In the Barrens
Map: NJ with Atlantic & Toms River marked
In many respects, the murder of Maria Marshall on September 7, 1984, was an iconographic moment in
New Jersey. And nowhere was that more true than in their own neighborhood in the plush suburbs of
Toms River, a comparatively affluent suburb carved in the 1950s and '60s from the cedar swamps and sandy pine forests that hug the
Garden State Parkway north of
Atlantic City.
It wasn't just that the slaying was so brutal: two rounds from a pistol pumped into her back as she lay sprawled across the front seat of her husband's Cadillac. It wasn't even that the murder, as a jury would later find, was so calculated and cold-blooded, or even that that it hinged, it seemed, on the most craven sort of betrayal, although those factors also contributed to making the case part of the lore of the Jersey Shore.
No, what made Maria Marshall's slaying -- at the direction of her husband so terribly disturbing was the fact that Maria and Rob Marshall had seemed to represent everything that life in this paradise in the Pine Barrens promised.
Maria & Rob Marshall
By all accounts, Rob and Maria Marshall were an ostentatiously attractive couple, with three handsome, intelligent and devoted sons, Rob Jr., Chris, and John. They were active in the community -- it seemed that Rob was forever doing something for the
United Way and both were always, it seemed, involved in some social activity or another, often at the country club. What's more, Maria and Rob, it seemed, were particularly doting when it came to their sons. That was especially true with regards to Chris's extracurricular career as a high school swimmer. The
Marshalls were a ubiquitous presence at swim meets, Maria serving as a kind of unofficial cheerleader, while Rob, with the latest and most expensive camera around his neck, acted as videographer for all, or at least most of Chris' swim meets.
Perhaps more importantly in the status-conscious community that was Toms River, in the wildly status-conscious 1980s, the Marshalls were successful, or at least appeared so. The son of a salesman, who grew up moving from rented home to rented home, Rob Marshall, the oldest of five children, had inherited the sales gene from his father. While in college, he had used his talents, it was said, to persuade a professor to raise a questionable grade, just enough so he could graduate and persuade Maria's conservative Polish parents to agree to let them wed before Marshall headed off to earn his wings as a Navy flier.
Later, after moving to Toms River, he used the talents in the insurance business, where, according to his own account, he quickly went from earning $700 a month to become one of the 50 top agents for the Philadelphia-based Provident Mutual Insurance Company, selling $2 million worth of insurance in his first year, and earning a $12,000 bonus to boot.
His earnings went a long way toward buying him the life he had always dreamed of. In 1973, with his newly minted affluence, Marshall, then 34, was able to build a dream home on a quarter-acre lot on one of the most prestigious blocks in Toms River. He prided himself on the fact that he provided his family with all the accoutrements of wealth, including a 40-foot long inground swimming pool, and later, an 18-foot ski boat, which he named "Double-Down" an allusion to his other real passion, blackjack, a passion he and Maria indulged as often as possible at the gaming tables in nearby Atlantic City.
"Ken and Barbie." That's what they were called, as author Joe McGinness put it in his 1989 book on the case, Blind Faith. And by all outward appearances, they were devoted to one another.
