American Homicide - S1: E17 – Murder on the Parkway, Part 2

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Robert Marshall's lavish life hides a dark secret as his wife, Maria, is murdered at a rest stop. Initially thought to be a botched robbery, evidence suggests a deeper plot. Investigators uncover a sinister plan involving hired killers and a potential motive tied to Robert’s gambling and affair.  Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us: [e-mail]. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don't miss real-life amigos Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast Dos Amigos, where they have candid conversations with special guests about anything and everything. Join them in Wilmer's speak-easy for genuine moments, laughter, and a toast to good times. Remember here in this commercial, are you between the ages of 14 and 16 years old? Do you think you got it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and, you know, Saturday morning shows? Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Robert Marshall was an upscale problem gambler.

He and his wife, Maria had spent the evening in Atlantic city. They were on their way home. It was a problem with his tire. He stopped at a rest stop and his wife was shot twice in the back and died almost immediately. The police didn't think this was a robbery turned homicide. It was murder for hire. And they believe the person who hired someone to kill Maria Marshall was her husband. He had a girlfriend someone to kill Maria Marshall was her husband. He had a girlfriend and he wanted out and he wanted his wife to pay for it with her life. Today we're in New Jersey for the conclusion of Murder on the Parkway. I'm Sloane Glass and this is American Homicide.

Just a note that this episode contains some graphic content. Please take care while listening. Just a note that this episode contains some graphic content. Please take care while listening. On a late summer night in 1984, Maria Marshall was killed at a rest stop along the Garden State Parkway. The ordeal was originally believed to be a robbery turned homicide. New Jersey is no stranger to murder. We have a lot of mobsters in New Jersey, but this was different. It was murder for hire, which we didn't get that much of.

Journalist Judy Peet wrote about the story for a New Jersey newspaper. It got national attention. A book was written about it. A movie was done about it based on the book, and no story about Tom's River for about 25-30 years. Reem, without mentioning the spectacular murder in the headline, or at least in the first paragraph. Even the Tom's River Little League team found that out in 1998 when it won the Little League World Series.

It was huge, but they never really got their due because of the Marshall case. By Christmas of 1984, three men from Louisiana were charged with Maria's murder, along with her husband, Robert Marshall. Robert Marshall was an attractive man with a very attractive wife and three teenage sons. I think the youngest was about 12 or 13 at the time who were all championship swimmers and she was swim team mom of the year. They seemed to have an idyllic life. Think about it. Those three teenage boys already having to deal with their mother being murdered and then they had to process the fact that their father was charged with orchestrating her death. Robert Marshall sold insurance and IRAs and did very well. However, Marshall was in debt. He had a gambling problem.

He had just in the months before the murder upped his wife's life insurance to a million and a half. In fact, Robert had just taken an additional policy out on Maria the morning prior to her murder. According to prosecutors, Robert's motive additional policy out on Maria the morning prior to her murder. According to prosecutors, Robert's motive for killing his wife was to use her insurance money to pay off his debt and run away with his mistress. He had a girlfriend and he wanted out and he wanted his wife to pay for it with her life.

Prosecutors believe Robert Marshall put the plan in place with the help of three guys from Louisiana, Billy Wayne McKinnon, Larry Thompson, and a hardware clerk named Bobby Cumber. And they believe it all started with Bobby. He first met Bobby at a party. He was up in New Jersey visiting. And Marshall asked Bobby if he could find him a private detective.

Lieutenant Jim Churchill investigated, and he learned Bobby Cumber connected Robert Marshall to a PI named Billy Wayne McKinnon. McKinnon talks with Marshall. Marshall said, I have a very sensitive investigation that I want them done. I don't trust anybody in my area to do it. So McKinnon says, well, it'll cost you $5,000 for me to come up there and do this. So Marshall sends him a Western Union money order, which we have a copy of. That's when Robert Marshall took things a step further.

