December 26, 2023 • 62 mins
This is the story of a murderous stripper and Vegas showgirl, Marjorie Orbin.
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This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Editorial Direction by Nora Batelle
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth, and Jacob Bronstein
Produced by Antonio Enriquez
Edited and directed by Mark Francis
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Executive Produced by Scott Waxman, Mark Francis, and Jacob Bronstein
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. It was a hot Arizona
(00:34):
afternoon in two thousand and four. A man named Robert
Ames walked out of a gas station with a bud
light and cut across the desert to get back to
the construction site where he'd been sleeping. He noticed a
futon about fifty feet off the road, so he sat
down on it to finish his smoke. Then he noticed
(00:57):
a piece of carpet wrapped around a fifty five gallon
rubber made tub. He thought it might have something in
it he could pawn, so he stuck his cigarette in
the corner of his mouth and he used a piece
of broken beer bottle to cut the tape around the container.
When he popped, the lid of foul odor seeped out.
(01:20):
As he pulled away the black trash bags and plastic sheeting,
the smell got so strong he gagged as soon as
he realized what he was looking at. He dropped everything,
ran back to the gas station and called emergency services.
He told them, I found a dead body or at
(01:44):
least parts of a dead body. Robert was still shaken
by his find a few hours later when detective David
Barnes questioned him. I saw the belt buckle and the
jeans and the belly. It was Harry, Ames, said, his
(02:06):
voice trembling. That's how I realized it was human, because
there was a belly button. Robert was never a suspect
(02:30):
of this crime. Everything at the scene corroborated his story,
a piece of broken bottle, a half drunk bud light,
and the partly smoked cigarette that had fallen from his
mouth when he gasped in shruck. That meant the police
(02:50):
had no suspects, they had no name for their victim,
and they had no idea why anyone would or how
they even could commit such a brutal murder. Welcome to
the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.
(03:14):
I'm a writer of true crime. I'm constantly reading about crime,
but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements
like the blood and the gore. Despite the hellscape I
just told you about, I'm more interested in the people
behind these stories and what we can learn about society
(03:37):
by looking at their experiences. That's what I explore here.
Every week I dig into crimes where women aren't just victims.
They might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner,
the criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you
(04:01):
probably already know, women can do anything. Today's episode we're
calling like a hot knife through butter. It's about the
murder of good guy Jay Orban. It's also about his wife,
the Vegas showgirl and stripper known by her stage name
(04:25):
Marjorie Marquis More after the Break. Here's the problem with
(04:48):
being a good person. You expect other people to be
good too. Good people find it especially difficult to accept
that someone they care about is bad. It's wild how
a good person will equivocate on behalf of a bad one.
(05:13):
For example, how many times has one of your friends
made an excuse for their partner, like, Oh, they just
lied to me because they thought they'd lose me if
they told me the truth. Bitch, are you hearing yourself?
They should have been lost you anyway, to find point
(05:38):
another problem, it doesn't get easier to accept when they
tell you that they're bad, and it doesn't always get
easier to accept when they show you how bad they are,
either because you don't want it to be true. Moral
(06:00):
of this story is best summed up by the poet
Maya Angelou. She said, when people show you who they are,
believe them the first time. I'd like to add to that,
if someone shows you they're bad, get out of there.
(06:22):
And of course it's never easy to get out, and
you normally can't even see the situation for yourself. You
usually need a very brave friend or mom to frame
out their badness for you. But good friends don't want
(06:43):
to shit talk someone you love, so it could take
a long time for the truth to reveal itself. Meanwhile,
you're just hanging out with a bad person thinking this
is normal. I think the second moral of this story
(07:05):
can be summed up succinctly by my Jeddo, my grandfather.
I think it might be loosely translated from an old
Arabic idiom. It goes like this, When you hang around shit,
you get shitited on you. Jay Orban was a good
(07:33):
dude who liked beautiful women. More specifically, he liked to
rescue beautiful women. Jay didn't look rich, he wasn't flashy
or especially handsome. He looked like a nice guy. He
wasn't the one that the dancers at Bourbon Street Circus,
(07:56):
Babes Cabaret, and Skin Cabaret with generally flocked to. Not
at first. Only after he became a regular at these
Phoenix strip clubs would they recognize that he was wealthy
and he was generous. The bartenders, managers, and even a
(08:20):
lot of the patrons knew Jay. He met a lot
of his friends at strip joints. He also met a
lot of his girlfriends there. Jay's friend Mario put it
this way, there were so many girlfriends I can't remember
(08:40):
all their names. Jay heard about the dancer's debts, divorces,
and abusive relationships, and he wanted to help them out.
So he did. He helped his girlfriends out financially. He'd
let them move in while they got on their feet,
(09:00):
and then they'd inevitably break up a few months later.
There were definitely some transactional relationships, and Jay seemed mostly
alright with that. He didn't seem to hold any hard
feelings towards anyone when his relationships went out. Something else
(09:21):
his friend Mario shared was this, Jay wasn't so much
as a good guy who went and picked up strippers
to keep a scorecard. Everyone was just friends. The whole
arrangement felt normal to Jay, if we want to go
meta with this interpretation, whether or not he totally understood this.
(09:48):
Jay's relationships were as capitalist as his actual business. Jay
had a wholesale Native American jewelry business. He was based
in Phoenix, Arizona, but he dealt all across the country,
driving the truck himself, staying in Lakinta Inns when he
(10:08):
traveled overnight wearing jeans and boots. He was rich, but
he really only stunted in the strip club and at
the Bourbon Street Circus. He met Marjorie Marquis, the quote
unquote love of his life. When they met in nineteen
(10:38):
eighty five. Marjorie was quite a smoke show. She always
had been. In her Orlando High school, she did all
the artistic athletic things. She was a ballet dancer and
then she was a lead majorrette. And while she was
(10:58):
a full time student and waiting tables, she also danced
at a dinner theater on the weekends. Despite her undeniable
beauty and fitness, she didn't have many high school boyfriends.
She preferred to date older men also and bear with
(11:23):
me here for this transition. Marjorie had a routine gynecological
visit in her teenage years where she was given the
diagnosis of endometriosis. For listeners who are not familiar with endometriosis,
it sucks. Basically, the tissue that normally lines the uterus,
(11:46):
the tissue that women shed during menstruation, grows in other areas.
It causes painful menstruation, irregular bleeding, and in Marjorie's case,
lots of scarring. The doctor told her that she was infertile.
(12:09):
For people who want to give birth, that's a hard
truth to accept. Marjorie was one of them. She started
living as though she was the only person she'd ever
be responsible for. That meant if she liked someone, she
(12:32):
jumped into that relationship with both feet full weight. Author
Shanna Hogan, who wrote the excellent book Dancing with Death
on this case, aptly describe those relationships this way. They
were quote always brief and often chaotic. He was nineteen
(13:01):
when she married Mitchell Marquis. His big legacy in her
life was that she kept using his last name Marquis
because she liked how it sounded. It is pretty, but
they were only together for a year and a half.
There was quickly a second husband, and then, before the
(13:25):
divorce was finalized, a new guy in the picture, Luke Forrest.
Luke was a part time singer who sounded like the
famous performer Lou Rawls and I'm going to slow down
here a bit. Because of this, Luke insisted on quote
(13:46):
managing their finances. That meant that Marjorie had to hand
over her entire paycheck to him the moment she got it. Y'all,
they weren't even married yet, and he was doing this unacceptable.
I mean, it's always wise for women to have some
(14:08):
money of their own in case of emergency, or like
the getaway bag that moore a Rose stashed for her
children on Shit's Creek. Even when you are married, it's
always a good idea to have something that's all yours
in case of emergency. It doesn't have to be a secret,
(14:29):
but if your partner thinks they're entitled to everything, danger
About a year after Luke and Marjorie started dating, her
car got towed for nonpayment. Luke had been using her
(14:54):
paycheck to gamble and had apparently neglected the car payments.
She was pissed she left him, He apologized, She took
him back tail as old as time. They'd been together,
right around a year when Luke suggested Marjorie pick up
(15:18):
some new work to help support them. She'd been a
dancer and a choreographer since her days as a high
school ballerina. Why not do the grown up version. That's
when she started stripping. Marjorie would keep stripping from then on,
(15:41):
and to paraphrase the Godfather, it don't make any difference
to me what someone does for a living, but your
business is a little dangerous, or at least it could
lead to dangerous things. For now, though there were other
(16:03):
more immediate dangers, Luke started pushing to bring another woman
into their relationship. It made Marjorie miserable, but she didn't
actually leave him. She didn't have the means to strike
out on her own. Then she learned that he'd gambled
(16:26):
away her eight thousand dollars in savings. Staying with him
was starting to look more financially risky than literally starting
from scratch without a dollar to her name, So Marjorie
packed up and left to which I say yes? On
(16:50):
her way back home to Florida. Though Marjorie's car broke
down in Phoenix. She had no money for the part
to fix it, and no one to ask for it.
