S1: E16 – Murder on the Parkway, Part 1

A wealthy couple spent an evening gambling in Atlantic City, but found trouble on their way home.

It was a problem with this tire. He stopped at rest stop and then he was knocked out from behind, and his wife was shot twice in the back and died almost immediately.

The mystery over what happened led investigators to a telephone some fourteen hundred miles away.

They had no motive, they had no opportunity, they had no money trailed. They only had those punge calls.

Today, we're in New Jersey for part one of Murder on the Parkway. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American homicide and just a warning that what you're about to hear is graphic.

Please take care while listening.

When New Jersey legalized gambling in the late seventies, Atlantic City came roaring back to life.

By the eighties.

It was the East coast version of Las Vegas, and for locals like Robert and Maria Marshall, it was where they went for their weekly date night.

She liked Atlantic City, She'd liked going out to dinner there.

They had friends down there.

Jim Churchill investigated major crimes for the Ocean County Prosecutor's office.

They noted a chef down there where they went, and he would come out and make a big fuss over her and him.

Maria and Robert were a popular couple who many called Barbie and Ken. Maria was a stunning blonde. They were high school sweethearts. The two were a nineteen eighties version of a power couple.

I suppose it would be an ideal American family.

Robert was a successful insurance salesman. In nineteen eighty four, he sold more than fifty million dollars worth of insurance that afforded the Marshalls a lavish lifestyle filled with expensive cars, a boat, and a fancy house in the New Jersey suburb of Tom River.

They were members of the Thomsriver Country Club. Most of their social life surrounded that particular place. They had three boys who were very active in swimming and tennis and stuff like that.

At the country club.

Maria was known as the mom of the swim team. At every swim meet, you'd find her and Robert cheering on their kids in the stands.

The couple made family time a priority.

As a matter of fact, they used to take off every Friday to be with the family, and many people at the country club admired him for that and other things.

On the night of September sixth, nineteen eighty four, Robert and Maria had dinner and drinks in Atlantic City. Afterwards, they played some blackjack and called it a night just before midnight.

It was a school night, so she said she had to be home early because the kids had to get ready for school the next morning.

Maria always treated her boys to pancakes breakfast, and since it was a Thursday night, she had to be up early the next morning, so Robert cashed out his blackjack winnings and the two headed home.

It was a short drive, maybe an hour or so from Tom's River.

As their Cadillac headed north on the Garden State Parkway, Maria slid off her shoes and earrings and laid back in her seat to get a little sleep, but Robert was concerned with how his Cadillac was handling the road.

He was having trouble with the tire almost immediately when he left Atlantic City, but it got progressively worse as he came up the area.

It was a forty five mile drive from Atlantic City to Tom's River and Robert tried his best to make it all the way home, but the tire had other plans. The faster he drove, the more it would shimmy and weave.

He thought it might have been a slow leak, but he had to pull off and see what it was.

Robert's exit was still fifteen miles away when he decided to pull over at the Oyster Creek picnic area. Back in the nineteen eighties, these picnic areas along highways were popular for travelers who needed a place to stop, stretch their legs, and use the restroom.

The only problem with.

The Oyster Creek picnic area was that it was tucked among a bunch of trees.

It was very dark. There was no lights.

The only thing there is a cinder block building that has restrooms in it. The only light in that area is about three hundred yards down.

Where the rest area is.

That.

He pulled an air to check on the tire, went to the back, told his wife to pop the trunk from the glove compartment inside the cadillac. There's a switch you can hit and it pops the trunk in the back.

The light from the trunk lit up the nearly pitch black picnic area. As Robert bent down to examine the rear passenger tire, he noticed another car pull in behind them. Seconds later, someone hit Robert over the head and he fell to the ground.

Next thing you knew, he was waking up from being hit on the head.

Unconscious, Robert felt woozy, his head was pounding, and a warm stream of blood ran from his forehead and down his cheek. He managed to get back on his feet, put his hands into the pockets of his tan khaki.

Pants and found them empty.

His wallet and the two grand he won from playing blackjack were gone.

One thing ran through his mind.

Somebody must have followed him from Atlantic City and did this.

