Stephen Marshall (9 August 1985 – 16 April 2006) was a 20-year old man who made headlines after searching federal Sex Offender registries for the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders, then traveling to Maine and killing two.

Early life

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Marshall and his family moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia when he was a child. His parents divorced in 1996. In 1999, Marshall moved in with his father in Culdesac, Idaho, where his father Ralph served three years as mayor. Marshall was charged with aggravated assault when he was 15, in April 2001, after he brought an AR-15 rifle onto his lawn, where two youths were fighting.

While his father moved to Arizona, and later Maine, Marshall moved back to his mothers in Cape Breton during the summer of 2003.

Murders

Out of 34 sex offenders listed on the Maine registry, Marshall took down the information on 29 of them. He began his Maine trip with a visit to his father, now living in Houlton, Maine.

Because his car had broken down during the drive, he borrowed his father’s truck, and took an .45 handgun from him. That night he shot and killed John Grey in Milo, and William Elliott in Corinth.

When police stopped the bus he was aboard that evening, he shot himself in the head.

Later investigation of the laptop he had brought with him, indicated that he had gone to the residences of four other sex offenders.

Wikipedia.org

Stephen Marshall

Born in Texas, Stephen Marshall was a 20-year old man who made headlines after searching federal Sex Offender registries for the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders, then traveling to Maine and killing two.

As a child, Marshall and his family moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. After his parents divorced, Marshall moved in with his father in Culdesac, Idaho, where his father Ralph served three years as mayor. Marshall was charged with aggravated assault when he was 15, in April 2001, after he brought a Colt Sport .223-caliber rifle onto his lawn, where two youths were fighting.

While his father moved to Arizona, and later Maine, Marshall moved back to his mothers, in Cape Breton.

Out of 34 sex offenders listed on the Maine registry, Marshall took down the information on 29 of them. He began his Maine trip with a visit to his father, now living in Houlton, Maine, reportedly upset by his parents’ divorce. Because his car had broken down during the drive, he borrowed his father’s truck, and took a .45 handgun from him. That night he shot and killed John Grey in Milo, and William Elliott in Corinth.

When police stopped the bus he was aboard that evening, he shot himself in the head.

Later investigation of the laptop he had brought with him, indicated that he had gone to the residences of four other sex offenders.

Sex Offender Murder Suspect Kills Self

Accused Of Shooting Two In Maine, Man Takes Life When Cornered By Police

By Amy S. Clark - CBS News

April 17, 2006

Maine police found two registered sex offenders shot to death in towns 25 miles apart and quickly zeroed in on a suspect, who fatally shot himself as investigators closed in.

The daylong manhunt that stretched through three states ended when police pulled over the bus Stephen A. Marshall was riding to Boston and the 20-year-old Canadian turned his gun on himself as officers boarded.

Marshall died late Sunday before he could answer questions about whether he knew the Maine victims — sex offenders whose deaths prompted officials to take down the Maine Sex Offender Registry Web site. The site lists the photos, names and addresses of more than 2,200 sex offenders.

“We will try to establish what is the link between these three men but as of tonight there's no known connection,” Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said.

The sex offenders — Joseph L. Gray, 57, of Milo, and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth — were shot to death in their central Maine homes, officials said.

Marshall, who lived in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, had come to Houlton, Maine, for the first time to meet his father, McCausland said.

He was driving his father's pickup, which was spotted leaving the scene in Corinth around 8:15 a.m., about five hours after the shooting in Milo was reported. The truck was later abandoned near an ice arena in Bangor, Maine.

Calling Marshall a “person of interest” in the shootings, Maine State Police alerted Boston authorities that he may be heading toward the city, McCausland said.

Police cornered Marshall on a Vermont Bus Lines coach that he had boarded in Bangor, Procopio said. Sitting 13 rows behind the driver, he pulled a .45 caliber handgun when officers boarded the bus and shot himself in the head.

When paramedics arrived, they found a second handgun in Marshall's possession, Procopio said.

No one else on the bus was injured, Procopio said, but five passengers who were splattered with blood were taken to area hospitals to be examined.

A sex offender registry Web site in Washington state was cited in the deaths of two convicted child rapists last summer. Michael Anthony Mullen, 35, said he targeted the pair and posed as an FBI agent to gain entry to their home after finding them on the online Whatcom County, Wash., sex offender list.

Mullen pleaded guilty in March to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to more than 44 years in prison. Whatcom County continues to list sexual offenders on the Internet.