While she was hoofing it to a nearby hotel, she
passed the Bourbon Street Circus strip club. Inspiration struck. She
(17:12):
got a job there, and she started pulling in five
hundred to six hundred dollars a night in the eighties.
That's where she met Jay Orbin for the first time.
He slapped one hundred dollars bill on the bar and
offered to buy her a drink. Marjorie smiled at the
chance to get off her high heels, and Jay was
(17:36):
immediately smitten. Marjorie was not smitten with his thinning hair,
belly boots, tight jeans, and belt buckle. Jay looked, she said,
like a used car salesman. But he was nice and charming,
(18:02):
and he always paid for her company. After a while,
she told him about her husband and the chaos she'd
been through. Shanna Hogan's book Dancing with Death notes that
Marjorie already knew about Jay from another dancer. He was,
(18:22):
as she puts it, known to find girls who were
in trouble or had a problem with an abusive guy,
and offered to help them out financially. They would usually
be his girlfriend for a few days. Before long, Marjorie
had moved into Jay's spare bedroom. She said he never
(18:46):
gave her cash and she never asked for it. Meanwhile,
she became pretty fond of him. They went on a
date dinner and dancing. Then they kissed and things related
to intimacy. That's when they faltered. When she told Jay
(19:08):
she was moving back to Florida, he asked her to stay.
I love you, He told her we can build a
life together. Marjorie couldn't set Although as sweet and secure
as Jay was, she wanted something more like the excitement
(19:30):
she felt with her more dangerous lovers. So she went
back to Luke for a while, but this time she
didn't stay long. Eventually, she did make her way back
(19:52):
to Florida and into the classy strip joints of local
owner Michael J. Peter, where she started doing more behind
the scenes work as well as dancing. She helped develop
the Platinum Doll Strip Show, a troop that saw some
real success. She even started making their costumes to cut costs,
(20:16):
and they did well. They booked venues across the country,
Marjorie was actually in Motley Cruez Girls Girls Girls music video,
but she didn't stick to this girl boss approach for
very long. While on tour, she met her next husband, Ronald.
(20:37):
Ronald owned his own excavating business in New Jersey, and
he changed the name to Marco, as in Marjorie's company.
He even brought her to his attorney's office to sign
the company into her name. She thought it was very
sweet at the time because Ronald swept Marjorie off her feet,
(21:02):
He bought her gowns, fur jewelry, and he'd take her
in his Ferrari into Manhattan for Broadway shows. All of
this so far is very cool on the surface, but
the thing is in New Jersey, where Ronald's business was,
(21:22):
companies were required to fulfill a certain minority quota. With
Marjorie listed as the head of the company, Marco was
now a certified women's business, so it could overbid other
contractors and still win jobs. So that's gross. I mean,
(21:46):
it would be different if Marjorie was a real owner.
That'd be dope. But unfortunately there's even more to why
I think this identity you politics underhanded move is gross.
In nineteen eighty nine, the new bookkeeper, Gilda, asked Marjorie
some important questions. The main one was, did Ronald tell
(22:08):
you why he put the company in your name? He hadn't.
To sum it up, Ronald wasn't paying any taxes on
the business. By the time he and Marjorie divorced in
nineteen eighty nine, he owed tens of thousands of dollars
(22:31):
to internal revenue, or rather Marjorie did a few months later,
(22:52):
Marjorie fled Ronald and his debt for Florida and Michael J.
Peters Clubs. This time she dated the wealthy strip club
owner Michael, but the relationship fell apart thanks to his
playboy ways. Marjorie once again moved on. She was traveling
(23:15):
from geg to gig Out West again when she got
a phone call. Remember me, asked the voice on the
other end, Jay, Jay, Orbin, I have been looking for
you for ten years. It was true. He had All
along his route in and out of many strip joints
(23:37):
he frequented, he always scanned the names for Marjorie Marquis.
He'd finally found her face on the billboard for Las
Vegas Club Paradise Dancers, and when he looked her up
in the Vegas phone Book. There she was. Marjorie did
(23:59):
remember Jay, and by now the qualities of sweet and
secure were starting to sound a lot more appealing. She
met up with him at the Rio Bar, and when
Jay returned to Phoenix, they talked on the phone for
hours every night. Still, the way he finally really won
(24:21):
her over was just as transactional as the way he'd
won over his past girlfriends. Because he knew about her endometriosis,
he told her he'd pursue fertility treatments with her to
have a child together. She counteroffered by saying they'd try
(24:42):
the treatments for two years and if that didn't work,
she would leave. And Jay said, Okay. The thing about
Jay is it just doesn't seem like he ever did
anything Dishonest. Business was kind of his language, but he
(25:03):
conducted his business Jayhawk Trader, in an understanding and generous way.
He was known for giving his customers extra time to
pay up, or sometimes waving their debts completely. Marjorie must
have sensed that he was an actually good guy, and
she'd always wanted a child. It was time to put
(25:27):
her thrilling, sometimes dangerous past behind her. She married Jay
at the Little White Wedding Chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard
just a few months later, on July twenty second, nineteen
ninety five. As a fun little aside, that place is
(25:49):
really cute. Famous couples like Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow,
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and Judy Garland and somebody
got married there too. Anyway, fertility treatments are no joke
even now. They are rough, physically painful, emotionally racking. You
(26:13):
have daily injections which cause wild mood swings and physical pain,
not to mention the results can be emotionally devastating, and
it's very expensive. In the nineteen nineties, when Marjorie started them,
the situation was worse. Marjorie had the daily injections, which
(26:37):
caused her ovaries to swell, leaving her nauseated and hot flashing.
She also underwent seven different surgeries for egg retrieval. Twice
she hyper stimulated and had to be rushed to the
er for doctors to drain the fluid from her abdomen.
Jay spent over sixty thousand dollars on the treatments. He
(27:02):
also attended to her every need. He was great, and
he was great when he had to be great, which,
as we know from Lizzo, is very uncommon. Marjorie realized
what a huge git she had on her hands. After
several failures to conceive, Marjorie said, I'm sure we're going
(27:27):
to get pregnant, and if we don't, it doesn't matter.
I'll stay. But finally they did conceive, and on August
twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six, Marjorie gave birth to a
little boy. Both parents doated on their son, Noah. Life
(27:48):
was good. Marjorie, after a long difficult road, had a
financially stable, comfortable home and the miracle child she had
been told was impossible when she was just a teenager.
She'd made it. That's when her bank account was seized
(28:10):
and Marjorie realized she was fifty thousand dollars in debt
to the irs. Yep, her former husband's debtors came back
to collect. Marjorie had already told Jay about the issues
with Ronald, but she'd also explained that in their divorce,
she'd signed the company back into his name. She thought
(28:34):
that meant she was out of the whole mess. When
they went to Jay's attorney, the next day, they learned
that was not the case, and even worse, because Jay
and Marjorie were married, Jay would also be held responsible
(28:55):
for the debt. Was at a loss. So Jay took
control of the situation. He got them a divorce and
took control of all their family assets. If you're thinking
what I was thinking, this looks like we're going right
(29:18):
back into the issues Marjorie had with Luke. Jay could
totally deprive her of everything and gain control over everything
she did, because money gives you choices, and now she
didn't have any. And I do wonder how Marjorie felt
(29:40):
about that, if maybe it triggered something in her, some
of that survival instinct that got her through the difficult
early years. But Jay loved his family, he loved Marjorie,
and this was a solution he saw to protecting his family.
(30:02):
If they weren't married, the irs couldn't hold him responsible
for Marjorie's debt, and if all their assets were in
his name, she simply wouldn't have anything to pay them with.
They'd have nothing to collect. Marjorie could no longer even
(30:23):
be a signer on Jay's credit cards. But Jay did
everything he could to give Marjorie a sense of security.
He set up a bank account for her and deposited
five hundred dollars a week like clockwork. He paid all
the bills directly, and if she needed more money at
(30:44):
any time, he'd give it, no questions asked. He also
went on to purchase two insurance policies that added up
to nearly a million dollars. Marjorie was the sole benefit fisiary,
and he wrote out his in case of plan. It
(31:05):
was a letter that gave Marjorie explicit instructions on what
to do if he died. Everything from the house, to
the car to his business was detailed. He even backed
this plan up by entrusting one of his business associates
to help her if she got confused, and arranged for
him to be paid for his efforts. That certainly sounds
(31:27):
like security. Jay was really a solid dude. Now Marjorie
would never have to worry about stability again, right, not
even if Jay was dead. Jay and Marjorie's son Noah,
(31:53):
was eight years old in September of two thousand and three.
