Blind Faith
Joe McGinniss
PRAISE FOR
BLIND FAITH
“Rob Marshall was a speed demon on the boulevard of dreams, living in a boomtown suburb, consumed by the prevalent greed. He looked at his wife and saw $1.5 million in assets if she died…. He looked at Felice, his lover, and saw a fabulous piece of sexual real estate…. Joe McGinniss rolls through this gilt-edged tragedy as smoothly as Marshall’s Cadillac pulled up to its final resting place…. The pacing is just right…a spun tension…. A jittery mix of horror, apprehension, and dead certainty…makes the reader dread the conclusion as he flips the pages over faster to get to it.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“We weep with anger and with pity at what the children went through.”
—The New York Times
“Impossible to put down.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A fine work of inquisitive journalism…a page-turner!”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Remarkable…fascinating…a relentlessly true picture of social values gone hellishly wrong.”
—Newsday
“Joe McGinniss has shaped a compelling tale of domestic horror masquerading as domestic bliss. He has taken all the elements of crime—murder, deceit, million-dollar insurance policies—wrapped them into this womb of polite society and produced as true an American story as any written in recent years.”
—People
“A chilling and unforgettable portrait of a gruesome American tragedy…. We find ourselves drawn into this wrenching tale.”
—Cosmopolitan
“Excellent, heartbreaking, engrossing…. McGinniss’s genius is in showing the effect of murder on a victim’s family.”
—Library Journal
“A con brio account of a real-life Double Indemnity murder…a lively true crimer with a touch of moral fiber.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Absorbing…moving and heart-wrenching.”
—Publishers Weekly
BLIND
FAITH
JOE MCGINNISS
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition.
First Signet Printing, October 1989
First Signet Printing (Repackaged Edition), October 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Joe McGinniss, 1989
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60864-7
The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources to reprint material in their control: Almo Music Corp. and Delicate Music for lyrics from “Take the Long Way Home” by Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies © 1979 Almo Music Corp. and Delicate Music (ASCAP). International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Printed in the United States of America
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my former student and research assistant, Karen Houppert, for her inquiries into the history of Toms River and Ocean County and for her insights into the social mores of the area today.
I would also like to thank my lawyer and friend, Dan Kornstein, for helping me through the period of time that encompassed the writing of this book. Mr. Kornstein is a man of high principle, great compassion and profound intelligence who has elevated the practice of law to the level of moral statement. He has the personal integrity to stand up for people, books and causes he believes in, even when others do not, and for that I am more grateful than I can adequately express.
For
MATTHEW
and
JAMES
EXPLANATORY NOTE
While much of the dialogue in this book is taken directly from court transcripts, there are numerous instances in which it has been reconstructed on the basis of the author’s interviews with relevant individuals. In addition, certain scenes have been dramatically re-created in order to portray more effectively the personalities of those most intimately involved in this story and the atmosphere surrounding the events upon which this book is based.
It should be recognized that a trial produces conflicting versions of events. Where such conflict exists in testimony or recollection, the author has sought to provide that version which in his opinion is the most plausible.
Except for Robert Marshall, Maria Marshall, the three sons, Roby, Chris and John, the parents of Maria Marshall, Judge Manuel Greenberg, assistant prosecutor Kevin Kelly and a few other minor characters, the author has chosen to change the names and to otherwise disguise the identities of the people involved in this story. This has been done to preserve privacy. Any similarity between the fictitious names used and those of living persons is, of course, entirely coincidental.
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’s doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?
—HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby-Dick
Table of Contents
Part One: The Boys
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Part Two: The Law
12
13
1
4
15
16
17
18
19
Part Three: The Trial
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Epilogue
Part One
THE
BOYS
1
At eleven o’clock on the morning of September 6, 1984, Roby Marshall was awakened by his mother. This was unusual. Most days he’d been sleeping past noon.
