THE JIGSAW MAN: STEPHEN MARSHALL

Article BY LORI BELL

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Law enforcement wouldn’t be able to catch the ruthless murderer until they solve the human jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece. There were three weeks of terror in London, England, as dismembered body parts showed up in random locations in the countryside.

In Coltered, England, March 22, 2009, a man was out on a tractor working the land, when he spotted something unusual in the fields, a small, green, travel bag. He opened the bag and found another blue bag secured with duct tape. The farmer touched the bag, but got spooked that there was something horrible inside, so he called police.

The responding officers arrived, unzipped the blue bag, and discovered a severed left leg. At first investigators were perplexed. Their initial assumption was perhaps the limb had been amputated during a medical procedure .

They started studying where the actual severance of the leg had occurred . They noticed that there was no cauterization, which would note a medical procedure as opposed to a possible murder. Investigators realized that the limb was probably involved in a dismemberment of a murder victim.

Local authorities launched a task force, Operation Abnet, to pull resources towards solving the homicide. The key to the entire operation was finding the identity of the person to whom the leg belongs. Because that would hopefully lead them to the murderer.

Forensic pathologists ran several tests on the severed leg. They determined it came from an adult, 5’6” to 5’10” tall who suffered from eczema. They also distracted DNA from the leg and ran it through the National Data Base. They didn’t get any hits, so whoever the leg belonged to did not have a criminal history. Investigators assigned to Operation Abnet were not even sure if they had a man or a woman’s leg.

In Williamstead, England, March 29, 2009, a group of people were walking along Grover’s Lane, when they stumbled upon a human forearm, which had been skillfully dismembered at the elbow and wrist. The forearm was found approximately 25 miles away from where the severed leg was found, approximately one week prior.

Investigators sent the handless arm to nearby Lister Hospital for further forensic examination. They conducted a DNA profile on the arm, and it turned out to be an exact match to the leg. Task force members scoured missing persons records, but without knowing the sex, age, or ethnicity of the victim, they had zero luck. With no identity it was hard to have a motive and suspects.

In Asfordby, England, March 32, 2009, a farmer, tending to his cattle pen, found a severed human head in his fields. He called the local police. This discovery was about 100 miles north of where the leg was previously found.

What was shocking about this discovery was that this head was found with all of its soft tissue missing, in addition to missing its eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and tongue. Only its teeth were left intact. It looked like something straight out of a horror movie.

Within 48 hours, tests confirmed that the severed head came from the same body as the dismembered leg and forearm. Subsequently an anthropology team was called in to study the head. The anthropologists were able to determine, due to the size, dimension, and shape of the skull, that they were in fact looking at a male not a female.

In Puckeridge, England, April 7, 2009, a driver near the A10 bypass made a gruesome discovery on the side of the road. It was a severed human right leg wrapped inside a series of bags sealed with duct tape. It was a human jigsaw puzzle and they were starting to put it back together again. Four days later another gruesome discovery was made.

In Standon, England, April 11, 2009, a man was out walking on Gore Lane when he found a suitcase near a ditch. He opened it only to find a human torso wrapped in a blue bag, secured with duct tape. The torso marked the fifth body part in less than three weeks, but with this discovery investigators could finally determine the victim’s cause of death.

The torso was examined and found to have a stab wound to it’s back which punctured the victim’s lung and led to their death. Further analysis of the torso discovered that it belonged to a person who was either of Caucasian, Asian, or mixed heritage.

Police went public with information related to the case, hoping to identify the victim and the suspected killer. The media immediately provided a nickname to the victim, The Jigsaw Man. They gave out as much information as they possibly could without pertinent details they would need if someone came forward and confessed. Calls from the public soon flooded the Abnet incident room.

On April 21, 2009, one such tip came in and proved to be the breakthrough in the case. Jeffrey Howe’s mom phoned the task force. She informed the authorities that her son had not been heard from for approximately a month. What she feared was foul play.

Investigators had long suspected the Jigsaw Man could have been a missing person. Missing 49 -year-old Jeffrey Howe had his own apartment in an area called Southgate, which was about eight miles outside the center of London. He was involved in the restaurant business, and was described as being a very likable person, single, with no children, and got along with almost everyone he met.

Southgate, London, April 21, 2009, two task force members visited the home of Jeffrey Howe. He was nowhere to be found. What investigators did find at his residence were two tenants, a man named Stephen Marshall, and his girlfriend Sarah Bush.

Marshall, age 38, and Sarah, age 20, had been living at Howe’s apartment for five months rent free since November 2008. At one point Marshall and Howe had been partners in a kitchen fitting business. The investigators ask both Marshall and Bush if they knew anything about Howe’s whereabouts. They said they didn’t know where he was, and that they hadn't seen him for about a month.

