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.  

Murder in Little Washington

Could a Vicious Attack and the Murder of a North Carolina Businessman Lead Back to Dungeons and Dragons? 

Lieth Von Stein around the time of his murder (photo source)

The Crime

It was 4:24 a.m. on Monday, July 25, 1988 when the call came in to North Carolina's Beaufort County Law Enforcement Center.  It had been a slow night, with dispatcher Michelle Sparrow reading a Stephen King novel throughout much of her 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift.  The woman on the other end of the emergency call was speaking so softly that Michelle couldn't fully understand her.  The woman asked for police and an ambulance and when Michelle asked her to speak up, she demurred.  She claimed that the intruder could still be in the house.  The dispatcher at first wondered if the caller was one of their "regulars," those few mentally disturbed people who would call emergency services to report terrible, yet false, acts.  She asked the woman her name and upon learning it -- Bonnie Von Stein -- and that the woman, Bonnie, said that she, as well as her husband, might be dying, Michelle Sparrow knew this was no crank call.  She advised the officers on duty, as well as rescue, to respond immediately to 110 Lawson Road for the possible beating and stabbing of two people.  "Please hurry," Bonnie Von Stein begged Michelle Sparrow.

The first officers to arrive at the scene, Danny Edwards, Ed Cherry, and Sergeant Bradford Tetterton, approached the two-story house with their weapons unholstered, fearing the intruder Bonnie Von Stein mentioned might still be in the house.  The house itself was dark and the men scoped it out with heavy flashlights, noting the enclosed back porch, with the porch door open and the broken window beside it.  Edwards and Tetterton entered the home through the open door where, in the kitchen, they found a fluorescent light on over the sink, cabinet doors opened under a microwave oven and a woman's white handbag on a stovetop with its contents strewn.  Edwards immediately detected the coppery scent of blood and mentioned it to Tetterton in a whisper, correctly ascertaining "Somebody's dead."  The pair made a sweep of the downstairs, finding no one or nothing unusual, and after turning on the hallway light, headed upstairs.  There were five closed doors and they took the first one on the right at the top of the stairs, a room that turned out to be the master bedroom.  In the darkness, they couldn't see Bonnie Von Stein but she called to them in desperation.  Sweeping his flashlight throughout the room, Tetterton was confronted by the most horrible sight he had ever encountered in his twenty-six years of service.  The room was awash in the red of the blood that was splattered everywhere.  On the bed, lying diagonally across it, was a stocky man clothed only in cotton briefs that had once been white but were now stained red with blood.   Stab wounds were visible in the man's upper back and left shoulder area.  Worse was the massive crater in the back of his head, so horrible that Tetterton believed he could look directly into the man's skull.   He immediately knew that this man was beyond human help.  Bonnie Von Stein, 44 years old, who lay on the floor next to the bed, told Tetterton that her husband, Lieth, 42 years old, was trying to help her and the intruder had attacked both of them with a "big club" or "baseball bat" and a knife.  

Meantime, Danny Edwards had gone into another bedroom after being advised that Bonnie's seventeen-year-old daughter Angela Pritchard was in the house.  He found the teenager asleep in her bedroom, the room directly next to the master bedroom, dressed only in a t-shirt and with a big square fan humming and blowing.  Despite the humidity and the heat of summer in North Carolina, a glass of ice water, with the ice cubes having not yet melted, sat on her bedside table.  Edwards awoke Angela, advised her there had been a situation in the house and asked her to get dressed as quickly as possible, which she did without question.  Leaving her to do so, he checked the remainder of the upstairs rooms and found no one else.  

Dispatcher Michelle Sparrow's husband, David, had been an EMT before becoming a police officer.  On duty that night, he responded to Lawson Road, armed with his shotgun and his medical equipment.  Let in the house by Edwards, he hurried upstairs to the master bedroom, finding Bonnie Von Stein lying on the floor in a bloodied nightgown.  He gave a compulsory check on Lieth Von Stein, agreeing with Tetterton that it was too late to render any aid, before turning his full attention to Bonnie.  He noted that she had been stabbed in the chest and was having difficulty breathing and so put an oxygen mask on her.  Although Bonnie was fading fast, she begged the officers not to let Angela in the room and to not harm her many cats and pet rooster that were roaming through the house.

The two EMTs that arrived by ambulance only moments later were stunned by the Von Stein bedroom.  They had expected some blood but the room was literally awash in it.  Blood had been sprayed and spattered on the ceiling and on three walls of the room.  The carpet was bloodied on both sides of the bed for more than three feet out.  They went first to Lieth, turning him over and discovering that in addition to the stab wounds in his back and the horrific head injury he had sustained, there was also a large and mean stab wound in the center of his chest, right above his heart.   Both his eyes were swollen and closed, his neat beard was matted in blood and his left hand was clenched.  Of the five gaping wounds on his head, three of them were across his forehead, one above and slightly to the side of his left eyebrow and the worst, above and to the back of his left ear.   There were six stab wounds from a large-bladed knife in his upper back, near his left shoulder and the one vicious stab wound to his chest, which would later be revealed to have gone straight through his heart.  His body appeared to have been bathed in his blood.   He had no pulse and the blood on his chest was already beginning to gel.   

Having done what they could do for Lieth, they began working on Bonnie.  They found she had cuts on her head and a stab wound to her chest that no longer appeared to be bleeding but she had lost a massive quantity of blood and her blood pressure was dangerously low.  The local hospital was notified to be prepared for her, as she was gravely injured and quickly fading, and permission was given for an IV drip and to wrap Bonnie in anti-shock trousers.  After a dressing was placed on her stab wound, a stretcher was brought into the house to transport Bonnie as quickly as possible to the emergency room.  

Tetterton had been speaking with Angela downstairs while the EMTs worked on Bonnie.  She claimed to have slept through the violence that went on in the room next door to hers, not even hearing Lieth's screams as he was being murdered.  She seemed oddly detached to the news that her parents had been beaten and stabbed.  She said she had a brother named Chris who was away at N.C. State University and Tetterton advised her to call her brother.  

