The Markley Mystery

"Chillicothe Gazette," January 6, 1996, via Newspapers.com

In 1995, John and Shelley Markley lived with their five children (aged between 8 and 15) in Bristolville, Ohio, where John worked as a truck driver.  The Markleys, who had been married 16 years, appeared to be an entirely normal, happy suburban middle-class couple.  However, in recent years the household saw its share of tragedies.  In 1993, their home was destroyed in a fire.  The following year, John’s father and one of his nephews both died.  (The latter was a suicide.)  In 1992, John’s twin sister Bonnie was diagnosed with breast cancer.  John and Bonnie were very close, and he did everything he could think of to help her, including raising $15,000 dollars so she could go to Mexico for some experimental treatments.  However, despite all John’s efforts and prayers, Bonnie died on December 13, 1995.  John was devastated by his loss, even saying he was “angry with God” for not sparing her.

On December 15--two days after Bonnie’s death--the Markley children returned home from school.  A strange scene awaited them.  The doors were unlocked and the family car was gone.  The children found that the coffee pot was still on, and John’s watch, which he constantly wore, was on a shelf over the stove.  Bonnie’s purse was still there, but her checkbook was missing.  Upstairs in their parents’ bedroom, the gun cabinet which was always kept locked, was now standing open.  (The children had no idea how many guns their parents owned, so they could not say if anything was missing.)  Their safe was also open, with its contents scattered across the floor, as though someone had frantically searched for some particular item.  The mourning clothes they had planned to wear at Bonnie’s memorial service that evening were laid out on their bed.  Perhaps the strangest detail was in the garage.  John kept a 1978 Corvette there, always covered by two tarps.  Those tarps were now gone.  The confused children phoned an aunt and uncle, who took them to their house.

At first, no one was particularly alarmed by John and Shelly’s absence.  However, when they failed to show up at Bonnie’s funeral the following day, everyone knew something was terribly wrong, and the couple was reported missing.

The subsequent investigation uncovered some troubling clues.  On the day the Markleys disappeared, a check for $1,000 dollars with Shelly’s signature on it was cashed at a Bloomfield, Ohio bank.  A teller saw the couple at the bank’s drive-thru, with a man sitting in the car with them.  Unfortunately, that man has yet to be identified.  Their car was eventually found abandoned in a parking lot ten miles from the Markley home.  Inside was the couple’s cell phone and the two missing tarps.  The keys were missing.  The car was covered in mud, as if it had been driven off-road.

The bank teller was the last known person to have seen the Markleys.  To date, no one knows if they are alive or dead, or if they left on their own free will or (as is considered far more likely) were the victims of foul play.

A curious sequel to the mystery came when Steven Durst, one of John’s co-workers, claimed to be holding the couple captive in return for a $100,000 ransom.  However, no evidence could be found that Durst was anything more than a heartless creep with odd tastes in get-rich-quick schemes.  Durst was convicted of extortion and sentenced to four to ten years.

However, some suspected that Durst was indeed involved in the dual disappearance.  At the time the couple vanished, Durst was out of work, and he was telling people that the Markleys owed him $1000--an interesting detail, considering that the last known sighting of the couple was when they were withdrawing from the bank that exact sum, in the company of a third person.  In 1996, Jane Timko, the lead investigator in the case, said “I truly believe that Steven Durst knows what happened to them and he just won’t say.”

In 2015, law enforcement announced that they had “new leads,” but this information--whatever it may have been--obviously did little to clarify the mystery.  The case of the disappearance of the Markleys appears to have gone well and truly cold.