210. The Poolside Murder Mystery - Marianne Shockley
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. You know what, I'm going to save you guys all the hassle of like this video, leave a comment, turn on notifications, leave a review, and just get right into Garrett's 10 seconds. All right, so for my 10 seconds this week, if you can like this video, if you can subscribe. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let's see.

Well, Peyton and I watched the new Roadhouse on Amazon Prime. It was okay. It was cheesy. It was cheesy. It was entertaining. I'm entertained pretty easily. So if it's something that just entertains us and we have fun watching it, we laugh a little bit. That's kind of all we care about. Yep. So if you're looking for something just that's kind of there, it's a good movie. Like a lot of punching in. Yeah, there was graphic. But it was fake. You can tell. But I mean, you're also listening to this podcast, so I'm going to assume you're okay with a little bit of... Blood. Blood. Blood.

But that was good. And then obviously March Madness has been going on. I love March Madness. I love college basketball, but I love March Madness for the Cinderella stories. Like that's why I like it. Obviously, I mean, there's certain players that I follow that are, you know, on Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and all of that. But something about the Cinderella stories just are so fun to watch. It's so fun to watch people that just come out and play lights out that you don't really know that you've never heard of.

Just good. It's also, it goes to show how much the competition, the gap is closing. People are just so good at sports now. One day that'll be me. But for now I am on a podcast and that's what I'm doing with my life. So reminder, if you want any bonus episodes, ad free content, check out our Apple subscription or Patreon or Spotify. You can find all of our bonus content ad free.

Yeah, that's what I got. So let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are CBSNews.com, The Washington Post, 13WMAZ.com, TheSun.com, MorganCountyCitizen.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, GoFundMe, Sandhills Express, Mirror.co.uk, US Today, The Cinemaholic, Baldwin 2K News, BobcatMultimedia.com, The Independent, and UnionRecorder.com. Also, we're about ready to get into this. I forgot to mention on Peyton's podcast,

podcast or personal podcast into the dark on youtube audio wherever she has now been covering um once a week every saturday an extra episode that has to do with recent true crime news updates to cases so if that's something you're interested in go and check it out okay trigger warning this episode includes discussions of suicide so please listen with care okay

Eyewitnesses are one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in basically any case, particularly when the crime happens in a private space, right? Like we count on those testimonies to piece together what happened to the victim in the moments prior to their death to figure out how the entire thing went down, who might have been responsible, and what happened to the victim.

And in private situations, police are lucky to find one witness at the scene and two is an even bigger deal. But the thing about being a witness is...

Sometimes that also means you're a person of interest. If you were at the crime, witnessing a crime, you might also be a person of interest. And in today's case, one witness added a whole lot of confusion and suspicion when they couldn't even make it down to the station for questioning because they died by suicide before the police could even fully suspect them. I think that if I witnessed a murder, I'm not going to lie, I'd be scared too.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I'd be like, I didn't see anything. Even if you were like, maybe you didn't witness it, but you were like kind of a part of it. You were there maybe. Yeah. Like if I was in a store and something happened and I didn't see anything. Yeah. I don't know. It just scares me.

So for today's case, we're actually headed to the area of Athens, Georgia, or more specifically to the University of Georgia. It's 2019, and this was home to 43-year-old Dr. Marianne Shockley, who was considered a star professor around campus.

Nicknamed Dr. Shock by many of her students, Marianne's area of expertise was both fascinating, unusual, and maybe a little bit of disgusting to some because she was a professor of entomology, which is the study of insects.

But she also had a deep fascination with something that I looked up how to say this. I wrote it down, but I'm just no, I'm not going to say it right. So just bear with me. But it's called entomofuggy or the practice of eating bugs.

So not only did she like study insects, she liked to eat them. Okay. That's weird, but not like that weird. But Marianne wasn't just in this field for the ick factor. She felt passionate that her work could change the world. She knew that eating bugs was a good source of protein for people. And she believed that normalizing the consumption of insects could cure some major problems in our society, like world hunger. Marianne,

Mary Ann's work took her all over the world, traveling everywhere from South America to Asia to continue her studies when she wasn't in the classroom at the University of Georgia. But as her friend Terry once told the press, quote, you're just as likely to find her in the Galapagos Islands as you are the church from her childhood.

