Prosecutors to seek death penalty in murder-for-hire plot
Phil Trexler
November 5, 2009
Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/69341447.html
Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against a former Copley Township woman accused of plotting with friends to have her mother killed.

Taylor Marks, 20, and her friend, Troy Purdie II, 19, have been indicted for aggravated murder by a Summit County grand jury.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Marks and Purdie under the state’s murder-for-hire statute.

Marks’ boyfriend, Brian S. Smith, 22, of Akron, is charged with aggravated murder.

Police said Marks offered Purdie $5,000 to kill her mother, businesswoman Kristie Marks, 58, who operated a Visiting Angels home health-care business.

Police said the plot was designed so that Taylor Marks could inherit her mother’s wealth.

Kristie Marks’ will, written in 2004 and filed this week in Summit County Probate Court, named her daughter as the sole beneficiary of her personal property and life insurance proceeds. The remaining money is to be placed in a private trust.

The will does not specify the beneficiary of the trust, but police said Taylor Marks anticipated receiving the entire estate.

Police said Taylor Marks lured her mother on Oct. 24 to a Springdale Street apartment complex where Purdie stabbed her as she stood near a parking lot.

Taylor Marks and Smith then called 911 to report the slaying as Purdie ran off, police said.

Within four hours, based on inconsistencies in their stories, police obtained confessions in the alleged plot. Purdie’s bloody clothes and a knife were recovered near the scene, police said.

All three remain jailed pending their arraignment Nov. 13 in Summit County Common Pleas Court.

Friends say that Marks had been dating Smith for several months after moving from her mother’s home in Copley Township earlier this year. She was living with Smith and his mother in an Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority apartment.

Taylor Marks graduated from Copley High School in 2008 and attended the University of Akron through last spring. She was adopted as a young child by Kristie Marks and her husband, Bruce, who died in 2002.