(photo source)

Detective John Taylor was the youngest detective in the Washington Police Department at twenty-seven and he arrived at the crime scene after Bonnie Von Stein had been taken out of the house on a stretcher.  It seemed apparent that the intruder had entered and departed the home by the back porch but the broken window by the door was curious, as the door itself had nine individual panes of glass.  Furthermore, it would be impossible for someone to reach an arm in through the broken higher window to unlock the door (and silly, as one of the panes of glass by the lock itself could have been broken instead.)  Taylor found that the cuts in the window screen did not match the breaks in the glass.  Also curious was a faded and torn military knapsack that seemed out of place, lying on the back porch by a plastic garbage can. 

Although the white handbag found on the stovetop in the kitchen had been rifled through - and two additional handbags were found on a countertop - there were too many other things left behind that robbers typically take, like televisions, VCRs, stereos and computers.  A twenty-dollar bill and change were in plain view on a dresser in the master bedroom.  Lieth Von Stein's wallet and watch were untouched.  Bonnie's wedding rings were in a small bowl and other jewelry was in an unlocked box on a chest.  Detectives quickly came to the conclusion that robbery was highly unlikely and it whoever had entered the home had done so with the sole purpose of killing Lieth and Bonnie.

At the Beaufort County Hospital's emergency room, the doctor on duty found that Bonnie had suffered three very ragged lacerations on her head, two near her hairline at the center of her forehead of about an inch in length, and another, in a C-shape, over her right eyebrow.  Her left thumb, swollen and bruised, was likely broken.  Above her right breast was a grapefruit-sized bruise and to the right of her sternum was a two-inch stab wound.  The blade had bounced off bone and cut into the chest wall, causing a partial collapse of her lung.   But she was still alive. 

Chris Pritchard arrived in Little Washington around 8:30 that Monday morning, driven into town by N.C. State Safety Patrol officers, who had found him, hysterical, at one of the university's emergency call boxes.  After receiving the call from Angela that his mother and stepfather had been attacked, he had woken his roommate and torn their dorm room apart in search of his car keys, which he had been unable to locate.  He had then gone outside and seeing the emergency call box, used it to beg for help in getting home.  During the two-plus hour drive back to Little Washington, Chris had curled up in the backseat of the patrol car and gone to sleep, awaking only when they arrived at the Washington Police Department.  He was informed there that his mother was in the hospital but expected to survive and his stepfather was dead.  While Angela had been oddly unemotional, Chris, according to the officer who informed him, attempted to be grief-stricken "but he wasn't quite making it."  Chris asked to go to the hospital to see his mother before speaking with authorities, a request that was granted.  He was allowed to sit and hold her hand in the ICU while she recounted what had happened and Chris cried.

Lieth and Bonnie

Lieth, in his 1963 high school senior photo (photo source)

As with any homicide investigation, the authorities looked closely at the victims to discern who might want to harm them and why.  

Lieth Von Stein had been born in Queens, New York, the only child of parents of German descent who both came from prosperous families.  The Von Steins moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina when Lieth was a baby and began running a laundry that would expand to become one of the most successful in the country, with several branches and more than 130 employees.  Lieth, after graduation, went to the School of Engineering at N.C. State University but flunked out by the end of his junior year and, with the Vietnam War raging, was soon drafted and sent to Germany for clerical work.  Honorably discharged in 1970, he returned to North Carolina and enrolled at Guilford College in Greensboro.  He was well known for his intellect, outspokenness, and wry sense of humor, as well as his continued close relationship with his parents, whom he unfailingly introduced to all of his friends, male and female.  He became enamored with computers during his time at Guilford and following graduation, he got a job working with them at Integon, an insurance company in Winston-Salem.  

While working at Integon, he met a woman who had also taken a strong interest in computers.  Bonnie Bates Pritchard was two years older than Lieth with two small children and had recently separated from her husband.  A native of Welcome, North Carolina, located in the rolling farmland of northern Davidson County, she had grown up in a family with three sisters and a brother and regular churchgoing parents.  Quiet and shy, Bonnie's main passions were reading and animals.  She had gone to work at Integon two years after graduating from high school and three years before she had married Steve Pritchard, who was only seventeen at the time of their wedding and attending his senior year of high school.  Fifteen months after the wedding, a son, Christopher, was born; under two years later, daughter Angela joined the family.  The addition of children to the already shaky marriage proved the death knell and the couple separated days before Bonnie's twenty-eighth birthday and weeks before Chris's fourth birthday, with the divorce becoming final the following year - the first in the Bates family.  

Lieth and Bonnie began to see each other outside of work in October of 1976, with their first date being dinner at Bonnie's house and then watching television after Chris and Angela were put to bed.  Two weeks after this dinner date, Lieth moved to Cincinnati, where he had taken a job with Federated Department Stores.  He had seen Bonnie for the two weekends before he moved and although she expected things to fizzle with him out of town, he continued to call and write to her.  Each trip he made home to visit his parents, he saw Bonnie as well.  About six months after he moved, he introduced Bonnie and her children to his parents, an indication that things were serious.  As Chris and Angela had had little to no contact with Steve Pritchard after he had left the marriage, Lieth stepped into the role, watching the kids in their school plays, taking them out to eat and even traveling together as a family on vacations at the beach.  Following a visit to Welcome at the home of Bonnie's parents, Lieth arranged to have a washing machine and an air conditioner delivered to their home, telling the Bateses that it would make him feel so good knowing they would be comfortable in the North Carolina summers and that Bonnie's mother could have more time to herself if she had help with the wash.  

In early August of 1979 Lieth accepted a new job at a finance company in South Bend, Indiana and asked Bonnie to go with him as his wife.   She said yes and the two were married on August 17.  Bonnie gave up the job she had held for fifteen years and she and her children moved with Lieth to a suburb in South Bend.  The winters didn't suit him and he worried about his aging parents and so in 1981 he accepted the position of head of internal auditing at National Spinning Company in Washington, North Carolina.   In July of that year, Lieth, Bonnie and the two children moved to the Smallwood subdivision, where they purchased the two-story frame house at 110 Lawson Road.   Although Lieth was happy to be back in North Carolina, he never cottoned on to Little Washington, as it was known, wanting instead to be in a larger city like Winston-Salem.  

