Trial date set for inmate charged with Vacaville girl’s 1982 murder

After more than 38 years, the accused killer of a 14-year-old Vacaville girl will face a jury trial in the coming months in Solano County.

Marvin Ray Markle, 55, who was scheduled to appear Friday in Department 2 for the trial setting, heard Solano County Superior Court Judge Daniel Healy set the trial date for 8:30 a.m. Sept. 27 in the Justice Building in Vallejo. Markle, charged with the 1982 bludgeoning death of De Anna Lynn Johnson, first will face a trial readiness conference at 8:30 a.m. June 11, also in Department 2, court records show.

Markle’s jury trial was previously scheduled to begin Aug. 3. He is being defended by Chief Deputy Alternate Public Defender Thomas A. Barrett.

In February 2017, after a resolution of the case that went cold nearly four decades ago, Markle pleaded not guilty to one count of murder in connection to Johnson’s death after being arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Prison on suspicion of murder and use of deadly weapon to kill her. At the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the murder of a Biggs woman in 2001.

It was the death of Shirley Pratt, 41, in Butte County, which led to Markle’s arrest in the Vacaville case. On the morning of Oct. 12, 2001, Pratt was found naked in the Oroville Wildlife area, dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the face. In July of 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department arrested Markle, and he has remained in either jail or state prison custody ever since.

According to court records, on the night of Nov. 15, 1982, Johnson, a Will C. Wood Junior High School student, attended a party near her Royal Oaks Drive home. Markle, then a 17-yearold student at Country High, Vacaville Unified’s continuation school, was also at the party.

Johnson was first reported missing after her brother, another party attendee, returned home and discovered she was not there and out past her curfew.

The next day Johnson’s body was found by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee near the tracks along Elmira Road. Johnson had been strangled, beaten, and bludgeoned in her head by a rock, an autopsy report later revealed.

Despite several residents of Vacaville believing Markle was the teenager’s killer, police were never able to amass substantial evidence that tied him — a well-known bully, Johnson’s friends said — to the crime and the case went cold.

The Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint against Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary hearing was held Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.