While Marianne's interests could seem a bit up in the clouds, everyone who knew her claimed she was extremely grounded, she was kind, she was an all-around loving human being. And by 43, she lived more life than people twice her age. Marianne had been married and divorced not once, but three times, and she had two grown children of her own named Paul and Nora. But in 2017, she'd reconnected with an old acquaintance from her youth.

Someone who added a whole new level of excitement to Mary Ann's already fast-paced lifestyle. His name was Marcus Lillard and he was a finance manager for a car company. There was no denying that the 43-year-old man had charms.

charm about him. He had a way of making everyone feel comfortable, at ease, like everyone was a friend of his. This was something that Marianne had likely been drawn to since she first met Marcus back in the late 1990s when the two of them were both students at Georgia College and were living in the town of Milledgeville. There they met working at the same little restaurant in town.

And while sparks didn't necessarily fly back then, Marianne and her sister Ayla definitely took notice of Marcus in the 90s. He was the party boy who dated around campus, including one of Ayla's close friends. And at the time, he certainly didn't seem like the kind of person who would take a relationship seriously, particularly because Marcus found himself dabbling heavily in drugs and alcohol at that time.

college point of his life to the point where he actually dropped out of college a year or so later. But then fast forward to 2017, things had changed for Marcus, or so it seemed. One afternoon when Marcus was making the hour drive up to Athens from Milledgeville, he thought of Marianne. Remembering that she now called the area home, he figured, why not reach out to her and see if she wants to grab lunch, maybe reconnect? And the rest was sort of

Marcus picked her up on his motorcycle that day. They cruised around Athens with the wind in their hair, eventually taking a romantic stroll through the local botanical gardens. Marianne realized they had a lot more in common now than they did in the past.

Marcus had also been married and divorced, and he now had a grown son of his own. So needless to say, that first date was like a fairy tale for Marianne and Marcus. After that, the two were inseparable, spending every waking minute they could together.

Marianne even brought Marcus along with her on work trips as her assistant, so together they traveled to exotic locations like China and Ecuador. Over the next year or so, things got incredibly serious between the two, and while there were some hiccups along the way, Marcus claimed the two were deeply in love.

But Marianne's sister, Ayla, sensed there was trouble in paradise. To Ayla, she still saw the 17-year-old kid they knew back in college, the playboy who wasn't capable of fully settling down or giving Marianne what she needed. It's so interesting because I know people get older and mature and, I guess, change, if you want to use that word. But do they? You know what I'm saying? Some characteristics and some...

I feel like are so deeply embedded. It is so hard to change those. And I do think people definitely have the ability to change. 100%. But do they change? Exactly. Yep. And, you know, coming from a small town where I went to school with people who, you know,

whose parents also went to school with my parents because we all just grew up in the same town. If you were to ask my parents, they would say, no, people don't change because the offspring tended to not fall far from the tree and ended up being like, if I said, oh, this kid's kind of mean,

One of my parents would say, well, their dad was kind of mean. So funny. So that makes sense. And Ayla, Marianne's sister, might not have been alone in this because even Marcus's now adult son, Carson, claimed that his father had a Jekyll and Hyde personality that only those closest to him saw. So even his adult son was kind of like, yeah, my dad's not all he's cracked up to be.

Carson claimed there were moments when Marcus could turn on those he loved. He could become angry, sometimes even violent. And he blamed a lot of those behaviors on his father's inability to kick his nasty cocaine habit that he still had. According to Carson, he warned Marianne about it at one point when they started dating. So Marianne comes in the picture and his adult son is like, hey, you know, my dad. Yeah.

loves cocaine but perhaps marianne only wanted to see the best in her new partner that's okay so if the couple was having any glaring issues they weren't apparent when they spent the day together on may 11th 2019 that morning marianne texted marcus asking if he knew anyone with a pool she felt the urge to celebrate and swim

The college year had just ended, all of the finals had been graded, and Marianne was ready to blow off some steam of her own. So Marcus invited her down to Milledgeville for the day and suggested they grab some drinks around town. They got some brunch with mimosas, then did a little bit more bar hopping before ending up at the local country club for a few more drinks.

So they've now moved on to the country club and it's at this point that Marcus's friend who he texted to see if they could use his pool, he was 69 year old Clark Kindell, finally got back to him. Clark was a former psychologist turned yoga instructor. He had a pool at his house in Milledgeville and he told the couple they were more than welcome to come over that evening to use it.

