Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  He told Terri that their relationship would have to end, but that he’d give her money to help her buy a car. Molly Stevens moved out of the house she’d been sharing with her husband and began to make plans for a future with Rob.

  “You’ll love her, boys,” he said once by long-distance telephone. “She’s just like Mom. We’ll buy a houseboat and we can all live together down here.”

  With no parents left, and no way to get a grip on the future, Roby, Chris and John drifted their separate ways through the remainder of the fall.

  When they were together, the boys didn’t talk about their father’s guilt or innocence—they talked about anything but. Since the one subject they did not discuss, however, was virtually the only one they thought about, it made for stilted conversation among them, with many long, awkward silences between the words.

  They themselves were all they had left, but they didn’t know how to deal with one another. They tried so hard to follow Sal Coccaro’s advice to respect each other’s feelings about their father that each of them found himself unable to be himself in the presence of the others. So, it was easier—or at least it seemed so—to stay apart as much as possible through the latter part of the fall.

  Chris stayed at Lehigh, where he had fewer awkward questions to answer and fewer also to put to himself. He studied and he swam and he tried to avoid conversations with his brothers about his father. When he did speak to Roby on the telephone it made them both uncomfortable because they were, for the time being, standing—if not on opposite sides—at least on separate shores of a gulf, with the great unanswered question of their father’s guilt or innocence looming between them.

  To Roby, who had made a decision to have absolute faith in his father no matter what, any sign of ambivalence seemed disloyal. So Roby found it easier just not to talk to Chris. He found himself, in fact, uncomfortable in the presence of anyone who had not made the same decision he had. This included not only Chris, but most of Toms River. Even, in time, Uncle Sal, who made it clear that he would always be there for Roby, but not for Rob. That split was not one that Roby, blindly faithful, was able to tolerate.

  As for John, at thirteen, what he had mostly was pain that no one seemed able to lessen.

  The fact was, as far as Toms River was concerned, the boys had become something of an embarrassment. Here was their father, who had murdered their mother (for the town’s mind was long since made up), still free to do what he pleased. That in itself was an affront to decency, no matter how many rumors had it that arrest was imminent.

  And here were these three heartsick boys, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge his guilt (for even Chris kept his uncertainty to himself).

  In the minds and hearts of country club members, that made it awfully difficult to feel all that sorry for the boys. Sure, it was terrible what had happened to them, but that still didn’t give them the right to shut their eyes to what was so obvious to everyone else.

  And so a feeling—however hard to believe this may seem—of something approaching resentment began to build toward the boys. If they were going to stand by their father, why, then, they’d just have to suffer the consequences.

  The biggest consequence was that they found themselves avoided, ignored, almost shunned by the very friends and neighbors who had always seemed closest to their parents.

  It was as if they’d become a messy loose end to the story and no one wanted to go near them to pick it up.

  For weeks, following the arrests of Myers, Grandshaw and L’Heureux, their lawyers had been trying to block the extradition of the three to New Jersey. By late November, however, the legal maneuvers were all used up and the three men were flown north.

  Suddenly, there they were, the three of them, “right here in River City,” as Toms River old-timers liked to say, being publicly arraigned before Ocean County Superior Court Judge William Huber on December 4. All were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, an offense that, under the new state death-penalty law, could result in execution by lethal injection.

  L’Heureux, forty-six, the former Caddo Parish deputy sheriff, was baby-faced, pale and grossly overweight. Standing six feet tall, he appeared to weigh at least 250.

  Next to him stood Grandshaw, swarthy and gaunt, a man with the hard, haunted eyes of an old hillbilly singer down on his luck.

  And there, at the end of the line, stood little Andrew Myers. He looked like just what he was: a hardware clerk drawing a small Air Force pension. Short, nervous, bespectacled, with something vaguely lizardlike in his appearance. While the others seemed impassive, Myers looked openly terrified—as if he’d gotten trapped in somebody else’s bad dream.

