Jury finds Lillard not guilty in murder trial; he remains jailed
Apr. 9—A jury in Baldwin County deliberated 35 minutes Friday evening before returning not guilty verdicts in the murder trial of Marcus Lillard.
The former car/truck salesman was accused of choking his girlfriend, Marianne Shockley, to death at a home in Baldwin County on May 12, 2019.
He was arrested, indicted and has remained jailed on charges of felony murder, aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct.
Lillard was found not guilty of the charges.
Opening statements and testimony began Tuesday morning in Baldwin County Superior Court in Milledgeville with Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison T. Burleson presiding.
Shockley was a University of Georgia professor. She studied the field of entomophagy, which involves the human consumption of insects.
Shockley and Lillard met while attending Georgia College in Milledgeville back in the '90s and had reconnected in the months leading up to her death.
On the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, Shockley drove down to Milledgeville from her home in Morgan County to spend the day with the defendant.
Later that Saturday, between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., the couple went to the home of Dr. Clark Heindel on Watson Reynolds Road, just a short distance from Milledgeville.
The couple knew Heindel and were friends with him.
When Shockley and Lillard arrived at Heindel's residence, they hung out together and played some music. They also indulged in marijuana and ecstasy that evening.
About 1 a.m. on Mother's Day, Heindel made a 911 call to report that Shockley had been found unresponsive in the hot tub and that she wasn't breathing.
A short time after deputies with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office arrived along with firefighters/first responders with Baldwin County Fire Rescue and personnel from Grady Emergency Medical Services, they found Shockley dead.
She had been dead for some time.
When deputies questioned Lillard at the scene, he told them that he and Shockley had gotten into the hot tub nude and that Heindel was in the pool at the opposite end.
First responders also observed Heindel and Lillard performing CPR on Shockley.
After questioning by deputies, Heindel later went into the house and fatally shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He left a note, which stated that he did not know what happened "but it happened on my watch," assistant district attorney Nancy Scott Malcor told jurors during opening statements.
Near the conclusion of her opening statements, Malcor said Lillard did not mean to kill Shockley, instead that he was charged with "felony murder for killing her during the commission of a felony — aggravated assault for choking her too hard."
Lillard's defense attorney, Matt Tucker, told jurors that his client was slowly getting some of the drugs out of his system while being questioned for hours by authorities.
Still under the influence of the potent drugs he had used earlier, Lillard tried to help authorities as best he could, his defense attorney said.
Lillard remains jailed despite the not guilty verdicts handed down on Friday. His probation was revoked after the conclusion of the trial, which means he is not a free man.
