New trial date for convicted killer charged with girl's 1982 murder
A new trial date has been set for Marvin Ray Markle, 57, a convicted killer charged with the 1982 bludgeoning death of a 14-year-old Vacaville girl.
Solano County Superior Court Judge Daniel Healy on Jan. 19 ordered Markle to return to Department 2 for the newly scheduled trial at 8:30 a.m. May 1 in the Justice Building in Vallejo.
Markle, accused of killing De Anna Lynn Johnson, also heard Healy set a trial readiness conference for 8:30 a.m. March 23 and a trial management conference for 10 a.m. April 20.
Markle's jury trial has been scheduled and rescheduled several times in recent months, in part because of reduced court operations as the COVID-19 pandemic surged and ebbed. In custody without bail in Solano County Jail, 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, Markle pleaded not guilty to one count of murder in connection to De Anna's death when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Prison on suspicion of murder and use of a 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.
The death of Shirley Pratt, 41, in Butte County led to Markle's arrest in the Vacaville case. 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 2013, the Butte County Sheriff's Department arrested Markle, and he has remained in either county jail or state prison custody ever since.
According to court records, the night of Nov. 15, 1982, De Anna, a Will C. Wood Junior High School student, attended a party near her Royal Oaks Drive home. Markle, then a 17-year-old student at Country High, Vacaville Unified School District's continuation school at the time, was also at the party.
De Anna 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, her body was found by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee near the tracks along Elmira Road. She had been strangled, beaten and struck in the head by a rock, an autopsy report later revealed.
Despite several residents of Vacaville believing Markle was De Anna's killer, police were never able to amass substantial evidence that tied him — a well-known bully, Johnson's friends said — to the crime. 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.