According to Marshall and Bush, as far as they knew, he was still alive. The investigators noticed that both of them became very nervous. The narrative they forwarded to the detectives at that time is that they fell on hard times and Howe had let them live with him.

During their interview the investigators noticed Howe’s passport on a nearby table. To investigators the presence of Howe’s passport almost certainly meant he didn’t leave the country. Something was a wry, something was up.

Police had to figure out if Jeffrey Howe was actually missing, and if so could his two tenants have had a roll in his mysterious disappearance. A month into the homicide investigation, the local task force still hadn’t identified the victim.

The more investigators questioned Marshall and Bush, the more suspicious they became. They eventually searched the flat and it was as neat as a pin. So what they were looking at was a possible cover-up or the scene of a crime. At one point they began to suspect that the flat was too clean. They eventually looked into a closet and found a license plate that belonged to Jeffrey Howe’s car.

At this point in time detectives made a determination that they were going to arrest them. Marshall and Bush were transported to nearby Hatfield Police station. Now the clock started for them to make a case against the couple with a 72 hour detention. A detention where they could get enough facts and evidence compiled together so they could actually physically charge them with murder and hold them to answer or would they have to release them.

The interesting thing at that point was they still didn’t have a positive ID on exactly who the victim was. They had reasonable suspicion that it was Howe, but they hadn’t made a positive identification that it was, in fact, Howe.

Investigators interrogated Marshall for more than an hour and during that time they asked a barrage of questions and he answered each question the same, “no comment.” When asked about Howe, Bush followed suit and stonewalled the officers, but she did offer that her partner suffered from mood swings, sometimes he was evil, and that she had been preparing to leave him.

This in and of itself was very suspicious and started to peak their curiosity. Marshall and Bush were returned to lockup , meanwhile, task force officers hustled to find out everything they could about them to see if they could connect them to the crimes before they would have to let them go.

Sarah Bush grew up in England’s foster care system. She moved back and forth between different homes, different families, and unfortunately she turned to the streets and prostitution. Bush was a mother of two, working for an escort service, when she first met Marshall in 2008. He started out as her client and quickly became her boyfriend.

Stephen Marshall lived outside London, England. The unemployed former gym owner was known to live life in the fast lane. Some considered him the life of the party, a great guy, but he also had a pension for drugs, prostitution, and partying. Some people said his outgoing and charming personality were actually a mask. There was something darker that lied within. Ultimately there was a portion of Marshall that liked violence.

Detectives ran criminal histories on Marshall and Bush. They realized that Marshall was currently out on bail for beating up a prostitute. He had been convicted of assault, drugs, and firearms offenses, and that wasn’t the worst of it. In 1996, a man was stabbed 12 times and he was arrested as a suspect in that murder, however he was never charged in the matter.

On April 23, 2009, forensic experts finally caught the break they needed to identify the Jigsaw Man. The killer of the Jigsaw Man went to great lengths to conceal the identity of his victim, by dismembering it and spreading it throughout the London area. What he failed to do was remove the teeth from the victim's skull.

Forensic experts had taken the teeth from the skull and compared them to the x-rays of Jeffrey Howe’s teeth. It was a positive match. They now had a definitive ID of the victim. Authorities still needed to find the evidence that tied Marshall and Bush to what they knew was the murder of Howe.

Detectives continued to dig into Marshall’s past. They found that at one time he lived only a few hundred yards from where the torso was found. They realized that coincidence didn’t really satisfy a charge to be held against Marshall. They knew they needed more evidence, and Howe’s apartment didn’t disappoint.

Task force officers returned to Howe’s apartment and conducted a more thorough examination. At first glance there was nothing much that would have indicated foul play. As the investigators continued their search they realized the apartment did hold some dirty secrets.

Under the carpeting in one of the bedrooms, they found a huge blood stain, and in the bathroom under the carpeting they also found blood stains. The investigators knew that Howe succumbed to a stab wound. They figured out he was stabbed and killed somewhere in the apartment, possibly in bed and then he was taken into the bathroom and dismembered.

Detectives inspected the room where Marshall and Bush slept. The mattress had fibers. They also tagged clothing belonging to them. Those items were bagged and saved for evidentiary purposes. They took the fibers for fiber analysis and checked the clothing for any transfers. There was a treasure trove of physical evidence that was gathered from the crime scene.

April 24, 2009, there was less than 24 hours left on the clock for detectives to either charge Marshall and Bush or release them. They were formally charged with murder.

Hertfordshire, England, May 1, 2009, Marshall and Bush appeared in court for arraignment. Both of them were going to subsequently plead not guilty . Over the next eight months, prosecutors attempted to build an ironclad case against the couple.

