Rampage (28 page)

Elizabeth Roth-Gunter      

Stephen Marshall

“I am sorry to admit that I will not likely ever choose to attempt to intervene in a violent situation to
save any person because of my fear
of the bad legal consequences.”

Victims:
2 killed/committed suicide

Duration of rampage:
Sunday April 16, 2006 (spree killing)

Location:
Maine, U.S.

Weapons:
.45 -calibre pistol, .22 -calibre pistol

Father and Son Reunion

Stephen Marshall and his father Ralph had always been close. Having spent his early years in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, when his parents’ marriage crumbled Stephen uprooted with the old man to Culdesac: a tiny community of less than four hundred people in northern Idaho. There the two bonded over a mutual love of firearms and hunting, regularly attending gun shows together. Things seemed okay. Ralph Marshall served as executive director for the Clearwater Economic Development Association, and later became town mayor. Throughout his teens, Stephen was a quiet but reasonably popular student who enjoyed playing video games and making prank phone calls. On the surface, he appeared more or less normal and well-adjusted — save for one troubling incident. In April 2001, local boys Chris Reisdorph and Nathan Tyler started brawling in the Marshall family front yard after Chris sprayed Nathan with a water gun. Stephen, a good friend of Chris’s older brother Joe, pointed a rifle at Nathan and was subsequently charged with aggravated assault by the Nez Perce County Sheriff’s Department. He was fifteen years old and about to move … again.

After sitting for three years as Culdesac’s mayor, plus a stint in Arizona, Ralph Marshall relocated to Maine, where he found employment with a local Native American band. Stephen returned to Canada. By the age of twenty he had a job washing dishes at the Canton Family Restaurant in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, where he was considered “nice, quiet,” and “reliable.” On Tuesday, April 11, 2006, Stephen showed up on time for his last shift before Easter weekend, when he planned to visit his father in Houlton, Maine. Nobody on the staff recalled seeing him acting peculiarly. They wished him “safe travels” and expected him to be back washing their dishes in a few days.

Bloody Sunday

It was three degrees above freezing on the morning of Easter Sunday when a white pickup truck rolled into the town of Corinth, Maine. Just before 8:15 a.m. it parked outside the mobile home of twenty-four-year-old William Elliott and his family. A junkyard operator by trade, William had been convicted of statutory rape and jailed for four months in 2002. His name, photo, and address were logged among 2,200 others in Maine’s online sex offender registry. That morning William was hanging around with his girlfriend, Terri, and father, Wayne, when there was a knock on the door.
*
He opened it to find himself confronted by a pimple-faced gunman. From her vantage point, Terri looked on in horror as the visitor emptied his pistol into her unsuspecting boyfriend, dropping him to the floor. He continued to fire long after William was dead before fleeing the scene. Darting toward the doorway, Terri saw his white pickup truck peel away and scribbled down the licence plate number.

It wasn’t long before police connected the slaying with that of Joseph Gray, a fifty-seven-year-old child rapist who had been gunned down in his Minot apartment five hours earlier. Like William Elliott, his name and details appeared in the state sex offender database. Running the licence plate number through the computer, police discovered that the mysterious white pickup belonged to a Ralph Marshall of Houlton. They contacted Ralph and learned that his son Stephen had stolen the truck, a .22 -calibre pistol, a .45 -calibre pistol, and a rifle. Maine state police sent out an alert, declaring Stephen a “person of interest” who should be considered armed and dangerous. Ralph Marshall couldn’t believe it. Just days before, the two had been laughing and eating ice cream cones. Now, his son had become the object of a police manhunt.

Stephen’s white truck was discovered that day, abandoned outside a hockey arena in Bangor. When a worker pulled some corresponding bullets out of a toilet tank at a nearby bus depot, investigators surmised that Stephen had probably caught the Vermont Bus Lines coach to Boston. They informed the Massachusetts police, who intercepted the bus just outside of South Station.

Inside the vehicle, the doors opened and two transit officers stepped aboard. “Turn on the overhead lights,” they commanded the driver. The bus lit up like a dance floor after last call, exposing the bewildered expressions of the holiday travellers. Before anyone knew what was happening, there was a loud bang, and blood splattered the passengers. Thirteen rows behind the driver, Stephen Marshall slumped forward in his seat — dead. He had blown off a portion of his skull with a .45 -calibre handgun, most of the brain matter flying through the open window. Rushing to the scene, paramedics found a second .22 -calibre pistol in his backpack along with a laptop, passport, and “some personal papers.”

Justifying Murder

Everybody knew that Stephen Marshall had committed suicide by gunshot to the head. The autopsy they were interested in was psychological. What would lead this polite young man from Cape Breton to embark on his killing spree? Eager to find out, Maine state detectives descended on Nova Scotia to interview friends and family of the deceased. His apartment was thoroughly searched for some clue to his motivation, and his laptop dissected electronically by police technicians. Eventually, it was learned that Marshall had indeed logged onto Maine’s sex offender registry, viewing the profiles of thirty-four out of 2,200 convicted perverts. Among the names of those whose information he had accessed were Joseph Gray and William Elliott. Not only did the registry provide each man’s name, but also his address and the specifics of his conviction.

Back in Idaho, Stephen’s friend, twenty-year-old Joe Reisdorph, admitted to the press via telephone that whenever a rapist or child molester appeared on the news, Stephen and his friends would discuss how vile the perpetrator was. To use Reisdorph’s own words, “We just said the people who were guilty of it were worthless. We all agreed it was heinous.… We thought sexual predators were worse than killers.” They weren’t the only ones — many Americans voiced their support for what Stephen Marshall had done. William Elliott’s father, Wayne, saw things from a different perspective: “My son, my only son, was my best friend.… I couldn’t understand who would hate him this much.”

