Brutal Killing, 6-Year Secret

In the eyes of his grandparents, Robert Marquez was a “good boy” who was raised as a Christian, helped with chores, minded his manners and had a passion for sports.

Not everyone, however, has such sunny memories of the stocky youth.

A group of acquaintances who knew him when he was a high school football star came forward last week with a chilling story that unburdened them of a six-year secret: Marquez had murdered a 16-year-old Orange County boy, dismembered the body and, after swearing everyone to secrecy, tossed the youth’s remains into a trash bin.

“I was scared and I am even more scared now,” said Marquez’s ex-girlfriend, one of seven friends who had kept secret the macabre killing of Bryan Thorne in 1998. “We saw what he was capable of doing, so it was kind of like he could do it again to me, my family or my friends.”

The old friends broke their silence when it appeared that Marquez, now 26, was about to be released from prison, where he was finishing a sentence in an unrelated extortion case. The story they told authorities resulted in murder charges against Marquez, who will be arraigned Wednesday.

In Marquez, detectives found something of an enigma -- a monster of a man, some said, who went by such nicknames as “Satan” and “Evil” and pasted pictures of headless animals on the wall of his cell. Others said he was kind, a model inmate and staff barber who was so trusted that he cut the warden’s hair.

But to the old group of friends, Marquez was a manipulating youth who used his charisma, bravado and sometimes a gun to get others to do as he said. He practiced Satanism, they said, and killed Thorne as part of a ritual, then ordered all of them to keep the secret or he would kill them too.

“The intimidation factor was so severe, they planned on taking [the secret] to their grave,” said Mitch Robison, one of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives handling the case. “They said it was like living in the movie ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ ever since.”

For six years, the classmates said, they feared for their lives and decided they’d rather live with the nightmare of what they had seen than go to the police.

“I had to shut it out of my head,” said the girlfriend, who’d known Thorne since elementary school and was pregnant with Marquez’s child at the time of his extortion arrest. “It wasn’t easy, but I had to do that so I wouldn’t fall apart with my son. I needed a good head on my shoulders. It’s been very emotional.”

The murder of the Brea teenager occurred Jan. 13, 1998, after a group of continuation students from Brea Canyon High School went on a field trip to Los Angeles to watch the filming of the television comedy “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

Marquez, a recent graduate of Walnut High in Los Angeles County, tagged along with his then-girlfriend, 15 at the time.

After the field trip, the students got together at Marquez’s Rowland Heights home to hang out. Marquez allegedly asked Thorne and another friend if they wanted to go out to his backyard and smoke marijuana. Without warning, they told police, Marquez stabbed Thorne with a military-style knife.

Marquez concocted a story for the group: that they last saw Thorne when they dropped him off at a liquor store across the street from his home.

Then, authorities said, Marquez chopped up the body, placed it in separate plastic bags and rolled it in a tarp. Marquez ordered some of the classmates to drive him to a nearby supermarket, where he tossed the body in a trash bin, police said. Thorne’s body has not been found. The group stopped hanging out together.

Thorne’s parents, who did not return telephone calls from The Times, waited to find out what happened to their son.

For years, authorities said, they searched for Thorne. Brea police interviewed one of the teens, but he stuck with the scripted story. Four months after Thorne disappeared, Marquez was arrested for extortion in an unrelated case.

The girlfriend said she came forward after six years because she feared Marquez would hurt her when he was released Dec. 16. She has a new family and wanted to leave the past behind.

“I realized after I became a mother, I did not want to be like Bryan’s mother and not know what happened to my child,” said the girlfriend, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation.

“I’m getting older, wiser, and I wanted to move on with my life.”

Armed with the woman’s information, investigators questioned the others, who confirmed the killing, police said.

The ex-girlfriend, who hadn’t seen Marquez in more than four years, visited him for about 40 minutes at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe about two weeks ago. After her visit, investigators confronted Marquez and he confessed to the killing, they said.

“If these witnesses didn’t come forward, we would have never solved this,” said the other detective on the case, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Garcia.

“It was always looked at as a missing persons case.”

Rose Mendoza, Marquez’s grandmother, said this is not the grandson she knows. The living room of her Whittier home is decorated with pictures of Marquez, his ex-girlfriend and their son. A china cabinet is filled with football trophies.

Mendoza said she recently spoke with her grandson.

“He was very hurt to find out someone accused him of doing this,” Mendoza said. “He was counting the days to come home. He wanted to see his son.”

She said Marquez wanted to start a new life and had plans to attend Rio Honda College to study computers.

Family members said one of the other classmates is responsible for the crime.

“They had something to do with it and they put Robert in the middle of the situation,” Mendoza said, her eyes welling up. “How fair is that? All of a sudden they dump it on Robert.”

With his father in jail and his mother living on her own, drifting between jobs, Marquez was reared by his grandparents, devout Christians who cheered him on at his football games. Mendoza said that after her grandson graduated from high school, he worked as a box boy and later attended a police academy, hoping to become an undercover officer.

But police knew a different Marquez.

He was convicted of robbery for stealing a bottle of super glue and attacking a security guard. He got probation. The year he graduated, he was convicted of possessing marijuana. He got probation again.

Street-smart and carrying a gun, he began telling friends that he was a member of the Mexican mafia, police said. He became interested in Satanism and adopted the nicknames “Evil,” “Satan” and “Rockhead.”

In May 1998, four months after the alleged murder, two boys told a group of gang members that Marquez had connections to the Mexican mafia. Angry, Marquez ordered the boys into a shed, pointed a gun at their heads and threatened to kill them.

After his arrest, police searched his home and found sawed-off rifles, loaded handguns, ammunition, a bandolier with 38 live shotgun rounds and three hunting knives.

Some of the items were used in the Thorne murder, police said.

At his sentencing for extortion, supportive teachers, coaches and his peers asked the judge for leniency. Marquez was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison.

If convicted of murder, he faces a term of 25 years to life.

“He was trying to act macho, and, because of his size, he was able to pull it off,” Garcia said. “But then he started to believe in his persona.”