When I was a little girl growing up in the Marting/Montgomery area (they are a few short miles away from eachother), I thought murders and finding bodies were normal. There were so many murders and bodies found close to home in the 80s. I was just talking to my dad today about Mark. There are also the Whitten and Nasby murders. Mark worked at the gas station (the Exxon in Smithers) and it was rumored that Mr. Whitten had some extra money/cash deal when he sold it. There was supposed to be money in that safe. Nasby also had ties to that gas station. Remember that both Nasby and Mazie's boyfriend's bodies were both found on Marting two years apart. Marting isn't that big. It is the stretch between Cannelton and Mt. Olive. When he was left out of the family will, he burned the family house down. He liked to take out life insurance policies on people he went into business with and they would end up dead. One of those people was my dad's first cousin. When he died, my great-aunt recieved nothing. Mark got everything from my dad's cousin and pretended to be the mourning "friend" next to his casket. If memory serves me right, that is when Mark put those big lion statues outside his house in Cannelton. He really revamped that place when my dad's cousin died. My dad also went to school with Cathy Carroll, who was also murdered. He also knew Gene pretty well. My dad believes that Mark was involved and was the one who committed the actual killing. If you wanted someone dead, you went to Mark...the story goes. He was a cold-hearted killer and would do anything to make some extra cash. He's in his 70s now and I'm pretty sure he's in prison in another state to molesting a child. Who really knows how many people he murdered in the 1970s and 80s. We will never know. Someone like that doesn't grow a conscious.