  After pleading not guilty to the charges, and seeing bail set at $1.5 million each, the three of them, handcuffed and shackled, were led from the courtroom—looking, incongruously, like three bewildered dwarfs in search of Snow White.

  But Snow White had been dead since September and the net around Rob Marshall was tightening fast.

  Part Two

  THE

  LAW

  12

  Bob Gladstone, lieutenant in charge of homicide at the Ocean County prosecutor’s office, was asleep at his home in Point Pleasant at 2:15 A.M. when he got a call telling him that a woman had been shot to death at the Oyster Creek picnic area on the Garden State Parkway.

  By the time he reached the chilly scene, forty-five minutes later, Rob Marshall, bleeding from a cut on his head, had already been taken to Community Memorial Hospital. Maria was still lying facedown on the front seat of the ivory Cadillac in a pool of blood.

  The first thing that struck Gladstone was how dark the site was, how thoroughly screened from the road. To reach it, a car entering from the northbound parkway would have to make a left at the end of the short entrance ramp, then, thirty feet further in, another left down a single lane of blacktop pavement lined with picnic tables and trash cans.

  The Marshall car had traveled about fifty feet down this blacktop strip. The lane ended about one hundred feet further on, at an unlit cinderblock restroom structure. It was so dark that even with the lights of the several patrol cars that had now convened at the scene, Gladstone twice banged his knee against the grilles of cars he did not see as he walked about.

  The evergreen growth on both sides of the lane was so thick (the picnic area, like that stretch of the parkway itself, had simply been hacked out of the Pine Barrens) that it was impossible to see and difficult even to hear traffic passing either north- or southbound on the parkway. It was no wonder, Gladstone thought, that there was a big sign posted at the entrance, warning, AREA CLOSED AFTER DARK, PARKING PROHIBITED.

  Approaching the ivory Eldorado, Gladstone saw immediately that the car’s right rear tire was completely flat. “What’s the story?” he asked the state police officer in charge at the scene.

  The officer read from a notebook by flashlight. The night was cold enough so that his breath made clouds in the darkness. “Robert O. Marshall, 884 Crest Ridge Drive, Toms River. Deceased is his wife, Maria P. Marshall. Mr. Marshall states that he and his wife had been to dinner at Harrah’s Marina in Atlantic City, leaving there approximately midnight. After passing through the Barnegat Toll Plaza, he felt a vibration in the car. Says he knew the picnic area was nearby as he used the parkway frequently. Pulled in here to check the tire. Says he exited his vehicle and discovered that the right rear tire was flat.

  “At that point, he observed a vehicle—dark sedan, possibly a Chrysler, pull into the area from the northbound parkway and stop perpendicular to his car, approximately thirty feet away. Says he ignored the vehicle and did not see or hear anyone exit from it.

  “Says he walked to his wife’s door, she opened it, and he advised her to—what’s this word?—to ‘pop’ the trunk. There was a button in the glove compartment, apparently, that opens the trunk.

  “Then he says as he began to turn from his wife he was struck on the head and knocked unconscious. Did not see his assailant, had not seen
or heard anyone approach. Does not know how long he was unconscious. When he regained consciousness he noted that his wife had been shot. He was unable to awaken her and he ran out into the roadway to flag down help.”

  “Anything else?” Gladstone asked.

  “Yeah. He says he’s missing two thousand in cash, money he won at the casino. Says it was taken from his right front pants pocket.”

  “Is that it?”

  “For now,” the trooper said. “Except I asked him one other thing. I asked him if he’d noticed anyone following him, you know, along the parkway. Or paying special attention to him or his wife down at Harrah’s. You know, in the casino.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said—I think I remember this exactly. He said, ‘People always watch Maria because she is such a strikingly beautiful woman.’ Then he started weeping. He was shivering and everything. We had to put a blanket around him, sit him down inside one of the patrol cars.”