In 1983, Bonnie began teaching data processing at a local community college.  The following year, she accepted a job as a programmer analyst with Hamilton Beach at the appliance factory only a handful of miles from the Lawson Road home, a position she would hold for two years.

In 1987, Lieth's father died suddenly of an aortic aneurism, leaving an estate valued at more than $1.2 million (nearly $3 million in 2021 dollars).  Lieth's mother, already suffering with health issues herself and thoroughly grief-stricken over her husband's sudden passing, followed him in death only four months later.  The loss of both of his parents in so short a time not only left Lieth relatively wealthy but had him thinking hard on his own life, which he felt had fallen into a rut.  He had apparently never much liked his job and by the last weekend of his life, he was talking to Bonnie about quitting by the end of the year and perhaps traveling or starting a business of his own.  Bonnie would later say that on the last day of his life, Sunday, July 24, 1988, Lieth had been jovial and in good spirits, looking forward with great anticipation to their future.  

In addition to the $1.2 million-plus inheritance, Lieth also had around $1 million in life insurance.  As expected, Bonnie was his beneficiary although she was fairly quickly ruled out as a viable suspect, not only due to her life-threatening injuries but also after speaking to the Von Steins' neighbors, who all said that they were decent, if less than sociable, even standoffish, people.  Should Bonnie also die, that left Chris and Angela Pritchard to inherit. 

The Investigation

Detectives spoke to Chris Pritchard that Monday night around 10:30 p.m., at a friend's house where he and Angela were staying.  Although he was nineteen, in appearance he looked closer to sixteen, a slight young man who wore a baseball cap and chain-smoked nervously.  He told them he had come home to visit that weekend, spending Friday night in the family home on Lawson Road.  He had had a term paper due that Monday though and so had headed back to school on Saturday evening after dinner.  On Sunday night, he had gone out with friends and then returned to the dorms, where he had stayed up until three or three-thirty drinking beer and playing cards.  He had only been in his dorm room and in his bed a very short time when Angela had called him about the attack.  The school's public safety officers had driven him back to Washington because he had been distraught and he couldn't find his car keys.   As far as Chris knew, his parents weren't having any problems and he knew of no one who disliked them, much less would would want to hurt them.  When asked if he and Lieth had gotten along, Chris assured the detectives they had and very well, something that was contradicted by other family members and friends who said that Lieth and Chris had frequently butted heads.  Chris claimed that he knew that Lieth had come into stocks or money but he really knew no details about it.  This too was contradicted by Bonnie, who told detectives that she herself had told Chris not only how much Lieth inherited but how much he was insured for.

Detectives go not only on facts but also on their gut feelings - and the detectives not only did not trust Chris Pritchard, they did not like him.

The map that broke the case and the house on Lawson Road (photo source)

What would eventually break the case came courtesy of  a Pitt County farmer by the name of Noel Lee.  Around four-thirty in the morning on Monday, Lee had just finished the hour-long process loading up hogs at his farm that was roughly one mile over the Beaufort County line and seven miles from Little Washington.  He had just been heading back home when he noticed a fire burning in the pre-dawn darkness.  He had been curious enough to drive his truck over and note that the fire was about three or four feet in height and a foot or two in diameter.  It burned so brightly that Lee instantly knew it had been fueled by something.  He didn't get out of his truck -- perhaps exhaustion, perhaps an ominous feeling -- but when he heard about Lieth Von Stein's murder, he instantly thought of the unusual fire and called authorities. 

Lee proved to be an excellent witness who remembered the exact time he first noted the fire and recalled precisely where it had been burning.  On Tuesday evening, he was able to take detectives to where he had spotted the fire and then over to Grimesland Bridge Road off State Route 264, where it had been burning.  The fire, naturally, had burnt out, leaving a blackened circle and charred debris.  In those debris were what appeared to be a socket for an extension wrench, burned remnants of blue jeans, molten remains of a sweater, the bottom of a Reebok sneaker and a large hunting knife, its handle melted and its six-inch blade blackened.  Also found were some wadded sheets of paper, one of them partially burned, that had blown out of and away from the fire. 

On Wednesday morning, detectives returned to photograph the area in daylight and give a more thorough search (although nothing more of significance was found).  

The knife was found to be consistent with the wounds that Lieth Von Stein had suffered.  More amazingly, once the singed sheets of paper were examined, one of them was determined to be a map, crudely drawn with a ballpoint pen,  One word was notated on the map - Lawson.  Blocks were drawn in, obviously to represent homes, and the one with an "X" had 110 written on it.  110 Lawson Road, the Von Stein home. 

The funeral service for Lieth Von Stein was held on Thursday, July 28.  What started as a gray drizzle turned into a raging thunderstorm by the time the service began.  Lieth's body was not present; he had been cremated and the cremains would be buried in Winston-Salem following a second, later, service.  The chapel was packed with Lieth's co-workers, neighbors and Bonnie's family.  Bonnie, attired in a black bedroom gown, was brought from the hospital in a car sent by the funeral home.  Chris and Angela rode with her and Chris, along with a mortuary employee, assisted her up the aisle and to her seat.  Following the service, she returned to the hospital, where she remained for four more days.   

On Friday, July 29, Washington's annual Summer Festival began, bringing in record crowds to enjoy the live music, food stands and arts and crafts exhibits.  Two of the attendees on that opening night were Chris and Angela Pritchard.  

Chris

(photo source)

Given the estimated timing of the attacks on Lieth and Bonnie, when Noel Lee had observed the fire and the location of the fire, detectives believed that after killing Lieth and attempting to kill Bonnie, the perpetrator or perpetrators had driven west on 264, stopping off at Grimesland Bridge Road to search for a good area to dispose of the evidence.  After doing so, if they then continued west on 264 they would end up in Raleigh and N.C. State University, where Chris Pritchard was a student.    The focus of the investigation enlarged to include Raleigh and N.C. State.

Before speaking to anyone outside the Pritchard family about Chris, however, investigators asked Chris to draw a map of the Von Stein neighborhood.  This he did, with a ballpoint pen, even going so far as to label the streets.  That second map would be compared with the first, with the professional and expert opinion by a handwriting analyst that the "Lawson" Chris had printed (twice) on the second map was identical to that on first map.

