Did he plan quadruple murder to clear debt?
Toronto man’s alleged plot ‘fantastic’ but ‘consistent,’ Crown argues at trial
Did a Toronto man already serving a life sentence for orchestrating the murder of his wealthy philanthropist godfather try to enlist a fellow inmate to kill his widow and three others from behind prison walls?
Superior Court Justice Graeme Mew is now deciding if Marshall Ross, 51, is guilty of counselling to commit murder — a charge he denies. Ross did not take the stand during the just-completed two-week trial in this southeastern Ontario town close to the federal penitentiary where the alleged plot took place.
The prosecution’s case centred around the evidence of a lifer who can only be identified as “Joe.” He testified remotely that Ross asked for his help escaping to Central America and lining up assassins to kill murdered Toronto millionaire Glen Davis’s widow and three other business associates. Ross wanted to avoid paying a $3.2-million judgment stemming from an unpaid loan his godfather had given him for a home renovation business years earlier.
It was the same motive behind Davis’s contract killing on May 18, 2007. He was fatally shot as he walked to his SUV in an underground parking garage in midtown Toronto. Ross’s two accomplices were also convicted of murder and are serving life sentences.
According to agreed facts read out in court when he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, Ross believed hiring someone to kill Davis would clear the debt — it did not. He also expected to be named in Davis’s will. He was not. (The proceeds of Davis’s will went to his wife, Mary Alice Davis. When she dies, the remaining money will be donated to charities.)
Joe testified that he strung Ross along inside the prison — fearing he would turn to other criminal associates to get the job done — but reported what was happening to corrections officials, who confirmed as much in court.
Critical to the prosecution case was a handwritten document — Ross’s defence conceded he wrote it — that Joe gave to authorities and that Crown attorney Monica Heine described as a “hit list.” Joe said Ross slipped it to him after a 2019 Thanksgiving family visit with his ex-wife, Eva Wower, and their two children. The document included personal details about the four alleged targets, along with two crudely drawn maps of Toronto locations.
At his 2011 guilty plea, Ross admitted providing the men he hired to kill Davis information to assist in the murder, including the location of Davis’s personal residence, vehicle description and daily routines.
In closing arguments Thursday, Ross’s lawyer, Peter Zaduk, suggested that rather than a “road map to murder,” it was likelier the document related to the civil litigation. (If that was the case, judge Mew asked, why include street diagrams?)
Zaduk added it was “absurd” for Ross to believe the four deaths would result in the debt being wiped out. “He was not an unsophisticated person who believed such naive legal fallacies,” the lawyer said.
He dismissed Joe as a braggart and liar who made up the tale to gain an advantage with the parole board. Although he was indeed recently paroled, Joe vehemently denied this. During cross-examination, Zaduk asked Joe if all four murders had to be carried out simultaneously, “just like the last scene of ‘The Godfather’?” Joe agreed.
Zaduk picked up the film reference again in his closing argument Thursday, saying such a slaughter would be a job worthy of the Corleone family. Why also would Ross turn to Joe, who had been imprisoned for 30 years?
Moreover, to be found guilty, the Crown must prove Ross intended for Joe to carry out the murders and “this has not been established,” Zaduk said. “There are just too many contingencies, loose ends, unanswered questions and unfulfilled conditions precedent.”
The “fantastic” nature of staging a quadruple murder didn’t go unnoticed by the Britishborn judge, a tall, well-respected former civil litigator from Toronto who specialized in sports law, particularly involving rugby.
“Killing Glen Davis in the hopes of inheriting the whole empire is fantastic, but it’s consistent,” the prosecutor responded, referring to Ross’s original motive for ordering Davis’s murder.
The defence called four other convicted killers in an attempt to discredit Joe. They painted a picture of an illicit drug abuser who accrued gambling debts at jailhouse card tables — accusations Joe anticipated, denied, and attributed to his new-found status as a “rat.” All were brought to court under heavy guard wearing ankle shackles and their wrists bound by handcuffs, the same way Ross arrived each day before settling into the prisoner’s box.
Ross remained expressionless throughout the case, but shook his head and appeared to be muttering during Heine’s closing remarks, during which she dismissed the evidence from the four killer witnesses as “based entirely on speculation, rumours and hearsay.”
After Ross’s arrest in 2009, Davis Corp. sued him to recover the $2.5-million loan. In 2012, a judge ordered Ross to pay $3.2 million, including interest. Davis Corp. was unable to collect that debt because Ross’s only asset — a home in North Toronto — had been transferred to Wower as part of their 2011 divorce. In 2013, Davis Corp. sued Ross and Wower, asking the court to declare the transfer void because it was done with the purpose of defrauding the Davis Corp.
In court, the prosecution alleged the latest murder plot was tied to his “desperation” around the sale of the home. “The noose was tightening around Marshall Ross’s neck yet again, just as it had in 2007,” Heine told the judge.
That lawsuit was settled in 2021 and the house, purchased with money loaned to Ross by Davis, was sold for $2.5 million. Davis Corp. received just 35 per cent of the net proceeds, according to court documents.
Crown attorney Heine told the judge she had made out her case, that Joe was a credible witness who should be believed, not the four killers who testified against him.
Although Ross is already serving a life sentence for Davis’s murder, a conviction would almost certainly hurt his chance at early release. The judge plans to deliver his decision Aug. 24.