A 58-year-old convicted killer charged with the 1982 bludgeoning death of a 14-year-old Vacaville girl faces a newly scheduled September jury trial in Solano County Superior Court.
Marvin Ray Markle Jr. appeared earlier this month in Department 2 for more proceedings in the case. Judge Daniel Healy, vacating a May 28 trial, ordered him to return at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 30 for a trial in the Justice Building in Vallejo. The judge also ordered him to return at 8:30 a.m. June 7 for a trial confirmation, court records show.
In custody without bail in Solano County Jail, Markle is being defended by Chief Deputy Alternate Public Defender Thomas A. Barrett. Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira leads the prosecution.
As previously reported, in February 2017, after a resolution of the case that went cold, Markle pleaded not guilty to one count of murder in connection to De Anna Lynn Johnson’s death when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Prison on suspicion of murder and use of a deadly weapon. At the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the murder of a Biggs woman in 2001.
It was the death of Shirley Pratt, 41, in Butte County, that led to Markle’s arrest in the Vacaville case. On the morning of Oct. 12, 2001, Pratt was found naked in the Oroville Wildlife area, dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the face. In July 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department officers arrested Markle. He has remained in either state prison or county jail custody ever since.
According to court records, on the night of Nov. 15, 1982, De Anna, a Will C. Wood Junior High School student, attended a party near her family’s Royal Oaks Drive home. Markle, then a 17-year-old student at Country High, at the time Vacaville Unified School District’s continuation school, was also at the party.
De Anna was first reported missing after her brother, another party attendee, returned home and discovered she was not there and out past her curfew.
The next day, her body was found by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee near the tracks along Elmira Road. She had been strangled, beaten and struck in the head by a rock, an autopsy report later revealed.
Police were never able to amass substantial evidence that tied Markle to the crime. And the case went cold.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint against Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary hearing was held on Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.
If found guilty at trial, Markle faces 25 years to life, with the possibility of more time for being a previously convicted felon.