That's when Robert ran towards the front of his Cadillac to check on Maria.

Missus Marshall was found in the front seat of the car. She died of two gunshot wounds to the back that eventually hit her heart.

Robert's wife of twenty years was gone. He cried out into the dark ness for help, but there was no one around.

He then ran out in the parkway, flagged down a couple of people who were coming back from Atlantic City, and they got help.

My name is Dan mahoney and I was an investigator with the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Major Crime Unit.

In the early morning hours of September seventh, nineteen eighty four, Dan Mahoney responded to the picnic area.

We got to call that there was a homicide, robbery, homicide at that location and there was one victim. Missus Marshall had been shot twice. The two wounds were almost on top of each other. She wasn't giving any resistance, she wasn't fighting. She probably never knew what happened.

The killer executed Maria with a forty five. They took her purse, but her gold jewelry and wedding ring were.

Left untouched, which is odd.

So whoever did this seemed to be after their ca and they picked a perfect place for the crime.

There was no restaurants, gas stations, or anything like that. It was secluded. It was secluded. It was about I'd say two miles from the larger rest area.

Detectives found a pool of blood at the rear of the car where Robert Marshall fell after being hit on the head. The gash on his head required a handful of stitches at a local hospital. He was released around sunrise and immediately met with the police.

He wanted to know who who killed his wife.

He wanted this to get to the bottom of this tragedy.

The investigation took off from there.

We had a lot of questions and most of them had to be answered by mister Marshall. When did he plan to go to Atlantic City? Did he see anybody down there that he knew? Did he think he was being followed? Will you rob or you're missing anything.

Robert told the police that he left Atlantic City with two thousand dollars and explained how the tire was acting up on their way home.

And I guess when he got out to take a look at the tire he was attacked. The lost consciousness I believe.

Robert told police he remembered a dark colored sedan pulled in behind him at the rest stop, but.

He didn't think anything of it.

He thought the driver had either pulled in to take a nap or had stopped to help him with his tire.

I believe it was the passenger rear that was flat, and it looked like it suffered damage to the wall of the tire, not the tread like a nail would do or you picked up a piece of debris on the road cut the tire.

This was on the side of the tire.

By the end of the weekend, Robert had hired a top notch investigator from nearby Philadelphia and offered a ten thousand dollars reward for information related to his wife's murder.

To me, it's always been about the victim. The victim needs justice. I know you've heard it before, but they can't speak for themselves.

Well, Maria mar Shell could not talk.

The private investigator she had hired that summer would be the first to talk with detectives. The newspaper headline set it all. Woman slain at rest area on New Jersey Parkway. That woman was a forty two year old mother of three named Maria Marshall.

She was a wonderful, wonderful person that everybody loved. I mean everybody was shocked.

Maria's friend, Linda Fenwick, heard the tragic news from her son.

I remember standing by the refrigerator and he said, guess what happened. Mom.

Linda was shocked to hear her friend and carpool partner had been murdered.

Our children went to swim camp in the middle of Pennsylvania and we would drive back and forth. I would drive one way, she would drive the other way. There were meets several times a week, and we always went to their house afterwards because they always entertained the team.

The Marshalls would videotape the swim meets and then hosts the team for a viewing party, where Maria would serve pizza, which is why they called her the mom of the swim team.

Center of her world were her boys. There was no doubt about it. They were the center of her world. Everything revolved around them and swimming.

Nearly all of Tom's River showed up at Maria's funeral to support the three Marshall boys and Maria's husband, Robert.

He had a bandage on the back of his head and he was crying the whole way down the aisle, and everybody was sympathizing with him. It was very difficult for everybody that knew them. Well, you know that this could have happened to Maria because she was such a kind person. You know, nobody quite could get a handle on. Was it for money? Why would you do that?

A few days after the murder, investigators were still looking for suspects and a motive.

It just didn't didn't make sense.

Dan Mahoney investigated.

Well, if you're rob being, why incapacitate mister Marshall with a bump on the head and then shoot missus Marshall twice who was not resisting. And so I think the main thing was to speak to mister Marshall.

With Robert Marshall's help, law enforcement recreated the events of that night.