Speaking to former coworkers of Chris' and a girl he had dated, detectives learned that Chris had reportedly begun using marijuana and cocaine after his high school graduation and that although he liked to think and say he was lucky with the ladies, he was anything but.  The girl he had dated briefly broke up with him after he wouldn't keep his hands off her, even after she repeatedly told him no.  That girl had had no contact with him since that time but mentioned that he had talked incessantly about a game called Dungeons & Dragons.  

Chris' roommate during his freshman year told detectives that he and Chris never hung out together as their habits were different.  Chris never studied, to the point of barely making it through his first year.  The roommate knew of Dungeons & Dragons, as Chris read books about it in their room, but had never played the game there.

Detectives also spoke to a local sixteen-year-old who had often sold Chris pot and a mutual friend who confirmed Chris' marijuana use, as well as LSD, which he said Chris had started taking in the middle of his first summer session.  Chris had been a braggart, throwing money around on alcohol and drugs, and telling his friends that his parents were wealthy; they had bought him a Mustang, a nice computer, and they sent him a weekly allowance.  Chris was easily influenced by others, they said, and the main reason he was doing so poorly at school, besides the drinking and drugs, was that he spent practically all of his time playing Dungeons & Dragons.  

Detectives located the two female students who had hung out with Chris and another friend on the night of Sunday, July 24, going out to eat and then returning to the dorms, where they recalled that Chris had parked his car in the outer, fringe lot rather than closer to the dorms.  They remembered the evening well because their card game had not started until ten o'clock or later in their dorm room and beginning around one or one-thirty in the morning, one of the girls had started to ask Chris to leave.  Chris had ignored her requests until three-thirty when, after learning the time, he left at once.   One of the girls recounted that Chris had told her that he had an outline on his computer of how to come into a lot of money but when she asked to see it he had refused, saying it was secret.  She further said that Chris was resentful of Lieth, angry that Lieth spent his money on Bonnie but not on Chris and Angela.  Chris, she said, felt that he and Angela should have better cars and better clothing.   

Other acquaintances of Chris' said the same; that Chris was resentful of Lieth, did not like him, while others claimed that Chris never spoke of his stepfather at all.  

Unsurprisingly, Chris was not a good student and was better known around campus for his alcohol and drug consumption and his utter obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, although he had been a good student in school until about his senior year.  Despite that difficult year,  he had still been accepted at NC State as a nuclear engineering student.  Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, it was the same school that Lieth Von Stein had taken and flunked out of twenty years before.

Detectives, when speaking with Lieth's coworkers, learned that the Thursday or Friday before his death Lieth had been upset with Chris over his studies, going so far as to say that if Chris' grades did not improve that semester, he would be cut off. 

The detectives felt they might have a good motive for Lieth's murder and the attempted murder of Bonnie - an inheritance the rapidly failing Chris was certain to receive should both of them die.   Unknowing to Chris, however, was the fact that even if Bonnie had died, her will and that of Lieth, stipulated that neither Chris nor Angela could receive their share until they reached the age of thirty-five.   

 The Game

Dungeons & Dragons circa 1980 (photo source) 

Dungeons & Dragons first hit the market in 1974, a precursor to the immersive videogames that would flood the market decades later.  A fantasy role-playing game derived from miniature wargames, D&D allows players to to create their own character and assume that role.  Playing with a participant that takes on the role of Dungeon Master, who is the game's referee and storyteller, they form parties who explore, gather treasures and information and do battle.  The game allows the Dungeon Master to create his or her own unique storylines and adventures.  

By 1981, Dungeons & Dragons had a reported three million-plus players around the world and three-quarters of a million copies of the rules were being sold annually by 1984.   While the game won many awards in the role-playing genre, it also came under fire for its violent incentives and allegations of devil worship and witchcraft and for leading to suicide and murder.  In 1979, nearly a decade before Lieth Von Stein was murdered in his bed, Michigan State University student James Dallas Egbert III went missing from his dorm after playing Dungeons & Dragons.  He was located by a private investigator a month later and returned to his family, where he killed himself with a gunshot to the head. 

In 1982, sixteen-year-old Bink Pulling, an honors student and avid D&D player in Montpelier, Virginia, left a note saying that his soul was no longer his after another player put the curse of the werewolf on him.  He then got his father's handgun, went out onto the front lawn of the family home, and shot himself through the heart.  

Four months after Bink Pulling's suicide, eighteen-year-old Tony Gowin of Bardstown, Kentucky walked into a local hobby shop to ask about a Dungeons & Dragons book he had ordered.  He got into an argument with the twenty-year-old clerk and impaled her with a medieval broadsword, killing her. 

In 1984, 12-year-old Steven Erwin of Colorado fatally shot his 15-year-old brother Dan and then himself.  Both boys were avid fans of Dungeons & Dragons and left suicide notes saying that death was the only way they could get out of the game.

On May 26, 1985, a trio of Ragland, Alabama high school honor students playing Dungeons & Dragons shot and killed 26-year-old convenience store clerk Missy Macon.   

In November of 1985, sixteen-year-old David Ventiquattro of New York, a Dungeon Master, took a .20 gauge shotgun and killed his eleven-year-old friend Martin Howland.  Ventiquattro claimed that in his D&D world, his role was to extinguish evil and Martin was an evil demon who had to die. 

In 1987, Long Island teen Daniel Kasten murdered his parents as they slept.  An avid Dungeons & Dragons player, Kasten believed that he was under the control of the Mind Flyer character.    

    

Although the company that produced the game denied any legitimate connection between it and violence, in 1983 it added a warning about players becoming too closely identified with their characters.

Like James Dallas Egbert had in 1979, Chris and his D&D friends liked to play the game in the steam tunnels at school, fortifying themselves with alcohol, pot and/or acid before playing out the scripts they were given by the Dungeon Master, roleplaying which would often run throughout the night.  The two friends that Chris had that seemed as dedicated to the game as he was were a current student named Bart Upchurch and a former student named Neal Henderson.

