, they felt she was brain dead and were asking if they could remove her from life support as there was no hope for recovery.     

As there was still no answer as to what had caused Sue to collapse and die, Dr. Corrine Fligner, King County's Assistant Medical Examiner, was assigned to perform an autopsy on her body.   Dr. Fligner was recording her findings when her assistant, Janet Miller, announced "I smell cyanide" and then made somewhat of a joking question as to whether Sue had taken Tylenol, referencing the Tylenol poisonings four years earlier in Chicago.  Dr. Fligner did not smell cyanide (a majority of the population is unable to detect its odor) and continued with the autopsy.  Another doctor came in to ask if anything had been discovered as he had been baffled by what happened to Sue.  Janet spoke up, saying that although Sue's body did not demonstrate the classic symptom of cyanide poisoning (cherry red skin), she smelled cyanide.  The doctor remarked that cyanide could explain why Sue had presented the way she did and Dr. Fligner arranged to have a toxicology screen for cyanide.  

The funeral for Sue Snow was held on Saturday, June 14 and hundreds attended.  She was remembered for her sense of humor, her zest for life, and her devotion as a mother. 

On Monday, June 16, Auburn police received word that the toxicology report on Sue had come back with a fatal level of cyanide in her blood.  Her death was classified as a homicide.   Sue's husband, Paul Webking, was the investigators' initial suspect in her murder.  He was apparently not well liked by anyone in Sue's family, including Hayley, and his marriage with Sue, although new, had been troubled by infidelity by him and tempestuous fights, leading Sue to suffer with bouts of irritability and depression.  The police found him to be strangely unmoved by his wife's death.  Webking told authorities that Sue had a routine of taking Extra Strength Excedrin each morning, something that Hayley confirmed.  However, he said that Sue routinely took capsules, which they had in the house, and red flags went up for Sue's twin sister Sarah, who had arrived in Auburn on the day that Sue collapsed.  According to Sarah, following the 1982 Tylenol incident in Chicago, Sue never, ever took capsules and would only take tablets.  The bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin that Sue had used the previous Wednesday was handed over to the police, with Webking telling them that he himself had taken two capsules from the bottle on Tuesday, the day before Sue collapsed.   Also collected were various other bottles of headache remedies and aspirin, all of which were tablets.  

The analysis of the Excedrin 60-count bottle showed that 56 capsules remained and of those, nine were tainted with potassium cyanide.  Much as it had in Chicago four years earlier, fear swept through the area, compounded by the fact that the Tylenol poisoner had never been apprehended.  The FDA, following its analysis of the bottle, notified the FBI of its findings.  Thanks to a federal law passed after the Chicago case, the FBI had jurisdiction over consumer-product tamperings.   

The FBI's first official act in the Snow investigation was to pull all bottles of Excedrin off the shelves in the Auburn area, while Excedrin's manufacturer, Bristol-Myers, initiated a nationwide recall.  A second tainted bottle was identified at a Johnny's Market in neighboring Kent and it too was sent off to be analyzed.  

Bruce and Stella (photo source)

Bruce

In the late afternoon of Tuesday, June 17, the King County police received a hysterical phone call from a woman who claimed that her husband had recently died and she had discovered a bottle of Excedrin capsules that matched the lot number of the one that had killed Sue Snow.  By the time the responding officer arrived at her home off Lake Moneysmith Road, just outside of the Auburn city limits, Stella Nickell had calmed considerably.  Stella told the officer that her husband Bruce had taken two Excedrin capsules two weeks earlier and had died at Harborview.  Although an autopsy was performed, the preliminary report stated that Bruce Nickell had died of emphysema, something that Stella disputed, saying that her husband had been very healthy.  She provided the officer with a nearly empty bottle of Excedrin; only eight capsules remained.  Bruce, she said, had been complaining of headaches at the time of his death and had been taking three or four capsules a day, a practice that had been ongoing for a week prior to his death.  Stella also provided a second bottle, still in its original box and with the price sticker adhered, claiming that she did not want it in the house.  The officer noted that the cap was loose on the second bottle but it was full to the top.  Stella said she had purchased both bottles two weeks earlier, although in two separate locations; the nearly empty bottle had been bought somewhere in Auburn and the full bottle had been bought at Johnny's Market on the Kent East Hill.  

Although Bruce Nickell had already been buried, a tube of blood from his eyes was at the eye bank; the tube was retrieved and sent for testing.

Analysis of the Nickell Excedrin bottles revealed that both of them had been tainted.  Bruce Nickell's blood showed a fatal level of cyanide, much as Sue's had, making him the first victim of the poisonings.

On Tuesday, June 24 an out of place bottle of Anacin-3 was noted at a Pay 'N Save drugstore off Auburn Way North.  Not only was the bottle sitting on a can of peanuts versus in the pharmacy's over-the-counter medications section, but it was stickered with an orange price tag not used by Pay 'N Save.   That bottle was also sent off for analysis.  

Although the case officially belonged to the FBI, the Auburn Police were continuing to investigate Sue's death and probe particularly into her husband Paul's background.  They firmly suspected that he was involved, even with Bruce Nickell now added to the mix.  Their suspicions were not assuaged by a report that Webking had gone to Sue's office two days after her death and requested the entire contents of her desk.  A coworker of Sue's said that Sue carried a large bottle of Excedrin tablets in her handbag, contradicting Webking's assertion that Sue always took capsules.  Another coworker said that Sue and Webking fought frequently over Webking's trips to California, where an ex-girlfriend with whom he had cheated on Sue with, lived.  The same coworker said that Sue was flirtatious with male customers at the bank and often had lunch dates with them.  Although she did not appear to have been unfaithful to Paul Webking, she had been unfaithful to her first and second husbands.  Additionally, she had been involved in several affairs with married men in Auburn, leading detectives to wonder if a scorned wife could have exacted revenge on Sue.  They also found out that six months before her murder, Sue had discovered some type of extortion or fraud scheme by a bank client.  That lead too was followed up on but went nowhere.  Although there seemed to be a motive for Paul Webking to kill Sue, detectives could find no connection between Sue, Paul Webking, and Bruce Nickell.  

Bruce Nickell had been born in June of 1934 and was adopted at one week old by an apple farmer and his schoolteacher wife.  Considered "the prettiest baby I ever did see," Bruce was beloved by his parents and brought up in a Norman Rockwell-esque environment in the rugged natural beauty of Washington's apple country.  Although neither of his parents were drinkers, Bruce began drinking at the age of fifteen, a year before he recalled finding out that he was adopted.  His drinking was an act his parents felt led to many of their son's mistakes, which included a brief enlistment in the Marines that ended with Bruce receiving a dishonorable discharge after going AWOL and fathering two sons that he was estranged from.  When he was not drinking, Bruce had an intelligent and gentle personality but alcohol brought out a combative side that would often lead him to being thrown out of bars and taverns, as well as several DWIs.  

Bruce had also married a lot - first to a woman named Ruby, then to a Linda, followed by a Mary, and then a Phyllis.  He had only recently married Phyllis when he first met a twice-married mother of two named Stella Strong.    

He and Stella married in 1976, separated in 1977 and reconciled three months later.  Bruce had been working as a mechanic and although the couple struggled financially, they continued their routine of drinking until 1979, when Bruce got sober.  From that point on, until June 5, 1986, his life consisted of working, talking on his CB radio, and spending time at home with his wife, who was by then working as a security screener at Sea-Tac International Airport alongside her adult daughter.  

On Thursday, June 5, 1986, Bruce reported for a normal day at work.  After returning home, he had taken a shower and as Stella was preparing their dinner, he had complained of a headache.  He took two Excedrin and, according to Stella's later statements, had planned on going outside to watch the birds but had stopped, said "I don't feel so well," and then collapsed.  The emergency call came in at 5:02 p.m. and first responders were sent out in aid of a man having a seizure.     As the home was in a rural area, they assumed that there would be someone waving them in from a driveway, as is often the case.  Not on this call.  They noticed Stella Nickell peering from behind curtains as they drove up.  Bruce Nickell, still damp from his shower and clothed only in his bathrobe, lay in front of the sofa on the living room floor, gasping for air.  Although he was deathly white from his neck down, from the neck up he was cherry red.  The EMS had never seen anything like it and were desperate to find what was causing his distress. 

Stella had reported that Bruce was not on any medication other than aspirin and had no underlying health issues, although he was a recovering alcoholic.  She ticked off his health history as calmly as she had let the first responders into the house.  She then brought a pack of cigarettes, musing that perhaps the cigarettes had caused the distress and then broke one open, looking for anything unusual.  The EMS team would also recall that Stella had mentioned the Tylenol poisonings of 1982 a few times.     

Despite best efforts, Bruce died at Harborview Medical Center.  He was only 52 years old.  

One of the paramedics recalled later that evening at around 10 p.m. a call came into the paramedic living quarters.  It was from Bruce's newly widowed wife, Stella.  She explained that the medics had wrapped Bruce up in a knitted afghan before transporting him to the hospital in Seattle and she wanted the afghan back.

June 18, 1986 New York Times article about the deaths (photo source)

A Break

Although detectives had thought Paul Webking, Sue's widower, was a good suspect, he had taken and passed a polygraph test.  He had not helped himself out though by telling detectives that they would never solve Sue's poisoning.  By October, only four months after Sue's death, Paul had a new girlfriend, was dressing in new clothing, and reportedly spending money left and right - but investigators had nothing to link him with Sue's murder.   By December, less than half a year after Sue was murdered, Paul was engaged to his new girlfriend.  

No one would have thought the case would break wide-open thanks to an aquarium and Bruce Nickell's stepdaughter.   

