All Episodes

July 30, 2024 18 mins
In this episode, we step out of the Great Lakes region and venture into New Jersey where we tell the story of the 1984 murder of Maria Marshall. Promo by Mystery Frequency Podcast.

Buy Me Coffee (please!) - https://paypal.me/greatlakestruecrime
Website - www.greatlakestruecrime.net
X - https://twitter.com/greatlakescrime 
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/greatlakescrime

All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.

Produced, written, edited, and hosted by Steve from Great Lakes True Crime.

*****Positive reviews really help out the show and are always appreciated*****

Sources
Martinelli, P. A. (2007). True Crime, New Jersey: The State's Most Notorious Criminal Cases. United States: Stackpole Books.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23088/maria-marshall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_O._Marshall 
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmmmm, who knows? Letting lek and the Hearts of Men.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Turn your dial to find the frequency of the past.
With the classic stories of mysteries, sci fi, thrillers, and
suspense are found waiting to be heard once again another
the final variety of those stories here in their original form,
where each episode takes you to another place or time

(00:37):
dot seven, but only when you find the mystery frequency
available everywhere.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
That knows. On the night of September seventh, nineteen eighty four,
Robert Marshall of Tom's River, New Jersey, and his wife Maria.
We're driving north on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway from
a casino in Atlantic City, when Robert said he felt

(01:06):
a vibration in one of the car's tires. He would
later recount the police that when he pulled off the
highway in a dimly lit picnic area to tend to
the tire, he was then knocked unconscious by a blow
to the back of his head, and approximately fifteen thousand
dollars worth of casino winnings was stolen from him. When

(01:27):
he regained consciousness, he found Maria's lifeless body lying across
the front seat of their car. She had been shot
in the head from the south shore of Lake Erie.
This is Great Lake's true crime. Before we go any further,

(02:23):
I want to address that this episode takes place in
New Jersey, which, if you're not familiar with US geography,
is not part of the Great Lakes. Just taking an
artistic liberty to tell this story, which is an important one,
and that's the beauty of not being beholden too a
network or anyone else for your independent podcast. Robert Marshall

(02:47):
and Maria Pozinski began dating in the early nineteen sixties.
Maria loved Robert's outgoing personality, but her conservative pearance took
a little more convincing. Eventually, though, they came around and
gave their blessing to the couple, who were married in
December nineteen sixty three at Saint Adelbert's Church in Philadelphia.

(03:10):
Robert had attended Villanova University in Philadelphia and managed to
graduate despite being a less than stellar student. After college,
he joined the US Navy, determined to make something of himself.
While in the Navy, Robert Maria discovered the fast growing
community of Toms River, New Jersey. In nineteen seventy three,

(03:33):
the couple bought a brand new house there with an
inground forty foot swimming pool. It was there that they
put down roots, having three sons in joining the prestigious
Toms River Country Club. Living a life of luxury was
important to Robert, who had grown up as the oldest
of five children of an alcoholic father who dragged the

(03:56):
family around from place to place, always trying to stay
a stefe ahead of the many bill collectors. He was
also motivated by the fact that Maria had grown up
in a well to do family, and it was important
to Robert that he'd be able to prove that he
could provide such a life for Maria and the children.

(04:17):
So Robert worked hard at his insurance sales job with
a Philadelphia based company called Provident Mutual. In fact, in
his first year there, he earned a twelve thousand dollars
bonus for selling more than two million dollars worth of
insurance policies. And remember this is in the nineteen sixties.
To celebrate the success, he went out and bought an

(04:39):
eighteen foot boat that they named the Double Down. The
couple were also fond of driving their Cadillac down to
Atlantic City, which had recently legalized casino gambling. Robert would
spend hundreds of dollars a night gambling at the blackjack tables,
sometimes even thousands of dollars. Over time, however, the couple

(05:02):
grew apart. Maria devoted most of her energy to raising
the kids and running the household. She preferred to stay home,
while Robert still enjoyed the night life. They both made
it work for a while, though, until the Fourth of
July weekend in nineteen eighty three. It was then that
the couple were at a friend's barbecue where Robert met

(05:24):
and became smitten with a merried assistant principal at a
local high school named Siran Crosshauer. The two soon began
a secret of love of her. After about a year
of sneaking around, Robert and Saran decided that they should
leave their respective spouses and move in together. During that