Bart

(photo source)

James Bartlett "Bart" Upchurch III was from eastern Caswell County and, like Bonnie Von Stein, had grown up on a farm.  Although his parents would stay married for years, they endured breaks in which Bart and his younger siblings were separated from their father.  In elementary and high schools, he had been a good student with above-average grades but he tended to bore easily.  He was an avid reader, though, with particular interest in the science-fiction and fantasy genres.  It was while reading one of his books that he was first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons.  He acquired the board game and soon had friends playing with him after school and even over the telephone.  By ninth grade, Bart brought the game to school with him and it would be played in the cafeteria during lunch.  So popular did it become that soon other students were creating their own groups to play.  Teachers were aware the students were involved in the game but in an isolated area like Caswell County, Dungeons & Dragons was seen as a positive outlet for kids to stimulate their creativity and imagination.   The game required intense concentration and a commitment, neither negative attributes.  For Bart, who loved to tell stories and loved to be in charge, it answered an innate need he had.  That the game had a lack of moral base, that the people who "won" weren't necessarily "good guys" but those characters who had outsmarted others, troubled him not at all.  As the Dungeon Master, he liked the power and the recognition far too much. 

Although Bart had acquired a reputation as a loner and "weird," his teachers recalled him always being very obedient and respectful to them, if with no apparent direction or goals in life.  

By the time Bart began his senior year of high school in the fall of 1985, he and his fellow players had moved into advanced stages of play and the game had taken on a new and different cast.  No longer were their characters going after monsters but were now facing off against each other, to seize each other's "treasure" and conspire to destroy other characters.  

It was at this point that Neal Henderson joined Bart's circle and D&D group.

Neal

Like Bart, Neal Henderson came from a broken family but unlike Bart, who did not communicate his feelings easily, Neal found the separation from his adored father heart wrenching.   Precocious in his youth, he had an exceptionally high IQ of 180 and was considered gifted.   So far ahead of his classmates that he made perfect scores on any tests he took, he, like Bart, became bored at school.  He turned his attention to books, books of all genres, and created his own comic books.  In the fifth grade, Neal attended eighth-grade classes in the morning and then returned to elementary school in the afternoon.  Although he could have handled a full day of a high school curriculum, Neal's mother worried about his social development if he spent all day with older classmates.  

Although the ten-year-old was considered an oddity, he was not bored at school for the first time although he was a terrible procrastinator.  At twelve, Neal went off to high school and took the SAT for the first time, outscoring the gifted academics in the senior class.  At thirteen, he heard of Dungeons & Dragons for the first time and read everything he could find on the subject.  

When he was fourteen, Neal was accepted at the prestigious North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, where joined other students who were considered the state's best at the tuition-free boarding school.  Shortly after his arrival at the school, he became involved with several groups that engaged in role-playing games that included Dungeons & Dragons.  Also for the first time in his life, he made friends, including his first girlfriend.  His habit of procrastination was still present though, as well as a lack of self-discipline and it reflected in his schoolwork.  He was placed on academic probation and although he managed to pass with Bs and Cs, he was not invited to return to the school the following year.

Although Neal felt badly about letting his mother down, he later said the school and its freedom wasn't for him, as he didn't have the self-discipline required to do the work.  He started his senior year of high school back home, where he played tuba in the band, worked on the high school yearbook, helped raise money to go towards the purchase of a computer for the Junior Engineering and Technical Society (a computer that he helped program), and organized groups for fantasy role-playing.  Like he had done in the year previous, Neal spent more time playing games than he did on his schoolwork and so repeated his senior year.  

He had also found a girlfriend.  Kenyatta Upchurch was Bart's first cousin but she met Neal through Bart's younger brother.  Their relationship would be a typical teenaged tempestuous one, peppered by Neal cheating on her with other girls during his second senior year.  Neal felt these indiscretions should not matter, as he did not love them and he was only satisfying a physical need.  He found girls easy to use and thought it their fault if they got hurt.  When told he shouldn't use people, his only reply was that people were so easy to manipulate.

A Perfect Storm

Bart had his first run-in with the law in February of 1986, when he and three friends were arrested and charged with breaking into the high school and stealing a computer and breaking into a lake house, where they stole cases of beer, wine, a television, two clocks, and a pair of binoculars.  Bart admitted his guilt to his angry and embarrassed parents, who later said that while Bart worried about the outcome (he could have faced the maximum of twenty years in prison), he had no remorse over what he'd done.  

A plea deal was worked out in March, in which the two charges would be consolidated and reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for Bart pleading guilty, paying restitution and completing 150 hours of community service in the six months following his plea (neither of which he did).    Over the next two years, he would be arrested twice more: a misdemeanor larceny charge for stealing a cooler of beer and for driving without a license and careless and reckless driving.   

He tried marijuana for the first time around graduation, allegedly because he thought it something he should do before he started college.  Initially, due to his interest in the military, he wanted to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy but realized his chances of acceptance were slim.  A chance meeting with an army recruiter led him to decide that a three-year enlistment, in which he saved his money and earned college credits, was perfect for him - until his arrest curtailed that.  His probation officer refused to give the permission for him to enlist, saying that he had to complete at least half a term at college before he could come off probation.  Bart had applied to three or four colleges in the fall of his senior year, although he had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do with his life.   He was accepted at North Carolina State University and while he wasn't particularly thrilled, he didn't want to stay in Caswell County.

Neal too had been accepted to NC State on a full scholarship.  He had achieved a near-perfect score on his SATs, the only 1500 the admissions director said he had seen.  Although not a particularly close or good friend of Bart's, Neal was friends with Bart's younger brother and he suggested that he and Bart room together at college.  Given Bart's propensity toward neatness and order and Neal's disorganization and sloppiness, as well as Bart's love of attending parties nightly and returning to the dorm drunk and Neal's dislike of any groups of more than three people, it did not turn out to be the best suggestion.  They remained roommates for their freshman year and even roommates at an apartment off campus during that summer of 1987 but went their separate ways, at least residentially, by the fall of their sophomore year.

Bart had flunked out his freshman year and was informed he would not be invited back.  Neal too had struggled, ending up on academic probation and with his scholarship in jeopardy.  Instead of applying themselves over the summer semester, they watched MTV, played games, smoked marijuana, and shoplifted from a variety of stores, despite Bart's earlier convictions.     