Because anyone could tell he was carrying valuable car, he
usually packed a thirty eight in his beat up Louis
Veton briefcase. He never revealed his full route either, just
in case someone might have a carjacking plan. When Jay
(32:15):
was on the road, he'd call his friends and family
to catch up, whether it was just checking in on
his buddies or discussing politics with his mom Joanne. He
talked to Marjorie and Noah two or three times a
day too. The only reason he didn't answer the phone
when he was on the road was bad cell service.
(32:37):
He was typically only gone for two weeks at a time,
but because he was headed all the way to Florida
this time, he'd be gone for nearly a month. At
least that was his plan. Then he turned on his
radio and he heard about a tropical storm rolling in.
Midway through the trip, he had to turn the truck around.
(33:01):
He called Marjorie and told her the situation. He was
coming home, he said, if you don't mind, She said, actually,
Noah and I are sick with strapped throat. That might
have been true, but what was definitely true is that
(33:24):
in recent years Marjorie started exhibiting some strange behaviors. For starters,
she worked out constantly. That is admirable, but four or
five hours in the gym every day seems a little excessive. Second,
(33:45):
she was obsessive over Noah. One of her friends said
Noah was like her little fashion accessory. I mean, that's
kind of cute up to a point. Matching outfits. Fine. Ever,
letting a child out of your sight, even with other
family members is too far. And then there were the affairs,
(34:08):
one of them with her close friend's boyfriend. When the
boyfriend wouldn't leave Marjorie's friend to be with Marjorie, Marjorie
got mean, violent and manipulative. She stalked the woman and
harassed the boyfriend, ultimately pitting them against each other. Marjorie
also struck things up again long distance with Michael J. Peter,
(34:32):
the Miami nightclub owner. And then, or maybe at the
same time, knowing Marjorie, she started seeing Larry, a sixty
year old bodybuilder at her gym. In Larry's defense, he
had no idea that she was married. Marjorie straight up
(34:52):
lied to Larry about being married. She told him that
Jay was her ex husband. Even though Jay's were at
the house they shared, Jay didn't live there. He was
always on the road, she said, and he just hadn't
made the time to buy a house and move out.
(35:13):
Larry bought it. In fact, it was Larry whom investigators
suspected the most when Jay Orbin never returned home. After
(35:47):
Jay Orbin heard about the storm blowing his way, he
turned his truck around. He was scheduled to arrive back
in Phoenix on the day he turned forty. He was
still on the road when he got a birthday call
from his brother Jake at about eight thirty am. He
told his mother Joanne that he was just outside Tucson.
(36:09):
She said, you'll be home to celebrate with your son.
Jay said he wasn't sure that Marjorie and Noah had
strapped throat, but at least he was heading back towards them.
Those birthday calls were the last time Jay would talk
to his family, but they weren't the last calls his
(36:33):
family received from his phone. These ones were odd. It
seemed like someone was on the line, but all the
Orbans heard was background noise. It sounded like Rush Limbaugh
blasting on the car radio. Then there were the calls
(36:56):
to eight year old Noah that Weekend's voice played on
the line, but they weren't really conversations. Jay kept repeating himself.
He'd say, good, will you take care, I'll talk to
you later. Noah, clearly terrified, told his uncle it was
(37:21):
like a take being played or something. Marjorie, meanwhile, didn't
seem concerned. She told Jay's family that Jay did make
it home on his birthday, just to you turn out
on another trip. They were needlessly worrying. Then she spent
(37:44):
the weekend on a home improvement project, epoxy coating the
garage floor. It wasn't until no one had heard from
Jay for a whole week that Marjorie finally reported him missing.
This is the point in our story when we get
(38:05):
a badass woman on the case Missing persons Detective Jan Butcher.
Detective Butcher immediately found Marjorie's behavior odd. There was a
story about Jay's arrival home and the U turn right
back out onto the road for his birthday. She couldn't
(38:26):
corroborate that with any of Jay's clients, because Jay did
often tell them he was going a different direction than
he was actually heading. After all, he was carrying valuable cargo.
But no one else had seen or heard anything indicating
that Jay made it home that Friday, much less that
(38:48):
he then hit the road afterwards. Then, only a few
days after she reported Jay's disappearance, Marjorie told Detective Butcher,
I'm past being emotional about Jay. What kind of wife
would be over her husband's disappearance after just a few days,
(39:15):
So Detective Butcher started looking into everything Marjorie had claimed
since Jay's disappearance. First, there was that story about strep throat,
which she and Noah had apparently had a week prior.
But when Detective Butcher checked school attendance records, she saw
(39:39):
that Noah was at school. She called Marjorie to confirm.
Marjorie was immediately defensive and rude. Here's a snippet of
the police recording of that conversation from the podcast This
Is Monsters. I kind of gets sing that you're really
(40:00):
not available and willing to help us out try to
locate Get.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That feeling, huh you mostly h that's the I'm surprised
you say that I had called you earlier this afternoon, Right,
I'm not knowing that and I just got home. Oh white,
you know what, I'm already feeling like I am having
to defend myself here. Okay, Well, I don't mean to
make you feel on expensive or anything.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Like that. When Detective Butcher tried to coordinate a meeting
time with Marjorie, again, Larry was in the background where
she called, and when Detective Butcher asked who Larry was,
Marjorie says something stunning. Aside from identifying Larry as quote
(40:46):
a friend of mine that I met at the gym,
she also said this.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Jay and I are not married. You're not married though, No, okay,
we have been divorced for a number of years, and
you remained together livington other for reasons that were between us.
And if you think that that's something sneaky and you
need to need to think you need I need to
know about something from five six years ago. Perhaps we'll
(41:12):
get into that if you feel at some point you
need to know. So you worked divorced five or six
years ago, and we went in between us have an
agreement to continue living together as husband and wife. I
have his will and I have him.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Marjorie was making whited to do about her and Jay's
divorce when the divorce had always been an act of
love on Jay's part, not separation. She might not have
been his wife on paper, but Jay had certainly never
planned to date other women. Meanwhile, an apparent unconnected case
(41:52):
was unfolding. Robert Ames, the guy I told you about
at the beginning of this episode, found that plastic tub
while he was taking a smoke break out in the desert.
I didn't go into grizzly detail before because that's not
really what we're about here, but there are a few
facts that are important to tell you. Bear with me
(42:14):
through this. It gets pretty gross. So the tub was
not that big. Although the tub was full of fluid,
only the man's torso was present. He had been sawed
through at the chest and above the knees. That meant
(42:38):
the head, hands, and feet were all missing. There wasn't
enough of the body to be able to identify the
victim except the torso still had the upper part of
(42:59):
the legs above the knees, and it was wearing a
pair of jeans, and there was a set of keys
in the jeans pocket. After the autopsy in which those
keys were discovered, Detective David Barnes, that's the man who
questioned Robert Ames at the scene, he took the evidence
(43:21):
to the station, not the remains, but things like the clothes,
the plastic sheeting, and those keys. It smelled so bad
that in the room next door, police officers were throwing
up police The tough guys were vomiting, so Barnes took
(43:45):
everything to the basement of the homicide impound lot. While
he was hanging up the wet plastic sheeting, Barnes chatted
with another detective. When Barnes mentioned the car keys, it
reminded the other detective of a Bronco that had recently
come into police possession. It belonged to a missing person,
(44:11):
jay Orban. Y'all are not going to believe this shit,
but it's true. Mark Twain said it right. The thing
about fiction is that it has to be believable. The
truth doesn't. So what happened next is truly unbelievable. On
a hunt they had to think was too good to
(44:31):
pan out, Barnes wipes the blood off the keys in evidence.
He walked a few yards to the bronco. The key
unlocked the car door, and then miraculously, the car cranked.
The other detective literally yelled unbelievable. That is when Jay
(44:57):
Orban was connected to the plastic tub. Jay's missing person
case had just become a homicide detective. Butcher wanted to
be the one to solve the case, but because it
now had to be investigated as a murder, she relinquished
(45:20):
her files to Detective Barnes. He invited her to stay on,
but she knew that two lead detectives on this case
was a bad idea. Still, she agreed to help out
with the research, and she's the one who found a
big clue. While she was going through Jay's credit card statements,
(45:41):
she saw a charge for almost five hundred dollars at
the Orban's local Target the day after Jay went missing.
The purchase included cleaning products mops, buckets, rags, scrub brushes,
and more. When Butcher showed the itemized receipt to Barnes,
(46:04):
he said, it sounds like the kind of stuff you
need to clean up a murder scene. Butcher did the
due diligence. She called the credit card company and made
sure there was only one card on the account. There was,
so Butcher went to Target. She had the manager gather
(46:27):
all the merchandise that had been purchased. It was an
astonishing quantity. Evidence technicians photographed it. Then Butcher had the
target staff pull up the security footage. She needed to
know who had made this purchase, and there it was
(46:49):
all on tape, buying the supplies to clean up a
murder scene with the credit card of the murdered man.