He says, well, basically, I want her done away with. McKinnon is somewhat taken back by that. And he says, well, you know, that can be done, but it's going to cost you a lot more than what you've already given me. So negotiate some sort of a deal. Now, according to Billy Wayne McKinnon, their deal to murder Maria amounted to over $80,000. McKinnon has no intention of doing this, but he has an intention of bleeding this guy for money as often as he can, because what's he going to say? He stole from me because I wanted to kill my wife. So McKinnon simply took Robert Marshall's money

and strung him along throughout the summer of 1984. And by the end of that summer, he turned the job over to his friend, Larry Thompson. Thompson's the kind of guy that does this and kind of horns in on this scam. The authorities in Louisiana know him. Whenever there's a homicide, he's the first guy they think of. McKinnon told investigators that he and Larry Thompson

drove up from Louisiana the day before Maria's murder. By then, Robert Marshall had already paid Billy Wayne McKinnon nearly $20,000 with the promise of more money to come after the job was done. He and Robert Marshall then came up with their plan. They'd make Maria's murder look like a robbery gone wrong at a rest stop off the Garden State Parkway. They tell him to pull in, park your car here, get out of the car, and then they will do

the rest. He said, I'll have $2,500 in my pocket. You can take that. Hit me over the head, but don't hit me hard enough. I'm going to be a vegetable. But here's where things get tricky for prosecutors. Thompson was the only person at the scene. Billy Wayne had dropped him off, and then he circled around

and came back north after the shooting had occurred and after Marshall had been hit on the head. So Billy Wayne McKinnon never actually saw Larry Thompson kill Maria. He dropped Larry off at the rest stop, drove away, and then returned after the murder. When he gets there, he sees Marshall laying by the rear tire and Thompson is running towards the car.

He gets in the front and says, take off. When he starts to take off, he says, wait a minute, I got to do something. He gets out of the car, runs back to the car, and Billy Wayne sees him take out his knife and stick it in the right rear tire. And he hears the air coming out. So the last thing to happen was Larry Thompson cutting the Marshall's rear tire. There was about a two inch cut in the sidewall. Perfect for somebody who had a fairly large knife and just stuck it in there and let it out. Billy Wayne McKinnon confirmed what investigators originally believed about the tire.

We had an air pump brought to the scene to inflate the tire and it wouldn't inflate it. The air was escaping as fast as it went in. So there's no way he could have driven from Atlantic City with a tire like that. Now if you remember, the suspicion over the tire was what made Robert Marshall a suspect early on in the investigation. He was arrested while he was Christmas shopping. Linda Fenwick was friends with Maria Marshall. It was complicated. It was a complicated situation. It was complicated. It was a complicated situation. Now picture this. It's been three months since Maria was killed. Her husband Robert is Christmas shopping for his three kids.

And that's when police go to arrest him. He even pleaded with the officers to allow him to first drop off the gifts. But they refused. I couldn't imagine anybody hurting Maria. That was my feeling. Least of all, him. I was torn between whether he was guilty or not. I didn't think he was. In fact, he said to me at the last time I saw him at a swim meet,

he said, don't believe everything you see in the paper. You know, I said, okay, don't believe it. It was just before he was arrested. But hindsight is 20-20. And looking back, she remembers Robert's demeanor changing after Maria's murder. At first, it was very hard for him to deal with. He acted like a grieving husband, certainly at the funeral, at the church. But yes, he did return to life as normal.

You know, going to swim meets and, you know, helping out at the house with the boys and whatnot. But what the boys went through was absolutely horrible. To see that your father is involved in a murder with your mother, it was terrible. I mean, as far as they were concerned, their father was innocent, he wasn't involved, and let's find out who is. Don't miss Real Life Amigos, Wilmer Valderrama, and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast,

Dos Amigos. Each episode is a party where the good friends get real with each other about life careers and Everything about everything and you're right there with them when I discovered acting it I've just found my calling but a lot of that was just because I wasn't I wasn't good at anything else You know join the two amigos straight from Wilmer speak easy for toast to good times Don't be surprised if some special guests and good friends drop in and always expect lively candid discussions, plenty of genuine moments and lots of laughter. you got it takes to what it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and you know morning Saturday morning shows listen to dos amigos as part of the my cultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or

wherever you get your podcasts Maria Marshall looked to have the ideal life. She was beautiful, she married her high school sweetheart, and they had three kids. They lived in the upper middle class township of Tom's River, New Jersey, where they belonged to the local country club. Robert was a successful insurance salesman, but he still seemed to have his priorities straight.