By the end of his sophomore year, Neal too had flunked out, with his scholarship revoked and he was forced to move off-campus.  

Bart was back in school for the summer session by the time he was hanging up posters in search of new D&D players around the campus (with a promise of "Free Beer!").  Neal was working at a local retail store but scheduled his hours around their projected game time.  Also taking the summer session, and against his parents' advice, was Chris Pritchard.  

Confessions

It would take many months but ultimately, it would be Neal that would break and confess all to the investigators.   Unlike Bart, who had been calm and alternately cordial and flippant when questioned, Neal seemed vulnerable and nervous to the detectives.  They played a hunch, telling him they knew Chris was involved and they felt Neal knew something and it would be better for him to tell them what he knew.  The story Neal told was chilling.

Neal said that within a week or so of meeting Chris, discussions turned toward future plans and Chris had mentioned that it would only be a matter of time before he was wealthy; his family, according to Chris, had millions, including multiple houses and cars.  Someone - Neal couldn't remember who - had made the suggestion that Chris should just go ahead and off his parents for the money.  Once they were dead and Chris inherited, he could buy a house in the woods for all of them to live in, where they could spend their days doing drugs, drinking, and playing Dungeons & Dragons.  Neal assumed that it was just bullshitting until July of 1988, when Chris and Bart informed him they had come up with a plan for Chris to inherit early by killing his parents.  

Their first plan had involved Chris sedating his family with sleeping pills and then setting the house on fire.  That plan was scrapped after Chris decided that it would be best if he were not in the home; he thought a home invasion would be a better choice.  Angela was not really discussed other than Chris saying at one point that he was okay splitting the inheritance with her (an amount he told Bart and Neal was around $10 million) and also saying that should she awaken on the murder night, she would also have to be taken out.

According to Neal, Bart agreed to be the actual killer.  Neal's job was to drive Chris' car to Washington, since Bart's driver's license had been revoked.  Neal believed he was going to paid either $2,000 or $20,000 for chauffeuring Bart to and from the scene.  Chris drew them a map of the neighborhood, showing not only the Von Stein house but the neighboring houses with dogs that might bark.   

The day before the murder, Neal said that Chris told him that his parents were about to disinherit him over his poor school performance and lack of ambition and if disinherited, he would have to leave school and likely find a job.  

Neal did not know when the murder plot was going down until the day of Sunday, July 24, 1988 when Bart showed up with Chris' car keys and told him to meet in the fringe parking lot behind the Lee dorms that night around midnight.  Neal said that Bart had applied black shoe polish to a white pair of batting gloves, as well as to the bat he said should "get the job done" on both of Chris' parents.  Just in case, though, Chris had purchased a hunting knife as backup.  According to Neal, Bart was excited and hyperactive about the upcoming murder mission.  

Neal maintained that even while driving Bart to Washington, he was under the impression that he was only going to commit a burglary of jewelry that Chris said was in the house.  Even when they pulled off where Chris had told them to and Bart changed into all black clothing, smeared black shoe polish around his face and put a dark ski mask on, Neal still insisted he had no idea that people were going to get hurt.

Neal told the detectives that he waited in the car while Bart went off with a key that Chris had provided.  He wasn't sure how long Bart was gone but when he returned he told Neal that he had "actually done it" and he had "never seen so much blood in my life."  Neal at first said that he had seen blood on Bart's hands and then later recanted that statement.  

It was Bart who directed Neal on where to go to dispose of the clothing, weapons and map and Bart who set the items on fire.  

Neal drove the two back to Raleigh and left Chris' car in the same lot.  He put Chris' keys on a high shelf in a shared bathroom per Bart's instruction. 

He had spent the last nearly twelve months trying to forget that night and claimed he had been in a state of depression ever since.  He knew he needed to atone by telling all but claimed that he had not come forward out of fear of Bart Upchurch and Chris Pritchard.  

On Thursday, June 15, 1989 Bart Upchurch was arrested for the murder of Lieth Von Stein and the attack on Bonnie Von Stein.  He refused to say anything and asked for a lawyer.

Although officers had done their best to keep Bart's arrest and arraignment secret so as not to tip Chris off, a friend of Bonnie's in Washington had called her in Winston-Salem to tell her that a friend of Chris' had been arrested for Lieth's murder.  Bonnie let Chris know, who had been living with her after leaving school for "psychiatric" reasons, and Chris spent Thursday night at a friend's house. 

On Friday, June 16 detectives turned up at Bonnie's home in Winston-Salem with a warrant for Chris' arrest.  Chris called his attorney before returning to the house, where he was promptly taken into custody.  On the drive back to Beaufort County, he chatted about the tornadoes that had recently struck Winston-Salem and Wake Forest, where he had enrolled in summer school.  He did not speak about the charges leveled against him but acted certain that he would not be under arrest for long.

On the morning of Tuesday, June 20, Neal Henderson was arrested in Raleigh.  He had known it was coming and was waiting for the detectives.  

The Trials

Chris, Bonnie and Angela, January 1990 (photo source)

On Friday, July 21, Neal was released on a bond of $200,000 and moved in with his mother in Danville, Virginia.  As he had been working at a Wendy's in Raleigh when he was arrested and was within days of a promotion, he was allowed to work at a Danville Wendy's while out on bail.   

On Monday, July 31, following a bond motion hearing in court in Washington, Chris' bail was set at $300,000, half of which was to be secured.  Bonnie used two certificates that had been Lieth's to secure Chris' bond.  Neal Henderson had also been in court that morning and Bonnie had a visceral reaction to him that necessitated her to briefly leave the courtroom.  She felt his thick, stocky frame may have been what she had seen that morning when she and Lieth had been attacked and not the lean and lanky frame of Bart Upchurch.

Three days later, Bart reported to the same courtroom where his bond was set at a half million dollars, all of it to be secured.  His family could not meet that requirement and he was returned to jail to await his trial.  

By December, a plea deal had been worked out with Neal and his attorneys.  In exchange for pleading guilty to the felony charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting assault with a deadly weapon and intent to kill, all other charges would be dropped and Neal would testify against Bart and Chris.  Sentencing would be left to the discretion of the judge, who could sentence Neal to as much as life plus twenty years.  On December 5, the plea agreement was accepted by the judge with sentencing to occur after the trials of Bart and Chris.  Neal was allowed to return to Danville with his family.