That's Marjorie, but yelled, we got her as soon and
(47:12):
as delicately as possible. Detective Barnes broke the news to
Jay's parents their son's body had been found. Jake Senior
and jo Anne understandably wanted to bury his remains. Detective
Barnes had to tell them they couldn't be released yet
(47:33):
because he said he was decapitated. Jay's parents were aghast
who would do that? Who could do that? The autopsy
had determined that the body had been frozen before it
(47:57):
was dismembered, and the method wasn't some kind of frenzied
axe chop. Someone had done this in cold blood with
an electric saw and chilling precision. The police, at this point,
with the target security footage in hand, were sure that
(48:21):
Marjorie was involved, but violent deaths like this one were
typically committed by men. They suspected Marjorie's boyfriend Larry had
done that actual deed, They filed warrants to search both
Marjorie and Larry's homes as well as the warehouse for
(48:43):
Jay's company, Jayhawk International. All they found at Larry's home
was evidence confirming his relationship with Marjorie in the form
of love notes, which neither denied. But Larry's home was
clean as far as evidence of murder. He later confirmed
(49:05):
through his attorney that he had never even met Jay Orbin.
Marjorie had told him that Jay was her ex husband,
and Jay didn't even live at their home anymore. Even
though the jealous boyfriend fit the police's knee jerk suspect profile,
Larry was almost off the hook. It was hard to
(49:28):
be a jealous boyfriend when you didn't know you had
any competition, and as you know, women can do anything.
At the urban house, there was no trace of blood
(49:49):
in the garage, which is where the police expected it.
In fact, the garage was cleaner than most people's kitchens.
The walls and ceiling had been freshly painted, and the
floor had a fresh epoxy coat. When they searched the
(50:12):
Jayhawk warehouse, detectives found several incriminating pieces of evidence. One
was an open pack of jigsaw blades, and two of
the sixteen blades were missing. They also gathered duct tape,
plastic and garbage bags to test against the evidence of
the scene. Meanwhile, they analyzed Jay's phone logs and called
(50:37):
the service provider. They learned that a new phone had
been purchased after Jay's death and Jay's number was given
to it. They tracked the cell tower data for the
phone calls that had come from Jay's number to his
friends and family, the weird ones with Rush Limbaugh in
the background, the ones that had terrified Little Noah. All
(50:58):
the cell towers that had pinged were around the Orban
home and Larry's house. They might have to try Marjorie
on circumstantial evidence alone, but that circumstantial evidence was definitely
stacking up. When investigators called Marjorie's friends to attest to
her character, the reviews were mixed. They all said she
(51:23):
had nothing really good to say about Jay. In her
book Dancing with Death, Shannahgan quotes Marjorie as saying things
like quote, Jay is so lucky that nothing has ever
happened to him, like an accident, a robbery. Someone has
to cut that fucker's brake sooner or later. When detectives
(51:47):
asked Larry how that made him feel, he answered that
it made him very uncomfortable. I would hope so At
this point, Larry and Marjorie didn't know that the police
discovered Jay's body, but to his credit, Larry cut things
off with Marjorie immediately when he found out about the murder.
(52:09):
Larry is a real one. He was down to help
when he thought his girlfriend needed to help, but when
he saw the truth, he got out fast. He lawyered up,
cooperated with the police, and extricated himself as well as
he could. Meanwhile, police came after Marjorie with the charge
(52:43):
they could get together fastest attempted fraud thanks to her
financial arrangement with Jay. She didn't have authority to use
Jay's cards, but she had been using them while she
in custody. Detective Barnes broke the news that Jay's body
(53:04):
had been discovered. He told her that only part of
his remains were found. His head was missing. She didn't
show any real emotion until he notified her that because
of the fraud, all of Jay's accounts were frozen. That
(53:26):
is when she went hysterical. Police released Marjorie that night.
They weren't really concerned about fraud. They wanted her from murder,
but they kept scouring the financial records. They noticed a
purchase at a Lowe's hardware store and drove up to
(53:46):
get an itemized receipt. They confirmed Marjorie's presence with surveillance footage,
and there they saw her buying a rubber made plastic tub.
They matched the upc at the store to the one
on the tub j was found in. They also found
(54:10):
two jigsaws in the urban garage. Now the evidence was
really stacking up. In addition to buying the tub, it
turned out the duct tape detectives found in Marjorie's house
was the same as the tape found with the body parts,
and detective Barnes had tested the jigsaw blades missing from
(54:33):
the warehouse package. He said, the blades that were missing
from that jigsaw package were the only two blades in
that whole package that could cut through bone. It was
like a hot knife through butter. To be fully sure,
the medical examiner compared the bone pattern on the test
(54:55):
to that found on j Orban's bone under the microscope.
The cut pattern was exactly the same. Detectives called Jay's
family to inform them they would be arresting Marjorie. The
family was at the station when they brought her in,
(55:18):
mostly to take custody of eight year old Noah. In
the first few weeks of taking care of Noah, the
Orbans realized something strange. Noah's hair was growing in brown.
(55:42):
They realized that Noah had never been blonde. Marjorie had
been bleaching his hair his whole life. There's nothing illegal there,
but isn't that a strange thing to do with a
little kid? The decision of someone who's thinking is off.
(56:04):
The Orbans had plenty of time to stew on that
over the three years they waited for Marjorie's trial. In
the interim, nothing of Jay's business could be sold or
collected on, not even on Noah's behalf, not until they
had a conviction. His merchandise sat on the warehouse shelves.
(56:30):
When forensic testing was complete on Jay's vehicles, though his
brother Jake was able to pick up his white cargo truck,
the one Jay took on trips. Then the front tire
started squealing. Jake stopped. When he looked at the vehicle,
(56:50):
the front tire was facing sideways. He called the police,
and when detectives re examined the truck, they saw his
brakes had been cut. If the person who cut them
had done a better job of cutting them. It would
have likely caused an awful crash. Meanwhile, the cellmate of
(57:14):
Marjorie's came forward. Marjorie had made a jailhouse confession. She
told me that she did it. Sophia Johnson said bluntly,
she murdered him. She told Sophia that Jay had been shot, frozen, decapitated, dismembered.
She said, not a single person knows where the rest
(57:37):
of his body is. They put Sophia on the witness stand.
After nearly a year of trials, Marjorie was convicted. She
stood to receive a lethal injection. The Orbans, however, said
they'd rather she spent her whole life in prison. That
(57:58):
would be a worse punishment. Back when I hosted a
podcast with other women of color about horror movies, we
have this system of gauging a film scariness. Basically, if
I could never be in that situation, the movie's not
scary to me. For example, if the premise was that
(58:20):
a bunch of men went on a four day trip
hiking off the map and got abducted into a Nordic
cult ritual, I mean I'd watch it, but that scenario
doesn't really apply to me because I just don't go
off the grid, so it wasn't scary to me personally.
I think we tend to do the same for true crime.
(58:42):
Some people do the thing of, well, she shouldn't have
been walking alone at night, slash wearing that outfit, Slash
gone to a second location with a stranger, so it's
her fault. But I'm not talking to victim blamers here.
That's not what this podcast is about. What I mean
is well, one reason why I follow true crime is
(59:03):
because I need to know all that shit so I
can avoid it. This story, I don't really know what
Jay could have done differently to me. That makes it
a real nightmare. It's the kind of case that's really
hard to write off as that could never happen to me,
because we can't even really pinpoint a motive. I mean,
(59:27):
for the insurance money, yes, but she already had access
to so much money. Marjorie started developing some odd behaviors
after she'd settled down with Jay and her son, sort
of like she couldn't take the comfort of that quiet
life after so many years of less stable living. But honestly,
(59:52):
I wouldn't have looked at any of it and thought
that woman is capable of a heinous violent crime. So
there's no moral here. I mean, there's never a moral
in a true crime story. There are things you can learn, sure,
but never ever a tidy takeaway this story, though, this
(01:00:15):
one illustrates just how ubiquitous evil is, and that even
if you try, even if you are a good guy
who looks out for others and keeps all your wits
about you, man, it's still out there. Join me next
(01:00:44):
week on the greatest true crime Stories ever told. For
a very special case, I'm heading back to the eighteen
nineties to introduce you to Jane Toppin, the subject of
my book, America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and
the Making of them On. I'd also like to shout
out some key sources that made it possible for me
(01:01:05):
to tell this story. First off, Shanna Hogan's book Dancing
with Death, the true story of a glamorous showgirl, her
wealthy husband, and a horrifying murder. Shanna died in an
accident in twenty twenty. If it was possible to interview
her about this case, I would have loved to do that.
(01:01:27):
Hopefully this episode does her work justice even in her absence.