Investigators believed that Marshall killed Howe on March 8th or 9th, then spent several hours over the following days meticulously dissecting his body. The motive was envy and greed. Marshall wanted what his landlord had, money and possessions. The only way to get it, in his mind, was to murder Howe and make him disappear him with the help of Bush.

When they moved in with Howe there was a payment arrangement which they never paid, and when asked to leave they refused. What was even more damaging was the fact that after Howe’s disappearance they began to plunder his assets.

Records indicated that the day after Howe was killed, Marshall pawned his cell phone at a local pawn shop. Within days of Howe’s disappearance, they started using his credit cards, and they started falsifying checks.

On March 19, CCTV captured Marshall depositing a forged check from Howe’s bank account into his own. On March 21, 2009, Marshall and Bush sold his Saab on EBay. Fingerprint examiners examined the documents associated with that sale and found both Marshall’s and Bush’s fingerprints on those documents.

None of this proved they killed Howe, but the test results from fibers collected from the apartment proved irrefutable. Whoever killed Howe was meticulous. Dismembering his body and placing it in plastic bags sealed with duct tape.

Forensic experts were able to meticulously take off all that duct tape and find fibers which were analyzed. Experts concluded that those fibers positively matched fibers found on the air mattress that was shared by Marshall and Bush.

One of the most compelling pieces of fiber evidence were the green fibers that came from Marshall’s shirt, which also matched fibers from the duct tape. What this did was place Marshall inside Howe’s apartment at the time his body was being dismembered and disposed of.

In Hertfordshire, England, January 12, 2010, the trial of Sarah Bush and Stephen Marshall got underway at St. Alban’s Crown Court. Prosecutors decided to try the lovers at the same time for the murder of Howe.

For months Marshall had been holding on to a not guilty plea, adamant about his innocence. However, that was about to change. Before the jury was even sworn in, he made a stunning revelation. He claimed he did not kill Howe, Bush killed Howe, but he dismembered the body. Of course Bush claimed the opposite.

These were two people who were at the lower rungs of society and literally pointed the finger at each other. This is typically referred to as a cut throat defense, meaning one person is going to claim that the other person is guilty and they are simply the innocent one along for the ride. The prosecutors were unfazed by the cut throat defense.

Several witnesses testified against Marshall, painting him as a frightening character with a violent temper, and who has had abuse issues with cocaine and steroids. They were going to bring in individuals who could testify that he was violent towards them.

The Crown presented evidence showing that in the days following the murder, Marshall and Bush assumed Howe’s identity in order to steal his assets. Records indicated that after Howe’s death, both of them used his credit cards to go on a shopping spree and to purchase items on the Internet.

They were down and out people, and that could have been a really strong motivator why they would want to get rid of somebody, which gave the prosecutors a basis for motive. They also had CCTV footage that showed Marshall and Bush driving to Leighstashire on the day it was believed Howe’s skull was deposited there.

Marshall realized the case wasn’t going well so he decided to plead guilty to murdering Howe. Bush plead guilty to assisting in dismembering the body and providing false information to police. Most probably looking at the two of these people, that’s probably the way it transpired, he killed, she helped.

On February 1, 2010, a judge sentenced both Marshall and Bush. Marshall was sentenced to life in prison. He will see a minimum of 36 years incarceration before he is eligible for parole. Bush is sentenced to three years, nine months in prison.

As a consequence of the trial, prosecutors hoped Marshall would disclose the location of Howe’s remaining unfound body parts. He does not. Although Bush claims they disposed of Howe’s severed hands, which have never been found, in the Epping Forest.

Marshall did confess to some of the other skeletons in his closet. He said that several years prior, while employed as a doorman, he also worked for an organized crime family in the London, England area known as the Adams family, and helped dispose of four bodies.

Marshall explained that these were gangland slayings that happened between 1995 and 1998, and that he was specifically hired to dispose of the bodies. It would have been logical to conclude that was where he got his expertise in body dismemberment. He said he would use knives, cleavers, and a chainsaw. These were items that were also used to dismember Howe.

In November, 2010, Marshall filed an appeal hoping to get a reduced sentence. He was turned down and completely dismissed, and was required to serve his sentence. As for Bush, she served 45 months in prison and walked out a free woman. Marshall is currently incarcerated at an undisclosed maximum security British prison. He is not eligible for parole until 2046 at the age of 74.

Marshall and Bush had taken advantage of someone who tried to help them. Howe was simply trying to give him shelter, but unfortunately it cost him his life. In this situation you had Marshall who thought he was so smart and perhaps he did this prior and had gotten away with it. He could continue to do it and no one would be the wiser. That just didn’t work out in this case thanks to some great police work.