(05:45):
time period, Robert apparently said that he wished Marie wasn't
around to stand in his way, and he would later
allege that Saran actually provided him with the name of
a local man that could make his wish come true,
someone who could murder his wife. It was apparently a
casual conversation. As casual as such, a conversation like this

(06:09):
could be, but that idea never left Robert's mind. Right
around this time, Maria found out about her husband's torrid affair.
But that's not the only bad news she discovered. She
also learned that their family was in massive debt due
to Robert's irresponsible gambling and other reckless spending. What's worse,

(06:35):
she found out that Robert had forged her signature on
one hundred thousand dollars home equity loan, and he also
had an eighty thousand dollars mortgage on an office he had. Maria,
of course, was furious when she found this out. She
was so mad that she clandestinely hired a private investigator
to find out everything that Robert was up to. It

(06:59):
wasn't long, however, before Robert had been tipped off that
Maria may have hired a private detective to look into
his affairs. He knew that at this point he could
lose everything, not only his wife, but his home, business,
and reputation in the community. Robert decided that he needed
to take action. He eventually met a man originally from

(07:25):
Louisiana named Billy Wayne McKinnon, who offered to help out
Billy sensed that Robert was desperate and he could probably
make some money off of him. So Robert, Billy McKinnon,
and another man from Louisiana named Robert Cumber met up
in an Atlantic City casino in June nineteen eighty four.

(07:48):
At the meeting, Robert paid McKinnon seven thousand dollars, supposedly
just to follow Maria and see what she was up to.
So at this point, both husband and wan for spying
on each other. It's not the sign of a great marriage.
But this arrangement was quite different, as Robert also agreed

(08:11):
that the two men from Louisiana would be paid sixty
five thousand dollars to split if Maria was murdered as
soon as possible. That was a lot of money, about
two hundred thousand dollars in today's money. Robert's arrangement didn't
work out too smoothly though. Instead of taking the seven
thousand dollars and following Maria around as he was supposed

(08:33):
to do, Billy McKinnon quickly left New Jersey and headed
back to Louisiana with the cash. About a month later,
Billy drove back to New Jersey to try and shake
some more money out of Robert, which he did. Robert
gave Billy another seven thousand dollars, and the two agreed
that Maria would be murdered in the parking lot of

(08:56):
a local diner. Not surprisingly, Billy failed to follow through
with the plan and instead headed back to Louisiana once again.
This time, though, was a little different. That August, Billy
was told that someone else had been hired to kill
him for not following through with the deal he had

(09:19):
with Robert. Apparently Robert had enough of Billy, or maybe not,
because the following month, in September nineteen eighty four, the
two met up again. This time, they met at a
picnic area along a busy highway in New Jersey known
as the Garden State Parkway. They decided that this picnic

(09:39):
area would be nice and dark at night and a
perfect place to murder Maria. On the night of September sixth,
nineteen eighty four, Robert and Maria Marshall drove down to
the Harris Casino in Atlantic City, where they enjoyed a

(09:59):
nice dinner and a few hours of gambling. A little
after midnight, they headed home in their yellow Cadillac, but
Billy McKinnon and Larry Thompson, who was the man Robert
had paid to kill Billy the previous month. Light in
wait at the Oyster Creek Picnic Area, which is that

(10:22):
dark area they had selected along the Garden State Parkway.
While driving north, Robert pretended that he thought the back
tire was going flat, so he pulled into that picnic area,
where Thompson ran out of a brushy area and murdered
Maria as she sat in the cadillac. He also delivered

(10:42):
a hard blow to the head of Robert as planned.
He then slashed a tire on the car before he
and McKinnon took off. Police were called, and upon arrival
they discovered Robert with a blow to the head that
required five stitches. They also found to the lifeless body
of Maria in the front passenger's seat of the cadillac.

(11:05):
Robert's story was that he pulled over to fix a
flat tire and a random criminal came out to mug
them and assaulted him while killing Maria. In the days
after the horrible incident, many people who knew Robert were
very suspicious, including neighbors, police, and even his two older sons.