The poison found in the capsules confiscated from the Snow/Webking home, the bottles that Stella Nickell turned over to the police, and the bottles found on market/drugstore shelves were analyzed.  Not only did the 23 capsules contain a lethal amount of potassium cyanide powder but 17 of the tainted 23 capsules also had green particles in them later determined to be an algaecide called Algae Destroyer used in home aquariums.  

One of the detectives working the case, who had been inside the Nickell home to speak with Stella, recalled a very nice aquarium in the living room.   Discreetly, investigators visited fish supply stores and pet stores in the area, nearly 60 of them, until they found a clerk who remembered not only Stella Nickell but selling her Algae Destroyer.  He had suggested to her that she grind up the tablets before applying them into her aquarium as they would work better that way.

Detectives felt money could have been a motive after it was also discovered that Stella had taken out roughly $76,000 in life insurance on Bruce, with an additional $100,000 payout if his death was accidental.  

Taking these facts into consideration, as well as believing the odds that Stella Nickell would have purchased two out of the five tainted bottles found in the entire country -- and two weeks apart in two different locations -- Stella was requested to take a polygraph, as Paul Webking had.  She refused at first, consenting only in November of 1986 and failing it.  

A search of the Nickell home turned up a mortar and pestle set, which had traces not only of the Algae Destroyer but also of cyanide.

Although investigators had plenty of evidence against Stella, they could not find any records of where, when or how she may have purchased or used cyanide and so held off on arresting her.   

By the end of 1986, a reward for information on the tainted medication and resultant poisonings was sitting at $300,000 and both Paul Webking and Stella Nickell had filed wrongful death lawsuits against Bristol-Myers.     

Cindy Hamilton had been Stella Nickell's firstborn child, entering the world when Stella was only fifteen.  Stella had had a rough upbringing, being born into a poor family where it was said that her father molested her older sister.  It's unknown if a young Stella suffered the same fate but she was sexually active in elementary school and was shuffled between relatives and states fairly frequently.  That she found herself pregnant at fifteen should not have been a big surprise.  She told her family that the pregnancy was the result of a gang rape and wanting her baby to "have a name," tried to convince a 19-year-old who had been her boyfriend for two years to marry her and claim the child as his.  The marriage never happened, as the man did not want to lie on the marriage license and claim he was twenty-one but he did ultimately consider the child his.  He wanted to fight Stella for custody, feeling that Stella was an unfit mother, but Stella threatened to turn him in for statutory rape and the ploy worked.  He never contacted Stella again.  

He was not wrong, though, that Stella was not mother material.  Motherhood did little to slow down her good times.  She had begun bringing Cindy with her to bars from the time Cindy was of a young age and by the time Cindy was a teen, she was drinking, using drugs and running with a wild crowd.   Later, she would confirm that her mother was essentially trafficking her out to paying customers.  She too became a mother during her teens and, like Stella, at times would put her drinking and partying ahead of her child.   

Stella married first a man with the last name of Hamilton, who gave Cindy her surname, and a man  by the name of Bob Strong, with whom she moved to California.  Being married, however, did not slow her down.  She continued to drink and sleep with other men during both her marriages.  She and Strong became parents to a daughter named Leah, although Strong would question whether or not the child was biologically his.  

Stella's run-ins with the law began in 1968 with a conviction for fraud.  The next year, she was charged with spousal abuse after beating Strong with a curtain rod.  In 1971, she got popped for forgery and served six months in jail.  

She was still married to Strong when she met Bruce, who was married to Phyllis, wife number four, in 1974.  The fact that both were married to other people did not seem to concern them.  Stella found that Bruce being a hard drinker suited her lifestyle and Bruce seemed not to mind that Stella had not only a legal record but a record for being less than faithful.   Both eventually left their spouses, divorced and married each other.  In her divorce, Stella relinquished custody of Leah to Strong.

Cindy had told her grandmother, Stella's mother, in October that she believed Stella killed Bruce.  It would take several months before she felt comfortable enough to talk to the police, but she did so in January of 1987.  According to Cindy, Stella had talked about killing Bruce for years before the plan really seemed to take action while mother and daughter were working together at the airport.  Initially Stella had wanted to overdose him by putting cocaine or heroin in his iced tea.  Stella had not known where to get cocaine or heroin though and instead began reading up on poisons.  She had first tried to kill Bruce by filling capsules with poisonous seeds and feeding them to him.  Rather than kill him, though, they simply made him sluggish and lethargic.  That led Stella to consider a hitman who could potentially shoot Bruce through his truck window, run him off the road, or mess with his brakes.  Cindy said the issue with the hitman plan was that Stella had no money to offer for the hit.  

According to Cindy, money was only partially the motive in Stella's plan to kill Bruce although once Stella received the life insurance money, she was going to open a tropical fish store.  Once Bruce had given up drinking, said Cindy, Stella, who enjoyed barhopping, found him "boring" and decided he had to go.  Divorce wasn't an option in her mind because she didn't want to have to split anything.  Furthermore, she had been having an affair with one of Bruce's married friends in the year prior to his death.  That friend was a photographer and had a darkroom set-up at home.  Stella had told Cindy that cyanide was used in photography.  The friend would later provide chemical samples from his darkroom, none of which contained cyanide.    

At the same time Cindy Hamilton was talking to investigators, a document examiner in the FBI's forensic lab in Washington, D.C. found that the signatures on the September 1985 and October 1985 American Life insurance applications for Bruce Nickell had been forged, with the forger's signature a match for the known samples of Stella Nickell.  

Following up on what Cindy had said, investigators discovered that Stella had checked out a variety of books on poisons from the Auburn public library.  Her fingerprints were discovered on the cyanide-related pages of the books. 

The Nickells' finances in the months leading up to Bruce's death told a story as well.  From North Pacific Bank, the lienholder on the Nickell residence, investigators learned that there had been 39 times when payments were ten or more days late.  On April 9, 1986, a final notice of delinquency was written and sent to the Nickells, indicating that a total amount of $1,892.01 was due by April 25.  By that point, the Nickells had not made a payment since September of 1985.  Stella had written a note to North Pacific Bank, sending it back on the deadline of April 25.  In it, she admitted she knew that she was "tremendously overdue" with payments but marital problems were the cause of the delinquency.  She asked the bank to have faith in her, that "Bruce is no longer involved" and those marital problems "are about to be solved."  She promised to pay $500 a month and enclosed an $800 check.  On May 27, a foreclosure notice was sent to the Nickells, the same day that Stella went shopping at Johnny's Market and at Pay 'N Save.  On June 1, four days before Bruce died of cyanide poisoning, Stella sent a second note that enclosed a double payment.   On June 3, she shopped at Albertson's and Johnny's, two places where tainted capsules were recovered.  

Meanwhile, in February of 1987, Stella was telling a friend that Cindy had always wanted Bruce as a lover and would therefore not hesitate to turn Stella in for the reward money, which was $300,000 (nearly $830,000 in 2024 dollars).  

A grand jury was convened in March, with Cindy providing testimony against her mother.   Stella's own mother testified, saying that her daughter did have cyanide that she used in her aquarium as well as for use in killing coyotes.  Stella's adult niece testified that Stella could not kill anyone and that she had been planning on leaving Bruce so it would have made no sense to kill him.  She also admitted that her aunt had spoken so much of insurance money that "I was getting sick and tired of hearing about what she was going to get."   

In May, Stella filed a financial affidavit for a government attorney, listing her salary as $621 (just over $1700 in 2024 dollars), her monthly payments of her mortgage, two Visa cards, and a MasterCard that totaled more than $650.  She was then provided a federal public defender by the name of Tom Hillier.   In June, the Seattle Times had a front-page headline about the poisonings and mentioned there was a probe into one suspect - but the suspect was not named.  In mid-July, newspapers across Washington State headlined that Stella Nickell was now the chief suspect in the poisoning deaths of her husband Bruce and Sue Snow. 

It would take until nearly the end of the year but on November 4, an indictment sheet was finally filled out.  Stella was well aware.  She had been placed on a leave of absence from work.  She spent her days, until she was arrested on December 9, drinking and waiting.  Her arrest went without incident, although her decision to wear a blue windbreaker with Bruce's name embroidered on it raised eyebrows.  

Stella was denied bail and pled not guilty to each of the five counts against her.  Trial was set for February 16, 1988.     

(photo source)

The Trial  

Stella's trial, starting in April of 1988, was held on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse in Seattle before Judge Bill Dwyer.  Attorneys Joanna Maida, for the state, and Tom Hillier, for the defense, managed to select 12 jurors from the original pool of 97 in two days: five men and seven women, with two alternates.  

Maida laid out the prosecution's case in a precise and deliberate manner for the jury.  The state believed that Stella Nickell had wanted more out of her life than her marriage to Bruce Nickell could provide and came up with a plan for an insurance payout that depended on someone finding out about Bruce's death being caused by product tampering.  Maida said that Stella had expected the pathologists to rule the cause of Bruce's death acute cyanide poisoning - she had read in the multitude of library books she checked out that cyanide had the distinct smell of bitter almonds.  But when the pathologists ruled Bruce's death one of natural causes due to emphysema, that cut her insurance payout by $100,000 and necessitated a Plan B.  Unfortunately, that Plan B would cause the death of Sue Snow, as Stella needed something to call attention to Bruce's death and therefore some random person or persons would also have to ingest poisoned capsules and die.   To bring her plan to reality, the prosecution believed that Stella had bought nine bottles of Excedrin and cut through the protective film with a razor blade.  She laced some of the capsules with cyanide, as she had done with Bruce's Excedrin, and placed the bottles in random stores in the area.  Unfortunately for Sue Snow, she purchased one of the bottles.     