And I'm not sure what time Marcus and Marianne got to Clark's house, but I do know that Marcus and swimming pool Clark spent the first several hours at his place just jamming. Marcus was on the drums and Clark was on the accordion while Marianne just kind of watched on. How old are, how old are they all again? They're in their forties. Okay.

Just living the life. Living the life on the accordion. No judgment. Nothing wrong with that. So while they're there, they consume some more beers. They even smoked a little bit of marijuana. And eventually it seemed like a dip in the pool was no longer part of the equation. The only reason I ask is because I'm 29. And if I'm out past nine o'clock these days, it is my bedtime. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcus said he and Marianne were thinking of calling it a night until a new thought dawned on him. He asked Clark if he had any acid they could do. Oh my gosh. And Clark tells him he doesn't have acid, but he does have some ecstasy, which was intriguing enough to get the couple to stay for a few more hours.

So Marcus claimed all three of them. So this is Clark, Marianne and Marcus took the drugs. And from there, things started to get a little fuzzy. They had already consumed a lot of alcohol, maybe some marijuana. But there were certain events from that night that Marcus was unable to shake.

So by 9 p.m., Marcus and Marianne had been in the above-ground hot tub for some time, while Clark allegedly stayed in the swimming pool most of the night. At that point, Marcus claimed he got out of the water to go find some firewood. They were ready to get out and warm up by the fire before calling it a night. So Marcus hops out, he grabs a towel, and he turns to venture towards the woods behind Clark's house.

According to Marcus, that's when Marianne sort of begged him not to leave her alone. Allegedly, the words she used were, baby, get back in the water with me right now.

Marcus says that she seemed a little scared but thought it was just the drugs talking, that maybe Marianne was feeling a bit paranoid from being under the influence of it all. So he tells her, you're going to be fine. I'll be gone just a few minutes. Okay. But when he wanders out there, he seemingly loses all sense of time. Oh, great. He's not sure how long he's gone for. But when he comes back, firewood supposedly in hand

he notices a strange hush has fallen over the backyard. So he calls Marianne's name, but there's no answer.

And as he gets closer, he realizes Marianne slumped down in the hot tub. Her mouth and nose are under the water. So Marcus claimed that's when he dragged Marianne out of the above ground hot tub and onto the deck to try and perform CPR. Except while doing so, he inadvertently dropped her and left her with a huge gash on her forehead.

Now, Clark supposedly gets out of the pool at this point and starts to panic with Marcus, even asking if they should call 911. Except according to Clark, Marcus says, no, no, I think she'll be fine. Okay. No, she's not fine. It isn't until 1 a.m. That's three hours later that Clark Heindel finally phones 911 to say that his friend has drowned in his hot tub. How do you...

how? How do you wait three hours? I guess they are on drugs. So maybe they wanted to wait until some of the drugs went away. Yeah. Or they sobered up a little bit. I don't know. Maybe that's what it is. I mean, I don't think it's chill when you're doing illegal drugs and then something bad happens and you're like,

Well, the last people we want to call are the cops. For sure. So I guess I can understand that. Also, what's more important? Someone's life. Someone's life. But when you're on drugs, are you thinking about that? Right. I don't know. I've never dropped acid, so I'm not the acid expert. If when you out there have dropped acid, feel free to enlighten us. In my acid days, I always called 911. I'm sure. Yep.

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So when the police arrive at around 1.20 a.m., they find that Clark and Marcus are both still trying to perform CPR on Marianne. It's been three hours. The thing is, when EMTs tell them to step aside so they can help Marianne, they're quickly able to assess that she's been dead for at least two hours by this point. Now, there's a few other reasons why police just find this entire scene unsettling when they show up.

While they're claiming that Marianne died from drowning, they're also seeing a lot of blood at the scene. And not just the blood from Marianne's head wound. They also discovered a pair of eyeglasses on the shallow end of the pool that also had blood on and next to them. So if he drops her while taking her on the deck, how are their glasses with blood in the hot tub? Mm-hmm.

And there appeared to be two puddles of blood on the grass near the swimming pool. Yeah, there shouldn't be any blood. So to me, this says Marianne was bleeding outside the proximity of getting her out of the jacuzzi and into the deck. Like there's more blood around this crime scene. Plus, in some accounts that I read, they also said all three of the people were naked when police arrived. Now, this was just some people reported this. Some people didn't. But it was...