Where he should have been was back at Villanova for his sophomore year, getting up at eight o’clock in the morning and going to class. But there had been a difficulty in the dorm the previous spring, just before final exams. The difficulty had involved beer, half a dozen other male freshmen, and the kicking down of a resident assistant’s door. Roby Marshall, along with others, had been instructed to spend the fall semester of his sophomore year elsewhere, awaiting January readmission. He’d enrolled at Stockton State College near Atlantic City, forty minutes down the parkway from his home in Toms River, New Jersey, but classes there did not begin for another week, and so late on this Thursday morning, as on most other mornings since his job as an Ortley Beach lifeguard had ended, Roby Marshall was still in bed.
“Roby, honey,” his mother said. “Your father and I are having lunch at the club. Do you want to come?”
Roby’s relationship with his father had been a little rocky through the summer. Rob Senior, a Villanova graduate (class of ’63) and the most prominent insurance salesman in Toms River, had not been pleased by Roby’s suspension. He had, in fact, refused to give Roby the new Mustang convertible he had promised upon completion of Roby’s freshman year. That had been a blow—having to drive the crappy old yellow Mustang to the beach all summer—but even worse had been his father’s short temper and cold silences for the past three months.
Since he was going to be living at home through Christmas, commuting (in the old yellow Mustang) to classes at Stockton State, Roby figured he’d better try to mend fences, even if it did mean, on this occasion, getting up before noon.
He told his mother he would join them, then got up, showered, blow-dried his curly blond hair, put on a pair of freshly pressed designer jeans and a freshly laundered shirt from Grog’s Surf Palace in Seaside Park (Roby’s parents took great pride in how well their children dressed), and went downstairs to the kitchen.
The Marshall house was located on Crest Ridge Drive in the Brookside section of Toms River. Brookside was the neighborhood that people in Toms River moved to when they wanted to show others how well they were doing. The Marshalls had lived there since 1971. Since then, in addition to their country club membership, they’d acquired an in-ground swimming pool, a time share in a Florida condo, an ivory Cadillac, a station wagon, Roby’s yellow Mustang, and a new Jeep for his younger brother Chris, who had just begun his freshman year at Lehigh. John, who at thirteen was the youngest of the three boys, had already been promised a Porsche.
Roby kissed his mother and sat at the kitchen counter. She handed him a glass of orange juice. Now that he was up, he was eager to move. “So let’s go,” he said. “Where’s Dad?”
He noticed a sudden tenseness in his mother’s expression. “God knows where your father is these days,” she said. Then she turned and walked quickly from the kitchen. That was unusual. Most days—though usually it was early afternoon instead of morning—Maria Marshall would be waiting in the kitchen when Roby came down. After giving him juice she’d make him pancakes and then sit at the table and engage him in conversation while he ate. Roby had found this one of the few good things about getting tossed out of school temporarily—the chance to spend more time with his mother.
He’d always been close to her, as had his brothers. She was not only his mom, he liked to say, but his best friend. Most guys his age—Roby was nineteen—would be embarrassed if told they looked like their mothers. Roby was proud. He had always thought his mother was the most beautiful woman in Toms River.
Roby was six one and broad shouldered and had been a record-setting swimmer in high school, but in his open, round, still slightly babyish face, he did bear an unmistakable resemblance to Maria. At forty-two, with striking blond hair, soft blue eyes, unwrinkled skin, a trim, athletic figure and one of the most extensive—and expensive—wardrobes in Ocean County, she was a woman always noticed and often envied. For Roby, lunch at the club with her would be a treat.
Shortly after noon, his father got home—late, as always; and, as usual these days, irritable and in a hurry. Rob Marshall, at forty-five, was the same height as his oldest son, with a hairline that was receding gracefully, if rapidly, above eyes that were just as flinty as Maria’s were soft. His lips were so thin and colorless as to seem almost transparent and his jaw jutted forward hard as the prow of a ship. Until quite recently, the jaw, and Rob overall, had been padded by a beefy layer of middle-age fat, but he’d lost a lot of weight in recent months so that it was now the herky-jerky, nervous energy that one first noticed about him.
Just as the three of them started down the front steps toward the Cadillac, another car pulled up and a man Roby did not know got out.
