For him, all those years ago, that anecdote underscored how cold-blooded Marshall really was. 'There is nothing more important than family,' Coronato said. Kelly revealed during Marshall's trial in 1986.Ĭoronato explained that Kelly told the jury that Robert Marshall had never picked up the cremated remains of his wife, which were left in a cardboard box at a Toms River funeral home. 'That he was obviously the mastermind of this hideous crime,' Coronato said.īut if there was any doubt about whether Marshall felt regret or sorrow over what he had done to his family was illustrated in what then-Assistant Prosecutor Kevin W. Coronato said Monday that he too is troubled by the fact that Marshall was incapable of acknowledging his complicity in the case. Their youngest brother John, who was 13 at the time, was never able to accept that truth. Ultimately, the eldest sons, Roby and Christopher Marshall, who were 19 and 18 respectively at the time of their mother's death, came to terms with their father's guilt. The meaning of the title comes from the fact that Robert and Maria Marshall's three sons continued to believe in their father's innocence, even in the face of mounting evidence for his guilt and his increasingly bizarre behavior after their mother's death. The case spawned a best-selling book, 'Blind Faith,' and a subsequent TV movie of the same name. At the time of the murder, the Marshalls were an all-American, upper, middle-class family who were pillars in Toms River society. After Maria's death, Marshall, a once prominent and respected Toms River insurance broker, planned to collect a $1.5 million payout on her life insurance policy and then be free to legitimize an extramarital affair. In the summer of 1984, Marshall had arranged the execution of his wife and the mother of his three sons, Maria Marshall, in an elaborate murder-for-hire scheme.

The arranged murder