The jury liked Tom Hillier, whose folksy style contrasted against Joanne Maida's technical, almost cold, argument.  Maida had mentioned that Cindy Hamilton would be testifying, and Hillier asked the jurors to pay very close attention to Cindy's testimony, assuring them that Stella would contradict every bit of that testimony.  He admitted that yes, Stella had filled out the life insurance paperwork and signed documents, something she had done on all papers throughout the duration of her marriage to Bruce and there was nothing nefarious in those actions.  Hillier even had a reason for Stella to have checked out so many books on poisons from the library:  she was a voracious reader and she was concerned about her granddaughter's safety on the Nickells' rural property.  Stella's attorney admitted that Stella and Bruce were in dire financial straits at the time of Bruce's death and suggested that Cindy Hamilton's motivation for speaking to the feds was solely driven by the reward money.  Stella did take the stand and predictably denied everything.  

The case went to the jury on Tuesday, May 3, 1988.  It would take five days of deliberations because Juror No. 7, a real estate saleswoman by the name of Laurel Holliday, had broken from the feelings of the other jurors that Stella was guilty.  She felt that Stella was innocent and lying on the stand about where she shopped and when, canceled checks, and learning about poison was justified in order to not be convicted.   

At 2:50 p.m. on Friday, May 6, Jury Foreman Murray Andrews sent a note to Judge Dwyer stating that after three votes taken over the previous three days, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and that no juror had changed his or her mind.  Judge Dwyer was adamant that deliberations continue and felt it was premature to declare a mistrial.  He asked that the jury retire early for the weekend, rest, and resume deliberations on Monday.  Stella and Hillier were given a sliver of hope that the jury may not have believed Cindy and Stella would leave a free woman.

On Monday, May 9, 1988, as the judge and attorneys prepared for the court reporter to read back portions of Cindy's testimony at the request of the jurors, Laurel Holliday reported to the court that she had received a concerning and threatening call over the weekend.  That forced all jurors to be questioned if they had received any similar calls.  None of them had and many of them believed the story to be untrue.  Once it was determined that Holliday could continue on the jury and deliberate fairly, the court reporter read back the testimony and at 10:30 a.m., jury deliberations resumed.  

At 3:35 p.m., the jury sent word that they had, at last, reached a verdict.  Stella stood, and with Tom Hillier's arm around her, closed her eyes to hear her fate.  She was found guilty on all charges.  Hillier noticed that during the reading of the verdict, Laurel Holliday was crying and he immediately wanted to question the other jurors to see if she had been the holdout and if there was a potential juror misconduct issue.  Judge Dwyer, however, sided with Joanne Maida, refusing to violate the sanctity of the jury's deliberations and ordered that sentencing would take place on June 17. 

Stella, convicted (photo source)

The media spoke to jury foreman Murray Andrews, Sue's widower, Paul Webking, Sue's sister, Sarah, and Sue's daughter, Hayley, who cried upon hearing of the verdict.  Stella's former husband, Bob Strong, after watching the television, listening to what the FBI had to say, what his stepdaughter Cindy had to say, and reading the newspapers came to the conclusion that he didn't know who had killed Bruce Nickell and Sue Strong.

 

Laurel Holliday

On Wednesday, May 11, 1988, after hearing Stella's motion for an order granting permission to interview jurors on potential juror misconduct, Judge Dwyer agreed to question each juror under oath.  In the meantime, a reporter from the Seattle Times who had heard about Laurel Holliday's mysterious phone call, drove to the courthouse to see if he could find anything on Laurel Holliday.  A quick records search found that there was a civil suit with her name in which she had filed a lawsuit against Pepperidge Farms, stemming from an incident that had occurred on July 31, 1986.  Holliday claimed to have bitten into Goldfish crackers during a broker's open house and found the crackers to be hard and taste bitter, leaving a burning sensation in her mouth.  Spitting them out, she claimed to find a pill inside one of the crackers.  Panicked, she had called poison control and, as she stated under oath in her August 19, 1987 deposition, "I pretty much figured I was dead.  This was right after the cyanide poisonings in Auburn."  Although the pill in the cracker was identified as ibuprofen, Holliday neglected to inform the court that she had sued Pepperidge Farms and that she herself had worried she had been poisoned a month after the Auburn poisonings.   Later, Holliday, who had received a $500 out-of-court settlement, said she felt her case didn't apply to the Nickell case and her case was a manufacturer error, not product tampering.  The attorney for Pepperidge Farms had questioned the incident in totality, as a pill would not survive the steel rollers that cracker dough is pressed through during manufacturing.  The Nickell jury foreman, Murray Andrews, believed that Holliday had planned to write a book about her experience on the jury but belatedly realized that she would have to be part of the decision-making process and her complaints of harassment, as well as the supposed phone call, were nothing but stall tactics because she simply did not want to make a decision.

Laurel Holliday was questioned for more than a hour by Judge Dwyer and continued to insist that her Pepperidge Farms lawsuit was not similar to that of Stella Nickell's, that it would not have influenced her, and yes, she had spoken to literary agents and newspapers about writing her story as juror.  The remaining jurors were also questioned, all of them denying any knowledge of the phone call Holliday claimed to have gotten and all of them denying speaking to each other about where they stood - guilty or innocent - on Stella Nickell before deliberating.

A week later, Tom Hillier filed a 16-page brief seeking a new trial for Stella citing that Laurel Holliday had willfully concealed material information during jury selection.  His argument was so convincing that word around the courthouse was that if a mistrial was declared and a new trial granted that murder charges would be filed in King County and prosecutor Joanna Maida would this time go after the death penalty.  Judge Dwyer ended the speculation, however, by denying the motion and sentencing Stella to 90 years with parole a possibility after 30 years.   Tom Hillier immediately filed an appeal and Stella was sent to the Washington Correction Center for Women in Gig Harbor to begin serving her sentence. 

Stella incarcerated (photo source)

Afterword

Stella's daughter Cindy received some $250,000 of the $300,000 reward money and cut off all ties with her family and friends she'd had when Bruce died.   FBI special agents questioned how deeply involved she might have been in the plot to murder Bruce, as did true crime writer Gregg Olsen.  Cindy never saw her mother again after taking the stand in the Seattle courtroom and has never corresponded with her during Stella's incarceration.  In recent years, she told Olsen that she discovered the man Stella had told her was her father was not but thanks to DNA testing, she was able to locate and connect with several siblings, including a brother she has become close with.     

Paul Webking and Sue's daughters, Exa and Hayley, reached an out-of-court settlement with Bristol-Myers and received an undisclosed sum.  Both Exa and Hayley used some of their respective shares to pay for their education.  Hayley is married and the mother of an adult son.  She currently lives in New Mexico, as her mother once did, and stays in touch with author Gregg Olsen. 

In 2000, the USA Network had planned a movie about the case with Katey Sagal to play Stella but it was scrapped shortly before production began.  There were strong objections from advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, who owned the Tylenol brand central to the 1982 poisonings, and network executives feared the movie might inspire a copycat or copycats.  

The appeal that Tom Hillier filed on Stella's behalf was rejected by the Court of Appeals in 1989.  Stella retained a new attorney, Carl Park Colbert, who, along with help from The Innocence Project and private investigators, filed a second appeal in 2001 based on alleged new evidence discovered that the FBI had withheld.   That appeal too was denied.   

Stella continued to assert her innocence for decades, including telling Gregg Olsen that "it is not in me to kill anyone."  She claimed to have been the victim of a plot or frame-up, implicating that her daughter Cindy was behind it.     

At her first parole hearing in 2018, in which both Hayley Snow Klein and Sue's sister Sarah drove to Dublin, California to watch, Stella claimed to be a good person and excellent inmate, as well as wholly innocent.   Her request for parole was denied.

A year later, on May 9, 2019, Stella was once again up for parole.  This time, however, she admitted that she tampered with the Excedrin bottles, intending to kill Bruce as she was a victim of domestic violence.  Hayley Snow Klein was incensed over what she considered to be Stella's half-assed confession and that she would not admit to having killed her mother.  She immediately fired off a letter to the parole board, reminding them of the nature of Stella's planned and premeditated crimes and the permanent damage they caused to the families of Bruce and Sue.  

Once again, parole was denied.

In May of 2022, Stella made a plea for compassionate release.  She was 78 years old, she said, with a myriad of health problems that left her without much time to live.  She claimed she had an arrangement lined up to reside with a friend in Las Vegas and would get a job.  She added that she had been a model prisoner and had lost out on more than 30 years of life with her grandchildren and other family members.   Never did she mention her victims or that she had lost out on life due to her own selfish actions.   As Hayley Snow Klein says, she is not remorseful and she is where she needs to be. 

In June of 2022, the request for compassionate release was denied.  

Stella remains incarcerated at Hazelton Federal Correctional Institution in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia as inmate number 17371-086.  She is up for another parole hearing this year (2024) and, with good behavior, will be eligible for release on July 10, 2040, when she will be 96 years old.  

She is the first person to be tried and convicted for committing murder using product tampering.  As she was convicted in a federal case, Washington State could still have the option to bring murder charges against her. 


     

Bruce's final resting place (photo source)

Sue's final resting place (photo source)

Sources:

Murderpedia (2024).  Stella Nickell.  

Olsen, Gregg.  American Mother.  Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2022.

United States v. Nickell, 883 F. 2d 824 (9th Cir. 1989). 

Wikipedia (2022).  Stella Nickell.

The Shooting of Maria Marshall: Greed, Corruption and Murder in New Jersey

 

Maria Marshall (photo source)

The 1980s were a decade of wealth and excess and Toms River, New Jersey personified all of that in its forty or so miles of land.  The Ocean County Mall, opened in 1976, became Toms River's most popular recreational spot, where shopping was king.  Once considered a Memorial Day through Labor Day vacation spot for New Yorkers, Philadelphians, and those living in northern Jersey (greatly helped thanks to the Garden State Parkway), Toms River became somewhere the executives didn't just get away to but chose to live.  Appearance was everything, from your house and neighborhood to the car you drove and the designer clothing you wore.  Anyone who was anyone belonged to the country club with its golf course and made sure to be seen there.  The ultimate status symbol, however, was to be able to take frequent trips to Atlantic City, to enjoy the glitz and gambling, only forty miles down the Garden State Parkway.