“Just be a minute,” Roby’s father said, and he walked quickly with the man back through the living room and into his first-floor office.
“What’s that all about?” Roby asked his mother.
“These days,” Maria said, “who knows?”
Whatever it was, it didn’t take long. In less than five minutes, Rob and the man emerged from the office. Again, they started down the front walk, this time accompanied by the man, whom Rob introduced simply as “Mr. Girard.”
When they reached their cars, Rob said goodbye to Mr. Girard.
“Have a nice vacation,” Mr. Girard said.
In the car, Roby asked his father what that had meant, since there was no vacation coming up.
“I don’t know,” Rob said impatiently. “Maybe he was just trying to be funny.”
“Ha ha,” Maria said, in a voice that betrayed no amusement.
Have a nice vacation. That was one of the little things that didn’t mean anything at the time that Roby remembered later, when everything seemed to mean a great deal.
Another occurred on the way home from the club, after lunch, when his mother pulled a cassette out of the tape deck and then picked up the plastic box on which the names of the songs had been written. From the backseat, Roby could see his mother reading the names of the songs.
“Don’t you have any that remind you of me?” she asked Rob.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, and driving slightly faster than normal, Roby’s father reached down and rummaged through the clutter of cassette boxes beneath the front seat. He kept glancing back and forth, from the road to the tapes. Finally, he found what he was looking for. Roby couldn’t see what it was, but it didn’t really matter anyway. What he remembered, later, was the ice-cold tone in which his father said the word “there,” as he held the box out to Maria.
In the afternoon, Roby’s girlfriend, Susan Salzman, came over to the house and they played Trivial Pursuit with Maria. Trivial Pursuit had been the hot game all over Brookside that summer. Rob and Maria Marshall had played it avidly, often with Roby and Chris and their friends, often until 2 or 3 A.M., Rob chugalugging Coca-Cola, the boys swigging Pepsi, Rob and Maria always a team and always the winners, kissing each other after each correct answer as if they were teenagers themselves.
Even playing the Baby Boomer edition, Roby was no match for his mother. There were just too many things—Where is Kruger National Park? What were the first names of the Maverick brothers? What’s known as the universal solvent?—that his Toms River East high school education had not covered. And Susan Salzman, just starting her senior year at East, was not much help.
In late afternoon, Maria went upstairs to dress for the evening. She and Rob were going to Atlantic City
for dinner at the Meadows, the most expensive of the six restaurants at Harrah’s Marina, followed by an hour or two of blackjack.
The trip to Harrah’s had become a weekly ritual for the Marshalls. In this they were no different from most of their Toms River friends. Since the coming of the gambling casinos in the late 1970s, Atlantic City had become the hub of Toms River social life. Just forty quick miles down the Garden State Parkway, the glittery towers that now lined the boardwalk had suddenly brought to life for the residents of an undistinguished small town along the central New Jersey shore a chrome-plated, free-spending world that had previously existed only on television.
The casino lifestyle did not simply fill a recreational void for the country club set of Toms River: it became the ultimate status symbol. To get “comped”—that is, given a free meal and tickets to a show—at an Atlantic City gambling casino was something you could brag about for weeks. To let it be known that Atlantic City had become the center of your social life (“Dinner Saturday? Gee, we’d love to, but we’ve got reservations at the Nugget.”) was to inform your peers that you had really begun to move in the express lane.
And no one cared more about that sort of thing than Rob Marshall. He didn’t just go to a casino, he ran casino bus tours out of his house (in return for which he was “comped” extravagantly). He didn’t just play blackjack, he cofounded an instructional club called the Winner’s Circle. When he bought a boat—and in Toms River a boat was as necessary a symbol of affluence as a Cadillac—he named it after a type of blackjack bet, the “Double Down.”
If Maria was not quite so enthralled by the lifestyle, she certainly didn’t find it objectionable. The fact was that the casinos and their most expensive restaurants gave her an arena in which to display the clothes she had purchased in Short Hills or on Fifth Avenue. And there is no question but that she enjoyed the attention lavished upon her by the headwaiters and maître d’s to whom she had become such a familiar presence.