It's just to add into the weirdness of the situation when police get there. So once EMTs declared Marianne dead, it's then that Marcus admits to police that the three of them were doing drugs that evening. But the drugs were so unexpectedly strong that they hindered his ability to remember the events leading up to Marianne's death. So he's like, I'm not really sure. I was in the woods, but something happened in the woods. I can't remember. I got the firewood. I came back and police.

aren't really buying Marcus's firewood alibi because they look around and there had already been a huge pile of wood stacked near the fire pit. So why would he need to go get more wood? Plus, it had rained earlier that day, so anything Marcus would have gone out into the woods to collect would have been a lot wetter and just harder to light than the pile that Clark already had on hand. It's hard, though, because you also have to realize...

I don't know. I mean, depending on how many drugs they took and how under the influence they were, I mean, that's going to affect a lot. He could have just not even seen the wood and been like, I got to go get wood. Look, Peyton and I are not the drug experts. You guys are definitely going to have to chime in on the comments a little bit on social media. But yeah, I'm not sure. So police are like, okay, listen, Marcus, if you were going out to get wood,

Why would you need to get wood? There was already wood here. It was really wet out there. And so Marcus is like,

okay, you got me. I actually wasn't going into the woods to get more firewood. He said he actually went out into the woods to reenact a scene from a movie called The Last Shaman. In the movie, the lead protagonist partakes in a series of strange rituals while high on drugs, and Marcus said he wanted a moment to try it for himself. So he went out into the woods, he dug a hole, and he laid down in it to

to recreate the feeling of being buried alive. What? Why? That's what it would do in the movie. He claimed he had no idea how long he was out there for. He'd lost all sense of time. When he came back, Marianne was no longer alive.

So now the Firewood story has kind of fallen by the wayside. Oh, the Firewood story was way better than that story. The other thing that's not adding up is if nothing incriminating was going on here, then why did the two men wait so long to die on 9-1-1? Well, it turns out Marcus wasn't exactly a model citizen to begin with. At the time, he was actually on probation for illegally selling marijuana and carrying other drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine.

Whether or not he was responsible for Marianne's death, this wasn't a good look for him, and he knew it. Plus, he and Clark kept insisting. Marianne was still breathing right up until the time the police arrived.

So when cops go to question Clark, he maintains that he never got in the hot tub that night. He stayed in the shallow end of the pool, which was about 50 feet away from where Mary Ann was. But the police know they aren't getting straight answers from either of the men, especially not with the two of them standing there looking at each other to confirm their answers.

So officers decide to separate them for more questioning. They put Marcus in the back of a squad car while they instructed Clark to go stand on his porch. Only at this point, Clark seems antsy, even maybe a little agitated. He keeps wandering around his property, despite the fact that police have told him many times to stay put. Like, this is a crime scene. Someone has died here. He needs to just stand there.

Finally, a deputy is assigned to keep an eye on Clark, who's been relegated to his front porch. Make sure he doesn't tamper with the crime scene in any way, but when that deputy receives a phone call and wanders off for a second...

Well, Clark uses the opportunity to do the unthinkable. It's around 3 a.m. when another police officer goes looking for Clark to ask if he has any idea where Mary Ann's purse might be. They want to check on her identification. Only they realize Clark isn't where they left him. The guard had took off on a phone call and he's no longer on the front porch.

And that's when a blast rings out from inside the home. What? A bomb? One quick gunshot and then silence.

Oh my gosh. So officers rush into Clark's home, guns pointed, like ready to go to battle. Like why? We're outside combing this crime scene and then all of a sudden a gun shot rings out. He shot himself. When they get inside, they find Clark Heindel dead in the bathroom and a handwritten suicide note in the kitchen. The letter read, quote, I don't know what happened with Marianne, but it was on my watch. It wasn't

It went on to apologize to Marianne's family and friends and then quickly instructed his own next of kin on how to handle his possessions. But nowhere in the letter did Clark take responsibility for Marianne's death. Now, while the police were dealing with their massive mistake, I mean, imagine the heat they're going to get when it's found out that someone took their own life.

At a crime scene while cops were already there walking around. A lot of legal battles, a lot of internal battles. It's not going to be good. They really probably should have never taken their eyes off Clark, who was already acting a little weird, acting a little agitated. Even the sheriff, Bill Massey, agreed it was a huge violation of their policy and procedures. That's unlucky. So despite everything that happened, a few other officers take Marcus down to the station for questioning because they still have a murder on their hands.