Rob Marshall not only exemplified the acceptable status quo of affluence in Toms River, he reveled in it.  A successful, if cutthroat and pushy, insurance salesman, he and his wife Maria had moved to Toms River in the mid 1960s, quickly joining the country club and becoming the creme de la creme of Toms River society.  By 1984, an in-ground swimming pool had been added to their Crest Ridge Drive home, a timeshare in a Florida condo was purchased, as well as a boat, a Cadillac for Rob, and a pricey designer wardrobe for Maria.  The couple had three sons: Robert, Jr. - called Roby - Chris, and John.  The two eldest boys, Roby and Chris, also had their own cars; a yellow Mustang and a Jeep, respectively.  John, only thirteen in 1984, was too young to drive but Rob had already promised him a Porsche when he reached driving age.

Maria Marshall was a beautiful and elegant lady, envied by others not only for her looks and impressive wardrobe but for the relationship she had with her sons.  Although all were teenagers and typically of the age where spending time with friends far outweighed evenings at home with Mom and Dad, all three of Maria's sons were devoted to her.  And with good reason.  Maria was not only a loyal wife, she was also a fiercely devoted mother who rallied behind her children, encouraging them on, and delighted with the young men they were becoming.   

The only apparent blight on the surface of the Marshall family in the summer of 1984 was Roby being suspended from Villanova during his freshman year four months earlier thanks to an incident involving a group of fellow underclassmen, beer, and a resident assistant's door being kicked down.  He had been instructed that he would have to attend his sophomore year of school elsewhere and then await readmission in January.  Rob, a Villanova graduate himself, had been angry at Roby's behavior and how it would make not only Roby, but the Marshall family as a whole, look.  In addition to refusing to purchase him a promised new Mustang convertible at the completion of his freshman year, Rob had subjected Roby to cold silences and bursts of temper throughout the summer of 1984.  

Thursday, September 6, 1984 was a routine day for the Marshall household, at least for everyone except Chris, just beginning his freshman year at Lehigh University.  Rob worked, John went to school, and Roby, who didn't have classes or an early work schedule, slept in.  Maria, Rob, and Roby had lunch out before Rob returned to work.  He and Maria planned what had become a weekly ritual for them - dinner and blackjack at Harrah's Marina in Atlantic City.  Over the years Rob had become such a devout gambler at the casinos that he not only named his boat "Double Down"  but organized casino bus tours out of their home and cofounded The Winner's Circle, an instructional club.  While Maria may not have been quite so enamored with the casinos, she did enjoy dressing up, showing off her carefully selected wardrobe, and the attention that was lavished on her at the restaurants.  The couple left home around 6:15 p.m. for their 8:30 p.m. dinner reservations, after Roby complimented his mother on how she looked and gave her a kiss goodbye, as he often did.  The night was unseasonably chilly. 

The rest of that evening for Roby passed as any other would have.  He watched television, did some sit ups, called his girlfriend to talk, and then went to bed around midnight.  It was only hours later that his bedroom light was flicked on by his father, who was wearing a bloodstained shirt and crying.

Maria and Rob

Robert Marshall was born in December of 1939 in Queens, New York to a salesman and his wife, the first of five children.  Rob's father was an alcoholic, which prevented him from holding down a job for long, requiring the family to move regularly and live in rental properties and hotel rooms.  Rob's mother was a devout Catholic; her religion kept her not only from leaving her husband but preventing pregnancy.  By the time Rob was sixteen, he was living in Haverstown, Pennsylvania, the tenth of his homes.  He felt estranged from his family and superior to his parents.  Although he wanted more than his parents had, school became a problem for him.  He flunked eleventh grade, requiring him to go to summer school.  While there, he met a boy who was forming a dance band and as Rob liked the play the drums, he volunteered to be the new band's drummer.  One of the band's first gigs was playing at a going away party for the older brother of another member, who had enlisted in the Air Force.  At that party, Rob met a pretty fifteen-year-old named Maria Puszynski.    

As offput as Rob was by his own family, Maria was close to her parents, who cherished their only child, a beautiful blonde daughter who had been born in Philadelphia.  Maria attended a Polish Catholic school, where her sweet disposition and lovely singing voice made her a favorite of the nuns.  Maria's parents, especially her father, made it clear that the boys were not welcome in their home and so Maria began dating Rob secretly.  For Rob, the beautiful blonde doctor's daughter was his first status symbol.

Rob and Maria continued dating throughout the remainder of Maria's high school years.  She never discussed Rob with her parents until she was in college - at which point he too was in college.  Rob had joined the Naval Reserve when he tuned eighteen and had his eye on Annapolis.  Despite spending an entire year prepping for his SATs, he did poorly and was not accepted at Annapolis.  He barely made it into Villanova, at that time not one of the more rigorous academic schools.  He was, however, in college and the Navy ROTC program so he and Maria hoped it would be enough to put her father's mind at ease.  Dr. Vincent Puszynski did not like Rob or his family from the start.  He thought they put on airs to appear better than they were and were terrible spenders - hardly what he wanted for his only child.  Maria was in love and wanted to marry Rob. 

Despite his goals and ambitious nature, Rob barely graduated from Villanova; his 1.9 grade point average fell below the 2.0 requirement to graduate.  He was, though, gifted with a silver tongue and he managed to convince one of his teachers to change a "D" to a "C" and was allowed to graduate in June of 1963.  He went on to Pensacola for Navy flight training and completed the course in November of 1963 and was then accepted for helicopter training.  Just over a month later, on December 28, 1963, he and Maria were married. 

Their first year of married life was spent overseas and in Florida before Rob was assigned to the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey.  It was the first time he saw Toms River and he liked the proximity to both the beach and the base and the cheap availability of homes.  For Rob, perhaps best was that Philadelphia was close enough that Maria could visit her parents, but it was not so close that they would be a continual presence.  He and Maria moved into their first home just before Roby was born.  A year later, Chris joined the family.  

Rob had the keen foresight to realize that Toms River was becoming a boom town with many families like this, just starting out and wanting to be responsible.   No longer in the Navy, he chose to become an insurance salesman.  A natural fit, he sold more than two million dollars' worth his first year, making him one of the company's top 50 salesmen in the country.  He repeated it the next year and so the family packed up and moved to a larger house three blocks away.  It was where they were living when their third son John was born in 1971.  The good times continued to roll on for them and in 1973, they moved into a brand-new house that Rob had hired an architect to design on Crest Ridge Drive.

The Marshalls had arrived, treated very nearly like royalty in Toms River.  Not only were they viewed with respect (and maybe jealousy) at the country club or on the tennis court but even at church on Sundays, where Rob drove the family in his red convertible Cadillac, with the boys in their suits and ties and Maria stylishly attired.  Rob seemed endlessly proud of his wife, whom he often called "the beautiful Maria."  

Maria (photo source)

The Investigation

Bob Gladstone, the lieutenant in charge of homicide in the Ocean County prosecutor's office, had been sleeping soundly in the early morning of Friday, September 7 when he was awakened by a call at 2:15 a.m. telling him that a woman had been shot to death at a picnic area off the Garden State Parkway.  Arriving in less than an hour to the crime scene, he found a white Cadillac with the lifeless body of 42-year-old Maria Marshall still face down across the front seats.  At first glance, she could have been mistaken for being asleep - were it not for the bullet wounds in her back.  Gladstone was told that Maria's husband Rob, bleeding from the head, had been taken to the hospital.  

The site of Maria's homicide was horribly, terribly dark.  Despite being just off the always busy Garden State Parkway, the picnic area, with its tables and trash cans, was not just extremely well shielded from the roadway but the myriad of evergreen trees surrounding the area muffled the noise of passing cars.  The Cadillac had apparently pulled in and stopped roughly a hundred feet from the end of the asphalt blacktop and from where an unlit cinderblock restroom structure stood.  The right rear tire of the vehicle was completely flat.

A state police officer filled Gladstone in on the information he had.  Rob said he and Maria had left Atlantic City around midnight, following their dinner and some gambling.  It was after passing a toll plaza that he felt a vibration in the car.  Suspecting it might be a tire, he had pulled into the picnic area to check it.   While looking at the back tire, he noted a dark sedan pull into the area and stop perpendicular to his car, about 30 feet away.  He said he ignored the vehicle and did not see nor hear anyone exit from it.  He went to Maria's door, which she opened, and he advised her to pop the trunk so that he could fix the tire.  It was then, according to Rob, that he was struck on the head and knocked out as he turned away from Maria.  He wasn't certain how long he was unconscious but when he came to, he saw that Maria had been shot.  He was unable to rouse her and ran out into the roadway to flag down help.  He added that he had over $2,000 in his pants pocket that was missing.  

Gladstone was immediately suspicious.  As dark as the site was, how on earth could Rob Marshall - or anyone, for that matter - change a tire?  Why did Rob continue on past the toll booths, always busy and always lit up, to choose a picnic area with a clear sign denoting it was closed after dark?  Why had he not continued three more miles to the Roy Rogers restaurant?   Why had the assailant or assailants clocked Rob in the head but shot Maria twice in the back?  Why did the tire have a clean cut in it with no signs of it having been driven on flat or low on air?  And while Maria's handbag was missing, if the motive was robbery, why was she still wearing a gold necklace, a gold bracelet, and three rings?  