I also have to credit the podcast This Is Monsters,
which included the interview tapes between Marjorie and detectives. For
more information about this case and others we cover on
the show, visit diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for
(01:01:48):
Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about
special behind the scenes features with hosts and actors from
diversions podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion in our partners,
and other exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's
Diversionaudio dot com to sign up for the newsletter. The
(01:02:08):
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of
Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. I wrote this episode
and our editorial director is Nora Battel. Our show is
produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our development team is
Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
(01:02:31):
Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis, and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Diversion Audio
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care and listening. It was a hot Arizona
(00:34):
afternoon in two thousand and four. A man named Robert
Ames walked out of a gas station with a bud
light and cut across the desert to get back to
the construction site where he'd been sleeping. He noticed a
futon about fifty feet off the road, so he sat
down on it to finish his smoke. Then he noticed
(00:57):
a piece of carpet wrapped around a fifty five gallon
rubber made tub. He thought it might have something in
it he could pawn, so he stuck his cigarette in
the corner of his mouth and he used a piece
of broken beer bottle to cut the tape around the container.
When he popped, the lid of foul odor seeped out.
(01:20):
As he pulled away the black trash bags and plastic sheeting,
the smell got so strong he gagged as soon as
he realized what he was looking at. He dropped everything,
ran back to the gas station and called emergency services.
He told them, I found a dead body or at
(01:44):
least parts of a dead body. Robert was still shaken
by his find a few hours later when detective David
Barnes questioned him. I saw the belt buckle and the
jeans and the belly. It was Harry, Ames, said, his
(02:06):
voice trembling. That's how I realized it was human, because
there was a belly button. Robert was never a suspect
(02:30):
of this crime. Everything at the scene corroborated his story,
a piece of broken bottle, a half drunk bud light,
and the partly smoked cigarette that had fallen from his
mouth when he gasped in shruck. That meant the police
(02:50):
had no suspects, they had no name for their victim,
and they had no idea why anyone would or how
they even could commit such a brutal murder. Welcome to
the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.
(03:14):
I'm a writer of true crime. I'm constantly reading about crime,
but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements
like the blood and the gore. Despite the hellscape I
just told you about, I'm more interested in the people
behind these stories and what we can learn about society
(03:37):
by looking at their experiences. That's what I explore here.
Every week I dig into crimes where women aren't just victims.
They might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner,
the criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you
(04:01):
probably already know, women can do anything. Today's episode we're
calling like a hot knife through butter. It's about the
murder of good guy Jay Orban. It's also about his wife,
the Vegas showgirl and stripper known by her stage name
(04:25):
Marjorie Marquis More after the Break. Here's the problem with
(04:48):
being a good person. You expect other people to be
good too. Good people find it especially difficult to accept
that someone they care about is bad. It's wild how
a good person will equivocate on behalf of a bad one.
(05:13):
For example, how many times has one of your friends
made an excuse for their partner, like, Oh, they just
lied to me because they thought they'd lose me if
they told me the truth. Bitch, are you hearing yourself?
They should have been lost you anyway, to find point
(05:38):
another problem, it doesn't get easier to accept when they
tell you that they're bad, and it doesn't always get
easier to accept when they show you how bad they are,
either because you don't want it to be true. Moral
(06:00):
of this story is best summed up by the poet
Maya Angelou. She said, when people show you who they are,
believe them the first time. I'd like to add to that,
if someone shows you they're bad, get out of there.
(06:22):
And of course it's never easy to get out, and
you normally can't even see the situation for yourself. You
usually need a very brave friend or mom to frame
out their badness for you. But good friends don't want
(06:43):
to shit talk someone you love, so it could take
a long time for the truth to reveal itself. Meanwhile,
you're just hanging out with a bad person thinking this
is normal. I think the second moral of this story
(07:05):
can be summed up succinctly by my Jeddo, my grandfather.
I think it might be loosely translated from an old
Arabic idiom. It goes like this, When you hang around shit,
you get shitited on you. Jay Orban was a good
(07:33):
dude who liked beautiful women. More specifically, he liked to
rescue beautiful women. Jay didn't look rich, he wasn't flashy
or especially handsome. He looked like a nice guy. He
wasn't the one that the dancers at Bourbon Street Circus,
(07:56):
Babes Cabaret, and Skin Cabaret with generally flocked to. Not
at first. Only after he became a regular at these
Phoenix strip clubs would they recognize that he was wealthy
and he was generous. The bartenders, managers, and even a
(08:20):
lot of the patrons knew Jay. He met a lot
of his friends at strip joints. He also met a
lot of his girlfriends there. Jay's friend Mario put it
this way, there were so many girlfriends I can't remember
(08:40):
all their names. Jay heard about the dancer's debts, divorces,
and abusive relationships, and he wanted to help them out.
So he did. He helped his girlfriends out financially. He'd
let them move in while they got on their feet,
(09:00):
and then they'd inevitably break up a few months later.
There were definitely some transactional relationships, and Jay seemed mostly
alright with that. He didn't seem to hold any hard
feelings towards anyone when his relationships went out. Something else
(09:21):
his friend Mario shared was this, Jay wasn't so much
as a good guy who went and picked up strippers
to keep a scorecard. Everyone was just friends. The whole
arrangement felt normal to Jay, if we want to go
meta with this interpretation, whether or not he totally understood this.
(09:48):
Jay's relationships were as capitalist as his actual business. Jay
had a wholesale Native American jewelry business. He was based
in Phoenix, Arizona, but he dealt all across the country,
driving the truck himself, staying in Lakinta Inns when he
(10:08):
traveled overnight wearing jeans and boots. He was rich, but
he really only stunted in the strip club and at
the Bourbon Street Circus. He met Marjorie Marquis, the quote
unquote love of his life. When they met in nineteen
(10:38):
eighty five. Marjorie was quite a smoke show. She always
had been. In her Orlando High school, she did all
the artistic athletic things. She was a ballet dancer and
then she was a lead majorrette. And while she was
(10:58):
a full time student and waiting tables, she also danced
at a dinner theater on the weekends. Despite her undeniable
beauty and fitness, she didn't have many high school boyfriends.
She preferred to date older men also and bear with
(11:23):
me here for this transition. Marjorie had a routine gynecological
visit in her teenage years where she was given the
diagnosis of endometriosis. For listeners who are not familiar with endometriosis,
it sucks. Basically, the tissue that normally lines the uterus,
(11:46):
the tissue that women shed during menstruation, grows in other areas.
It causes painful menstruation, irregular bleeding, and in Marjorie's case,
lots of scarring. The doctor told her that she was infertile.
(12:09):
For people who want to give birth, that's a hard
truth to accept. Marjorie was one of them. She started
living as though she was the only person she'd ever
be responsible for. That meant if she liked someone, she
(12:32):
jumped into that relationship with both feet full weight. Author
Shanna Hogan, who wrote the excellent book Dancing with Death
on this case, aptly describe those relationships this way. They
were quote always brief and often chaotic. He was nineteen
(13:01):
when she married Mitchell Marquis. His big legacy in her
life was that she kept using his last name Marquis
because she liked how it sounded. It is pretty, but
they were only together for a year and a half.
There was quickly a second husband, and then, before the
(13:25):
divorce was finalized, a new guy in the picture, Luke Forrest.
Luke was a part time singer who sounded like the
famous performer Lou Rawls and I'm going to slow down
here a bit. Because of this, Luke insisted on quote
(13:46):
managing their finances. That meant that Marjorie had to hand
over her entire paycheck to him the moment she got it. Y'all,
they weren't even married yet, and he was doing this unacceptable.
I mean, it's always wise for women to have some
(14:08):
money of their own in case of emergency, or like
the getaway bag that moore a Rose stashed for her
children on Shit's Creek. Even when you are married, it's
always a good idea to have something that's all yours
in case of emergency. It doesn't have to be a secret,
(14:29):
but if your partner thinks they're entitled to everything, danger
About a year after Luke and Marjorie started dating, her
car got towed for nonpayment. Luke had been using her
(14:54):
paycheck to gamble and had apparently neglected the car payments.
She was pissed she left him, He apologized, She took
him back tail as old as time. They'd been together,
right around a year when Luke suggested Marjorie pick up
(15:18):
some new work to help support them. She'd been a
dancer and a choreographer since her days as a high
school ballerina. Why not do the grown up version. That's
when she started stripping. Marjorie would keep stripping from then on,
(15:41):
and to paraphrase the Godfather, it don't make any difference
to me what someone does for a living, but your
business is a little dangerous, or at least it could
lead to dangerous things. For now, though there were other
(16:03):
more immediate dangers, Luke started pushing to bring another woman
into their relationship. It made Marjorie miserable, but she didn't
actually leave him. She didn't have the means to strike
out on her own. Then she learned that he'd gambled
(16:26):
away her eight thousand dollars in savings. Staying with him
was starting to look more financially risky than literally starting
from scratch without a dollar to her name, So Marjorie
packed up and left to which I say yes? On
(16:50):
her way back home to Florida. Though Marjorie's car broke
down in Phoenix. She had no money for the part
to fix it, and no one to ask for it.