And Marcus has yet to learn at this point that he didn't just lose one close companion that night. He lost two. So they took him before the suicide had happened. So while he's in the interrogation room, an officer gets a call and then breaks the news to him. And if you watch the clip of Marcus receiving this news,

It's actually pretty distressing. Marcus gets out of his seat and starts rolling around on the floor in like what appears to be genuine heartache. Like first Marianne has died and no one knows what's happened. And then he gets this news. We'll put it in both podcasts and YouTube. He tells police that he never in a million years would have guessed that Clark would have died first.

would have done something like die by suicide. I mean, this is a lot for anyone to handle in one night. But Marcus also uses this information to his advantage in a way. He starts questioning what had happened in that time frame when he was in the woods, buried underground, just trying to see. How convenient that he was the one that was gone in the woods and his friend was the one that was there and he just took his own life.

Yeah. I mean, I say convenient because maybe he didn't do anything, but it all just falls in the story. Just was weird from the get go. And now it's just even a little bit weirder. Yeah. He starts saying to police, I don't know what happened in that hot tub while I was in the woods. He starts wondering aloud, saying maybe Clark did something to be guilty of after all, if it was worth taking his own life over.

In fact, he's quick to pitch his own theory of what happened. Of course he is. He thinks that while he was off in the woods, Clark might have gotten in the hot tub with Marianne. Perhaps there was a disagreement or he made a move on her, which led him to drown Marianne.

It's a theory that police have considered as well. After all, it's not every day that a witness turned person of interest in a case then dies by suicide before they can even be brought in for questioning. But there's a problem. Any evidence or DNA that might have indicated there was some sort of inappropriate behavior on Clark's part would have been washed away in the hot tub. So they weren't going to get any confirmation that way.

which is what gets them looking into Clark Heindel's background. And here's what they learn. Apparently, Clark had his license to practice psychology revoked two years prior, so back in 2017. This was after a female patient told the state licensing board that Clark had given her marijuana and tried to pursue a sexual relationship with her. Dude, him and drugs. Yes, but Milledgeville was a tiny community.

A lot of people in town knew Clark and had nothing but kind things to say about him, including the sheriff, Bill Massey, who had a lot of sympathy for Clark.

saying he'd lost his six-year-old son years prior and dealt with a lot of depression himself. Sheriff Massey believed that Clark truly wasn't involved with Mary Ann's death, that it was possible he took his own life because he was just so distraught over her dying at his house and on his watch. So by the afternoon of May 12th, the question remained,

Did Marianne drown on her own in that hot tub, perhaps from the cocktail of drugs and alcohol that she'd consumed over the course of the day? Or was foul play involved after all? So that same day, Sheriff Massey's office gets a phone call from someone who just heard the news about Marianne Shockley's death.

It's a female who says she's an ex-girlfriend of Marcus Lillard's and she knows darn well what he's capable of. So this girl learns about Marianne's death and is like, hey, if Marcus was there, I need to talk to you.

So the woman comes down to the station to give police a statement and she admits Marcus had a thing for choking his lovers during intercourse. In fact, she claimed that in the close to 100 times that she and Marcus had been intimate, 30 of those times involved consensual choking. But sometimes it was it would get to the point where she would lose consciousness. Oh.

So investigators go back to Marcus wondering, is this true? And Marcus doesn't deny it. He says, sure. But again, it was always consensual. And when it came to Marianne, Marcus said they had only tried it once in the past. But Marianne told him she didn't like it. And he says that was that. Marcus never put his hands around her neck again. So for now, police only have Marcus's word to go off of. That is until the following afternoon on May 13th.

when they get Mary Ann's autopsy report back. And the medical examiner's determination says that Mary Ann died as a result of asphyxia due to strangulation. That manner of death is best classified as a homicide. So she didn't drown. She was choked. But it's hard because he's just going to blame it on his friend. Right. So she didn't drown after all, and they pointed to several things on Mary Ann's body that supported their son.

Summary, Marianne had broken blood vessels in her eyes, bruising on her face, neck, torso, arms, and legs. They also stated that there were internal injuries to the neck that were consistent with manual strangulation. So with this information, police go back to Marcus that day to try and get more out of him. They tell Marcus, look, we know that she died by strangulation, so we need you to tell us what really happened before we arrived on the scene.

