48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Strange Death of Professor Shockley

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

In 2019, college professor and renowned entomologist, Marianne Shockley, was found unresponsive in a hot tub after a night of partying. Georgia police were called to the scene for an alleged drowning, but when they arrived they found Shockley covered in blood. Something wasn’t adding up, and the last two people to see her alive – her boyfriend, Marcus Lillard, and their friend, Clark Heindel – told investigators conflicting accounts of what happened that night. Correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti and Producer Paul La Rosa discuss whether her death was an accident or if there could’ve been a motive for murder. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Want to listen to Postmortem Uninterrupted? Subscribe to 48 Hours Plus for ad-free episodes today. Welcome back to another episode of Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green, and today we

are revisiting an episode that aired on 48 Hours in October of 2022, The Strange Death of Professor Shockley. So joining me are CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti and producer Paula Rosa, who reported on and produced this episode. Welcome, guys. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Paul and Jonathan, at first, this case really doesn't seem all that strange, right? Police are called to a home in Georgia with an initial report that a woman had seemingly drowned in a hot tub. You know, there was a small

party there. There was drinking. Some drugs were involved. It could have been an accident. But then in your report, you started peeling back the layers and revealing that there could have been a more sinister motive, let's say, for murder. Let's hear a quick recap of the episode. It was the early morning of May 12th, 2019. We're going to rope it off and go from there. And medics and sheriff deputies rushed to a house in Milledgeville, Georgia. The initial report was that a woman had drowned in a hot tub. Marcus Lillard identified the woman in the hot tub as his girlfriend, college professor Dr. Marianne Shockley.

We get out here and she got a big old gash on her head. I'm telling you, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Something ain't right with this. So, can I get your name, please? Clark. Clark Heindel owned the property where Mary Ann died. Marcus said he and Mary Ann had gone there to socialize. Had a few beers, smoked a little pot, started listening to some music, had a couple more beers.

Marcus says he and Mary Ann, but not Clark, got into the hot tub. He initially told deputies he then left her to collect some firewood. As I dropped the wood off at the fireplace, I could see Mary Ann slumped down. My mother called me and she said, Mary Ann's gone. And I just was saying, no, mama, no, no. Ayla Crippen is Marianne's sister. She's drowned in some hot tub. And I was like, Marianne is not stupid. She would not drown in a hot tub.

Something funny would do somebody. It ain't adding up. Deputies suspected a possible homicide, and that was before a shotgun went off inside the house. Sheriff's office! Sheriff's office! And that was before a shotgun went off inside the house. By morning, of the three people who attended the small party, only Marcus was still alive. There is good and there is evil. And that night, evil came to play. So, Paul, I'll start with you. What struck She was an expert in entomology, insects, and also entomophagy, the eating of insects. So she was almost like one of the primary experts on that in the country and highly thought of. So the dichotomy here is that her boyfriend,

Marcus Lillard, who was a car finance manager, he was a convicted drug felon. A lot of people thought that he sort of wasn't at her level and wondered what they were doing together. From my perspective, they shared a commonality, a common curiosity for life. Marianne was someone who loved to go and venture off into the jungles all around the world looking for bugs. They were also both very charming. The way that Marianne commanded a classroom and the way that Marcus seemed to command everybody that walked into the business he worked in where he financed cars, people were charmed by both of them. And I think they charmed each other. Really, Paul, I can see you nodding your head.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, basically, Marcus was a lot of fun. And Marianne was looking for fun. I mean, by the way, Marianne had been married and divorced three times. She had two children. But I think she was looking for fun in her life. And she was that kind of personality, like Jonathan said. She was an upbeat person.

People loved her. Students loved her. And Marcus, his son, Carson, who has nothing really good to say about his father, said that Marcus was the most charismatic person he's ever met. Interesting. Well, that explains the attraction. And the third person whose house they were at, Clark Heindel, was a psychologist. And he had his license revoked for psychology because of a scandal he was involved with where a woman filed a complaint against him because he had an affair with her and gave her some marijuana and alcohol when she had substance abuse problems. So's house. They're doing a lot of drugs. They're doing, you know, there's marijuana. There's ecstasy.

What was Marcus's recollection of the events, Jonathan? We spoke with him in person for several hours. After all of this time, it's been four years now. It's still fuzzy. He says that they got into the hot tub. They spent some time there. And then he had the idea to go and collect some firewood for a fire that they were going to start. He told me and he's told investigators that Mary Ann said, don't go, a little bit more clear on what unfolded as maybe parts of his memory were coming back. He claims that when he was in the woods looking for this firewood, he then got a little lost, just distracted by the environment he was in, the drugs that he was on.