(11:27):
It seems that Robert's story about what happened kept changing,
Plus he wasn't the type of guy that would try
to change his own flat tire. When word got out
about the affair with Saran, suspicions grew even more. For
her part, Saran told investigators that Robert had taken a
long distance call from Louisiana at her apartment one night.

(11:51):
He claimed it was in regard to a gambling debt.
She had her doubts, though, and also became suspicious that
she may be having an affair with a murder. The
relationship fizzled out at this point. Murder tends to put
a damper on things. Police continue their investigation, and Robert

(12:12):
must have known that authorities were closing in on him.
He actually checked into a hotel room in northern New
Jersey and recorded a suicide tape. Although he did not
go through with the suicide. It's not entirely clear if
Robert actually intended to go through with it, or if
he made the tape in some effort to show mental instability.

(12:35):
Marshall was eventually arrested for the murder of his wife
on December nineteenth, nineteen eighty four. The prosecution publicly theorized
that Robert orchestrated the murder for higher scheme so that
he could collect on a one point five million dollar
insurance policy. Police also arrested three of Marshall's accomplices for

(12:55):
conspiracy to commit murder. They were a forty seven year
old Robert Cumber of Bossier City, Louisiana, forty nine year
old James Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana, and forty two year
old Billy Wayne McKinnon of Greenwood, Louisiana, who was also
charged with murder. After a six week trial, Robert Marshall

(13:20):
was convicted of capital murder. He was sentenced to death
by lethal injection. Cumber, who had introduced Marshall to McKinnon,
was convicted as an accomplice and sentenced to life in prison,
although he was released in two thousand and six. McKinnon
cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy.

(13:43):
He was sentenced to five years in prison and only
served one year. McKinnon testified during the trial that he
was hired by Marshall to kill Muria, and that he
and the gunman, Larry Thompson, had in fact ben hiding
at that Garden State Parkway rust stop where Thompson had
committed the murder. Thompson actually managed to be found not

(14:06):
guilty of murder in nineteen eighty six after testimony from
family members stated that he was in Louisiana at the
time of the killing. In April twenty fourteen, however, while
in prison for other crimes, Thompson admitted to having committed
the murder of Maria Marshall. With America's prohibition on double jeopardy,

(14:30):
though it didn't matter, he could not be retried for
Maria's murder after being found not guilty. It's unlikely, though,
that Thompson will ever be let out of prison, as
his earliest possible parole date under his current sentence is
twenty seventy one. Although Robert Marshall had been sentenced to death,

(14:53):
his death penalty was overturned on an appeal in two
thousand and four through the U. S. District Court. The
Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in two
thousand and five, and the U. S. Supreme Court declined
to hear an appeal by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office.
After that New Jersey prosecutors declined to retry the death

(15:17):
penalty phase of the case, as Robert's conviction still stood,
he just could no longer get the death penalty, which
the State of New Jersey was very unlikely to carry
out anyway. Later that year, in August two thousand six,
Marshall was re sentenced to life in prison with the
possibility of parole in eight years. This made Marshall, who

(15:40):
had been locked up since his arrest in nineteen eighty four,
eligible for parole in twenty fourteen. A parole board hearing
was eventually scheduled for March twenty fifteen, and Robert's two
older sons, Roby and Christopher, planned to oppose their father's
parole at the hearing. Their younger brother, John, on the

(16:02):
other hand, had always believed in Robert's innocence and was
going to speak in favor of his father, but Robert
would never get his parole hearing. Several months after suffering
a stroke, Robert Marshall died in Southwood's State Prison in Bridgeton,
New Jersey, on February twenty first, twenty fifteen. Maria Pozinski

(16:27):
Marshall is interred at Saint Joseph Catholic Cemetery in Tom's River,
New Jersey. The inscription on her headstone reads, quote, our
greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising
every time we fall, unquote. And that's all for this

(16:50):
episode of Great Lake's True Crime. You can say hi
to us on Facebook and on the X just search
for Great Lake's True Crime. You can also check out
the show notes for sources and more information. Please send
any thoughts or case suggestions to Great Lakes True Crime
at gmail dot com. And if you like the show,
please give us a positive review and encourage your friends

(17:13):
to subscribe. We need new subscribers as that really helps
us out for Great Lakes True Crime. This has been Steve,
your host and producer. Thanks for listening. Buys took you

(18:00):
to
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience

The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.