And Marcus now realizes the police have their mind made up. They are honing in on him, whether he's guilty or not. So it's time for him to lawyer up. And by the end of the day, on May 13th, 2019, Marcus Lillard is arrested. He's later charged with reckless conduct, aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter, and felony murder. It's so interesting. I'm surprised they arrested him because I feel like they don't have much evidence.

Yeah, it's like, well, the other suspect... Because the girlfriend says he likes choking. I'm not saying he's innocent or guilty because I don't know yet. But is there enough evidence to arrest him? I'd probably say no. Let me tell you how trial goes. Okay. So for the next three years, and this is largely due to COVID-19. That's the downside. That's...

That's hard. Having a trial that goes three to five years, that's ridiculous. So Marcus was held in jail without bond as he awaited his trial. By this point, police had fully vetted Clark Hindell and were no longer considering him a suspect, but only a witness in the crimes against Mary Ann Shockley. So Marcus's first day in court finally came around in April of 2022.

The theory put forth by the prosecution was that Marcus and Marianne may have engaged in sex in the hot tub that evening, during which Marcus strangled Marianne, maybe even unintentionally killing her.

And while the defense argues there's no way to prove that Marcus and not Clark was the one to strangle her that evening, the prosecution says they do have some pretty incriminating evidence that Marcus had tried to cover the entire thing up. So on that fateful night, Marcus and Clark obviously didn't call the police until 1 a.m. And remember, when EMTs got there, they said that it appeared as though Marianne had been dead for at least two hours. Well, Marcus had a friend who was a respiratory therapist.

And they had no problem sitting in front of the jury to say Marcus texted them at about 11 p.m. that night in a panic. Marcus was asking how to administer CPR and revive someone who wasn't breathing.

But remember, he and Clark tell police they waited to call 911 because they thought Mary Ann was breathing until the time the EMTs arrived. Interesting. However, this wouldn't be quite enough to sway the jury alone. As I said before, Marcus was on probation for another charge at the time. So while it's extremely irresponsible, his defense argues that

That's not the reason why he avoided involving the authorities for so long. And it certainly didn't help that all three people were under the influence of drugs and alcohol. But the prosecution doesn't let up on Marcus. Not only did they call to the stand the ex-girlfriend who reported the choking, but six of Marcus's ex-lovers take the stand to say they had had the same experience with them. He would choke them until they passed out. Like once? Yeah, no. Six different people? Yeah.

That might be an issue at that point. So two of the six say he did it until they passed out. And then another said she had to tell Marcus more than once that it was something she didn't like. So the word consensual is a bit blurred in this situation. But there was another star witness who spoke out against Marcus, and that was his own son, Carson.

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Carson said as soon as he heard the news that Marianne had died, he had no doubt that his father was to blame. He argued that his father always had violent tendencies, particularly because of his cocaine addiction, and that he'd even warned Marianne about Marcus after they began dating. Yeah, the amount of drugs that this guy does is pretty wild. Well, and I also think it's important to note that Marcus did have cocaine in his system the night Marianne died. And as it turns out,

Marianne might have seen the violent side of Marcus before. The prosecution also pointed to a journal entry that was found in Marianne's bedroom after she died, and it spoke about how she often chose the wrong men and acknowledged that Marcus was not right for her.

But here lies the problem. There's no physical evidence to prove it was Marcus who killed Marianne. Everything is purely circumstantial. That's what I was saying. You trying to convince a jury of this so then they can put someone in jail for life for something that is a 50-50 according to the evidence?

I don't, that's, there's no way they do that. So the prosecution was like hoping for DNA, that there had been sexual intercourse in the hot tub. But even then he could have claimed it was consensual. And then he left in the woods, which gave the defense the opportunity to take one more shot at Clark Heindel. That he could have just as easily gotten into the hot tub to make a move on Marianne while Marcus was away. But when she rebuffed his advances, maybe Clark got angry.

To support this, they pointed to one detail on the autopsy. The fact that Marianne's hyoid bone was still intact.

Now, we've talked about the hyoid bone in other cases before because usually it's the number one indicator that strangulation took place. But it's not always a guarantee. In fact, during Marcus's trial, the defense asked the medical examiner, was it possible Marianne was strangled but the person who did it just was too old or maybe not strong enough to break the hyoid bone in the process? And the medical examiner is like...

Yes, it's possible. And so they say, hey, this makes more sense for 69-year-old Clark than us in our 40s to have done this. Except, as we know, Clark wasn't the one on trial here.