At the hospital, Rob received five stitches before being discharged.  He was on his way out when Ocean County homicide sergeant Danny O'Brien, dispatched by Bob Gladstone, encountered him.  Since the murder happened on a state parkway, O'Brien could not take a statement from Rob without a state trooper present but told Marshall, who was headed home to "break the tragic news" to his sons, to sit tight and stay at home until authorities arrived.  In O'Brien's opinion, Rob Marshall, in his blue blazer and tan slacks, did not look seriously injured, nor like a man who had just lost his wife to violence.  Instead, he appeared to be on his way to the yacht club.   

Just after 5 a.m., after Rob had woken up Roby and John to tell them their mother was never coming home, O'Brien arrived at the Marshall residence with two state officers in tow.   Rob offered the gentlemen drinks (which they declined) and then was taken to a local precinct for a formal interview.  He reiterated what he had said several hours earlier, adding only that the car had not seemed right almost immediately after leaving Atlantic City and had only gotten worse the further north they traveled.  He answered standard questions - he and Maria had been married for almost 21 years and the problems they had - financial - were due to Maria's excessive spending and living beyond their means.  They had briefly tried marriage counseling as a result.  He also said, in an attempt "to be perfectly candid" that Maria had suspected him of cheating on her, which he flatly denied.  He also denied killing Maria, saying that he loved her.  O'Brien noted that both before the interview started, while in a squad room, and in a car on the way back home, Rob fell asleep.  

Maria and Rob shortly before her murder (photo source)

Shortly after 9 a.m. on that Friday morning of September 8, Bob Gladstone got a call from a former state policeman turned private detective by the name of Fred Grasso.  Grasso informed Gladstone that Maria Marshall, "the nicest lady anyone could hope to meet," had been a client of his.  He had first been contacted by her in December of 1983 following suspicions that Rob was having an affair.  Maria and Grasso had met in a grocery store parking lot, as she had been terrified she would be spotted going into his office.  Maria had given him a hundred-dollar bill, nothing that she needed to pay him in advance due to "the way our money's disappearing."  Grasso didn't think much of Rob Marshall, considering him a schmuck, and told Gladstone that the only enemy Maria Marshall would have in the world would be her husband.      

Not long after talking to Grasso, Gladstone heard from an attorney named Michael DeWitt.  DeWitt had gotten Maria as a client in December of 1983 from Tom Kenyon, an attorney who had also referred her to Fred Grasso.  Once Maria had told Kenyon her suspicions of Rob cheating on her and who with, Kenyon, knowing the alleged other woman, had decided it might pose a conflict of interest for him.  He helped her to find other legal counsel.  According to DeWitt, Maria's problems weren't just an unfaithful husband - Rob was indeed having an affair and with the local high school's vice principal - but in fact, they were in deep financial distress.  Rob had sent the family into financial despair and had attempted to fix or disguise the problem with a $100,000 home equity loan in which he had signed Maria's name on the loan application.  DeWitt had prepared a divorce filing for Maria, as well as a bankruptcy petition, but Maria had wanted to save her marriage, not end it.  At least until the summer of 1984, when she became seriously concerned that her husband was involved in criminal activities that included using, and even selling, cocaine and falling into the underworld of the Atlantic City casino scene.  DeWitt had once more prepared a divorce filing for her in July of 1984, including naming Sarann Kraushaar, Pinelands Regional High School's vice principal, as co-respondent.  DeWitt also prepared a notice of lis pendens, which would place a lien on the family home and keep Rob from using it as an asset in any way.  He had the papers ready to go on July 26, but Maria asked him to hold off as the Marshalls were leaving for vacation on July 27, and she really hoped to resolve the matters privately.  DeWitt had seen her one final time before her death; in mid-August, Maria had stopped by his office to pay her bill.     

While Gladstone was receiving information from Grasso and DeWitt, an autopsy was being conducted on Maria's body.  She had been shot twice in the back at very close range with a .45-caliber pistol.  The two entrance wounds were close enough that a fifty-cent piece could cover them both.  One bullet had exited through the front of her chest, one through her left breast.  The trajectory of the bullets, as well as a .45-caliber bullet found lodged in her left forearm, indicated that she had been lying down with her left arm under her when she was shot.  Her cause of death had been the massive hemorrhaging caused by her left lung and the main artery of her chest being lacerated.  Death would have been instantaneous.  Whoever had shot her had one intention in mind: murder.  To Gladstone's eye, Maria Marshall's homicide had all the earmarks of an execution. 

Following the end of the school day, around 3:30, Sarann Kraushaar was brought in, fingerprinted, and a mug shot was taken.  She demanded two lawyers before she would speak to detectives Al McGuire and Tony Mancuso.  Once she was advised of her rights and informed she was not under arrest and anything she said was voluntary, she admitted that she and Rob Marshall had begun an affair in the summer of 1983.  She said that Rob was unhappy in his marriage and told her that Maria was too possessive and spent too much money.  As she herself was not happy with her husband, she and Rob had decided they were going to leave their respective spouses. They had rented a beach house in Manahawkin, as well as a joint safety deposit box and had just signed papers for a joint checking account.  They also had a downtown post office box in which they exchanged letters and tapes declaring their love for each other.  In fact, the week following Maria's death had been the week they had chosen to announce to their families they were leaving their respective marriages.  

Sarann said she had seen Rob the day before around 4 p.m.  They had met in one of their favorite parking spots and had chatted for an hour to an hour and a half.  Rob had complained about having to go to Atlantic City because Maria "insisted" they go.  When they parted ways around 5:30, Sarann had gone to a Toms River gym, where she lead an exercise class, and then had gone to a birthday dinner for her father with a small group of friends in Bricktown.  Rob had called her at school that Friday morning to tell her that Maria was dead.  He had broken down crying, saying that he had not wanted it "to be like this."   He essentially told her the same story he had told the first officer on the scene before being taken to the hospital.  Sarann also remembered that Rob had been experiencing financial difficulties and had taken out a $100,000 second mortgage on his house.  Allowed to speak with her attorneys for a few moments when the detectives left the room, she added that before Christmas of 1983, Rob had told her that the insurance he had on Maria would take care of his debts.  According to Sarann, he wished Maria wasn't around and asked her if she knew anyone who could "take care of it."  Sarann told him she wanted nothing more to do with him if he were serious but did provide him with a name of someone she knew of who had had run-ins with the law and might be able to help him. 

On that same long day of Friday, September 7, Gladstone received a call from a Philip Girard.  Girard, an insurance agent, had felt unsettled and deeply concerned when he heard of Maria's murder.  According to him, on Monday, September 3, he had been contacted by Rob Marshall, who wanted an insurance policy taken out on his wife in the amount of $100,000.  Marshall was in a very big hurry to get the policy taken out and into effect, to the point of where he wanted the paperwork and medical examination done within 48 hours.  He said that he and his wife were leaving on a vacation at the end of the week, and it was imperative the policy be in force by then.   Girard had arrived at the Marshall home around noon on Thursday, September 6, roughly two hours after the medical examination was conducted.  Rob, Maria, and Roby were on their way out to lunch, but Rob took Girard into his home office to complete the paperwork before heading out to lunch with his wife and eldest son.  

Maria's parents, Vincent and Helen, hold a photo of their daughter (photo source)

Monday, September 10 was the day for Maria's memorial service, held at St. Joseph's Church.  Over the objections of Maria's parents, who were strict Catholics, Rob had had Maria's body cremated within hours of the completion of her autopsy.  While not much was said about the memorial itself, plenty was said about the reception held afterwards at the Marshall house.  Some 150 to 200 people had shown up and Rob had gone from guest to guest, offering to top off drinks, urging people to eat the food, and remarking on how much Maria would have loved it all.  For those who had not suspected Rob of involvement in his wife's murder before this, the grotesqueness of it all began to create doubt in his innocence.    

Two days before the service in which Roby, Chris, and John Marshall would say goodbye forever to their mother, and only a day after she had been killed, their father had sat them down to tell them that he had someone special in his life - Sarann Kraushaar.  Rob warned them that there could be talk of his involvement, and the police might even suspect him, but it was common for the husband to be considered a suspect in such cases.  

While Rob appeared anxious to let his sons know of his involvement with Sarann Kraushaar, Chris nursed a secret that was painful to him.  From the moment his father had entered his dorm room on Friday, September 7 and told him "something terrible has happened," and after the shock had passed, Chris had wondered.  He wondered if his mother had suffered, if she had been afraid, and if she had said anything.  His father's vague answers to his questions had frustrated and tormented him.  He wondered why his mother hadn't run the hundred or so yards to the parkway, to seek help from a passing motorist.  Chris knew that she could have been shot while running away but at least she could have had a chance versus lying in the car, waiting to die.  Most of all, he wondered if his father was somehow involved.  The question made him feel disloyal, irrational, and that his doubt was unforgivable.  Chris was a studious, serious-minded young man who, although he physically resembled his father, had inherited his mother's gentle and loving personality.  He felt as though he couldn't or shouldn't tell anyone about his doubts or suspicions.    

Rob's brother-in-law, Gene Leady, was an attorney who lived in Wilmington, Delaware.  Hearing of Maria's murder, he headed to Toms River at once and accompanied Roby and John to Philadelphia to inform Maria's parents of her death.  Like Chris, he too had doubts and suspicions.  He also had a secret and he was going to confront Rob with it.  On that same Saturday that Rob told his sons of his affair with Sarann Kraushaar, he also confessed to Gene, who had not been surprised.  He informed Rob that Maria had known all along; she had found a secret toiletry kit Rob kept for his assignations with Sarann, as well as tapes with various love songs on them, and had put together a file with American Express charges to various motels in the area.  Maria had called Gene on Tuesday, September 4.  She had been frantic, saying that everything was coming to a head, and she was finally ready to confront Rob.  She wanted Gene to be there when she did and he agreed to support her.  He and Maria had planned to sit down together with Rob on Monday morning, September 10. 