He would take Fridays off to spend time with his family. But according to prosecutors, it was all a facade. In early 1986, Robert Marshall sat at the defense table in a New Jersey courtroom. He was on trial for murdering his wife. Marshall was charged with conspiracy to commit first degree murder, which is a capital offense in New Jersey, or was at the time.

That's journalist Judy Peet. The other person in the case was a man named Larry Thompson. Thompson and Marshall were tried first. In an unusual move, prosecutors tried Robert Marshall and Larry Thompson together. Thompson was accused of pulling the trigger and shooting Maria Marshall, while Robert Marshall was accused of orchestrating the whole thing. The third man who would be tried separately is Billy Wayne McKinnon. He was accused of driving the getaway car. McKinnon revealed the whole thing, at least his version of the whole thing, in turn for

essentially getting a vastly reduced sentence. And this is important and likely the very reason prosecutors tried Robert Marshall and Larry Thompson together. Billy Wayne McKinnon struck a plea deal with prosecutors. He agreed to testify against the two men. Billy Wayne McKinnon was just going to fleece Marshall, at least that's what he testified. But he ended up hiring a murderer. Billy Wayne said he subcontracted the job and hired the co-defendant Larry Thompson to kill Maria. If you remember, the Louisiana hardware

store clerk named Bobby Cumber was the one who originally connected Robert Marshall to Billy Wade McKinnon. Although the police charged Bobby, those charges didn't stick. The judge actually dismissed the charges against Bobby. There's a lot more to what happened with Bobby Cumber, and we'll share the full story in a special bonus episode of American Homicide. But first, let's get into the case against Robert Marshall and Larry Thompson. I know there's a lot of names in this case, so let's recap. Robert Marshall was married to Maria Marshall.

He was cheating on her with a woman named Saran Crashhour. During the summer of 1984, Maria hired a P.I. to look into Robert's affair, while Robert hired a P.I. of his own named Billy Wayne McKinnon to look into Maria. According to Billy Wayne, Robert wanted him to murder Maria. But Billy Wayne McKinnon subcontracted that job to his friend Larry Thompson. And prosecutors made the risky decision to offer Billy Wayne McKinnon a plea deal in exchange for his testimony against Robert Marshall and Larry Thompson. He would be their star witness.

It really rested on Billy Wayne McKinnon. And Billy Wayne McKinnon was a former deputy sheriff turned private detective. This is not someone you'd expect to be a hitman. McKinnon was a former deputy sheriff-turned-private detective. This is not someone you'd expect to be a hitman. He testified that Robert Marshall hired him to kill Maria, but he said his conscience wouldn't allow him to be the shooter. He stalled for at least three or four months. McKinnon never expected to actually go through with it.

He was just trying to see how much he could fleece Robert Marshall for, and he'd taken 21,000 upfront. And eventually, Billy Wayne McKinnon offered some of that money to his friend, Larry Thompson. Authorities always believed that Larry was a stone cold killer. He was fairly slick that way. McKinnon said he and Robert Marshall planned out the murder the afternoon before. She could not be shot in the face.

He didn't want her beauty affected, so she was shot in the back. I mean, these were the kind of details that came out in court, and they were pretty damning. Billy Wayne McKinnon said he did not witness the shooting. He was there to drive the getaway car. But here was the problem for Billy Wayne McKinnon and prosecutors.

Larry Thompson used McKinnon's gun in the killing. Larry Thompson, this surprised everyone, but he brought up a preacher and family from Louisiana who testified that he was at the dentist and a revival meeting at the time of the murder. Larry Thompson denied killing Maria Marshall. He said he was at home in bed that night. His son, wife, and brother even backed up his alibi. Larry even went a step further and said he had never even been to Atlantic City.