He told us that it was a celebration to go to Atlantic City. They had a dinner at a certain restaurant that he always went to he liked. He was driving back, felt that there was something wrong with the way the car was performing the way he could make it to the rest area. We pulled over just to take a look at it, and he suffered a glow.

To the head.

Investigators focused on the Marshall's rear tire and the picnic area Robert pulled into.

It really didn't make sense to me to stop there. If you haven't hire trouble. Anybody who didn't frequent Atlantic City would know that rest area and know it is dark, and you wouldn't get any light or any help or people that pull off the road to try to help you if you needed help, you would pulled off to decide and put your flashers on.

Robert said he had a family friend who was struck and killed while changing a tire on the shoulder, so he chose the picnic area because he believed it was the safest place to pull over.

But then there was the tire itself.

The inspection of the tire was sort of a turning point for us.

In the daylight, detectives noticed that the rear tire of Robert Marshall's Cadillac wasn't just an ordinary flat.

As the tire had been cut.

I think it was about an inch maybe an inch and a half on the tire wall the side of the tire.

Investigators believed the tire was intentionally slashed.

That sort of give us a direction to go, because you could not drive that car with that amount of damage to that tire for any length of time.

The tire was intentionally slashed. Did it happen before they left the casino or was something else going on here?

It was totally dark, so it didn't make sense to me to pull in there. It didn't make sense to me that did somebody happen to be in there? A crime of opportunity at that time in the morning, in that desolated area, it just didn't make sense.

And then investigators were surprised when a private detective that Maria Marshall hired came forward.

I spoke with him about two days after the homicide was discovered.

Lieutenant Jim Churchill learned Maria hired a PI to look into her husband's supposed extracurricular activities.

She hired a private investigator to follow Marshall on two separate occasions, once in the spring, once during the beginning of the summer of nineteen eighty four. During the course of the investigation, we found out that he was carrying on an affair with a woman who was in their social circle, and the private investigator reported that he had seen mister Marshall and had photographs of he and her together in the motel rooms.

A vice principal at the local high school named Saran crash Hour was the other woman in Robert Marshall's life.

I'm not sure how she found out, but I know that she hired a private investigator or follow him.

Maria's friend Linda Fenwick was shocked when she heard Robert had been cheating on Maria.

I mean, nobody would ever have suspected there was a problem in that marriage. The relationship between the two of them seemed perfect to me.

At the time.

Saran was a member of the same country club as the Marshalls.

In fact, they all played tennis together.

Sarann and her husband were tennis partners with Robert and Maria Marshall.

I didn't know Sir Anne. She was at an unhappy mo marriage, and apparently he was too.

The police learned Maria planned to confront Robert about the affair and seek a divorce, but she kept stalling.

After we heard from the private investigator that brought miss cross Hour into the arena here, we thought possibly maybe she might have had something to do with it, so we stopped growing a way to work.

Lieutenant Jim Churchill brought Soran in for questioning.

She wasn't happy about the relationship she had with Marshall, but she didn't apologize to us or give us a feeling she.

Was sorry for. She didn't like the idea it put herself in a position she was in.

Saran told the detectives she and Robert had been sleeping together for fourteen months. The two hat plans to rent a home together and leave their spouses. And the affair was no secret to Maria because she found a phone bill with a series of calls I'm Robert to the high school where Saran worked.

But I think she was most concerned. We thought she had some part in this.

A look into Robert Marshall's phone records confirmed what Saran told them, But something in those phone records jumped out.

Certain numbers caught our eye because they were to a hardware store in a place is called Boser City, which is right across the Red River from Shreveport.

Shreveport as in Shreveport, Louisiana. The police found more than thirty phone calls from Robert Marshall to that number. So why was Robert calling a hardware store some fourteen hundred miles away.

I asked that the local police department down there going to interview anybody who could give us information.

On Robert Marshall.

And they came back to me and said that a clerk who worked in the store, retired from the US Air Force, said that he met Marshall at a party during the beginning of the summer of nineteen eighty four.

Police learned that during that party in May of nineteen eighty four, the hardware store clerk named Bobby Cumber spent the night talking with Maria and Robert. He was even spotted dancing with Maria. And after that party is when all the phone calls began.