Gene had looked at the facts of Maria's death as calmly and logically as he could.  After being told by Rob that Maria had $1.5 million worth of life insurance, he bluntly replied that everything was pointing to Rob and he should probably get an attorney.  Rob said Gene's thoughts were impossible; he was far too prominent in Toms Rivers, too high up on the civic ladder to ever be accused of such a thing.  His reputation, at least as far as Rob himself was concerned, made him beyond reproach.  

Sal and Paula Coccaro had been friends of both Rob and Maria.  They had met at the country club and both Sal and Paula grew to love Maria dearly.  Her murder had left them both shocked and numb.  They had joined the Marshalls for dinner at Harrah's a week before Maria was killed and Sal remembered the dinner conversation he and Rob shared very well.  Rob had talked about how he kept at least a million in insurance on Maria as a good selling point and that he and Maria had both decided to be cremated when the time came, a point he mentioned several times.  The majority of their dinner, however, was spent with Rob talking about how he was taking every Friday off from work to devote to the family as a means of repayment to Maria for all she had done for him.  According to Rob, the practice had rekindled their relationship into a full-fledged romance.  He told Sal how to do the same, making sure that all his work was done by Thursday and that Sal owed it to Paula.  Sal had been somewhat irritated by the way Rob was practically lecturing and patronizing him that night at Harrah's but it would be nothing compared to the anger he felt on Saturday, September 8.  Following his discussion with Gene Leahy, Rob sat down with Sal to admit to the affair and the financial problems.  Sal felt that Rob was nothing but a hypocrite and worse, a hypocrite that blamed Maria for their financial problems.  Sal was very familiar with Sarann Kraushaar; he was friends with her husband.  He was aware of her reputation around town for not only being flirtatious with the husbands of other women but actually being called Toms River's very own Madame Bovary.  That Rob would throw away two decades of marriage to someone as wonderful as Maria made Sal feel sick, a point he mentioned to Rob.  He also brought up the fact that Rob seemed to have little to no concern for the grief his sons were suffering.  

On Tuesday afternoon, September 11, as he was leaving the house, Roby was confronted by several reporters who had been waiting outside.  They peppered him with questions - did he know about his father's affair?  Was his father in debt to the casinos? - before asking him if he had heard the rumor that Rob would shortly be arrested for his mother's murder.  Keeping his mother's gentle nature and proper manners in mind, he declined to comment on those subjects but stressed that if the reporters knew his father and had seen his parents together, they would know there was no way Rob was involved.

Later that night, Rob made a tape for Sarann which included some of their favorite love songs.  He cried about how much he loved and missed her but told her what he was currently undergoing was bringing him closer to God.   

The Louisiana Connection 

The same day that friends and family were honoring Maria in a memorial service three days after her murder, attorney Michael DeWitt brought his file on Maria Marshall to Bob Gladstone.  Of particular interest, DeWitt thought, was a note Maria had sent him on July 23.  Along with the words "Holding my own, pray for me," she had attached three telephone numbers with the area code 318 she had gleaned from their telephone bills.  DeWitt found out that area code 318 serviced western Louisiana.  Soon enough, Gladstone was able to get a printout of toll calls to and from the Marshalls' home and Rob's office for the six months prior to the murder and struck paydirt.

The first number on the list was for a hardware store in Shreveport.  That number appeared on the Marshall phone records a good twenty times starting in June of 1984.  The last call had been on Wednesday, September 5.  

The second number belonged to 47-year-old Robert Cumber, who lived in Bossier City, just outside of Shreveport.  Cumber's number appeared on the Marshall phone records at least ten to twelve times.  Not coincidentally, Cumber worked at the hardware store in Shreveport that had exchanged at least twenty calls with the Marshall residence.    

The third telephone number, appearing a few times on the phone records, was for a payphone located outside an Exxon gas station ten miles west of Shreveport.

The Marshall phone records provided Gladstone with more information.  On Thursday, September 6, Rob had called Sarann Kraushaar at work at 9:46 a.m.  At 9:48 a.m., she had called him back from a different line, something she had neglected to mention in her interview.  Their call had lasted ten minutes, until another call had come in for Rob at 9:59 a.m.  That incoming call had come from a payphone at the Airport Motor Inn in Atlantic City.  It would be two days later when Gladstone learned that eight minutes after that 9:59 a.m. call was received, someone had called the payphone at the Airport Motor Inn from a payphone outside a 7-Eleven store five minutes from Rob Marshall's office.

On Tuesday, September 11, the same day Roby Marshall would tell reporters there was no way his father was involved in his mother's death, Detective Danny O'Brien, who had first laid eyes on Rob Marshall in the hospital within hours of Maria's death, traveled to Atlantic City and the Airport Motor Inn.  Looking at the motel's register, he discovered that a James Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana checked in shortly after seven in the morning on Thursday, September 6 and checked out the next day.  Davis had paid the rate for a double occupancy. 

Insurance information began coming in on Tuesday as well.  In addition to two separate $100,000 policies that Rob had taken out on Maria years earlier through his own company, he had taken out a $500,000 policy with the Banner Life Insurance Company in September of 1983; a $500,000 policy with the Manhattan Life Insurance Company in February of 1984; a $100,000 policy with the Firemen's Fund Company in February of 1984; a $100,000 policy with the Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance Company in April of 1984; and then the $100,000 policy that Rob had rushed into effect the week Maria died.  $1.2 million of the insurance policies had been obtained after the affair with Sarann Kraushaar had begun.  

On Thursday, September 14, Gladstone studied records he'd obtained from both a credit check and Harrah's Marina.  The Harrah's report showed that Rob had made 25 visits to the casino between January of 1984 and September 6.  He had played blackjack for roughly ninety-three hours and seven minutes over the course of those visits and his average bet was $131.  He had a credit limit of $10,000 and at the time of Maria's murder he owed the casino $3000.

The $100,000 home equity loan that Rob had forged Maria's signature on had been raised to its $130,000 limit in the spring of 1984.  In April, Rob had taken out a $20,000 loan from the First National Bank of Toms River and another $15,000 in May.  He followed those up with a $30,000 loan from Navy Federal Credit Union and a $12,000 loan from Citibank.  Over the summer he had applied to raise the credit limits on his Visa and MasterCard accounts; both were denied.  

On Friday, September 15, Gladstone discovered that James Davis's trip to Atlantic City the last day of Maria Marshall's life was not his first.  He had traveled to Atlantic City on June 18 but had stayed at the far more luxurious Harrah's Marina.  June 18, perhaps not coincidentally, was the same day that Rob had attempted to acquire a $20,000 term life policy for Maria from Bankers Life in Chicago.

The New Jersey detectives had asked Shreveport detectives to pay a visit to Robert Cumber and see what he had to say, if anything, about Rob and Maria Marshall.  Cumber said that he had met the Marshalls in May in New Jersey at a party for a family friend.  The friend he mentioned, detectives learned, allegedly had ties to organized crime and was also connected to the person Sarann Kraushaar brought up to Rob when he mentioned "taking care of" Maria.  According to Cumber, he had spoken to Rob about IRAs and only IRAs.     

Oyster Creek picnic area, the site of Maria's murder (photo source)

On Tuesday, September 18, Gladstone, Mancusso, and O'Brien flew to Shreveport.  Robert Cumber repeated the same story to them about speaking to Rob Marshall about IRAs.  They had no luck speaking with 49-year-old James Davis, who flatly denied knowing Rob or Maria Marshall or ever setting foot in New Jersey or the Airport Motor Inn, despite what the records said.  

On September 20, detectives were able to get a search warrant for Davis's home, where they found a receipt for a Western Union money order sent to Davis from Toms River on June 25, as well as a piece of paper with a notation that Davis would be receiving a $3,000 money order.  The paper came from a memo pad belonging to the Shreveport hardware store that Robert Cumber worked at.  Davis refused to comment, other than to say it was not in his handwriting, but his wife told detectives to check out a friend of Davis's named Billy Wayne McKinnon.  Forty-one-year-old McKinnon, she said, was a former policeman and the kind of person who would commit murder.   

On September 21, Gladstone found that Davis had received two money orders via Western Union from Toms River in June.  The receipt they had found a day earlier had been the second money order.  The first one, sent on June 13, had been for $2,500 and the sender was Robert O. Marshall.  Although the second money order was sent from a James McAlister, the handwriting on both was identical. 

When Robert Cumber, at the request of detectives, came down to the station around 5 p.m., they read him his rights.  He admitted that James McAlister was a name that Rob Marshall used and that Rob had asked him if he knew of an investigator he could hire as he didn't want to use one locally.  Cumber had suggested Billy Wayne McKinnon.  The multitude of phone calls between the Shreveport hardware store and the Marshall residence were mostly between Rob Marshall and McKinnon; Cumber was merely the go-between.   

At 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 22, Robert Cumber became the first person arrested in connection with Maria's murder when he was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.  

Four days later, on September 26, Cumber was indicted by an Ocean County, New Jersey grand jury on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.  Rob denied knowing Cumber, Davis, or McKinnon although Roby would later admit to having taken a message for his father from a James Davis in the days prior to September 26.  Sarann Kraushaar, on the advice of counsel, ended her 14-month long relationship with Rob after news of Cumber's indictment broke.