The trials were scheduled to begin on January 2, 1990 but on December 27, 1989, Chris plead guilty and agreed to testify against Bart after spending nine hours telling his story.  Although there were some inconsistencies, Chris' account backed up Neal's that Bart was the murderer.  Despite this crushing development for Bart's defense, he refused to admit his guilt in the crimes and attempt to seek a plea deal from the state.  He would go to trial.

Bart on trial (photo source)

Bart's trial began on Monday, January 8, 1990 in Elizabeth City, at the Pasquotank County Courthouse.  His jury compromised eight women, four men and two alternates - a man and a woman.  All of them said they could in good conscience sentence Bart to death should they find him guilty and determine the circumstances warranted such punishment.

Beginning at the end of that first day and into Tuesday, January 9, Bonnie Von Stein took the stand and recounted the horrible events of that night in July when she was attacked and her husband was killed.  Two days later, on Thursday, January 11, Chris, considered the prosecution's star witness, took the stand.  He recounted his relationship with Lieth, his troubles with drugs that included marijuana, cocaine, LSD and ecstasy, his faltering grades at college and his obsession with Dungeons & Dragons.  He then recounted the murder plot, which was the first time the general public had heard it.  It was also the first time that Angela, seated beside Bonnie in the courtroom, heard her brother say that if she had awakened on that night back in July of 1988, she was to have been killed as well for the main reason being that Chris would then stand to be the sole beneficiary of their parents' estate.  She showed no outward signs of emotion and had no change in expression.  Chris admitted to having bought the knife used to stab Lieth at a Kmart only days before the murder and testified that only the knife was discussed as being used, not the baseball bat.  

Responding to questions from his own attorney, Chris said that upon learning his mother had survived the assault, he had been "happy."  He also said that he had "incredible remorse" over the attack and murder and he was "thoroughly disgusted."   He admitted the initial idea to murder his parents had come from him.

On Tuesday, January 15, Neal Henderson took the stand, testifying as to his background in a monotone voice so low that the judge had to remind him to speak up.  He recounted meeting Bart back in high school, going to NC State with him, playing Dungeons & Dragons, meeting Chris and taking drugs.  He went over the plot to murder Lieth and Bonnie and testified that Bart had always carried around an army green knapsack, like the one found at the crime scene, and a baseball bat.  He was still on the stand Wednesday, recounting the night of the murder and asserting that neither Bonnie nor Angela nor anyone else had conspired to murder Lieth Von Stein; only Chris, Bart and Neal himself.  Neal was asked why he had gotten involved the plot to kill the Von Steins and he responded that he had poor self-esteem and was desperate to make friends and fit in.  When shown a color photograph of Lieth as he was found dead in his bedroom, Neal teared up and said he not only did not do that, but that he could not have done that.  

Chris and Neal testifying at Bart's trial (photo source)

Bart's attorneys called Jim Upchurch, his father, to the stand, then his great-uncle and then a friend of Bart's from high school.  To everyone's surprise, the defense then rested.  

In closing, which ran over an hour-and-a-half, Bart's attorneys stressed there was not one piece of physical evidence that linked their client to the crime, but both Neal Henderson and Chris Pritchard had admitted their guilt.  The "cold, callous and bloodthirsty" Chris had hired Neal to kill his parents.  The medical examiner had testified that the object used to bludgeon Lieth and Bonnie had been swung by a right-handed person.  Bart, seen writing at the defense table, was clearly left-handed - but Neal was right-handed.  The jury just needed to use common sense with the case.  They closed with a reminder to the jury that despite the testimony, no one knew exactly what had happened and by whom that night at the Von Stein house.

The case went to the jury on the morning of Tuesday, January 23.   Their deliberations continued through lunch and into the afternoon until 5 p.m., when the judge called the end of the day.  Deliberations resumed on Wednesday morning, continuing through lunch until the jury reached a verdict at 4:05 p.m.  None of them looked at Bart as their verdict of guilty was read.  Bart, who on Tuesday morning, had expected the jury to return within minutes with an acquittal, paled visibly and put a hand to his mouth.   His mother, whose birthday it was that day, sobbed and grabbed her son's shoulder.

(photo source)

The jurors' jobs were not yet done.  Under North Carolina law, they had to decide the punishment for Bart: life in prison or death in the gas chamber.   

The sentencing hearing began on Friday, January 26.  As expected, Bart's family took the stand to beg that his life be spared.  What was unexpected was Bonnie taking the stand outside the presence of the jury to speak of her general objection to the death penalty and that she did not want Bart Upchurch to be executed.  Feeling that her words would invite the jury to use passion and emotion in their decision, the judge found her testimony constitutionally unconscionable and did not allow the jury to hear it.  

Shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Monday, January 29, the jury began its deliberations on sentencing.  They were sent home at 5 p.m. and picked up deliberations on Tuesday morning.   When they returned later that day with a verdict, two of the female jurors were openly crying and once again, none would look at Bart.  Bart's attorneys knew that they had not chosen to spare his life and instead, sentenced him to death.  

Angela Pritchard, who had sat through Neal Henderson's testimony and who had heard the painful details of her brother recounting his plans to end their parents' lives, and possibly her own with boredom bordering on thorough disinterest, burst into tears upon hearing that Bart had been sentenced to death.  

End Game

(Photo source)

Neal Henderson was sentenced to 40 years for aiding and abetting second-degree murder and six years for aiding and abetting assault with a deadly weapon, with the sentences to run concurrently, and was sent to the Harnett County Correctional Institution south of Raleigh.   He was given a recommendation for a "study release," which meant that Neal could have been out of prison in as little as five years.   He ended up serving double that, being released from the Orange Correctional Center in Hillsborough on December 11, 2000 and still resides in North Carolina, where he manages a restaurant.  During the entirety of his incarceration, Neal did not commit a single infraction or have one write-up.   

