An Oct. 3 trial has been vacated and a brand new one is scheduled in February for a convicted assassin and accused killer of a 14-year-old Vacaville woman 4 a long time in the past.
Solano County Superior Court docket Decide Daniel Healy reset the jury trial date for Marvin Ray Markle, 57, to eight:30 a.m. Feb. 6 in Division 2 within the Justice Constructing in Vallejo.
Showing in courtroom on Sept. 28, Markle, charged with the 1982 bludgeoning demise of De Anna Lynn Johnson, additionally heard Healy set a trial administration convention for 10 a.m. Jan. 19.
Markle’s jury trial has been scheduled and rescheduled a number of instances in latest months, partially due to diminished courtroom operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In custody with out bail in Solano County Jail, he's being defended by Chief Deputy Alternate Public Defender Thomas A. Barrett.
In February 2017, after a decision of the case that went chilly, Markle pleaded not responsible to at least one rely of homicide in connection to De Anna’s demise when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Jail on suspicion of homicide and use of a lethal weapon to kill her. On the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the homicide of a Biggs girl in 2001.
It was the demise of Shirley Pratt, 41, in Butte County, which led to Markle’s arrest within the Vacaville case. On the morning of Oct. 12, 2001, Pratt was discovered bare within the Oroville Wildlife space, lifeless from an obvious gunshot wound to the face. In July of 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Division arrested Markle, and he has remained in both county jail or state jail custody ever since.
In response to courtroom information, on the evening of Nov. 15, 1982, De Anna, a Will C. Wooden Junior Excessive College pupil, attended a celebration close to her Royal Oaks Drive residence. Markle, then a 17-year-old pupil at Nation Excessive, Vacaville Unified College District’s continuation college on the time, was additionally on the celebration.
De Anna was first reported lacking after her brother, one other celebration attendee, returned residence and found she was not there and out previous her curfew.
The following day her physique was discovered by a Southern Pacific Railroad worker close to the tracks alongside Elmira Street. She had been strangled, overwhelmed and bludgeoned within the head by a rock, an post-mortem report later revealed.
Regardless of a number of residents of Vacaville believing Markle was the teenager’s killer, police had been by no means in a position to amass substantial proof that tied him — a widely known bully, Johnson’s mates mentioned — to the crime and the case went chilly.
The Solano County District Lawyer’s Workplace filed its criticism towards Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary listening to was held on Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.