While she was hoofing it to a nearby hotel, she
passed the Bourbon Street Circus strip club. Inspiration struck. She
(17:12):
got a job there, and she started pulling in five
hundred to six hundred dollars a night in the eighties.
That's where she met Jay Orbin for the first time.
He slapped one hundred dollars bill on the bar and
offered to buy her a drink. Marjorie smiled at the
chance to get off her high heels, and Jay was
(17:36):
immediately smitten. Marjorie was not smitten with his thinning hair,
belly boots, tight jeans, and belt buckle. Jay looked, she said,
like a used car salesman. But he was nice and charming,
(18:02):
and he always paid for her company. After a while,
she told him about her husband and the chaos she'd
been through. Shanna Hogan's book Dancing with Death notes that
Marjorie already knew about Jay from another dancer. He was,
(18:22):
as she puts it, known to find girls who were
in trouble or had a problem with an abusive guy,
and offered to help them out financially. They would usually
be his girlfriend for a few days. Before long, Marjorie
had moved into Jay's spare bedroom. She said he never
(18:46):
gave her cash and she never asked for it. Meanwhile,
she became pretty fond of him. They went on a
date dinner and dancing. Then they kissed and things related
to intimacy. That's when they faltered. When she told Jay
(19:08):
she was moving back to Florida, he asked her to stay.
I love you, He told her we can build a
life together. Marjorie couldn't set Although as sweet and secure
as Jay was, she wanted something more like the excitement
(19:30):
she felt with her more dangerous lovers. So she went
back to Luke for a while, but this time she
didn't stay long. Eventually, she did make her way back
(19:52):
to Florida and into the classy strip joints of local
owner Michael J. Peter, where she started doing more behind
the scenes work as well as dancing. She helped develop
the Platinum Doll Strip Show, a troop that saw some
real success. She even started making their costumes to cut costs,
(20:16):
and they did well. They booked venues across the country,
Marjorie was actually in Motley Cruez Girls Girls Girls music video,
but she didn't stick to this girl boss approach for
very long. While on tour, she met her next husband, Ronald.
(20:37):
Ronald owned his own excavating business in New Jersey, and
he changed the name to Marco, as in Marjorie's company.
He even brought her to his attorney's office to sign
the company into her name. She thought it was very
sweet at the time because Ronald swept Marjorie off her feet,
(21:02):
He bought her gowns, fur jewelry, and he'd take her
in his Ferrari into Manhattan for Broadway shows. All of
this so far is very cool on the surface, but
the thing is in New Jersey, where Ronald's business was,
(21:22):
companies were required to fulfill a certain minority quota. With
Marjorie listed as the head of the company, Marco was
now a certified women's business, so it could overbid other
contractors and still win jobs. So that's gross. I mean,
(21:46):
it would be different if Marjorie was a real owner.
That'd be dope. But unfortunately there's even more to why
I think this identity you politics underhanded move is gross.
In nineteen eighty nine, the new bookkeeper, Gilda, asked Marjorie
some important questions. The main one was, did Ronald tell
(22:08):
you why he put the company in your name? He hadn't.
To sum it up, Ronald wasn't paying any taxes on
the business. By the time he and Marjorie divorced in
nineteen eighty nine, he owed tens of thousands of dollars
(22:31):
to internal revenue, or rather Marjorie did a few months later,
(22:52):
Marjorie fled Ronald and his debt for Florida and Michael J.
Peters Clubs. This time she dated the wealthy strip club
owner Michael, but the relationship fell apart thanks to his
playboy ways. Marjorie once again moved on. She was traveling
(23:15):
from geg to gig Out West again when she got
a phone call. Remember me, asked the voice on the
other end, Jay, Jay, Orbin, I have been looking for
you for ten years. It was true. He had All
along his route in and out of many strip joints
(23:37):
he frequented, he always scanned the names for Marjorie Marquis.
He'd finally found her face on the billboard for Las
Vegas Club Paradise Dancers, and when he looked her up
in the Vegas phone Book. There she was. Marjorie did
(23:59):
remember Jay, and by now the qualities of sweet and
secure were starting to sound a lot more appealing. She
met up with him at the Rio Bar, and when
Jay returned to Phoenix, they talked on the phone for
hours every night. Still, the way he finally really won
(24:21):
her over was just as transactional as the way he'd
won over his past girlfriends. Because he knew about her endometriosis,
he told her he'd pursue fertility treatments with her to
have a child together. She counteroffered by saying they'd try
(24:42):
the treatments for two years and if that didn't work,
she would leave. And Jay said, Okay. The thing about
Jay is it just doesn't seem like he ever did
anything Dishonest. Business was kind of his language, but he
(25:03):
conducted his business Jayhawk Trader, in an understanding and generous way.
He was known for giving his customers extra time to
pay up, or sometimes waving their debts completely. Marjorie must
have sensed that he was an actually good guy, and
she'd always wanted a child. It was time to put
(25:27):
her thrilling, sometimes dangerous past behind her. She married Jay
at the Little White Wedding Chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard
just a few months later, on July twenty second, nineteen
ninety five. As a fun little aside, that place is
(25:49):
really cute. Famous couples like Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow,
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and Judy Garland and somebody
got married there too. Anyway, fertility treatments are no joke
even now. They are rough, physically painful, emotionally racking. You
(26:13):
have daily injections which cause wild mood swings and physical pain,
not to mention the results can be emotionally devastating, and
it's very expensive. In the nineteen nineties, when Marjorie started them,
the situation was worse. Marjorie had the daily injections, which
(26:37):
caused her ovaries to swell, leaving her nauseated and hot flashing.
She also underwent seven different surgeries for egg retrieval. Twice
she hyper stimulated and had to be rushed to the
er for doctors to drain the fluid from her abdomen.
Jay spent over sixty thousand dollars on the treatments. He
(27:02):
also attended to her every need. He was great, and
he was great when he had to be great, which,
as we know from Lizzo, is very uncommon. Marjorie realized
what a huge git she had on her hands. After
several failures to conceive, Marjorie said, I'm sure we're going
(27:27):
to get pregnant, and if we don't, it doesn't matter.
I'll stay. But finally they did conceive, and on August
twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six, Marjorie gave birth to a
little boy. Both parents doated on their son, Noah. Life
(27:48):
was good. Marjorie, after a long difficult road, had a
financially stable, comfortable home and the miracle child she had
been told was impossible when she was just a teenager.
She'd made it. That's when her bank account was seized
(28:10):
and Marjorie realized she was fifty thousand dollars in debt
to the irs. Yep, her former husband's debtors came back
to collect. Marjorie had already told Jay about the issues
with Ronald, but she'd also explained that in their divorce,
she'd signed the company back into his name. She thought
(28:34):
that meant she was out of the whole mess. When
they went to Jay's attorney, the next day, they learned
that was not the case, and even worse, because Jay
and Marjorie were married, Jay would also be held responsible
(28:55):
for the debt. Was at a loss. So Jay took
control of the situation. He got them a divorce and
took control of all their family assets. If you're thinking
what I was thinking, this looks like we're going right
(29:18):
back into the issues Marjorie had with Luke. Jay could
totally deprive her of everything and gain control over everything
she did, because money gives you choices, and now she
didn't have any. And I do wonder how Marjorie felt
(29:40):
about that, if maybe it triggered something in her, some
of that survival instinct that got her through the difficult
early years. But Jay loved his family, he loved Marjorie,
and this was a solution he saw to protecting his family.
(30:02):
If they weren't married, the irs couldn't hold him responsible
for Marjorie's debt, and if all their assets were in
his name, she simply wouldn't have anything to pay them with.
They'd have nothing to collect. Marjorie could no longer even
(30:23):
be a signer on Jay's credit cards. But Jay did
everything he could to give Marjorie a sense of security.
He set up a bank account for her and deposited
five hundred dollars a week like clockwork. He paid all
the bills directly, and if she needed more money at
(30:44):
any time, he'd give it, no questions asked. He also
went on to purchase two insurance policies that added up
to nearly a million dollars. Marjorie was the sole benefit fisiary,
and he wrote out his in case of plan. It
(31:05):
was a letter that gave Marjorie explicit instructions on what
to do if he died. Everything from the house, to
the car to his business was detailed. He even backed
this plan up by entrusting one of his business associates
to help her if she got confused, and arranged for
him to be paid for his efforts. That certainly sounds
(31:27):
like security. Jay was really a solid dude. Now Marjorie
would never have to worry about stability again, right, not
even if Jay was dead. Jay and Marjorie's son Noah,
(31:53):
was eight years old in September of two thousand and three.
Because anyone could tell he was carrying valuable car, he
usually packed a thirty eight in his beat up Louis
Veton briefcase. He never revealed his full route either, just
in case someone might have a carjacking plan. When Jay
(32:15):
was on the road, he'd call his friends and family
to catch up, whether it was just checking in on
his buddies or discussing politics with his mom Joanne. He
talked to Marjorie and Noah two or three times a
day too. The only reason he didn't answer the phone
when he was on the road was bad cell service.