(Photo source)

Following his conviction and sentence of death, Bart Upchurch filed an appeal and in October of 1992, the Supreme Court of North Carolina found that errors had been made in his sentencing trial and vacated his death sentence, remanding his case for a new capital sentencing proceeding.  At the new hearing, he was sentenced him to life imprisonment.  After serving time at Alexander Correctional Institute and Hyde Correctional Center, Bart was transferred to Davidson Correctional Center, near Lexington, where he remains.  

Unlike Neal Henderson, Bart has had seven infractions since 1995, ranging from theft to disobeying orders.  His last infraction, in September of 2021, was for substance possession.    

He is eligible for parole in 2022.    

            

(Photo source)

Judge Thomas Watts, who had presided over Bart's trial and who had sentenced Neal Henderson, also sentenced Chris Pritchard.  Before handing down the sentence, Chris spoke on his own behalf, saying that while he had forgiven Neal and Bart for their parts in the crime, he had not yet forgiven himself.  Judge Watts believed that Chris was remorseful but also stated, "The midwife may have been Dungeons & Dragons and drugs - I would not argue with that - but the genesis was Christopher Pritchard." 

Judge Watts imposed the maximum sentence on Chris; life plus twenty years.  He was allowed to step into a side room with Bonnie and his attorney for a final, brief, goodbye.  Angela, for whatever reason, did not accompany them.

Chris was sent first to a prison in Goldsboro, southeast of Raleigh, where he underwent a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program before transferring to the Craggy Correctional Institute, north of Asheville.  While in prison, he became a born-again Christian.  Shortly before he was convicted, Bonnie reestablished her relationship with him.  She stayed in touch with him while he was incarcerated and drove to visit him every visitation day.     

He was released from the Davidson Correctional Center near Lexington on May 13, 1997 and moved in with his mother.  He finished his probation on May 31, 2012.    

He currently resides in Winston-Salem with his wife and works with at-risk youth, an advocation he began while imprisoned.  He remains close to his mother.

  

And yet unanswered questions still remain.  

During Lieth's autopsy, the coroner found undigested chicken and rice in his stomach.  Bonnie always said that she and Lieth had dinner that night and then returned home, where Lieth went to bed at 9 p.m.  Rice and chicken, being easily digestible, should have long since left his stomach between three and four in the morning, when the attack would have happened.   Extreme stress can slow down the body's normal digestive functioning but this fact, combined with the abnormal lack of emotion shown not only by Chris and Angela but by Bonnie herself had some wondering whether she had been telling the truth.

Bonnie's initial and visceral reaction to seeing Neal Henderson for the first time supported the theory of some experts who believed that two people were involved in Lieth's murder.  Bonnie had described the assailant, whom she had only glanced briefly in the dark and without her glasses, as being big and bulky with a neck that sat right on his shoulders - a description that would never been given to Bart Upchurch, unless Bart had padded himself substantially that night.  The experts believed that Lieth had been struck by an instrument wielded by a right-handed person; Bart was left-handed.  If the experts were correct, Bart used his less dominant arm to strike Lieth and Bonnie or someone else was in the Von Stein bedroom wielding a weapon.    

In Neal's statement to the police and in his testimony, he claimed that he got nervous while waiting for Bart to return and left their prearranged meeting place and drove without purpose to another location, where Bart apparently found him.  Neal never could explain exactly how Bart would find him in an unfamiliar area in the dark.

Chris testified that he had given Bart the key to the Von Stein back door but Bonnie had told authorities that the porch had been redone and the back door rekeyed with a new lock.  The key that Chris had no longer worked - and yet Lieth Von Stein's killer had managed to enter the home.

Chris always maintained that Angela knew nothing of his murder plot but when asked a year after his conviction about a conversation he had with her on Saturday, July 23, 1988, he had no answers. Chris has been on his way back to Raleigh, supposedly to write a term paper, and had stopped by a friend's house where Angela was.  He had taken her aside for a short, private conversation with her but when pressed later, he could not recall stopping off to see her or having the conversation.  

He also denied that Angela had ever known Bart Upchurch, contradicting Angela herself who said that she and Bart had met a few times when she had traveled to NC State to visit with Chris and one of Angela's girlfriends, who recalled meeting Bart as early as January of 1988 at a Def Leppard concert (notably, five months before Chris claimed to have first met Bart).  Angela presented her relationship with Bart as more acquaintances but friends of Bart had said that they two had been involved in a sexual relationship and that Bart had been in love with Angela.  While incarcerated, Neal Henderson told author Joe McGinniss that Bart had told him, "Finally, I've met a girl I'd like to marry."  

Angela always insisted that she had slept through her stepfather and mother being bludgeoned and stabbed in the bedroom next to hers.  Only hours earlier, Bonnie had knocked on Angela's door, asking her to turn her radio down because the music could be heard through the walls.  Angela not only slept through murder, she also apparently slept through the police, EMS and ambulance coming down the street, up the driveway, into the house and up the stairs.   And she elicited no panic or fear at being woken by a police officer in the wee hours and apparently did not immediately run to his mother's room - next door to hers - upon seeing the police officer or hearing from him that something had happened. 

Some investigators wondered not only how Angela could have slept through Lieth screaming (according to Bonnie more than a dozen times) but if she had unlocked the door downstairs in order to let Bart in.  They theorized that perhaps she had been told Bart was only going to burgle the house and she did not know murder was on the menu until it was happening or had already happened.   The glass of water, with the unmelted ice cubes on her nightstand, in the heat of a North Carolina July evening more than four hours after she claimed to have gone to sleep never made logical sense.  

As late as two years after her brother was incarcerated for Lieth's murder and the attack on their mother, Angela still insisted that Chris and Lieth had a loving relationship.

Lieth's final resting place (photo source) 

Sources

Bledsoe, Jerry.  Blood Games.  Penguin Group, 1992.

McGinniss, Joe.  Cruel Doubt.  Simon & Schuster, 1991.

State v. Upchurch, 421 S.E. 2d 577 (1992).   

The Crime Bus (2021).  Dungeons & Dragons Murderers.

Washington Daily News (May 26, 2007).  Pritchard To Be Paroled. 

Wiki2.  The Murder of Lieth Von Stein.  

New York Post (December 12, 2000).  "Dragon' Up Old Fears.