And that was the risk prosecutors took with having Billy Wayne McKinnon as their star witness. So now, with a confused jury looking on, Robert Marshall was called to testify. He took the stand on his own behalf. Lieutenant Jim Churchill was in the courtroom. Basically what he says is that he didn't do it. He was a loving father and didn't do it and he wasn't in financial trouble. I had no problem paying bills. Robert Marshall testified he had simply hired Billy Wade McKinnon to investigate some missing gambling winnings. He said he later learned his wife, Maria,

had used that money to hire a detective to investigate his adultery. He was carrying on an affair with a Saran crash hour. So Robert Marshall confirmed his 14-month-long affair with Saran and other women. He also admitted that in the three months after his wife's murder, he vacationed with another woman in Florida, sent flowers to an ex-lover, and was involved with a third woman.

All that aside, he maintained he was not at all involved in Maria's murder. Basically, that was it. McKinnon, who testified against him, was lying. And the inference was that he did it, stole the money, and now he's making all this stuff up. By this point, the trial became a spectacle. In between his testimony, Robert Marshall would turn to his family, smile, and give them a thumbs up.

Marshall would have signs out of cardboard and turn around and show turn to his family, smile, and give them a thumbs up. Marshall would have signs at a cardboard and turn around and show it to his kids that says, I love you. And he'd do that so the press that was there would be able to see him flash in these card stones. The most explosive exchange during Robert Marshall's nine and a half hours on the stand happened during cross examination. Listen to what the prosecutor said

when he noticed Robert Marshall was wearing his wedding ring. So the prosecutor said, hold up your left hand. Is that a wedding ring on there? He said, yeah. That signifies your devotion to your wife, your deceased wife, and your devotion and love for her, is that right? You say, but can you tell a jury why she's still on a box at the funeral home?

Nobody came and picked up the ashes of Maria Marshall at the funeral home. That's heartbreaking. Maria Marshall was cremated in mid-September, and Robert was arrested in December. At the time of the trial, she was still on a shelf in the funeral because nobody picked her up. Robert Marshall was stunned. And he held his hand up there for like five minutes.

He didn't know what to do. When he finally found the words to respond, he said he and his children had planned to bury Maria in Florida over the Christmas holiday. But Robert Marshall was arrested a week before Christmas. It was something I'd never seen like that in a courtroom before. The seasoned insurance salesman hoped the jury would ignore the mountain of evidence against him and made one last attempt to sway the jury. His boys testified on his behalf. One of his sons explained that their mother wanted to be buried under a palm tree.

To the prosecutor's credit, he went easy on the children who testified, but he unloaded on Robert Marshall during closing arguments. They said what he did to those boys, and he said to put him on a stand like that and you saw it They didn't want to be there But he made him take the stand and because of that there's a special place in hell for him

Don't miss real-life amigos Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast dos amigos Each episode is a party where the good friends get real with each other about life, careers, and everything about everything. And you're right there with them. When I discovered acting, I've just found my calling. But a lot of that was just because I wasn't good at anything else, you know?

Join the two amigos straight from Wilmer's Speakeasy for a toast to good times. Don't be surprised if some special guests and good friends drop in and always expect lively candid discussions, plenty of genuine moments and lots of laughter. Remember here in this commercial, are you between the ages of 16? What is it? Oh man. Are you between the ages of 14 and 16 years old?

