48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Strange Death of Professor Shockley

In 2019, college professor and renowned entomologist, Marianne Shockley, was found unresponsive in a hot tub after a night of partying. Georgia police were called to the scene for an alleged drowning, but when they arrived they found Shockley covered in blood. Something wasn’t adding up, and the last two people to see her alive – her boyfriend, Marcus Lillard, and their friend, Clark Heindel – told investigators conflicting accounts of what happened that night. Correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti and Producer Paul La Rosa discuss whether her death was an accident or if there could’ve been a motive for murder.

Duration: 24m
Broadcast on: 14 Nov 2023
Audio Format: other

Want to listen to Postmortem Uninterrupted? Subscribe to 48 Hours Plus for ad-free episodes today. Welcome back to another episode of Postmortem. I'm your host Anne-Marie Green, and today we are revisiting an episode that aired on 48 Hours in October of 2022. The strange death of Professor Shockley. So joining me are CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti and producer Paul LaRosa, who reported on and produced this episode. Welcome, guys. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Paul and Jonathan, at first this case, really doesn't seem all that strange, right? Police are called to a home in Georgia with an initial report that a woman had seemingly drowned in a hot tub. You know, there was a small party there. There was drinking. Some drugs were involved. It could have been an accident. But then in your report, you started peeling back the layers and revealing that there could have been a more sinister motive, let's say, for murder. Let's hear a quick recap of the episode. It was the early morning of May 12, 2019. We're gonna roll over now and go from there. And medics and sheriff deputies rushed to a house in Millageville, Georgia. The initial report was that a woman had drowned in a hot tub. Marcus Liller identified the woman in the hot tub as his girlfriend, college professor Dr. Marian Shockley. We get out here and she got a big old gash on here. I'm telling the hell on the back of my neck and that something ain't right would do this. So can I get your name, please? Clark Kindle owned the property where Marianne died. Marcus said he and Marianne had gone there to socialize. Had a few beers, smoked a little pot, started a list of some music, had a couple more beers. Marcus says he and Marianne, but not Clark, got into the hot tub. He initially told deputies he then left her to collect some firewood. As I dropped the wood off at the fireplace, I could see Marianne slump down. My mother called me and she said Marianne's gone and I just was saying no, mama, no, no. Ayla Crippen is Marianne's sister. She's drowned in some hot tub and I was like, Marianne is not stupid. She would not drown in a hot tub. Yeah, something funny would do to somebody. It ain't had enough. Deputies suspected a possible homicide and that was before a shotgun went off inside the house. By morning, of the three people who attended the small party, only Marcus was still alive. There is good and there is evil and that night evil came to play.

So Paul, I'll start with you. What struck you about this case that made you think, okay, there's more than meets the eye. So the three personalities involved were fascinating. Professor Marianne Shockley, who died that night, she was a PhD professor at the University of Georgia at Athens. She was an expert in entomology insects and also enthemophagy, the eating of insects. So she was almost like one of the primary experts on that in the country and highly thought of. So the dichotomy here is that her boyfriend, Marcus Lillard, who was a car finance manager, he was a convicted drug felon. A lot of people thought that he wasn't at her level and wondered what they were doing together. From my perspective, they shared a commonality, a common curiosity for life. Marianne was someone who loved to go and venture off into the jungles all around the world looking for bugs. They were also both very charming. The way that Marianne commanded a classroom and the way that Marcus seemed to command everybody that walked into the business he worked in, where he financed cars. People were charmed by both of them and I think they charmed each other. Really Paul, I can see you nodding your head. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, basically, Marcus was a lot of fun and Marianne was looking for fun. I mean, by the way, Marianne had been married in divorce three times. She had two children, but I think she was looking for fun in her life. And she was that kind of personality. Like Jonathan said, she was an upbeat person. People loved her, students loved her. And Marcus, his son, Carson, who has nothing really good to say about his father, said that Marcus was the most charismatic person he's ever met. Interesting. Well, that explains the attraction. And the third person whose house they were at, Clark Heindel was a psychologist and he had his license revoked for psychology because of a scandal he was involved with, where a woman filed a complaint against him because he had an affair with her and gave her some marijuana and alcohol when she had substance abuse problems. So these three people, they had a lot going on. So going back to that night now, they're at Clark's house.

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