Book
McGinniss attended the Marshall trial, and used court transcripts, extensive interviews with family and friends and general research to recreate the events surrounding the murder of Maria Marshall, the subsequent trial and eventual conviction of her husband. The book concludes with a status update of key players (including the Marshalls’ three sons) in 1987, a year after the conviction. The eldest son Roby is married to actress Tracey Gold.
Blind Faith maintains that to the affluent residents of Toms River, New Jersey, Marshall was a devoted family man and respected member of the community. But soon after his wife’s death, Marshall’s perfect image began to unravel as the police investigation uncovered debt, infidelity and a $1.5 million insurance policy. McGinniss wrote that by the time Marshall was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986, everyone who knew him, including two of his three sons, believed him guilty.
McGinniss changed the names and some personal details of most of the real people involved in the case, except for the Marshall family themselves, Judge Manuel Greenberg, assistant prosecutor Kevin Kelly, and a handful of others.
In 2002, Marshall wrote the book Tunnel Vision: Trial & Error, in which he challenged the conclusions McGinniss drew in Blind Faith. While pointing out flaws in the judicial process he believed failed him, Marshall also alleged that his trial was contaminated by police misconduct and compromised testimony and evidence.
Read more about this topic: Blind Faith (book)
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“I have unclasped
To thee the book even of my secret soul.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am told that Duclos’ book is not in vogue in Paris, and that it is being violently criticized, apparently because readers understand it; and being intelligible is no longer the fashion.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)