On September 27, Rob checked in to the Best Western in Lakewood.  In room 16, the room in which he and Sarann had often conducted their extramarital affair, he recorded messages for each of his sons and one for his brother-in-law, Gene Leahy.  He put the four tapes in an envelope addressed to Leahy with specific instructions on the outside that it was to be opened in the event of his death.  The hotel clerk, familiar with Marshall, had called the Ocean County prosecutor to let the office know where Marshall was.  Detectives were dispatched to the Best Western and took room 17, next door to Marshall.   They observed him buying a can of soda at 10:30 p.m. and dropping an envelope into the outgoing mail at the front desk at 11:30 p.m.  Seeing the notation on the envelope and fearing he might take his own life, they called EMS and then entered his room.  He was asleep on the bed, a photo of Maria with Roby, Chris, and John on the floor beside him.  He said he had mixed 50 Restoril sleeping pills in a can of Coke and intended to kill himself at the same moment that Maria had died on the parkway.  He had stirred the mixture with his finger, which he had licked, but had fallen asleep before actually drinking it.  Nevertheless, he was taken to a hospital and then, at the advice of his attorney, was transferred to a psychiatric facility close to Philadelphia.   

The Tapes

The tapes that Rob made were confiscated by police and listened to on October 2.  In the tapes he had made for his sons he explained that he was taking a "shortcut" out and would hopefully join their mother.  For Roby, he explained that he had instructed Gene Leahy to purchase him a Mustang.  For Chris, it was that Leahy had been instructed to purchase the lease on his Jeep.  For John, it was that Leahy would buy him a Porsche when he turned seventeen.  On the tape addressed to Chris, Marshall ended it with "Please love me."  

If Rob had hoped that the tape addressed to Gene Leahy would document a series of events in which Rob himself had been preyed upon and was a victim of the events leading up to Maria's murder, he failed spectacularly.  He claimed that he and Maria had been working on their financial problems together and that although he was going to leave her for Sarann Kraushaar, they were spending less and he was going to put Maria on an allowance.  Then he bemoaned how he didn't realize how amazing and incredible Maria was and how stupid he had been to walk away from her and how much he missed her every day.  In the next breath, he asked Leahy to tell Sarann how much he loved her, that she needed to quit smoking, and that he was currently in "their" room, room 16, at the Best Western where "I was at my happiest."  Leahy was also instructed to call Sal and Paul Coccaro on Rob's behalf to express his gratitude and love for them, as well as a reminder that Paula's insurance premium was overdue.

The bulk of the recording, and what detectives were waiting to hear, was about Rob's recounting of his involvement.  Rob stressed that in spite of his innocence, he worried that he would be convicted on circumstantial evidence that pointed in his direction.  He said that casino money had been missing and Robert Cumber had recommended an investigator named Billy Wayne McKinnon to look into it.  Rob said he had wired McKinnon $2,500 in June, after which McKinnon came north to New Jersey, and then wired him a second installment of $3,000.  The second time Rob said he said McKinnon was at Harrah's the night Maria was killed, when he gave McKinnon $800.  

Detectives now had a basis to arrest Billy Wayne McKinnon.   

It would take until December 3, after losing a fight for extradition to New Jersey, before McKinnon and James Davis, both under arrest, were delivered to Toms River.  The prosecutor's office, believing the big fish they were after was Rob Marshall, was ready to deal with McKinnon and/or Davis for the right information.  McKinnon, having once been a cop, knew the odds were not in his favor and that he was looking at potentially taking the rap for first-degree murder.  He was ready to talk but only after he heard the tape that Marshall made.  He convinced the authorities that he was not the shooter, had never intended to kill Maria, or anyone else, and that Marshall was only going to be an easy mark to collect thousands of dollars while McKinnon strung him along.  Satisfied that McKinnon was indeed not the triggerman, the tape was played for him.  At the conclusion of the tape, McKinnon commented that Marshall was supposed to say that he and Maria had patched up their marriage and were enjoying a second honeymoon and that before her death, he had no longer needed McKinnon's services as a private investigator.  McKinnon added that Rob Marshall was so stupid that he should be put to death for his stupidity alone.  

McKinnon signed a plea bargain, in which he would admit his part in Maria's murder, give up the name of the shooter, and testify in court, on December 15, 1984.  

On December 19, 1984, in Stanton, Louisiana, a 42-year-old man named Larry Thompson was arrested outside of a hotdog stand and charged with killing Maria.  

That same day, at 2:30 p.m., after being out Christmas shopping, Robert Marshall was arrested.  Bob Gladstone had been told that Rob was pricing tickets from Miami to Costa Rica, where extradition might have proven difficult.     

Rob Marshall under arrest (photo source)

The Trial

The trial of Robert Marshall and Larry Thompson began in the small city of Mays Landing, in Atlantic County, on January 28, 1986.  As both were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances, the death penalty was on the table and the prosecution announced they were seeking it.  Judge Manuel H. Greenberg presided, Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Kevin Kelly represented the state, attorney Glenn Zeitz represented Marshall, and attorney Francis Hartman represented Thompson.  In a bizarre turn of events, Thompson's wife Wanda and their teenaged son stayed in the Marshall home during the trial.  

Kevin Kelly outlined the state's case.  They believed that Rob Marshall, drowning in debt and wanting to continue his relationship with his married mistress, had solicited and paid for the murder of his wife in exchange for the $1.5 million (just over $4.3 million in 2023 dollars) in insurance money.  That money, made off of Maria's blood, would allow him to start a new life, unencumbered by both debt and a wife.  

All of the life insurance policies that Marshall had taken out on Maria were introduced into evidence, including the $130,000 policy taken out just hours before she was murdered.  Eight insurance companies testified to Marshall taking out policies in the years before Maria's murder.  

James Davis testified that he had picked up the $5,500 wired by Marshall to Billy Wayne McKinnon that was sent in his name.     

Sarann Kraushaar took the stand to talk about her 14-month long affair with Rob Marshall that ended 18 days after Maria's murder.  According to her, Marshall told her in December of 1983 that he was $300,000 in debt due to Maria's spending and if he could "just get rid of her," the insurance he had on Maria would take care of his debts.  

Billy Wayne McKinnon testifies (photo source)

The state's star witness was Billy Wayne McKinnon.  He testified that he had used James Davis's name during his travels to New Jersey and that he had first met Rob Marshall in June of 1984, at which time he was promised $65,000 (over $186,000 in 2023 dollars) for killing Maria, $22,000 or so of which he eventually received.  He said that Marshall had wanted him to kill Maria on that first meeting in June and again in July.  McKinnon testified that he had planned on stringing Marshall along as far as he could and to continue collecting money, at least until he heard from Larry Thompson that a contract may have been put out on McKinnon for not holding up his end of the bargain.  McKinnon swore that he never intended to shoot Maria but he knew Thompson would have no qualms about doing so.  In September of 1984, he brought Thompson along to New Jersey and it was Thompson who had shot and killed Maria.  According to McKinnon, Marshall had told him that in killing Maria, he did not want anything that would mar or destroy her beauty - no bludgeoning, stabbing, or any kind of sexual assault.  Marshall also refused to allow himself to be shot as part of the cover story and it was only with reluctance that he agreed to let Thompson strike him in the head to bolster the robbery motive.  He did make sure to tell McKinnon to instruct Thompson not to hit him too hard.  He didn't want to any kind of permanent damage or impairment. 

McKinnon added that he had often wondered what Marshall had said to his wife on the way home on that night in July of 1984, that night he had hoped to have Maria executed while he pulled over on the way back to Toms River from Atlantic City with the excuse of using the restroom.  What do you say to your wife, McKinnon mused on the stand, when she's supposed to be dead?  Roby, Chris, and John, all in attendance, cried as they listened to McKinnon's testimony.  

Thompson's attorney told the jury the only reason his client had been charged was because McKinnon needed a fall guy.  All the evidence, he said, pointed to McKinnon, and only McKinnon, as the shooter.  

Rob Marshall (left) and Larry Thompson during their murder trial (photo source)

Thompson, who sat quietly and unemotionally throughout the prosecution's case (and would continue to do the same during much of the defense's case) took the witness stand and said that he had not known of any plot to kill Maria Marshall, nor had he killed her.  Six witnesses, including his brother, his teenaged son, and his wife, followed him to testify that Thompson had been in Louisiana during the time of the murder.  Thompson's defense took roughly two hours of trial time.   

Rob Marshall on the stand (photo source)

Not so with Rob Marshall, who took the stand in his own defense.  He testified that he hired McKinnon not to kill his wife but to investigate what Maria knew or didn't know about his affair with Sarann Kraushaar and what she did with the casino winnings he had given her.  When Kevin Kelly asked him to produce a contract from McKinnon for those investigator services, Marshall had to admit he could not.  The $5,500 that was wired to Louisiana that James Davis had picked up had an innocent explanation according to Marshall.  They were simply payments for bets he'd made on sports games.    

When recounting the murder, he now said that he heard Maria cry out "oh my God!" when he was checking the tire and just before he was struck in the head.  This was news not only to the prosecutor but also to Roby, Chris, and John, who had held on to the hope that their mother had been asleep when she was shot and never knew what was happening.

Kevin Kelly had noticed that Marshall had faithfully worn his wedding ring during the trial and it made him unnaturally angry, feeling that Rob was playing at being the grief-stricken husband.  Using Marshall's prior testimony of "undying love" for Maria, Kelly asked him why Maria's ashes were still in a cardboard box at the funeral home if he loved his wife so much.  Marshall, who had had time to vacation in Florida and begin two affairs following the end of his relationship with Sarann Kraushaar (including one with Karen Odell, a married Toms River woman who had been friends with Maria and Rob) in the three months between Maria's funeral and his arrest, had no answer.  

Closing arguments were delivered on Monday, March 3, 1986.  Kevin Kelly ended his with a pronouncement that there was a special place in hell for the cowardly, greedy, and self-centered Marshall, who had put his own sons on the stand in an attempt to save his own skin.  Marshall shook his head while his sons sobbed and cried audibly before turning around in his seat to smile at them.  Whereas before they had always offered their father support (at least publicly) and acknowledged the "I love you" signs Rob had penned on the backs of manilla folders he held up so his sons (and the assorted media) could see, by this last day of trial Roby, Chris, and John kept their heads down, none of them meeting their father's eyes.  

