Stephen Marshall, the young Cape Breton man who gunned down two sex offenders in Maine before killing himself, endured a harsh beating as a youth and shared an odd passion for firearms with his father, newly released police reports say.
Transcripts from Maine State Police interviews with Ralph Marshall -- the 20-year-old's father -- represent the first published account of the father's version of the events that led to the high-profile crimes in April.
For reasons that remain a mystery, Stephen Marshall travelled from Cape Breton to his father's home in Maine, where took a Colt AR-15 rifle and two handguns and drove off in his father's pickup.
Later that night, using the state's public, on-line sex-offender registry, police say he tracked down Joseph Gray, 57, of Milo, Me., and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, Me. Both were shot dead in their homes in the middle of the night.
Stephen Marshall later boarded a bus for Boston, but police stopped the vehicle before it reached its destination. As officers approached him, he shot himself in the head.
In the days immediately after the slayings, friends and relatives of the slight, shy man seemed baffled by what happened. They described him as a quiet but friendly person who showed no signs of trouble.
"The bottom line is that there is no motive," Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety in Augusta, told the Associated Press yesterday. "Sometimes there's no completely rational answer for a completely irrational act."
Police interviews with Ralph Marshall, who lives in Houlton, Me., suggest that he had argued with his son, who seemed obsessed with cleaning his father's weapons just hours before the killings. "The first thing Stephen wanted to do when he got to Houlton was go shooting," Ralph Marshall told Detective Dale Keegan of the Maine State Police.
For the next two days, Stephen Marshall made the same request, and the father declined.
Ralph Marshall told police that the evening before his son left his home for the last time, he was in a bedroom with his laptop and several guns were on the bed.
In a separate interview with Det. David Preble, Ralph Marshall said his son was bullied while in high school in Cape Breton.
"Ralph said it went beyond being bullied," one police report says. "Stephen was seriously hurt, to the point of being hospitalized."
The father also told police he had had conversations with his son about a pedophile who had approached his son in North Sydney, N.S., when he was in his late teens. "Stephen told him the man made a pass at him and asked him if he was a homosexual. . . . Stephen immediately moved to a different apartment to get away from the man."
The reports also reveal that Ralph Marshall had a lifelong fondness for guns, and he introduced his son to shooting at a young age.
Police also recovered letters exchanged between the pair, some of which showed Ralph Marshall's strong faith and belief that his son was destined for great things.
"Those who God would use he refines in fire," said one letter obtained by CBC. "You have great things standing before you, a chance to right many wrongs."
Despite the problems in his son's past, Ralph Marshall said he felt his son was about to move from Cape Breton to Houlton to live with him, and that life was about to get better for the young man, who had suffered bouts of depression.
Still, a report from the Maine computer crimes task force reveals careful preparation for the slayings.
"I found the accused had used the national, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont sex offender registries to gather information about registered sex offenders," the investigating officer said.
In addition, the detective noted that Stephen Marshall had visited a website that contains detailed information about how to plan and execute a homicide. The laptop also contained a digital image of Jesus armed with an assault rifle.
In her interview with police, Stephen Marshall's mother, Margaret Miles, also painted a troubling portrait of her son, who had returned to Cape Breton from the U.S. in 2003.
She told police that after the young man quit his job at a call centre, his stepfather, Keith Miles, criticized him. "Stephen threatened Keith, stating if he ever got on his case like that again, he would kill him," the police summary says.
In the months before the slayings, the young man sent confusing signals, the reports suggest.
"He had recently started jogging, he stopped smoking, and he was planning his future. . . . In January, Stephen had accepted Christ as his saviour," the mother told the police.
Stephen Marshall told his mother that pedophiles were the "lowlifes" and "scums of the earth."
Ms. Miles also told police she was worried about her son because he had trouble concentrating and had once fainted at work.
"She is in hope that some day, we may find out why Stephen did this."