He lay down in the ground and was just absorbing the world around him, very similar to this documentary that he had watched called The Last Shaman, which has very similar undertones, drugs and drifting off into the great unknown. At some point for an undisclosed period of time, because he doesn't remember, he returned back to the hot tub. And that's when he says he saw Marianne slumped over in the hot tub, unresponsive. So Marcus goes off into the forest. And yes, they're partying, they're doing drugs.

But for them, it was not just about partying. There was a whole kind of spiritual component to being in nature and the drug use. There was. being in nature and the drug use? There was. He was on, as he has told us, his own spiritual journey, his awakening. And Clark was really seen as a spiritual guru in that smaller community. Clark had taken several trips using ayahuasca as part of his own awakening. A lot of those drugs kind of played into opening up the mind. And so you have Marcus going off into the woods, getting lost, coming back, seeing Marianne in that state, claiming that he had nothing to do with it. He would later say, the devil came out to play. Was that perhaps Clark, while seen as a spiritual guru, what in fact he was doing was leading people astray, further away from God, closer towards evil. Marcus said he tried to revive her.

He tried to pull her out and he just couldn't do it. But instead of calling 911 immediately, what do these two men do, Paul? So Marcus was on probation for a drug conviction. And he knew that if he called 911, the police would recognize that they had been using drugs that night. That would come out. They were clearly high. And he called instead his ex-wife, who was a respiratory therapist. But he also called an ex-girlfriend who was an EMT. He tried leaving messages and reaching people who could provide him with information on how to help Mary Ann.

He just didn't want to call 911. When Marcus's ex-wife was interviewed later on by investigators, she says, I can't help you. Call 911. Investigators believe that it took two hours before Clark called 911. Marcus never did. So then Clark is the other person who last saw Marianna live. What did he say that he was doing at the time? So we reported this in our piece.

He told sheriff's deputies that first arrived that he was at the edge of the pool. He didn't really see anything out of the ordinary happen, but what we didn't really get into in the piece was some of the other things that investigators later found. We learned that around the same time he was watching pornography by himself while Marcus and Marianne were there. the defense would later really point to this to kind of showcase what a creep he was. This idea that this wasn't some innocent man, that maybe there was something more nefarious going on. The defense pointed the finger at Clark for Marianne's death, specifically using the pornography detail as one of the main charges. the pornography detail as one of the main charges.

The defense also brought us some other things that were not really great about his behavior in the past. Yeah. I mean, we know he had his psychology license revoked and it was common knowledge he would have a Sunday night parties with everybody said a lot of young people. Clark was 69 when this happened. He had opened a yoga studio in town after he lost his license. And, you know, there are pictures of him online posing with, you know, very attractive women. So when the police finally do show up, they separate Marcus and Clark.

They want to question them. But then they make a major mistake. We want to play a bit of that from the show. Judging from the body cam footage, deputies seem to be having a hard time getting Clark to cooperate. I've been told three times to stay off the pool, but he's insisting to have his lawyer. Something is not right here, bro.

All right, wait right there. It's a crime scene now. Wait right there. I asked you to wait right here, bro. All right, wait right there. It's a crime scene now. Wait right there. I asked you to wait right there, sir. I asked you to wait right there. But then the deputy watching Clark got a phone call, and Clark wandered off. We got a dead woman. No one noticed that Clark had slipped into his house,

not until deputies heard that shotgun go off. Sheriff's office! Sheriff's office! Sheriff's office! And found his body. In the bathroom? Yeah. It tainted the case 100%

because there weren't two people there that could say what happened. There was only one. But investigators say Clark did leave behind a potential clue, a handwritten suicide note. And I just said, well, he had to have done it. If that pill made me so stupid, maybe it made him for once in his life a violent guy. but maybe it made him for once in his life a violent guy. What stands out to me looking at that body camera footage, at least as you observe it kind of in real time,