Do you think you got it takes to what it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and you know, Saturday morning shows. Listen to Dos Amigos as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's not always a given that the accused takes the witness stand in his own defense, especially in a murder trial. But Robert Marshall did. He testified that he was hit over the head while changing a flat tire and woke up to

find his beloved wife Maria shot to death in the front seat of their car. That particular murder, because of the nature of it, who the people were and so on, sent a lot of shockwaves through town. Tom Kelleher is the former mayor of Tom's River. Maria had been shot, would have looked like a.45 automatic. And they said that Marshall was hit over the head, apparently with the same.45. I have to tell you that I thought,

why would they shoot a petite blonde lady who was asleep anyway and wasn't really a threat to them and only hit Marshall over the head? That raised a question right off the bat in my mind. After Robert's six-week trial, the Court of Public Opinion in Tom's River had pretty much convicted him. The evidence was so overwhelming against Marshall. There were only one or two people that really went to bat for him and everybody else was just

kind of waiting for the other shooter drop. As the case went to the jury, Robert Marshall, who had been holding up signs to his children that said, I love you, passed another message to his youngest son. When everybody in the world who knew anything about the case figured that jury's only going to be out 10 minutes and convict this guy, he kept telling his son, listen, you go home, get the house ready for a big celebration tonight. And then when it's over, you and I are going to go to Florida, get a boat and fish and everything. But Robert Marshall would never take his children fishing in Florida.

The jury wasn't out very long at all. And the jury found him guilty. He was convicted. Jim Churchill was in the courtroom when Robert Marshall heard the verdict. What happened was after the verdict came in, he fainted and they took him to a local hospital down there Can you even imagine? Even after Robert Marshall was hauled off on a stretcher the jury still had to rule on the co-defendant Larry Thompson The same jury that finds Marshall guilty finds Thompson not guilty

That's right. The jury acquitted Larry Thompson. We spent as much time, I think, trying to convict Larry Thompson than we did Robert Marshall. And for some reason or other, they just didn't buy it. It's unbelievable. The jury believed Larry Thompson's defense, that he was home in Louisiana on the day of the murder. That he was at a dentist office with his son having some work done on his child's mouth. So Larry Thompson walked away a free man. A member of the jury was polled

and said you had so much information, so much stuff against Marshall. And the judge kept talking about reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt. So either the system works or it doesn't work. And it stays with you, you know. An infamous picture ran in the local newspaper. Larry Thompson is seen climbing into his beat-up pickup truck, going off to leave, while Robert Marshall is laying on a stretcher in the background. But there's an even more important photo. A picture of Maria Marshall that Lieutenant

Churchill had pinned to his bulletin board at work. He put it there as a reminder that the case was not closed. I mean, you've been there enough. Sure, you get involved in cases, but you do the best you can. You collect investigation. There might be something you might overlook, but it's certainly not on purpose. With Larry Thompson's acquittal, the attention again returned to Robert Marshall. After recovering from his fainting spell, he returned to the courtroom hours later.

And the judge ordered him back because the hospital said there's no reason why he shouldn't go back. That's when Robert Marshall heard his sentence. Marshall got the death penalty. You know, I expected him to serve some time, but I was surprised at the death penalty. That's Maria's friend, Linda Fenwick. He wrote me a couple of letters early on when he was in prison telling me that he didn't do it and that, you know, he missed Maria and he missed the boys and, you know, that

kind of thing. Robert Marshall spent 18 years on death row before an appeals judge ruled that his lawyer misrepresented him during the death penalty phase of his trial. So in 2006, he was resentenced and had the opportunity to address the court. Here he is speaking. I know I've made some terrible mistakes, mistakes which have caused a lot of suffering from my family. I accept full responsibility that my actions led to her death. I'm deeply sorry for my actions, but I can't change the past. However, I can change the future. I'll be 75 years old when my 30-year

sentence is up, and I hope and pray I have a chance to spend what's left of my life with my sons and grandchildren. By this time Robert's three children were in their 30s. I mean he actually thought he was going to you know that these appeals were going to work but of course they didn't. The judge re-sentenced Robert Marshall to life in prison with the possibility of parole. All three of them supported him until it was clear that he had some involvement, but the younger one supported him till his death. And Robert Marshall was right about one thing.

The people of Tom's River did talk, and they talked about this case and the murder of Maria Marshall for years. Yes, it had an impact on a lot of people. It's a case that's still talked about in town. I mean, everybody was aware of every detail of it and they still talk about it. The alleged triggerman was Larry Thompson, who was acquitted. But his story doesn't end there.