So when the jurors left to deliberate, they'd be choosing the fate of Marcus, and most of them felt there just wasn't enough concrete evidence to confirm he was guilty. They could not say without a reasonable doubt that Marcus Lillard had killed Marion Shockley. Yeah, it's too hard. It's...

Even I don't know what I think, so. So after 35 minutes of deliberating, they returned to find the 44-year-old Marcus not guilty on all four of his charges. Okay. However, that did not mean that Marcus was leaving the courtroom as a free man. As I mentioned a few times...

Marcus was on probation for a drug charge, so the judge presiding over Mary Ann's murder case determined Marcus had still violated that probation, and now it was time to pay the price for that. She sentenced him to three additional years in prison, which meant Marcus was whisked away in handcuffs and returned to his cell. As of this recording, he is still serving time behind bars, although not for the death of his girlfriend.

and according to other forensic pathologists, that might be within reason. So while there were plenty of hot button issues contested during Marcus's trial, I want to include one of them. One of the biggest was the accuracy of Marianne's autopsy. So as we heard, the defense called the strangulation cause of death into question, saying, well, her hyoid wasn't broke, so was she really strangled? They

They also said there might be a few other ways Marianne could have died that night, and one of them being her enlarged heart. This was a condition Marianne didn't seem aware of herself. They pointed to the fact that Marianne was in a hot tub at 107 degrees, three degrees over the safe temperature. And for someone with a heart condition like Marianne's, who was also under the influence of drugs and alcohol, it could have been too much, causing her to go into cardiac arrest and then drown.

This was something CBS's 48 Hours actually looked into after their special on the Mary Ann Shockley case. In fact, they hired their own forensic pathologist to offer a second opinion on Mary Ann's autopsy results. And what they found was

yes, it was possible that Marianne was strangled that night. But they reported, quote, a valid competing cause of death is sudden cardiac arrest due to mixed drug intoxication, a lethal mix of MDMA, alcohol, and marijuana with a contribution from underlying heart disease. In addition, the pathologist told 48 Hours if he was the one to file the report, there was no way he would deem this case a homicide in the first place.

So it's hard not to wonder, what did Clark Heindel see or know about the evening Marianne died? Would Marcus Lillard's trial have gone a little differently had Clark been alive? Would the evidence have been more than circumstantial had one of the best and only witnesses not taken his own life? At the very least, Clark would have been able to defend himself, a right that every person of interest is entitled to.

But without Clark, the mystery behind that strange May night might never be fully solved. And that is the case of Marianne Shockley. That is rough because I don't know what he saw. I don't know what he did or didn't do. We don't know anything. I...

We have nothing. We literally have nothing. I think when you mix in drugs and alcohol and an underlying heart condition, people pass away in hot tubs all the time because of heart conditions. But why would he... You have to take into account why did he go in...

shoot himself do what he did right maybe it was drugs it was either it could have been drugs it could have been he saw something or it could have been he did something we don't know right i'm gonna if we want to assume i think your best assumption is that he saw something but then but then if he saw something then you automatically assume that marcus did it yeah and oh i mean he did according to

The court cases, he didn't do it. Also, you know, just to kind of play another side, having someone die in a night full of drugs and alcohol and partying. That happens all the time. But it's also traumatic. Oh, for sure. That's very traumatic if he was sitting in the pool and had no idea that Marianne had died. Totally. And so if he's being told that and you add in all the drugs and alcohol and the trauma of that situation, I do think it's enough. And did Marcus seem pretty...

sincere in the clips with the cops and stuff. What, what, when he found out that, um, yeah, his friend died, his friend had died. Yes. I don't know. I don't know if we'll ever know. Extremely sad that she passed away and we'll, I don't,

But then you want to say... We'll never know why. Then you want to say, what are the chances that she passes away in the hot tub... Yes, in the exact time frame. While someone is sitting in the pool and at the exact time that another person is burying himself in the woods. Like, it's just so weird. So, personally, I think there was probably foul play involved. But we will never know who, how, or who. Yeah. I just...

We don't know. There's so obviously we could spin up a million theories, but there's just not a good enough evidence to even narrow it down at all. This is definitely one of those cases where you learn more about the case and you're like, it gets worse and worse. I have no idea. It could have been either or. Accidents do happen. So does murder. All right, you guys, that was our case. And we will see you next time with another episode. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.

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