On a full day of prolonged closing arguments, the prosecutor’s rebuttal ended with two succinct sentences.
Taking a look at jurors in Division 2 of Solano County Superior Court docket, Chief Deputy District Lawyer Paul Sequeira stated, “She’s gone, and the case is 42 years old. Justice for DeAnna Lynn Johnson is in your hands.”
With that, he introduced the three-week Marvin Ray Markle Jr. homicide trial to an in depth Tuesday afternoon within the Vallejo courtroom of Choose Daniel Healy, who learn last directions to the 12 jurors who will decide the evolving destiny of the beforehand convicted 59-year-old felon.
Markle is charged with the Nov. 15, 1982, strangulation and bludgeoning demise of Johnson, 14, a scholar a Will C. Wooden Junior Excessive, whose physique was discovered the following day alongside railroad tracks close to Elmira Street in Vacaville, simply blocks from her dwelling on Royal Oaks Drive.
Sequeira was particularly animated throughout his 30-minute rebuttal to the closing argument of Markle’s lawyer, Thomas A. Barrett, chief deputy of the Alternate Defender Workplace, who asserted one other particular person, not Markle, was culpable to Johnson’s brutal homicide and {that a} fire poker was the seemingly reason for lacerations on the woman’s face.
Amongst his first factors, Sequeira stated a fire poker wouldn’t have trigger Johnson’s cranium fracture, which proof revealed within the post-mortem report confirmed it was extra seemingly attributable to a big rock or football-sized chunk of concrete. There was no DNA on the poker, he added.
And, Sequeira stated, jurors have to sift “reasonable and unreasonable” inferences from trial testimony throughout deliberations and query Barrett’s assertions {that a} potential different suspect within the case, James Zimmerman, who lived in one other Royal Oaks Drive dwelling, the positioning of a beer occasion Johnson attended on Nov. 15, was her killer.
Marvin Ray Markle Jr., 59(Solano County Sheriff’s Workplace)
Her assailant was Markle, stated Sequeira, who argued, “There was no accounting for where he was” after Markle, 17 years outdated on the time, left the occasion and didn’t wish to be seen strolling previous Royal Oaks Drive after killing Johnson.
Recounting trial testimony, Sequeira stated Markle extra seemingly “came from the railroad tracks” and took “the secret way,” strolling alongside a fenced-off irrigation canal, again to the occasion home.
He reminded jurors that Matthew Lydon, a former Vacaville police captain and now an investigator for the DA’s Workplace, testified that in his lengthy profession as a Vacaville officer he solely encountered two individuals contained in the canal space.
“It’s just not a place people go — unless you don’t want to be seen,” stated Sequeira.
And when did Zimmerman kill Johnson, as Barrett stated, when nobody sees him depart the occasion home and the occasion ends about 9 p.m., he questioned, including that Zimmerman, shirtless and shoeless, and one other man, Joseph Silva, later left the home in a car to purchase beer, then the automobile ran out of fuel on the way in which again to the home.
The deeply skilled longtime prosecutor then reminded jurors that blood evaluation of the boots Markle wore on Nov. 15 yielded Johnson’s DNA and her fingernail clippings, based on a state Division of Justice criminalist, additionally yielded Markle’s DNA.
A number of witnesses, together with Markle’s sister, Melissa Markle, testified that through the years they heard Markle, suicidal and guilt-ridden, admit to killing Johnson, together with instances when he was believed to be excessive on methamphetamine, Sequeira stated.
These statements have been “shocking” to listen to, he stated, including and pacing behind and in entrance of the lectern simply steps away the jury field, that “brief statements,” like “I killed somebody,” are quick and, thus, simply remembered.
“Either the defendant’s the unluckiest guy or he’s stone guilty,” stated Sequeira earlier than displaying what he known as “one exhibit,” to the jurors, a shade picture of Johnson.
Early on in his closing argument, Sequeira additionally reminded jurors of statements made by Dr. Harold Brazil, a forensic pathologist, a transcript learn in courtroom. Sequeira learn the prosecutor’s half and Deputy District Lawyer Barry Shapiro learn Brazil’s statements.
Sequeira confirmed a half-dozen or extra graphic and grisly shade post-mortem pictures of Johnson’s physique and head, the latter coated in blood spatter, on the day the post-mortem was carried out, Nov. 17, 1982.
He known as the trial “a journey through time in this case,” and known as Johnson’s killing “first-degree murder,” that Markle meant to kill her and “made a decision and killed in two different ways,” alluding to strangulation and the bludgeoning.
Over the previous a number of years, because the case wound its approach by way of the county courtroom, trial dates greater than as soon as have been assigned, then vacated.
As beforehand reported, in February 2017, Markle pleaded not responsible to at least one rely of homicide in connection to Johnson’s demise when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Jail on suspicion of homicide and use of a lethal weapon. On the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the 2001 homicide of a Biggs lady, a reality not prone to be launched throughout the ongoing trial.
It was the demise of Shirley Ann Pratt, 41, in Butte County, that 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 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Division officers arrested Markle, who was later tried and convicted. He has remained in both state jail or jail custody ever since.
Within the Vacaville case, based on courtroom data, on the night time of Nov. 15, 1982, Johnson attended a celebration at a house on Royal Oaks Drive, up the road from her household’s residence. She was later reported lacking after her brother, one other occasion attendee, returned dwelling and found she was not there and was out previous her 8 p.m. curfew.
The subsequent day, her physique was discovered by a Southern Pacific Railroad worker close to the tracks alongside Elmira Street.
The Solano County District Lawyer’s Workplace filed its grievance towards Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary listening to was held on Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.
If convicted of the homicide cost, Markle, who stays in Solano County Jail with out bail on a state jail maintain, faces 25 years to life in jail, with the potential for extra time for being a beforehand convicted felon.
Jury deliberations start at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday in Division 2 within the Justice Constructing in Vallejo.
Initially Revealed: March 19, 2025 at 8:08 AM PDT