(32:37):
He was typically only gone for two weeks at a time,
but because he was headed all the way to Florida
this time, he'd be gone for nearly a month. At
least that was his plan. Then he turned on his
radio and he heard about a tropical storm rolling in.
Midway through the trip, he had to turn the truck around.
(33:01):
He called Marjorie and told her the situation. He was
coming home, he said, if you don't mind, She said, actually,
Noah and I are sick with strapped throat. That might
have been true, but what was definitely true is that
(33:24):
in recent years Marjorie started exhibiting some strange behaviors. For starters,
she worked out constantly. That is admirable, but four or
five hours in the gym every day seems a little excessive. Second,
(33:45):
she was obsessive over Noah. One of her friends said
Noah was like her little fashion accessory. I mean, that's
kind of cute up to a point. Matching outfits. Fine. Ever,
letting a child out of your sight, even with other
family members is too far. And then there were the affairs,
(34:08):
one of them with her close friend's boyfriend. When the
boyfriend wouldn't leave Marjorie's friend to be with Marjorie, Marjorie
got mean, violent and manipulative. She stalked the woman and
harassed the boyfriend, ultimately pitting them against each other. Marjorie
also struck things up again long distance with Michael J. Peter,
(34:32):
the Miami nightclub owner. And then, or maybe at the
same time, knowing Marjorie, she started seeing Larry, a sixty
year old bodybuilder at her gym. In Larry's defense, he
had no idea that she was married. Marjorie straight up
(34:52):
lied to Larry about being married. She told him that
Jay was her ex husband. Even though Jay's were at
the house they shared, Jay didn't live there. He was
always on the road, she said, and he just hadn't
made the time to buy a house and move out.
(35:13):
Larry bought it. In fact, it was Larry whom investigators
suspected the most when Jay Orbin never returned home. After
(35:47):
Jay Orbin heard about the storm blowing his way, he
turned his truck around. He was scheduled to arrive back
in Phoenix on the day he turned forty. He was
still on the road when he got a birthday call
from his brother Jake at about eight thirty am. He
told his mother Joanne that he was just outside Tucson.
(36:09):
She said, you'll be home to celebrate with your son.
Jay said he wasn't sure that Marjorie and Noah had
strapped throat, but at least he was heading back towards them.
Those birthday calls were the last time Jay would talk
to his family, but they weren't the last calls his
(36:33):
family received from his phone. These ones were odd. It
seemed like someone was on the line, but all the
Orbans heard was background noise. It sounded like Rush Limbaugh
blasting on the car radio. Then there were the calls
(36:56):
to eight year old Noah that Weekend's voice played on
the line, but they weren't really conversations. Jay kept repeating himself.
He'd say, good, will you take care, I'll talk to
you later. Noah, clearly terrified, told his uncle it was
(37:21):
like a take being played or something. Marjorie, meanwhile, didn't
seem concerned. She told Jay's family that Jay did make
it home on his birthday, just to you turn out
on another trip. They were needlessly worrying. Then she spent
(37:44):
the weekend on a home improvement project, epoxy coating the
garage floor. It wasn't until no one had heard from
Jay for a whole week that Marjorie finally reported him missing.
This is the point in our story when we get
(38:05):
a badass woman on the case Missing persons Detective Jan Butcher.
Detective Butcher immediately found Marjorie's behavior odd. There was a
story about Jay's arrival home and the U turn right
back out onto the road for his birthday. She couldn't
(38:26):
corroborate that with any of Jay's clients, because Jay did
often tell them he was going a different direction than
he was actually heading. After all, he was carrying valuable cargo.
But no one else had seen or heard anything indicating
that Jay made it home that Friday, much less that
(38:48):
he then hit the road afterwards. Then, only a few
days after she reported Jay's disappearance, Marjorie told Detective Butcher,
I'm past being emotional about Jay. What kind of wife
would be over her husband's disappearance after just a few days,
(39:15):
So Detective Butcher started looking into everything Marjorie had claimed
since Jay's disappearance. First, there was that story about strep throat,
which she and Noah had apparently had a week prior.
But when Detective Butcher checked school attendance records, she saw
(39:39):
that Noah was at school. She called Marjorie to confirm.
Marjorie was immediately defensive and rude. Here's a snippet of
the police recording of that conversation from the podcast This
Is Monsters. I kind of gets sing that you're really
(40:00):
not available and willing to help us out try to
locate Get.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That feeling, huh you mostly h that's the I'm surprised
you say that I had called you earlier this afternoon, Right,
I'm not knowing that and I just got home. Oh white,
you know what, I'm already feeling like I am having
to defend myself here. Okay, Well, I don't mean to
make you feel on expensive or anything.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Like that. When Detective Butcher tried to coordinate a meeting
time with Marjorie, again, Larry was in the background where
she called, and when Detective Butcher asked who Larry was,
Marjorie says something stunning. Aside from identifying Larry as quote
(40:46):
a friend of mine that I met at the gym,
she also said this.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Jay and I are not married. You're not married though, No, okay,
we have been divorced for a number of years, and
you remained together livington other for reasons that were between us.
And if you think that that's something sneaky and you
need to need to think you need I need to
know about something from five six years ago. Perhaps we'll
(41:12):
get into that if you feel at some point you
need to know. So you worked divorced five or six
years ago, and we went in between us have an
agreement to continue living together as husband and wife. I
have his will and I have him.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Marjorie was making whited to do about her and Jay's
divorce when the divorce had always been an act of
love on Jay's part, not separation. She might not have
been his wife on paper, but Jay had certainly never
planned to date other women. Meanwhile, an apparent unconnected case
(41:52):
was unfolding. Robert Ames, the guy I told you about
at the beginning of this episode, found that plastic tub
while he was taking a smoke break out in the desert.
I didn't go into grizzly detail before because that's not
really what we're about here, but there are a few
facts that are important to tell you. Bear with me
(42:14):
through this. It gets pretty gross. So the tub was
not that big. Although the tub was full of fluid,
only the man's torso was present. He had been sawed
through at the chest and above the knees. That meant
(42:38):
the head, hands, and feet were all missing. There wasn't
enough of the body to be able to identify the
victim except the torso still had the upper part of
(42:59):
the legs above the knees, and it was wearing a
pair of jeans, and there was a set of keys
in the jeans pocket. After the autopsy in which those
keys were discovered, Detective David Barnes, that's the man who
questioned Robert Ames at the scene, he took the evidence
(43:21):
to the station, not the remains, but things like the clothes,
the plastic sheeting, and those keys. It smelled so bad
that in the room next door, police officers were throwing
up police The tough guys were vomiting, so Barnes took
(43:45):
everything to the basement of the homicide impound lot. While
he was hanging up the wet plastic sheeting, Barnes chatted
with another detective. When Barnes mentioned the car keys, it
reminded the other detective of a Bronco that had recently
come into police possession. It belonged to a missing person,
(44:11):
jay Orban. Y'all are not going to believe this shit,
but it's true. Mark Twain said it right. The thing
about fiction is that it has to be believable. The
truth doesn't. So what happened next is truly unbelievable. On
a hunt they had to think was too good to
(44:31):
pan out, Barnes wipes the blood off the keys in evidence.
He walked a few yards to the bronco. The key
unlocked the car door, and then miraculously, the car cranked.
The other detective literally yelled unbelievable. That is when Jay
(44:57):
Orban was connected to the plastic tub. Jay's missing person
case had just become a homicide detective. Butcher wanted to
be the one to solve the case, but because it
now had to be investigated as a murder, she relinquished
(45:20):
her files to Detective Barnes. He invited her to stay on,
but she knew that two lead detectives on this case
was a bad idea. Still, she agreed to help out
with the research, and she's the one who found a
big clue. While she was going through Jay's credit card statements,
(45:41):
she saw a charge for almost five hundred dollars at
the Orban's local Target the day after Jay went missing.
The purchase included cleaning products mops, buckets, rags, scrub brushes,
and more. When Butcher showed the itemized receipt to Barnes,
(46:04):
he said, it sounds like the kind of stuff you
need to clean up a murder scene. Butcher did the
due diligence. She called the credit card company and made
sure there was only one card on the account. There was,
so Butcher went to Target. She had the manager gather
(46:27):
all the merchandise that had been purchased. It was an
astonishing quantity. Evidence technicians photographed it. Then Butcher had the
target staff pull up the security footage. She needed to
know who had made this purchase, and there it was
(46:49):
all on tape, buying the supplies to clean up a
murder scene with the credit card of the murdered man.