Marcus was very cooperative. He goes into the police car as he's instructed, and Clark, as we see in this body camera footage, still wants to get back to the pool for reasons that are unclear. The responding deputy at the time even saying something wasn't right about his behavior. They lost track of him and he went to the house and used a shotgun to kill himself and had enough time to write a suicide note. So were there any other clues in Clark's note at all? You know, there was one part of this two and a half page note that stands out and it's

right off the top. And I'll just read it exactly as it was written. And it begins, I am very sorry. I don't know what happened with Marianne, but it was on my watch. And I am so sorry for her family and friends. I counted myself as one and was looking forward to and it's kind of hard to read what he says here with her i have had a most blessed life and it's time to go namaste we looked at that handwritten note the the sheriff presented it to us you could just imagine how chilling it was to to see that to have that in front of us mar Marcus was later told and informed of this suicide when he was being questioned by investigators. And in the footage that you see from that questioning, he slumps over onto the ground in what appears to be a state of shock. At that point is when he

started pointing fingers at Clark. And then sort of even Marianne, her body is covered in blood, but she allegedly drowned. Just a lot of things that didn't make sense right away. And Marcus admits this, that he, in pulling her out of the tub, he dropped her and she hit her head and she started bleeding. And that's another thing that happened. And of course, that gets the sheriff's attention immediately. You call 911 and say a woman drowned in a hot tub.

You get there and the woman is covered in blood. Something isn't adding up. Right. So we're talking about a big crime in a small town. And news spreads like wildfire. When we get back, we're going to discuss how different theories emerged through word of mouth, even leading investigators to key clues that they used as evidence to arrest Marcus for murder. And later at trial, we'll discuss the conflicting findings from the medical examiner's report,

calling into question whether or not Marianne was strangled to death or if it truly was just an accident. Stay tuned. Truly was just an accident. Stay tuned. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours. And of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most. A bizarre and maddening tale involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying against a brother. A lack of physical evidence.

Crosley green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit listen to murder in the orange grove the trouble case against crossley green early and ad free with a 48 hours plus subscription on apple podcasts in the pacific ocean halfway between peru and new zealand lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10

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and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely, Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Welcome back. So after Marianne Shockley was declared dead, tragically, on Mother's Day of 2019, news of this spread quickly in such a small town. Almost immediately, people started to get in touch with the police department, including one of Marcus's ex-girlfriends. That's right. And she helps turn the investigation as well. And she helps turn the investigation as well. Marcus, as we said, had called his ex-wife that night.

And the ex-wife was best friends with his ex-girlfriend. So this is a small town. So the next morning, the two women speak. And, you know, they find out Marcus is being held for questioning at the very least. He's in custody. And the ex-girlfriend, she decides on her own that she's going to call the sheriff. She knew the sheriff since she was a little girl. And she calls the sheriff with information that when she had sex with Marcus, Marcus liked to choke her. That was one of his fetishes. That was his thing. And she believed, she told the sheriff,

that he probably had done the same thing to Mary Ann, that he probably choked her when she was in the hot tub. Okay, let's hear a clip from that conversation with Marcus's ex-girlfriend that she had with law enforcement. How many times do you think you and Marcus had sex? Maybe a hundred times. How many times do you think choking was involved? I would say at least 30 times. The woman said the erotic choking was consensual, but one time, she says, Marcus went too far.

He choked me long enough to where I lost consciousness, and my body crumbled to the floor. He just left me there. So, Jonathan, how crucial was this tip to police in building their case against Marcus? I think this was a critical moment. This was a day into the investigation. You have a sheriff's department that's unraveling because of this mistake that was made that led one of the suspects to be alone and take his life. And now you have someone calling in that's providing what could be a motive for the only surviving suspect. And I think that immediately

directed and focused the minds of investigators. And then the next day, the medical examiner comes out with a report that supports this tip to some degree. She wrote that Marianne, and this is a direct quote, died as a result of asphyxia due to strangulation, the manner of death best classified as homicide, end quote. And so there is the manner of which Marianne, according to the medical examiner, died that night in the hot tub. Mm-hmm.

And so then, you know, they've got this tip, they've got the report, they figure we've got enough to charge Marcus. But here's the thing. I mean, a lot of people do a lot of things in bed, right? It doesn't always lead to murder. So I'm curious about how did the choking argument actually hold up at trial, Paul? Well, the DA and the sheriff's office investigated this claim. And Marcus had a lot of ex-girlfriends and they found at least six women who testified at trial that Marcus had choked them. Some of them admitted it was consensual, of course, and a couple of them he had choked them out where they had passed out. where they had passed out. And other women, I've listened to some of the tapes, if he tried to choke them and they didn't want to do that, they would tell him and they said he stopped. That was that. In fact, he said that he had tried it. I think he told us this, that he had tried it once on Marianne and Marianne didn't like it and he never did it again.