The Verdicts

On Wednesday, March 5, 1986 at 11:15 a.m., the jury reached their verdicts.  For the charge against Larry Thompson, they found him not guilty.  Thompson smiled, shook his attorney's hand, and once he was told by Judge Greenberg he was free to leave, crossed the courtroom to shake the hand of prosecutor Kevin Kelly before departing with his wife.  

  

The verdict for Thompson gave Rob Marshall's supporters hope that he too would be found not guilty, but their hope died quickly.  The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.   Marshall collapsed and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital.  With nothing found to be wrong, he was returned to the Mays Landing courthouse where, at 1:30 p.m., the sentencing phase commenced with the same jury.  Only two outcomes were possible for him:  a life sentence with eligiblity for parole after 30 years or death by lethal injection.  

Following a half-hour presentation by Kevin Kelly and Glenn Zeitz in which neither side called any witnesses, the jury took 90 minutes to decide on punishment - death.  Chris, the only one of Rob's sons to remain in the courtroom, heard the pronouncement without tears.    

(Photo source)

The End of the Case . . . Eventually

Robert Cumber was tried for his part in Maria's murder in June of 1986.  Offered a deal in which he would go free after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, he turned it down, believing he would not be convicted.  He also thought after being acquitted he could file a lawsuit against Ocean County for false arrest. 

Instead, he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and on September 11, 1986 sentence (some thought excessively harshly) to life imprisonment.  On January 19, 2006, he received clemency from Governor Richard Codey after serving almost 20 years of his sentence.  He returned to Louisiana, now 68 years old, minus the vision in one eye, and with no one but his wife and daughter still talking to him.   

Robert Cumber (photo source)

Following the Marshall trial, Billy Wayne McKinnon testified in Robert Cumber's trial.  He was then sentenced by Judge Greenberg to five years in prison but served only months in accordance with his plea agreement.  He entered the Federal Witness Protection Program but stayed in a matter of weeks, finding it overly constrictive and not conducive to his style.  He returned to Louisiana and his various business ventures.   

Sarann Kraushaar resigned from her job at the high school shortly after news of her affair with Rob Marshall broke.  She and her husband reconciled, opened a chain of Blockbuster Video stores, and eventually left New Jersey to move to Florida. 

Maria's father, Dr. Vincent Puszynski, suffered a heart attack during his former son-in-law's trial.  He recovered and planned to look after his grandsons and protect them from their "snake" of a father but in February of 1987, suffered a second and fatal heart attack.  Maria's mother Helen lived until 1995, after some years of suffering with senility.  

Writer Joe McGinniss, who attended the trial, published a book about the case in 1989, called Blind Faith (which became a bestseller and was eventually adapted into an Emmy-nominated 1990 miniseries of the same name). 

Not to be outdone, and while going through the appeals process, Rob Marshall wrote a book called Tunnel Vision: Trial & Error in 2002.  The book was little more than his attempt to show that he was framed and not guilty of the crime he was convicted of.  As the Son of Sam law prevented him from profiting from his crime, it was his son John that published and marketed the book.    

Robert Marshall, convicted killer (photo source) 

 

After sitting on New Jersey's death row for 18 years, Rob Marshall was granted a new sentencing due to a federal court decision regarding ineffective counsel in his original 1986 trial.  The current prosecutor elected not to retry the death penalty phase of the Marshall case and on August 18, 2006.  Marshall was resentenced to 30 years with the possibility of parole in 2014.

In January of 2015, he was approved for a parole board hearing set for March 18, 2015.  Both Roby and Chris Marshall vowed to speak in front of the board and against their father's release.  It turned out to be a moot point, as Robert Marshall died in prison on February 21, 2015 following a stroke and poor health.  He was 75 years old.   

Larry Thompson, convicted killer (photo source)

After being acquitted, Larry Thompson had driven to the Marshall home in Toms River to collect his wife's belongings.  While there, he had spoken to the press assembled outside wearing a red Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap he found inside the residence that had belonged to Maria.  After  returning to Louisiana, he and his wife filed a $50 million lawsuit against the prosecutors and the investigators for the violation of Thompson's civil rights by malicious prosecution and wrongful arrest and for Wanda Thompson's loss of her husband's company.  Following a two-week trial in May of 1988, a Louisiana jury rejected the claims.  Thompson wrote a letter to John Marshall, Maria and Rob's youngest son, telling him that he was welcome to come visit the Thompson family, or even live with them, at any time (something John Marshall did not take the Thompsons up on). 

After returning to Louisiana, Thompson returned to his life of crime.  Luck finally ran out for him in 2003, when he was convicted for his part in an armored car robbery and the attempted murder of a Shreveport police officer.  In 2014, at the age of 71 and after serving 12 years of his 50-year sentence, Thompson finally admitted that he had indeed been the triggerman that put two slugs in Maria Marshall's back.  He recounted this to James Churchill, a retired chief from the Ocean County, New Jersey prosecutor's office with the same lack of emotion he had displayed during the 1986 trial.  He admitted his witnesses, including his wife, son, and brother, who claimed he had been in Louisiana at the time of the Marshall murder, had lied on the stand in order to give him an alibi.  Due to double jeopardy, Thompson could never be retried or prosecuted for Maria's murder.  With New Jersey's statute of limitations for perjury being five years, charges could not be brought against the people who had lied to provide him a false alibi.  

Thompson also admitted to a bank robbery, 33 night depository box robberies and three armored car robberies throughout the U.S., as well as burning down two businesses, a former meat market, and a residence in Louisiana.  

He offered up the solution to a 1979 cold case for which he had long been the prime suspect.  On January 1, 1979, 32-year-old Deanna Elliot Montgomery had been sitting in the passenger seat of a car driven by her husband, James Haywood Montgomery, when she was killed by a shotgun blast to the back of her head.  Like Maria, Deanna was a pretty blonde whose husband had taken out life insurance on her shortly before her murder and also like Maria, she was a loving mother, leaving behind a 12-year-old daughter.   

Deanna Montgomery (photo source)

Investigators at the time believed that Thompson was involved, as he and James Montgomery were friends, but they couldn't prove it.  The case went cold until Thompson confessed that he had killed Deanna after being promised $15,000 by her husband to do so.  

Thompson confessed to two further murders; Larry Wayne Lester, who he shot to death on June 15, 1988 in Dolet Hills, Louisiana and Chester Underwood, also shot to death, on June 25, 1979 in Harrison County, Texas.  

By his own admission, although he provided no details, he had killed even more.  

Per his plea deal, Thompson was sentenced to 21 years in 2016.  

John, Roby, and Chris circa 1986 (photo source) 

Within days of their father's conviction, Roby, Chris, and John Marshall went to the funeral home in Toms River where their mother's ashes, in a cardboard box, had sat in a desk drawer since September of 1984.  After claiming her ashes, they had them buried in a plot at St. Joseph's Cemetery.  For her headstone, they chose words she herself had written for Roby: "Our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall."    

Roby Marshall moved west and served as a consultant for the 1990 miniseries Blind Faith.  He became close with actress Joanna Kerns, who portrayed Maria.  She introduced him to actress Tracey Gold, who portrayed her daughter on the television show Growing Pains.  Roby and Tracey married in 1994 and are parents to four sons.  They live in California, where Roby works as a teacher.  

Chris Marshall graduated from Lehigh University and served as their varsity swim coach for a time before becoming Cornell University's Senior Vice President of Alumni Affairs.  He eventually opened his own consulting firm.

John Marshall, only 13 years old when his mother was murdered, remained convinced that his father was innocent and the only one of the three boys to remain steadfast in support of Rob Marshall.  He married at 17 and became a father shortly thereafter to a daughter that was given the middle name of Maria.  Divorced and the father of two, he continued to support his father throughout the appeals process and up until Rob's death.  

Following the airing of the miniseries about their mother's murder and their father's involvement, Roby and Chris told the media they were done discussing the case - a promise they kept until their father was granted a parole hearing in early 2015.  Then, 49-year-old Roby and 48-year-old Chris, who had cut their father completely from their lives, fought against his release.  Advocating for their mother, they described her as having been their closest friend, strongest supporter, and biggest fan.   

Maria's final resting place (photo source)

Sources

Asbury Park Press (January 29, 2015).  Chris Marshall Exclusive Interview: Defend Our Mom. 

Asbury Park Press (February 5, 2015).   Marshall Sons: Leave that Selfish Monster Where He Is.

Bonnie's Blog of Crime (January 26, 2006).  Maria Marshall Murder.  

Criminal Discourse Podcast (April 27, 2020).  Robert O. Marshall: Murder For Hire.  

Daily Journal (June 29, 2014).  Blind Faith Killer Up For Parole.  

Daily Mail (May 16, 2014).  Man Confesses to Being Hitman . . . 

McGinniss, Joe.  Blind Faith, GP Putnam, 1989.  

New York Daily News (September 9, 2017).  Perfect Marriage Masked Husband's Gambling Debt, Affair, and Plot to Have His Wife Murdered.  

New York Post (February 10, 2002).  Blind Faith in Dad; NJ Wife Killer's Son Takes Aim at '84 Slay Rap.  

Seattle Times (October 3, 1999).  A Hard Lesson: Justice Doesn't Always Triumph. 

Shreveport Times (October 18, 2014).  Confessed Serial Hit Man Has More To Tell.  

State v. Robert O. Marshall (1997).  

USA Today (February 23, 2015).  Blind Faith Killer Robert O. Marshall Has Died, Son Says.

U.S. Department of Justice (September 24, 1991).  State v. Robert Marshall:  Death Penalty Proportionality Review Project.