That's Marjorie, but yelled, we got her as soon and
(47:12):
as delicately as possible. Detective Barnes broke the news to
Jay's parents their son's body had been found. Jake Senior
and jo Anne understandably wanted to bury his remains. Detective
Barnes had to tell them they couldn't be released yet
(47:33):
because he said he was decapitated. Jay's parents were aghast
who would do that? Who could do that? The autopsy
had determined that the body had been frozen before it
(47:57):
was dismembered, and the method wasn't some kind of frenzied
axe chop. Someone had done this in cold blood with
an electric saw and chilling precision. The police, at this point,
with the target security footage in hand, were sure that
(48:21):
Marjorie was involved, but violent deaths like this one were
typically committed by men. They suspected Marjorie's boyfriend Larry had
done that actual deed, They filed warrants to search both
Marjorie and Larry's homes as well as the warehouse for
(48:43):
Jay's company, Jayhawk International. All they found at Larry's home
was evidence confirming his relationship with Marjorie in the form
of love notes, which neither denied. But Larry's home was
clean as far as evidence of murder. He later confirmed
(49:05):
through his attorney that he had never even met Jay Orbin.
Marjorie had told him that Jay was her ex husband,
and Jay didn't even live at their home anymore. Even
though the jealous boyfriend fit the police's knee jerk suspect profile,
Larry was almost off the hook. It was hard to
(49:28):
be a jealous boyfriend when you didn't know you had
any competition, and as you know, women can do anything.
At the urban house, there was no trace of blood
(49:49):
in the garage, which is where the police expected it.
In fact, the garage was cleaner than most people's kitchens.
The walls and ceiling had been freshly painted, and the
floor had a fresh epoxy coat. When they searched the
(50:12):
Jayhawk warehouse, detectives found several incriminating pieces of evidence. One
was an open pack of jigsaw blades, and two of
the sixteen blades were missing. They also gathered duct tape,
plastic and garbage bags to test against the evidence of
the scene. Meanwhile, they analyzed Jay's phone logs and called
(50:37):
the service provider. They learned that a new phone had
been purchased after Jay's death and Jay's number was given
to it. They tracked the cell tower data for the
phone calls that had come from Jay's number to his
friends and family, the weird ones with Rush Limbaugh in
the background, the ones that had terrified Little Noah. All
(50:58):
the cell towers that had pinged were around the Orban
home and Larry's house. They might have to try Marjorie
on circumstantial evidence alone, but that circumstantial evidence was definitely
stacking up. When investigators called Marjorie's friends to attest to
her character, the reviews were mixed. They all said she
(51:23):
had nothing really good to say about Jay. In her
book Dancing with Death, Shannahgan quotes Marjorie as saying things
like quote, Jay is so lucky that nothing has ever
happened to him, like an accident, a robbery. Someone has
to cut that fucker's brake sooner or later. When detectives
(51:47):
asked Larry how that made him feel, he answered that
it made him very uncomfortable. I would hope so At
this point, Larry and Marjorie didn't know that the police
discovered Jay's body, but to his credit, Larry cut things
off with Marjorie immediately when he found out about the murder.
(52:09):
Larry is a real one. He was down to help
when he thought his girlfriend needed to help, but when
he saw the truth, he got out fast. He lawyered up,
cooperated with the police, and extricated himself as well as
he could. Meanwhile, police came after Marjorie with the charge
(52:43):
they could get together fastest attempted fraud thanks to her
financial arrangement with Jay. She didn't have authority to use
Jay's cards, but she had been using them while she
in custody. Detective Barnes broke the news that Jay's body
(53:04):
had been discovered. He told her that only part of
his remains were found. His head was missing. She didn't
show any real emotion until he notified her that because
of the fraud, all of Jay's accounts were frozen. That
(53:26):
is when she went hysterical. Police released Marjorie that night.
They weren't really concerned about fraud. They wanted her from murder,
but they kept scouring the financial records. They noticed a
purchase at a Lowe's hardware store and drove up to
(53:46):
get an itemized receipt. They confirmed Marjorie's presence with surveillance footage,
and there they saw her buying a rubber made plastic tub.
They matched the upc at the store to the one
on the tub j was found in. They also found
(54:10):
two jigsaws in the urban garage. Now the evidence was
really stacking up. In addition to buying the tub, it
turned out the duct tape detectives found in Marjorie's house
was the same as the tape found with the body parts,
and detective Barnes had tested the jigsaw blades missing from
(54:33):
the warehouse package. He said, the blades that were missing
from that jigsaw package were the only two blades in
that whole package that could cut through bone. It was
like a hot knife through butter. To be fully sure,
the medical examiner compared the bone pattern on the test
(54:55):
to that found on j Orban's bone under the microscope.
The cut pattern was exactly the same. Detectives called Jay's
family to inform them they would be arresting Marjorie. The
family was at the station when they brought her in,
(55:18):
mostly to take custody of eight year old Noah. In
the first few weeks of taking care of Noah, the
Orbans realized something strange. Noah's hair was growing in brown.
(55:42):
They realized that Noah had never been blonde. Marjorie had
been bleaching his hair his whole life. There's nothing illegal there,
but isn't that a strange thing to do with a
little kid? The decision of someone who's thinking is off.
(56:04):
The Orbans had plenty of time to stew on that
over the three years they waited for Marjorie's trial. In
the interim, nothing of Jay's business could be sold or
collected on, not even on Noah's behalf, not until they
had a conviction. His merchandise sat on the warehouse shelves.
(56:30):
When forensic testing was complete on Jay's vehicles, though his
brother Jake was able to pick up his white cargo truck,
the one Jay took on trips. Then the front tire
started squealing. Jake stopped. When he looked at the vehicle,
(56:50):
the front tire was facing sideways. He called the police,
and when detectives re examined the truck, they saw his
brakes had been cut. If the person who cut them
had done a better job of cutting them. It would
have likely caused an awful crash. Meanwhile, the cellmate of
(57:14):
Marjorie's came forward. Marjorie had made a jailhouse confession. She
told me that she did it. Sophia Johnson said bluntly,
she murdered him. She told Sophia that Jay had been shot, frozen, decapitated, dismembered.
She said, not a single person knows where the rest
(57:37):
of his body is. They put Sophia on the witness stand.
After nearly a year of trials, Marjorie was convicted. She
stood to receive a lethal injection. The Orbans, however, said
they'd rather she spent her whole life in prison. That
(57:58):
would be a worse punishment. Back when I hosted a
podcast with other women of color about horror movies, we
have this system of gauging a film scariness. Basically, if
I could never be in that situation, the movie's not
scary to me. For example, if the premise was that
(58:20):
a bunch of men went on a four day trip
hiking off the map and got abducted into a Nordic
cult ritual, I mean I'd watch it, but that scenario
doesn't really apply to me because I just don't go
off the grid, so it wasn't scary to me personally.
I think we tend to do the same for true crime.
(58:42):
Some people do the thing of, well, she shouldn't have
been walking alone at night, slash wearing that outfit, Slash
gone to a second location with a stranger, so it's
her fault. But I'm not talking to victim blamers here.
That's not what this podcast is about. What I mean
is well, one reason why I follow true crime is
(59:03):
because I need to know all that shit so I
can avoid it. This story, I don't really know what
Jay could have done differently to me. That makes it
a real nightmare. It's the kind of case that's really
hard to write off as that could never happen to me,
because we can't even really pinpoint a motive. I mean,
(59:27):
for the insurance money, yes, but she already had access
to so much money. Marjorie started developing some odd behaviors
after she'd settled down with Jay and her son, sort
of like she couldn't take the comfort of that quiet
life after so many years of less stable living. But honestly,
(59:52):
I wouldn't have looked at any of it and thought
that woman is capable of a heinous violent crime. So
there's no moral here. I mean, there's never a moral
in a true crime story. There are things you can learn, sure,
but never ever a tidy takeaway this story, though, this
(01:00:15):
one illustrates just how ubiquitous evil is, and that even
if you try, even if you are a good guy
who looks out for others and keeps all your wits
about you, man, it's still out there. Join me next
(01:00:44):
week on the greatest true crime Stories ever told. For
a very special case, I'm heading back to the eighteen
nineties to introduce you to Jane Toppin, the subject of
my book, America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and
the Making of them On. I'd also like to shout
out some key sources that made it possible for me
(01:01:05):
to tell this story. First off, Shanna Hogan's book Dancing
with Death, the true story of a glamorous showgirl, her
wealthy husband, and a horrifying murder. Shanna died in an
accident in twenty twenty. If it was possible to interview
her about this case, I would have loved to do that.
(01:01:27):
Hopefully this episode does her work justice even in her absence.
I also have to credit the podcast This Is Monsters,
which included the interview tapes between Marjorie and detectives. For
more information about this case and others we cover on
the show, visit diversion Audio dot com. Sign up for
(01:01:48):
Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about
special behind the scenes features with hosts and actors from
diversions podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion in our partners,
and other exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else. That's
Diversionaudio dot com to sign up for the newsletter. The
(01:02:08):
Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of
Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. I wrote this episode
and our editorial director is Nora Battel. Our show is
produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our development team is
Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
(01:02:31):
Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis, and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Diversion Audio
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