So we're trying to find out why these calls were made.

Most suspiciously, the final phone call between Robert Marshall and Bobby Cumber occurred just before Maria's murder, and investigators wanted to know more about their relationship between Bobby Cumber and the Marshalls.

So Cumber now became a person of interest.

Also, that night of dancing with Maria Marshall would forever change the life of Bobby Cumber. In the early morning hours of September seventh, nineteen eighty four, Maria Marshall was murdered at a rest stop along the Gordon State Parkway in New Jersey. Police learned her husband, Robert, was cheating on her. They also found a bunch of phone calls from Robert to a man named Bobby Cumber. Bobby worked at a hardware store in Louisiana.

Within two weeks of the murder, the police glombed onto the Louisiana connection by the phone calls.

Journalist Judy Peat covered the story.

There were thirty one calls between Marshall and Bobby Cumber, which is what the police found.

Almost immediately, forty seven year old Bobby Cumber answered the phone at that small Louisiana hardware store.

Bobby, at the time was living in Louisiana, even though Bobby was originally from New Jersey.

Of soft spoken Bobby confirmed to investigators that he met Robert Marshall during the summer of nineteen eighty four.

Bobby never knew Robert Marshall really. He decided to go visit some family in North Jersey where they still lived, and he ran into his high school girlfriend, who invited him to her daughter's graduation in Tom's River. She happened to be the next door neighbor of Robert Marshall.

At that party, Bobby Cumber noticed Robert was having a hard time getting a drink, so he flagged down the bartender. It sparked a conversation between Robert and Bobby that soon included Maria Marshall.

He was stunned about how pretty Maria Marshall was, and he was very flattered that a big shot in his mind like Robert Marshall would pay attention to him at all.

Robert Marshall was wealthy, well dressed, and handsome, whereas Bobby was a simple guy who enjoyed long drives in the country, nana splits, and bowling.

It was very flattered that a tie and jacket kind of guy would pay attention to him, because Bobby was not a ty and jacket.

Kind of guy.

At that party, Bobby Cummer and Robert and Maria Marshall spent that night talking. Bobby even hit the dance floor with Maria.

But only fast dances. The Marshalls danced all the slow dances.

Together, and that was the extent of his face time with Robert and Maria. Bobby told investigators he never saw the Marshals after that party, but he did talk with Robert by phone over the summer.

And Marshall asked Bobby if he could find him a private detective, somebody to trace his wife he thought she was cheating on him.

Robert Marshall, who was cheating on Maria, said Tom's River was a small town.

And people talked.

That's why he wanted a PI from out of town to look into Maria.

There is a series of phone calls to Cumber.

Lieutenant Jim Churchill investigated.

During one of the phone calls, he asks him, is there somebody you know that can do an investigation. I have a very sensitive investigation that I want him done. I don't trust anybody in my area to do it. And Cumber he tells him there's a gentleman that comes into the store all the time that he knows as a former sheriff's officer, Billy Wayne mckinnitt, and he knows that he does private investigations on the side.

Billy Wayne was a deputy sheriff in Louisiana who resigned in the late seventies after he was accused of stealing.

He then sold used.

Cars and did private detective work on the side.

So Cumber gets in touch with Billy Wayne and says, there's this guy in New Jersey wants an investigation.

Would be interested?

He said, well yeah, He said, it's going to cost him because I have to go up to New Jersey to do this, all the way from Louisiana.

Bobby Cumber said that was the extent of his dealings with Billy Wayne and Robert Marshall. Other than passing phone calls between the two and these messages they were always short and to the point, like tell him to call me.

He said. At the time, he had no idea really what was going on.

Judy Peet covered the story well.

The police hammered him, They were sure that he had something to do with it, and Bobby mostly cried and apparently shook through the entire forty eight hours. Police didn't believe that. After forty eight hours, they did arrest him for conspiracy.

Two weeks after Maria Marshall was shot to death along the Garden State Parkway, Bobby Cumber was charged with conspiracy to commit her murder.

At this time, we still didn't know who the shooter was. We didn't think it was Marshall. We didn't think it was Cumber. So it's either Billy Woyne Kennon or somebody that we didn't know.