N.S. murder suspect was arrested as a teen

CTV.ca

Apr. 19 2006

Canadian Press

HALIFAX -- The mysterious Cape Bretoner who shot two sex offenders in Maine, leaving family stunned that such a quiet young man could be so violent, was arrested when he was 15 for threatening another youth with an assault rifle, The Canadian Press has learned.

The arrest record from Idaho is the first indication that Stephen Marshall, a 20-year-old dishwasher who friends described as gentle and passive, had aggressive tendencies in his murky past.

Paul McNish, the patrol lieutenant for Nez Perce County, said Wednesday that Marshall was arrested in tiny Culdesac, Idaho, in the spring of 2001.

The police record shows that Marshall threatened another youth who was fighting with his friend on the front lawn of his father's home.

"He went into (his father's) house and retrieved an AR-15, .223 semi-automatic rifle, returned to the front door and told the one subject to let his friend go," McNish said in an interview.

Police and relatives have repeatedly said they're baffled that Marshall would research the addresses of 34 people on an Internet sex offender list in Maine, locate two of them, and then travel over 1,000 kilometres to his father's house in Houlton, Maine, before going on a killing spree.

He used handguns belonging to his father, Ralph Marshall, to gun down Joseph Gray, 57, of Milo, Maine, and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, Maine, last weekend.

He later used one of the guns to kill himself on a bus in Boston when he was approached by police.

It all seemed a stunning contrast from a youth working as a dishwasher in North Sydney, N.S., where co-workers knew him as a gentle soul who never harmed others.

However, little by little, details of some of the youth's difficulties in his teenage years in the United States are emerging.

Marshall was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and his parents moved to rural Cape Breton Island when he was small.

He lived in Sydney, N.S., then in nearby Louisbourg. His parents divorced when he was eight years old, and his father left for the United States.

When Stephen Marshall was 13, his father visited him in Cape Breton, and the boy moved to the United States shortly afterwards.

Terry Crawford, a teacher at Marshall's former school in Culdesac, said he remembers a youth who seemed to be "emotional, a little angry.''

"He wasn't in bad trouble, but he was rebellious a little bit. He was sometimes a classroom discipline problem."

However, he didn't recall Marshall as being threatening at school. The incident on the front lawn appears to have been the only one that people in the area can remember.

Margaret Miles, Marshall's mother, cautions against drawing conclusions from one incident in the past.

"It's so simplistic to look for an answer and just look at one thing. If we have a chance to look at this and we ever learn the truth, it could be a series of things, it could be a combination of things, it could be things we're not even aware of,'' she said in an interview.

Law enforcement officials in Maine still haven't been able to make any personal link between Marshall and the two dead men.

Still, the case is provoking a public debate over whether public sex registries are safe, as well as prompting police to attempt to uncover just what motivated the killings.

Sgt. Stephen Pickering, the supervisor of the homicide investigation, says police want to know more about why Marshall committed the crime.

"The families of the murder victims want to know why, and it also impacts how we maintain our sex offender registry, on a political level," said the investigator.

"The attorney general's office wants to know why this happened."

He hopes to have some further clues once crime labs examine Marshall's laptop computer -- which may contain e-mails, notes or other records of Marshall's interest in the Internet sex offenders registry.

Pickering said he doesn't expect the state to alter its registry system, which is currently open to the public.

"I don't suspect anything much will happen with the registry. It would be remiss to change it,'' he said.

"I see a benefit in it in that it allows people to adjust their lives. It's a benefit to people with children.''

Meanwhile, two state detectives are being sent to Cape Breton to search Marshall's apartment and interview friends and family.

Murder suspect's motive remains a mystery

CTV.ca News

Wed. Apr. 19 2006

Investigators say there is still no indication of what may have driven Stephen Marshall to allegedly gun down two sex offenders in Maine before turning the gun on himself this weekend.

"We have no connection that we have been able to find between the three men," Maine Public Safety Department spokesperson Stephen McCausland said Tuesday. "So far there's been no paper trail we've found."

Marshall's family, meanwhile, continues to express disbelief that the quiet 20-year-old would use the state's online sex offender registry to track down the two victims and shoot them in their homes.

Marshall's stepfather, Keith Miles, said authorities may have better luck finding answers in the U.S., where Marshall was born and spent most of his adolescence.

"A lot of his teenage years were spent down there, so how would we know if anything would happen to Stephen that would trigger this?" Miles told the Associated Press on Tuesday in an interview from his rural home in Bras d'Or, N.S.

"We have no information on that. We don't know every moment of his history."

Investigation

Investigators are hoping to find some clues in a laptop computer and in some personal papers Marshall had with him when he died.

Police in Massachusetts on Tuesday had not examined the contents of the laptop, saying they want to preserve its information and plan to hand it over Wednesday to investigators from Maine.