  Gladstone looked around again at the dark, desolate and isolated location. “What is it,” he asked, “three miles down to the tollbooths?”

  “Just about,” the trooper said.

  “And what, another three up to the Roy Rogers?”

  “Maybe three point eight, maybe four.”

  Gladstone shook his head, then peered once more into the darkness, looking again at the nearly impenetrable barrier of forest that surrounded them. The high-speed, hectic New Jersey parkway world seemed not only miles but years away.

  “The guy says he pulled in here to change a flat?”

  “Yes, sir,” the trooper said.

  “And now he’s gone?”

  “At the hospital. He got whacked in the head, but it don’t look too bad. Might take a few stitches is all. Oh, it’s not in my notebook, but I can tell you one other thing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When he’s leaving, you know, to go up to the ER, he walks back to his car and he climbs in the passenger side and he reaches over and he, like, pats his wife on the ass. You know, just put his hand there, on the buttock. Like he’s saying goodbye.”

  Gladstone walked over to the ivory Eldorado and looked again at the body of Maria Marshall. From outside the car, it appeared as if she simply were sleeping, her body facedown across the two bucket seats, her shoes off, her head resting on her hands. She’d been shot in the back. There wasn’t much blood. She was still wearing several pieces of gold jewelry—a necklace, a bracelet, two or three rings. On the floor, just beneath where her two stockinged feet hung over the edge of the seat, was a single, long-stemmed red rose.

  “It’s goodbye, all right,” Gladstone said. “The long goodbye.”

  Gladstone then walked to the right rear of the car, got down on one knee, switched on a flashlight, and examined the tire. Right away, he saw a clean, straight cut, about an inch and a half long on the sidewall, just above where it rested on the ground.

  Gladstone moved his light around the tire. The edges were smooth and undamaged, showing no signs of the tire having been driven on when flat or low on air.

  He stood up. Gladstone was a jovial, soft-spoken, heavyset man in his late thirties who wore a neatly trimmed gray beard, read a lot of books, and looked more like a college professor than a homicide detective. He was, in fact, an exceptionally talented homicide detective. But one did not have to be Inspector Maigret to get the sense here that something was wrong.

  He called to the trooper. “Have somebody radio the hospital,” he said. “I don’t want that guy going anywhere. I’ve got a few questions for him.”

  When Danny O’Brien, the county homicide sergeant dispatched to the emergency room by Gladstone, arrived at 4:15 A.M., Rob was just on his way out, accompanied by Father Mulcahy, the priest from St. Joseph’s, whom he wanted to have by his side when he told Roby and John about their mother.

  Rob was wearing a blue blazer and tan slacks and had a fresh white bandage high on his forehead, near the edge of his deeply receding hairline, covering a cut that had been closed with five stitches. He did not appear to have been seriously injured and, to O’Brien, he did not seem traumatized either.

  “He didn’t look like a man whose wife had just been murdered,” O’Brien said later. “He looked like a man on his way to his yacht.”

  Because the murder had occurred on a state parkway, O’Brien could not take an official statement from Rob without a state trooper present. He did, however, ask Rob where he was going.

  “Home,” Rob said. “To break the tragic news to my sons.”

  O’Brien, with his mustache and his baleful eyes and his unreconstructed nineteenth-century Irish face, gave Rob a look in which the cynicism was palpable.

  “Sit tight once you get there,” he said. “We’ll be dropping by to say hello.”

  By 5 A.M., when O’Brien arrived at Crest Ridge Drive in the company of two state police officers, Rob had already been upstairs to see the boys. He was still dressed in blazer and slacks and now seemed, to O’Brien, ready to host a cocktail party. In fact, as the three men stepped into the front hall, the first thing Rob said to them was, “Gentlemen? Would you care for a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” O’Brien said. “Let’s take a ride.”

