‘Husband’ of Erie’s pizza bomber loses, again
The self-declared husband of the late Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong remains wedded to his belief that he was indeed married to the lead defendant in the Erie pizza bomber case.
The federal courts have once again said that the contentions of the would-be spouse, Mark Marvin, are divorced from sound legal reasoning — particularly Mr. Marvin’s claim that he is entitled to Diehl-Armstrong’s remains, which are buried near a federal prison in Texas where the Erie native died in 2017 while serving a sentence of life plus 30 years.
In the latest in the drawn-out and strange case, a federal appeals court has rejected Mr. Marvin’s arguments that a U.S. district judge erred in refusing to grant him access to Diehl-Armstrong’s body in light of what Mr. Marvin said was his status as her common-law husband due to their Quaker marriage.
A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Mr. Marvin on Feb. 7 and in favor of U.S. District Judge Donetta A. Ambrose, of Pittsburgh, who has denied Mr. Marvin’s requests five times, most recently on May 2. The panel found that “jurists of
reason” would agree with Judge Ambrose’s findings.
Judge Ambrose rejected Mr. Marvin’s claims for a number of reasons, including procedural flaws. Mr. Marvin, who is representing himself, has been unsuccessful in both challenging Diehl-Armstrong’s conviction and sentence and proving that he was her husband and thus be allowed to move her remains to a Quaker cemetery close to his residence near Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
The Feb. 7 3rd Circuit decision affirms Judge Ambrose’s ruling on May 2. Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Theodore A. McKee cited another court ruling to support Judge Ambrose’s dismissal of Mr. Marvin’s claims regarding access to Diehl-Armstrong’s body.
The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 1984 decision, affirmed “dismissal of a claim where a widow failed to comply with the state’s procedures for asserting her ‘quasi-property’ right in the body of her deceased husband,” Judge McKee wrote in the three-page order.
Judge McKee also wrote that Mr. Marvin had failed to show, among other things, that Ambrose should have recused herself from his case.
“Jurists of reason,” Judge McKee wrote, “would also not debate that the District Court committed no legal error in denying reconsideration of its decision to deny Appellant’s motion for recusal, as his allegations of judicial bias are merely disagreements with the District Judge’s rulings.”
Mr. Marvin corresponded with Diehl-Armstrong while she was incarcerated but is not believed to have met her in prison. Diehl-Armstrong — Mr. Marvin refers to her as “Mrs. Marvin” in legal filings — was convicted in the pizza bomber case in U.S. District Court in Erie in 2010 and was sentenced in 2011.
She died of breast cancer at 68 in April 2017 while she was serving her sentence at a federal women’s prison close to Fort Worth, Texas. Diehl-Armstrong, who outlived her parents and had no siblings or children, is buried in a cemetery near there, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
The bureau determined she had no next of kin and interred her body at public expense as an indigent case. The cost was $4,200, according to records the Erie Times-News obtained through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr. Marvin, who is in his 60s, launched his court case in August 2017. He is arguing that he and Diehl-Armstrong somehow were married as Quakers while she was in prison. He said the marriage entitles him to Diehl-Armstrong’s remains, though he has also questioned, in court records, whether she really died.
Since her death, Diehl Armstrong’s international notoriety has grown with the May 2018 release of the Netflix docuseries “Evil Genius,” about the bombing death of pizza deliveryman Brian Wells. He was killed after he robbed a bank in Summit Township with a bomb locked to his neck on Aug. 28, 2003.
In his court fight, Mr. Marvin has appealed to emotion as well as his expansive reading of the law to try to get access to Diehl Armstrong’s body. In April, in the challenge that Judge Ambrose turned down a month later, Mr. Marvin indicated he was in something of a rush.
“The Court has an obligation under human decency to return his wife’s remains to her husband for proper burial,” Mr. Marvin wrote. “Since he expects to dig her grave by hand, her remains should be home before the heat of summer.”