Three witnesses in the Marvin Ray Markle Jr. murder trial, including his sister, testified on Tuesday that they heard him confess to or refer to a 1982 killing in Vacaville.
On the fifth day of proceedings, Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira’s first witness, Matthew Gates, a Paradise police officer who previously worked in Oroville, said on Jan. 2, 2010, he received a call for a welfare check for a “man who might be suicidal.”
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When he arrived at the residence, Gates saw Markle standing on the porch, with the officer adding he had been called to the residence before.
Gates recalled asking Markle how he felt that day, and the defendant told him “I feel suicidal every day.”
The officer looked for signs of intoxication, but told Sequeira that he did not conclude that Markle was intoxicated, but instead sounded coherent, his speech normal, and to the prosecutor’s question “Did he ask why he called” police disptach? Markle replied, “You know why.”
“He told me had killed someone, and it was years before,” recalled Gates, adding, “He said the killing had occurred in Vacaville.”
Gates then placed him in handcuffs and patted him down. Then, according to Gates, Markle asked if he was going to the hospital and if he was going to jail. “He told neighbors to look after his dogs, because, he said, ‘I’m going away for a long time.’ “
Markle, seated at the defense table in Department 2 of Solano County Superior Court and wearing a light gray shirt over tan slacks, his head shaved and sporting a white goatee and mustache, is charged with the Nov. 15 killing of De Anna Lynn Johnson, 14, a student at Will C. Wood Junior High, whose body was found the next day along railroad tracks near Elmira Road.
The second witness, Hollis Thackery, a retired entertainment manager, testified that Markle had worked for him and lived at one of the properties Thackery owned in the Biggs and Ridley areas in Butte County. One day, in 2001, Markle told him “about a person who had been killed,” information that “came out of nowhere and I wasn’t ready for it.”
“Did he say he killed her?” Sequeira asked.
“He just said, ‘Something had happened,’ ” Thackery said.
“Did he use the word ‘killed,’ ” asked Sequeira.
“Yes,” said Thackery.
Some time afterward, arriving at Markle’s trailer on the property, he found the defendant in medical distress after apparently ingesting rat poison “that looked like it was sprinkled” on food nearby. Thackery called 911, the ambulance arrived, and, he told Sequeira, “I thought maybe there was something to it,” referring to the killing.
Thackery said he told one person what Markle told him but did not inform law enforcement.
In cross-examination, Thomas A. Barrett, chief deputy of the Alternate Defender Office, got Thackery to say, “I remember what he told me” nearly 25 years ago.
“I didn’t want to ask him questions, I wanted the conversation to end,” said Thackery, adding, “He was tearful. He was upset. I knew there was remorse. I don’t know why he chose me. I wish he hadn’t chosen me.”
On redirect, Sequeira confirmed that Thackery had spoken with Vacaville police investigator Matt Lydon years later, with Thackery saying that Markle had told him he had killed someone.
Third and final witness of the morning’s proceedings, Melissa Markle, sister to Marvin, recalled “hearing” that her brother had killed Johnson.
In the late 1990s, while living with her parents in Biggs, she overheard a conversation between her brother and their parents and “he was high on meth,” short for methamphetamine.
She recalled Marvin saying, “I killed that girl,” and her mother saying to Marvin, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you know what he was talking about?” asked Sequeira.
“Yes,” she replied.
On Barrett’s cross-examination, Melissa Markle acknowledged she had been interviewed by Lydon and told him about the statement her brother had made. She also said that she knew her brother had exhibited symptoms of methamphetamine use, including delusional thinking.
Early on during Tuesday’s proceding, Sequeira and Deputy District Attorney Barry Shapiro read the testimony about the autopsy report written by Dr. Harold Brazil, a forensic pathologist, a transcript written after the doctor’s testimony in the case. Sequeira read the prosecutor’s part and Shapiro read Brazil’s statements. During his reading, Sequeira also referred to graphic and grisly autopsy photos of Johnson’s body and head, the latter covered in blood spatter, on the day the autopsy was performed, Nov. 17, 1982.
Highly detailed, with vivid and technical descriptions of Brazil’s findings, the doctor concluded that Johnson died of strangulation and severe brain injuries.
Over the past several years, as the case wound its way through the county court, trial dates more than once were assigned, then vacated.
As previously reported, in February 2017, Markle pleaded not guilty to one count of murder in connection to Johnson’s death when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Prison on suspicion of murder and use of a deadly weapon. At the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the 2001 murder of a Biggs woman, a fact not likely to be introduced during the ongoing trial.
It was the death of Shirley Ann Pratt, 41, in Butte County, that led to Markle’s arrest in the Vacaville case. On the morning of Oct. 12, 2001, Pratt was found naked in the Oroville Wildlife area, dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the face. In July 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department officers arrested Markle, who was later tried and convicted. He has remained in either state prison or jail custody ever since.
In the Vacaville case, according to court records, on the night of Nov. 15, 1982, Johnson attended a party at a home on Royal Oaks Drive, up the street from her family’s residence. She was later reported missing after her brother, another party attendee, returned home and discovered she was not there and was out past her 8 p.m. curfew.
The next day, her body was found by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee near the tracks along Elmira Road.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint against Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary hearing was held on Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.
If found guilty at trial, Markle, who remains in Solano County Jail without bail on a state prison hold, faces 25 years to life in prison, with the possibility of more time for being a previously convicted felon.
The trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. Monday in Judge Daniel Healy’s courtroom in the Justice Building in Vallejo.