  Half an hour later, at the Bass River barracks, while waiting for the formal interview to begin, Rob lay down on a couch in a squad room and fell asleep. When the questioning did begin—and at this point, O’Brien said later, the atmosphere was of the neutral sort appropriate to a circumstance in which it had not yet been determined whether the individual being questioned was more likely victim or suspect—Rob repeated the story he’d given at the scene, adding, according to a state police report, that “the car did not seem right almost immediately and became progressively worse (seemed to have a sway) the farther north he went.”

  This made it seem all the more peculiar that he would have driven past numerous toll plazas and all-night service areas before pulling into such a secluded spot as Oyster Creek. Most peculiar of all, of course, was the one-and-a-half-inch slash in the tire which would have caused it to go immediately and totally flat, but at this point O’Brien chose not to mention that.

  “How long you been married?” O’Brien asked.

  “Twenty years,” Rob said.

  “A long time,” O’Brien said. “I just got divorced myself. You have any problems with the marriage?”

  “Well,” Rob said, “we were having some financial problems. My wife, quite frankly, was living beyond our means. We briefly tried some marriage counseling as a result of that. Also, to be perfectly candid, I should say that my wife suspected me of cheating on her.”

  “Were you?” O’Brien asked.

  “No. No, of course not,” Rob replied.

  O’Brien just sat there, staring at him. O’Brien didn’t like him. O’Brien didn’t like that whole, phony, country club set, and Rob Marshall seemed as obnoxious an example of it as O’Brien had ever encountered.

  “Did you kill her?” O’Brien asked.

  “No. No, of course I didn’t kill her,” Rob said, his voice displaying sudden indignation. “What sort of question is that?”

  “You have any reason to want her dead?” O’Brien asked.

  “Listen, Sergeant. You’d better get one thing straight right from the start. I loved my wife.”

  “That wasn’t my question,” O’Brien said. “My question was, you have any reason to want her dead?”

  This time, Rob didn’t answer right away. He looked at O’Brien, for the first time, with something other than disdain. “Am I a suspect?” he asked.

  “As much as anybody else who rode up or down the parkway last night,” O’Brien said. “Now, how about I give you a ride home?”

  As soon as he got in the car, Rob closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  Bob Gladstone was downtown in the county prosecutor’s office at nine o’clock in the morning, telling the county prosecutor what he knew—which was mostly that Rob Marshall’s story about the
flat tire didn’t make sense—when the phone rang.

  The caller was a private detective named Fred Grasso who had formerly been a state policeman. Gladstone knew Grasso. In Toms River, everybody knows everybody, especially if they work in law, law enforcement or real estate.

  “There’s a client of mine,” Grasso said, “in whom I think you’ve recently developed an interest.”

  “How recently?” Gladstone asked.

  “Oh, maybe one, two o’clock this morning.”

  “Marshall, Maria P.?”

  “That’s the lady. And, Bobby, she was one hell of a lady. Nicest woman you’d ever want to meet.”

  “Somebody didn’t think so.”

  “Yeah, and I can tell you who.”

  “Well, don’t be shy.”

  “She was the nicest lady, Bobby, I swear to God. Not a mean bone in her body.”

  “Who disagreed?”

  “Her husband.”

  “That would be Robert O. Marshall, eight eight four Crest Ridge Drive, Toms River?”

  “Rob-O himself. And what a horse’s ass he is. Bobby, this woman calls me last December, just before Christmas. She’d been talking to Tom Kenyon, the attorney. Said she suspected her husband was having an affair, wanted to talk to him about her options. Turns out Kenyon knows the broad involved in the affair, so he don’t want any part of it. But he has her call me, do some surveillance, get the goods, so whatever lawyer she winds up with will be holding a few face cards when the game starts.”

  “Hey, Fred? Why don’t you come on in, do this in person. And bring me whatever you’ve got.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Grasso said. “Listen, Bobby, this one is a nasty piece of business. There’s all kinds of wrinkles in this. But Mrs. Marshall, she was such a fine lady, Bobby. The kind of lady you wish you’d had her for a mother when you were a kid.”