After being exonerated in the Marshall case, Larry Thompson was later convicted of armed robbery and the attempted murder of a Louisiana policeman. That landed him a long prison sentence and a lot of time to think about his past. In 2014, I got a phone call saying, Larry wants to talk with you. So three decades after Lieutenant Jim Churchill had investigated Maria Marshall's murder, he gets on a plane and flies to Louisiana to visit Larry Thompson in prison. Larry's waiting outside the warden's office for me. And this is the first time I've talked to him ever. The two sit face to face. That's when Lieutenant Churchill turned on his tape recorder.

And I said, this is going to be short and sweet. Did you fire those shots that killed Maria Marshall? Yes, I did. Those people testified to you, including your son. They were either mistaken or deliberate lions on your behalf. Is that right? Yes. Larry Thompson admitted that he fabricated his alibi and he killed Maria Marshall. But even with Larry's confession, double jeopardy laws prevented him from being retried. Regardless, it was the truth, something Lieutenant Churchill had never stopped looking for.

I did it mostly for Robbie. Robbie Marshall was Robert and Maria's oldest son. He had always believed his father murdered his mother. Robbie wasn't too happy with the fact that the man we charged with his mother's actual murder was found not guilty. He thought that it was because we didn't do enough work on it. With this information, Lieutenant Churchill got in touch with Robbie's brother, Chris.

And I called him, I said, look I got some closure for you here. So I told him. And he thanked me very much. And I said, do me a favor, call your brothers and tell them, you know, I just told you. And it was the last time he heard from any of the Marshall children. The fact that there are three young boys who, you know, were left without a mother and then without a father. And it's amazing to me that they've done as well as they have.

The Marshall children would receive shocking news in 2015. A year after Larry Thompson's confession, Robbie and his siblings were preparing for the possibility of their father getting out of prison. Robert Marshall was up for parole. And just before his parole hearing, Robert suffered was up for parole. And just before his parole hearing, Robert suffered a stroke and died. He was 75 years old.

For Lieutenant Churchill, he felt like the Marshall case was finally closed. And that meant he could remove the photo of Maria that hung above his desk. I took it off the bulletin board, put it back in a file, and that's where it is among the 19 file boxes in the archives. It's been over 40 years since Maria Marshall was killed along the Garden State Parkway and nearly a decade since Robert Marshall died in prison.

And this is still the one case that sticks with the lieutenant. Not because it's the hardest case we ever had, but it's the one that's most memorable. I feel I know more about him and her and Larry Thompson and the Kinnon than I do some of my relatives. And when he says him, he's referring to Robert Marshall. And to have him do something like what he did, and he had every opportunity to get out of it, but he was so desperate, desperate to get out of debt,

desperate to get out of a marriage, desperate to maintain his notoriety in the community, that trumped everything. Next time on American Homicide. I was interviewing a judge, and as I was walking out the door, he actually said, you know, there's one case that always bothered me.

Journalist Judy Peet wrote extensively about one person in this story. It sort of stunned me because sitting judges under New Jersey law are not allowed to discuss any case they've had. I'm Sloane Glass. In a special bonus episode, we'll talk about Bobby Cumber, the man at the hardware store who

passed messages between Robert Marshall and Billy Wade McKinnon. The Bobby Cumber angle was small. He was the little guy that nobody really paid attention to. He was the person so few paid attention to. And yet, the part of this case I think is worthy of so much more attention. The way he was treated was criminal. Almost every step of the way. That's next time on American Homicide.

You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at americanhomicidepodatgmail.com. That's americanhomicidepodatgmail.com. That's americanhomicidepod at gmail.com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me, Sloane Glass, and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional writing by Ben Federman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is Kristen Malkuri. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinchak.

Audio editing, mixing, and mastering by Nico Oruka. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser, music library provided by MyMusic. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please rate and review American Homicide. Your five-star review goes a long way towards helping others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dos Amigos, where they have candid conversations with special guests about anything and everything. Join them in Wilmer's Speak Easy for genuine moments, laughter and a toast to good times.

Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.