At the end of the day, Marshall knew even less about his victims than we know about Marshall. Was he an enraged sexual abuse survivor who enforced his own brand of justice against those who, at least on the computer, resembled his tormentors? Or was he simply a disturbed young man with a gun fixation, using his victims’ sex offender status to dehumanize them, and justifying his overwhelming urge to kill? Could it be some combination of the two? Marshall’s mother has repeatedly asked American police to divulge the contents of her son’s laptop, but as of this writing, she has been consistently refused.

Though we have far less access to information than the authorities, we will now examine Marshall’s personal history and psychology, in an attempt to gain an understanding of his actions. A good starting point is the killer’s own writings. Source #1 is the content of a personal website Marshall created at the age of fourteen. Source #2 is an essay on guns and juvenile violence he was required to write as part of his probation for pointing the assault rifle at Nathan Tyler. Source #3 is a 2005 email reply to a long-lost buddy in Idaho, in which Marshall speaks rather candidly about his personal life and situation.

Source #1: Website Content
[49]

Marshall provides a link to the “sweetist [
sic
] pics of weapons that you can find anywhere.”

He also includes a list of “personal dislikes:

• minorities getting special treatment
  
• men who don’t keep their women in line
  
• Asthma
  
• women in general
  
• the beautiful people
  
• my job
  
• cleaning
  
• school
  
• society
  
• the disgusting commercialization of our daily lives
  
• the economic system
  
• capitalism (But it’ll do for now)
  
• rich people
  
• the United Nations
  
• a world government
  
• the feds
  
• the man and his rules
  
• civil oppression
  
• the ‘Patriot Act’ of 2001.”
  

Source #2: Essay on “Guns and Their Influence on Juvenile Crime” mandated by Marshall’s probation
[50]

Note to the reader: In order not to disrupt the flow of Marshall’s essay, I included footnotes wherever I saw fit to provide analysis.

Guns and Their Relation to Juvenile Crime

August 19, 2001

Introduction

When you hear the title of this paper, what comes to mind? “Guns and their relation to juvenile crime.” What I think of is, of course, serious crime that I see on the news.a Liquor store robberies, gang related violence, drug dealing, ect [
sic
]. The types of youth involved in these activities have not been raised around firearms. They have never been through a safety course, and have almost no prior experience around guns. They live in the city where hunting and target shooting is not practiced. The fact is, an extremely small percentage [of] youths who have access to guns rob stores or do drugs.b They are kids raised on good values and have had their shooting and hunting heritage passed on from their parents. They go shooting with their friends and family and would never think of using a gun in a violent crime.c Such was my attitude until I was presented with a situation in which I made a hasty decision, and inadvertently committed a crime. I know that what I did was wrong, and Nathan said that it scared him.d I have since written an apology letter addressing my actions and the way they impacted him. I believe that Chris Reisdorph has since recovered from his assault, also.e

This paper will address some of the concerns of society on juvenile crimes involving guns. From the point of view of a concerned citizen, I will make suggestions on sentencing and how to solve this problem. I will obtain some useful information from the internet, and will list my sources on my resource page. This paper will mostly be about personal opinions. I will state my point of view on the different types of crime I research. Juvenile gun crime can [
sic
] is a significant problem, and I hope that my point of view will help solve it somehow.

Types of crime

As I said before, when I think of “gun crime” related to youths, I think of what I see on the news and on television. There are people shot down on the street for gang related activity, rare school shootings, drugs, and muggings.f School shootings, though, are all we ever hear about in the national news out of all these types of crime. In the specific crime that I committed, it was an emergency situation. My alternatives had to have been considered and action taken in a split second. Under such pressure, my judgment was faulty. One of the alternatives I had was to do nothing. The alternative I should have selected was to call 911 and wait for the sheriff to come. But I believe that any long delay could have resulted in grave harm to a 13 year old boy at the hands of a much bigger, stronger 16 year old.g In the future, if I am a witness to any violent situation my response will be to contact the proper authorities.

Victim Impact

Most violent gun related crimes usually end in death for the victim. If this victim is not in fact killed, the impact is usually severe. Paralysis and other disabilities can result from gun wounds. But the people who are shot are not the only victims. Their friends and family suffer, also. Take the so-called “Million Mom March” for example. These people were friends and family of youths killed by people using guns. They were obviously very hurt by what had happened to someone who they loved so much. It was their opinion that increased gun control was the answer. Though I disagree with this opinion, I can understand the way they feel. They are hurt and angry for their loved ones [
sic
] death, and some of their arguments about guns are respectable.h

Further to address psychological impact, I refer to my case. Nathan told police that he was scared and worried that he was going to be shot. His fear and “worry” are legitimate psychological impacts on him, and though I had no intention to do anything of the sort to him, I do feel remorse for making him feel that way.

Other emotional problems can arise from things like muggings and other street crime. Victims of these crimes often feel scared and even paranoid if and when they go out on the street again, some cannot even go out for weeks after a traumatic incident like this happens.

Sentencing

I do not believe in mandatory sentencing for gun related crime. Such as if I was automatically required to serve 90 days in jail and probation until I was 21 for “aggravated assault” or “assault,” just because it involved a gun. I do not believe that that would have been fair, or necessary to correct my actions. Each case is unique, and must be treated that way by the judge. I do believe that since gun related juvenile crime is a problem, sentencing should be harsher than with other violent crime. But I think that the judge should use his judgment to fairly deal with each case. Further, I think that youths should be educated beyond what they learn in hunters ed. They should learn about inappropriate ways to use a firearm in an emergency, and they must know the laws. If I knew that what I was doing was illegal in trying to save Chris, I would never have done it that way.