Police are still trying to determine Marshall's last moments, but the chain of events in the days that led to the killings is becoming clearer.

It's believed Marshall left Canada for Maine last Thursday to visit his father at his home in Houlton, Me. -- a town close to the New Brunswick border. That's where police say he took Ralph Marshall's handgun and Toyota pickup truck.

By Sunday, he was being pursued by police as a suspect in the slaying of Joseph L. Gray, 57, of Milo, Maine, and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, Maine.

The two men's names, photographs and addresses had been downloaded onto Marshall's computer.

Gray was killed at 3 a.m. Sunday at his home in Milo, Me., a 2½ hour drive south of Houlton.

Five hours later, Elliott was shot in the doorway of his mobile home in Corinth, Me., about 40 kilometres from Milo.

When Marshall was later approached by transit police on a crowded bus headed for Boston, he pulled a .45-calibre handgun and shot himself in the head. He died later in hospital.

Gray's name was in the sex offender registry because he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Elliott, meanwhile, was convicted of having sex with a girl under the legal age. Maine's age of consent is 16.

Offender registries

In Maine, the state's Department of Public Safety announced Tuesday that it had no plans to change its online registry in light of what happened over the weekend.

Every U.S. state has a sex offender registry, designed to let people know of the whereabouts of child molesters and other sex offenders. Almost all states post that information online.

In the U.S., a sex offender website was cited last year in the deaths of two convicted child rapists in Washington State.

Michael Anthony Mullen, 35, is serving a 44-year prison term after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.

In Canada, sex offender registries have been set up for police use -- but are off limits to the public.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised tougher controls on sex offenders, but said he has no plans to make their names public.

"I think it's up to the police to protect us from offenders," Harper said at a news conference in Burnaby, B.C. on Tuesday. "I'm not sure that that's a function we want to have just dealt with on the streets."

Timeline

August 9, 1985: Stephen A. Marshall born in Fort Worth, Texas.

1988: Stephen and parents Margaret and Ralph move to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

1992: Joseph Lewis Gray convicted in Massachusetts in 1992 of raping a child and indecent assault and battery on a person under 14.

Summer 1993: Stephen goes to live with grandparents in Arizona. His mother Margaret and six-week old sister Sarah also move down to Arizona later in the fall. Stephen's father stays in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. However, Stephen's parents will separate after they return later in 2004.

1996-1997: Stephen attends Malcolm Monroe middle school until March. During the last several weeks of the school year, his mother removes him after bullying incidents.

Summer-Fall 1999: Stephen moves to Culdesac, Idaho to live with his father. Ralph is Executive Director of the Clearwater Economic Development Corporation and is voluntary mayor of Culdesac. Stephen attends grades nine, ten and eleven at Culdesac High School.

2000: 14-yr-old Stephen sets up his own website. He links to website with the "sweetist pics of weapons that you can find anywhere" and lists "personal dislikes" including, "minorities getting special treatment, men who don't keep their women in line, Asthma.women in general, the beautiful people, my job, cleaning, school, society, the disgusting commercialization of our daily lives, the economic system, capitalism (But it'll do for now), rich people, the United Nations, a world government, the feds, the man and his rules, civil oppression, the "Patriot Act" of 2001."

2001: A clique called "Slacker's Coalition in Arms" founded by Stephen and friends. The "main goal is to provide advice for protecting yourself from the tyrannical educational institution."

Stephen's friend and classmate Kris Peterson Jr. is charged with molesting a minor. He receives counseling and is put on probation.

April 24, 2001: Stephen charged by police with felony aggravated assault afterbreaking up a scuffle in front of his house, AR 15 assault rifle in hand.

July 27, 2001: Stephen appears in court for sentencing - placed on probation for six months, ordered to attend a hunter's safety course, write an apology letter and five-page paper on teen violence.

August 10 & 16, 2001:   James R. Phillips Ph.D., conducts mental health evaluation of Stephen as part of his probation. It finds "Mr. Marshall's responses do suggest that he often somewhat questioning of authority and distrusting of the motivations of others. He is likely to be quite introspective and calculating in his actions."

The report concludes that: "No significant psychopathology is present that would have any impact on Mr. Marshall's ability to comply with the conditions of his Informal Adjustment, or contribute to the likelihood of his commitment of future crimes."

August 19, 2001: Stephen writes five-page paper on teen violence as part of probation requirements. It is entitled Guns And Their Relation To Juvenile Crime. He cites the NRA as one of his sources.

March 20, 2002: William Elliott charged with "sexual abuse of a minor." He is convicted on June 12 and incarcerated for four months at Penobscot County Jail in Maine.

June 5, 2002: Culdesac city maintenance supervisor Kris Dee Peterson Sr., the father of Kris Peterson Jr., is arrested for sexually abusing two minors. Later Peterson Sr. pleads guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and is given two consecutive 15 year sentences and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution for each count.

Summer-Fall 2002: Stephen Marshall moves to Phoenix, Arizona to live with his half-sister and her family. Stephen attends senior year at Desert Vista High School in Arizona.

Spring-Summer 2003: Stephen visits his mother for the first time since leaving Nova Scotia four years earlier. Stephen also visits his father, who is now living with his first wife, in Colorado.

May-June, 2003: Stephen's old high school friend, Chance Coombes, has sex with an underage girl at a friend's house in Fort Collins, Colorado. He is charged with sexual assault on a child. He later pleads guilty to intimidating a witness and third degree assault. (It is not known whether Stephen met Chance when they were both in Colorado.)

September 2003: Stephen moves back to Nova Scotia to live with his mom and attends computer course at Memorial High School, North Sydney.

December 2003: Canadian military informs Stephen that it cannot accept him because of his asthma.

August 2004: Stephen sees psychiatrist twice for depression, cancels next meetings.

January-February 2005: Stephen Marshall moves into a rooming house in Whitney Pier, Sydney, Nova Scotia.

April 9, 2005: Convicted Cape Breton pedophile Francis Doyle released from prison, resides at rooming house in Whitney Pier, Sydney where Stephen lives.

April-May 2005: Stephen moves into apartment on Regent Street, North Sydney. He meets and becomes friends with housemates Dan Devoe, Devon Farrell and Courtney Burton.

Read an e-mail from Stephen to one of his friends in Idaho describing his life in Nova Scotia.

Fall 2005: Ralph visits Stephen in Sydney.

January 2006: Friends and family notice that Stephen isn't himself, he seems to be depressed. Stephen faints at work.

Stephen and his mother Margaret meet with Pastor Kevin Mattatall, Stephen accepts Christ into his life, starts attending church regularly.

April 11, 2006: Stephen withdraws $500 (Cdn) from his bank account.

Stephen withdraws $2657.00 (USD) from his U.S. account, leaving a balance in that account of only 61 cents.

April 12, 2006: Early in the morning Stephen says good-bye to his housemates, tells Courtney and Devon he is going to Baddeck, Cape Breton. Instead, he heads for Maine to visit his father who is now living in that State.

Stephen uses interac for a purchase at The Source for $1,076.32. Margaret, his mother, assumes this was the purchase of his laptop computer. He also purchases GPS mapping software.

Stephen has car trouble and pulls into the Coastal Inn in Sackville, New Brunswick for the night. Calls housemate Dan Devoe, lies, tells him he's in Baddeck visiting grandparents.

April 13, 2006: Stephen's father has been expecting him. Stephen calls him to pick him up and drive him to his house in Houlton, Maine.

April 15, 2006: Stephen misses scheduled shift at Canton Restaurant in North Sydney where he works as a dishwasher. Housemate Dan Devoe, expecting Stephen home, calls Stephen and leaves a message on his cellphone. Stephen does not reply.

April 16, 2006: Early in the morning, Stephen leaves Houlton in his father's pick-up truck with three guns and his laptop computer. The guns: Ruger handgun Colt 45 semi-automatic handgun .223 Colt Sporter semi-automatic rifle (AR 15 assault style rifle)

3:00 am: Marshall shoots Joseph Gray at his home in Milo, Maine. Stephen drives by the homes of four other registered Maine pedophiles.

8:15 am: Marshall shoots William Elliott at his home in Corinth, Maine. Elliott's girlfriend witnesses the shooting, writes down license plate of pick-up truck and calls police. Maine sex offender registry is temporarily taken off-line.

Stephen ditches his pick-up truck near a bus station in Bangor, Maine. He drops ammunition in the toilet tank of the station washroom. He then buys a ticket and boards bus to Boston. Police find the ammunition and confirm that Stephen Marshall bought a bus ticket to Boston.

That afternoon Stephen's mom, Margaret, and step-dad learn of shootings on TV.

8:00 pm: Stephen commits suicide with Colt 45 on bus outside terminal when Massachussetts Bay Transit Authority police stop and surround the bus.

11:24 pm: Marshall is pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center as a result of a massive head wound.

Stephen A. Marshall

These undated photos from the Maine State Police Sex Offender Web site show William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, Maine, and Joseph Gray, 57, of Milo, Maine, who were found shot to death in their central Maine homes 25 miles apart Sunday, April 16, 2006.