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At a picnic area on the Garden State Parkway, Robert Marshall pulled over shortly after midnight to check a tire on his white Cadillac. He was walking to the rear of the car, he said, when he was struck on the head and knocked unconscious.
When he came to, Marshall said, he found his wife, Maria, dead in the front seat of the car, with two bullet wounds to her back. She had been shot with a .45-caliber automatic pistol.
Writer Joe McGinniss told the story of Maria Marshall’s murder in the 1989 true crime novel “Blind Faith,” which in 1990 was adapted into a TV miniseries.
Robert Marshall was found guilty of arranging his wife’s murder, and indicted alongside three men from Louisiana.
Although he was found not guilty, one of those men, 71-year-old Larry Thompson — currently in prison for an unrelated attempted murder and armed robbery — has admitted he was indeed the shooter.
Robert Marshall is currently serving a life sentence for the conviction. He was originally sentenced to death, but the penalty was reversed in 2004. In 2012, his request to have his sentence reduced to 30 years was denied. The 2001 book “Tunnel Vision: Trial & Error,” was Marshall’s response to “Blind Faith.”
Thompson’s revelation was forced by his family members, who in April recanted testimony they gave decades ago saying that he was in Louisiana at the time Marshall was shot.
The “Blind Faith” miniseries, which received an Emmy nomination, starred Dennis Farina, Robert Urich, Joanna Kerns and Johnny Galecki.
Despite his confession, Thompson — who was found not guilty of Marshall’s murder in 1986 — cannot be tried again for Marshall’s murder, because of the double jeopardy provision of the Constitution.
Agencies/Canadajournal