As Bobby Cumbers sat in jail awaiting his trial and investigators were questioning Billy Wayne McKinnon, some mysterious news involving Robert Marshall's surfaced.

When we arrested Cumber. Not too long after that, Marshall Enn goes to a motel, the same hotel, I think, the same room that he and Saran would go to on the rendezvous.

Robert Marshall turned up at the same hotel room where he carried on his affair with Saran crash hour, but this time Robert was alone.

And while he's there, he takes a tape recorder and makes three separate tapes, and he puts him in an envelope, and on the back of it says only to be opened in the event of my death.

These envelopes with the label to be opened in the event of my death concerned the hotel staff.

It's sitting in a outgoing mailbox that people can use.

As they got ron.

The police responded and went to Robert's hotel room, but he didn't answer the door. They forced entry and found him passed out next to a pile of pills and a can of coke. They woke Robert Marshall up, and he said he put sleeping pills into his drink and planned to take his own life at the exact same time Maria had been murdered.

He said he put it in a coke and swirled it around with his finger and licked his finger a couple of times in an he fell immediately sleep and they took him to a local hospital down there.

So investigators got a search warrant to play those cassette tapes. They heard Robert freely admit to his affair with Saran. He also admitted to be massively in debt. Robert also said he believed he was a suspect in Maria's murder, but claimed he was innocent.

He said, I love Maria, I couldn't have done this that kind of stuff. There was another one in there that basically said that he was dealing with this private investigator from Louisiana, and he mentioned his name on the tape, Billy Wayne McKinnon, and he said he probably followed me and killed Maria because he had written me off for a lot of money.

Robert admitted to paint thousands of dollars to Billy Wayne McKinnon to investigate Maria, including eight hundred dollars on the night of her murder early.

Part of October. Billy Wayne McKinnon, he was arrested and we say we want to play something for you, so we play the Marshall tape.

You're about to hear a recreation of the tape that Robert Marshall labeled to be opened in the event of my death.

I felt compelled to hire somebody who I thought had a good reputation. This was the guy who came recommended by a fellow named Bob Cumber, supposed to be a very good investigator. He made two trips to New Jersey, one in June. After I wired him twenty five hundred dollars, he said he was going to be busy for a while, but if I wired him additional money, he'd come back. So on the second time, the evening Maria was killed, I gave him approximately eight hundred dollars. He said he

Billy Wayne McKinnon had a lot of explaining to do to investigators, and he quickly admitted that yes, he was in Atlantic City the night of Maria's murder, but he says he didn't kill Maria. He was merely the getaway driver.

Over a four day period, we talked with him retrace his steps, and we could not find anything that he told us.

That was a deliberate lie or a lie.

Billy Wayne McKinnon cooperated with investigators and identified the shooter as a friend.

Of his, a man named Larry Thompson.

Thompson's the kind of guy that does this. This is what he does. He kills for money. He won't kill for anything else but money.

Larry Thompson was a short order cook and his run ins with the law were well documented.

Thompson has fingers missing on his hand.

Dogs bid it off because he used to do dog fighting, and some dogs bid it off.

But Larry Thompson was no help to investigators.

Thompson pretty much refused to talk to us at all.

In December of nineteen eighty four, the police arrested and charged Larry Thompson with the murder of Maria Marshall. He was the third person charged, and there would be one more.

To the arrest of Larry Thompson. Robert Marshall was arrested on December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four.

The police charged Robert Marshall with being an accomplice to his wife's murder.

But how and why?

Sometimes it's a relief. This wasn't that way. The family believed in Robert Marshall and kept faith with him.

Did Robert Marshall have something to do with killing his wife. His family, including his children, emphatically said no.

It's a tough thing to wrap your head around that your father may have taken a life of your mother. So and that's what the tragedy of this thing was. Didn't have to be, didn't have to be.

I'm Sloan Glass. We'll learn who killed Maria Marshall, who didn't kill Maria Marshall, and how justice was ultimately served. That's next time on American Homicide in part two of Murder on the Parkway. You can contact the American Homicide Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of

Voice acting from Trey Morgan.

American Homicide theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Nouser Music Library provided by my Music. 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts