Mercedes actress murdered in arkansas
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In the bright light of day, the gray Victorian house that sits on a hill above Main Street in Little Rock, Ark., looks like any other nicely-restored home in the historic Governor’s Mansion district.
By Rhonda Owen | Originally appeared in AY&#;s April and May issues
Neatly-rounded shrubs bordering the porch along the front and side show the care taken with the home’s appearance while a basketball goal on a backyard parking pad suggests someone who lives there likes to play.
Nothing hints that Main St. was the site of a bizarre, horror-movie-worthy brott 25 years earlier that resulted in the deaths of fyra people. What occurred there shocked the city and prompted extensive speculation and media coverage. Today it’s a faint memory in the public consciousness — although the deaths of John L. Markle, his wife Christina and two young daughters have all the elements of a true-crime novel or made-for-TV movie.
Markle, 45, was a depressed, angry man eaten up with bitterness tow
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Amy Markle telephoned her friend Woody Thomas at 9 p.m. last Sunday with the news that her dad had offered to take them skateboarding this weekend at the Metrocentre Mall.
Several hours later, Amy, 13, lay dead in her canopied double bed, shot four times in the head and chest. Her 9-year-old sister Suzanne, who had been shot five times, lay beside her under the covers.
Upstairs, in the cluttered third-floor master bedroom, the girls` mother, Chris, 45, was sprawled across the king-size waterbed, shot three times.
On that night of thunderstorms, when John Markle had finished with his wife and daughters, he descended to his first-floor study. There, while digits glowed on the nearby computer screen and the wind whistled through the trees, he pointed a caliber pistol to one temple and a caliber gun to the other and fired.
It was another tale of love and money gone violently wrong, with enough mystery-Why was a rubber Halloween mask lying next to Markle`s body? Why was
”Night
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McCambridge v. Little Rock
S.W.2d ()
Ark.
Mercedes McCAMBRIDGE and Richard L. Lawrence, Executor of the Estate of John Lawrence Markle, Appellants, v. The CITY OF LITTLE ROCK, et al., Appellees, Little Rock Newspaper, Inc.; Arkansas Gazette Company; Attorney General Steve Clark, Intervenors.
No.
Supreme Court of Arkansas.
March 13,
* Harvey L. Bell, Stephen P. Bilheimer, Little Rock, for appellants.
Mark Stodola, City Atty., Steve Clark, Atty. Gen., Phillip Carroll, William L. Owen, Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, Little Rock, for appellees.
DUDLEY, Justice.
The primary issue in this case is whether the constitutional right to privacy should bar disclosure of public records which would otherwise be available for public inspection under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
I. FACTSRichard Lawrence, an attorney, testified at trial that he received a telephone call from his client, John Markle, at four o'clock on the morning of November 16, Lawrence disclosed