It wasn't the smoking gun that prosecutors thought that they had. Even the autopsy report left some wiggle room. A lot of wiggle room. And Marcus's defense team picked that apart. They noticed that the autopsy showed that the hyoid bone, and this is a bone near the neck that I learned during this investigation, was intact and not broken. And as I learned during all this with strangulation,

usually that bone, most times, it is shattered as a result of the power of that strangulation. The defense suggested because it was not shattered, whoever killed Marianne might have been either too old or too weak to break that bone, and who was nearly 70 years old, Clark. So the implication here being it wasn't someone as strong, young, and healthy as Marcus. It was Clark. And Paul, the thing about Marianne is, you know, she wasn't sort of the healthiest person either.

This is true. Marianne, for one thing, she had an enlarged heart and it's in the autopsy. And she was on drugs. And then you take into consideration all of those drinks, those drugs, and then the temperature of the hot tub, 107 degrees.

And for anybody that has a hot tub, I had just gotten a hot tub around the time of this story. You know that it can't really go over safely, 104 degrees. Which is uncomfortable sometimes. Which is uncomfortable. And most hot tubs actually prevent it from going over 104 degrees because it is dangerous.

You're not supposed to be in a hot tub that hot for more than 15 minutes. So who knows how long they were in there for. I think that could play a role. When I first heard this story, I thought, oh, that's got to be what this was, 107 degrees, whether or not that is what it was. I think the jury took note of that temperature, took note of the drugs and the alcohol, and that certainly played a big role in their verdict. So ultimately, though, of course, when it comes to Marcus and his freedom, it's the jury's opinion that matters. And you guys actually spoke to one juror and she went in completely convinced that Marcus had killed Marianne, but then she changed her mind. I want to play some of that reaction from the show. I felt like the prosecuting attorney, she painted a picture that Marcus Lillard was a womanizer. He was a narcissist, But they didn't prove that he was a killer.

What do you think happened to Mary Ann Shockley that night? I don't know what happened. That frustrated me because we don't know what happened to her. Or if she really was strangled, if she died from strangulation, who strangled her? So it sounds like you even question if there was a murder in the first place. I have my doubts about that. As she was sitting there and she was looking at all the evidence,

she understood that there were these previous girlfriends that had this experience with Marcus, but did that make him a killer? Did that prove what happened that night? Ultimately, she said no. There just wasn't enough evidence to match what he was charged with. And so that's why she changed her mind. The evidence, according to her, was not there. The jury deliberated for less than 40 minutes and ultimately found Marcus not guilty on all four charges of felony murder, aggravated assault,

involuntary manslaughter, and reckless conduct. In that moment, you know, he thought he was a And it's interesting because this goes back to why Marcus didn't call police initially or call 911. Because he was afraid that he would get in trouble for being on drugs, which was a violation of his probation. for being on drugs, which was a violation of his probation. And what happens here, he is found to have violated his probation for that 2015 drug conviction. And so he was remanded to prison. And Marcus is still in jail, as we talked about. Do we know how long he might remain there? Actually, his date of release is 2030.

Wow. And they think he and his family hopes he gets out earlier, but there's no guarantee of that. So this is, of course, an incredible case with lots of twists and turns. But we can't close out, of course, without talking about something that you had to do for this, Jonathan. Reporter involvement, you know, you got to go in full. You actually ate bugs for this story. Yeah, you know what I won't do for 48 hours. You know, I would be lying if I said this was my first time eating bugs. I've had bugs before. I think I've done a story on bugs before. I've certainly eaten them. And we did eat bugs because Marianne was a leader in ephemology, which is the eating of bugs as a protein source. Marianne was a leader in ephemology, which is the eating of bugs as a protein source. Marianne really believed that insects would help curb world hunger. And so one of her students was kind enough at our request to bring in, I believe they were crickets on brownies that we ate.

And they were crunchy. They didn't taste like cricket or chicken. It was all brownie, all crunch. We, in Marianne's way, honored her and paid tribute to her doing what she loved to do when she was alive. So it was a nice moment, crunchy moment, but a nice one. That's great. So true. Yeah. Well, once again, I thought it was a great, it's a great case. The way you both told it was fantastic. I found myself going back and forth and back and forth throughout the whole hour. Thank you so much, Paul.

Thank you so much, Jonathan. This is a really great conversation. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you for having us, Anne-Marie. Be sure to join us next Tuesday for another Postmortem. And if you are liking the show, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on the Amazon Music and Wondery app or with with a 48-hours-plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

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