Prescription: Murder! Volume 3 by Noel Hynd

Author:Noel Hynd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: True Crime, Biographies & Memoirs, Hoaxes & Deceptions, Serial Killers, Murder & Mayhem
Publisher: Red Cat Tales LLC of Los Angeles
Published: 2014-11-22T06:00:00+00:00

Dr. Marshall (CENTER) with Lt. Belshaw (LEFT) in police custody.

Now he claimed that Dietrich had committed suicide, using poison she found in his office. Panicked, he said, he had then cut up her body in order to dispose of it.

Still the detectives weren’t buying the tale. Another gentle round of interrogation evoked a different version of events, leading to Marshall being charged with murder. In this, Marshall described how Dietrich turned up at his office and tried to blackmail him over their longstanding relationship, demanding money for some items she had just purchased.

“I refused, then a quarrel started. I tried to scare her,” the doctor said. “The result was that, I guess, I choked her… I would like to say this, though … I don’t want the impression that I deliberately intended to choke her to death, for I didn’t.

It seemed like an odd thing to say, in light of the fact that Marshall’s next course of action was to cut Dietrich’s throat. But those were Marshall’s words and they were eventually introduced as evidence in court.

The savagery of the killing, the allegations of blackmail and the illicit sex – these were the 1920’s, after all – combined to make this a lurid trial the local press would love. And there was plenty of more for the prosecution to throw at the doctor by the time the trial convened.

For starters, a chauffeur named E. J. Barry described how Dr. Marshall had hired him on the night of January 20, to haul away some parcels from his office. As Barry lifted one of the packages its paper wrapping broke and out fell a human leg. Barry just gaped. Frantically, Marshall began thrusting fistfuls of dollars at him, begging him to get rid of the parcel, but Barry would have none of it and later approached the police after the doctor had been arrested.

When in custody, Marshall had been hustled off to the morgue by Delaware County District Attorney William Taylor and William Belshaw. Testifying for the prosecution, Taylor now told how they had assembled a group around the remains of Anna Dietrich. After this, Marshall eventually made a statement, presumably after the police had hosed him for several hours.

“I cut the body up,” he admitted, “but I had nothing to do with her death. She committed suicide. She came into my office and took something. I don’t know what it was. She died there.”

The words were read in court. Then the jurors listened spellbound as Marshall’s account of dissecting the body — a three-hour task — was read aloud.

Desperate to discredit the confession, Marshall’s lawyers attacked the next witness, Assistant District Attorney William B. McClenachan, who had been present at its dictation. McClenachan conceded that the defendant had been grilled nonstop for fourteen hours, but the jurors didn’t appear too sympathetic.

The prosecution needed to establish that the victim had been afraid of Marshall. They called to the witness stand a man named Kenneth Gleason, a commuter on the train used by Anna Dietrich.

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