Mercedes McCambrige's Son: Infantacide

Little Rock Arkansas!?!

Bill Clinton was Governor there between 1983 and 1992.

Hillary probably was behind this. It's probably part of the Clinton Death List.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.
- Ayn Rand

Family Massacre Bottom Line For Broker
November 22, 1987|By Mary T. Schmich, Chicago Tribune

LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — Amy Markle telephoned her friend Woody Thomas at 9 p.m. last Sunday with the news that her dad had offered to take them skateboarding this weekend at the Metrocentre Mall.

Several hours later, Amy, 13, lay dead in her canopied double bed, shot four times in the head and chest. Her 9-year-old sister Suzanne, who had been shot five times, lay beside her under the covers.

Upstairs, in the cluttered third-floor master bedroom, the girls` mother, Chris, 45, was sprawled across the king-size waterbed, shot three times.

On that night of thunderstorms, when John Markle had finished with his wife and daughters, he descended to his first-floor study. There, while digits glowed on the nearby computer screen and the wind whistled through the trees, he pointed a .38 caliber pistol to one temple and a .45 caliber gun to the other and fired.

It was another tale of love and money gone violently wrong, with enough mystery -- Why was a rubber Halloween mask lying next to Markle`s body? Why was "Nightmare on Elm Street" in the VCR? Why did he use three different guns in the four killings? -- that even the investigators joked darkly about an upcoming

Markle, 45, had been vice president of Stephens Inc., the country`s 15th- largest investment banking firm and the largest off Wall Street. He also was the only son of the actress Mercedes McCambridge, who won an Oscar in 1949 for her role in ``All the King`s Men`` and who was the voice of the devil in "The Exorcist."

Those two factors-his job and his mother-would prove more related than they seemed.

Rumors had circulated through Little Rock all week that Markle had been in financial trouble at Stephens, where he had worked since 1979 after seven years at Salomon Brothers in New York.

At first, Stephens would say only that Markle was a respected employee who had been on medical leave since Oct. 7 and whose employment had been "completed" on Nov. 13, two days before his death.

On Thursday evening, however, shortly after the Markles` ashes were buried outside Trinity Episcopal Church and McCambridge had flown home to San Diego in the corporate jet, Stephens issued a cautious announcement.

``On Oct. 6, Stephens Inc. learned of a previously undisclosed account controlled by Markle with an out-of-state brokerage firm,`` the release said. In light of Markle`s previous heart problems, the company placed Markle on medical leave, pending an inquiry.

The Stephens release also said that the money involved, ``while substantial,`` did not affect any of the company`s customers.

On Friday morning, the Arkansas Democrat was more explicit. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said Markle, who was responsible for the company`s in-house investments, had placed his mother`s money in the out-of-state account.

He would make investments for his mother and the company simultaneously, without distinguishing which money was the company`s and which was his mother`s.

If the investment made money, he would credit a profit to his mother`s account. If it lost money, he would place the losses on Stephens` in-house accounts. There was no indication that McCambridge knew what her son was doing.

Steve Stephens, a Stephens spokesman, had little comment on the report:

``I am surprised they would print hearsay. All I can say is that the matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities.``

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Association of Securities Dealers have declined to say whether they are investigating Markle. Those investigating Markle`s death believe that he murdered his family in neither haste nor anger.

``It was an act of macabre benevolence,`` said Steve Nawojczyk, the Pulaski County coroner. ``He wanted to spare the girls the publicity.``

Near the front door, Markle had left a briefcase containing papers and a note indicating they were for his lawyer. On the desk in his study, near his hearing aid and a pint of Cutty Sark-the autopsy showed he had drunk very little-he had left a two-line handwritten note saying he had killed his wife and children. He had written 2:30 at the top. It was addressed to no one.

Markle was considered a brilliant, witty and slightly eccentric family man. Though his wife and daughters were involved in many community activities, friends called them a private family. They lived in a three-story 1880`s house in Little Rock`s Quapaw Quarter, an old neighborhood near downtown where blocks of huge, renovated Victorians alternate with streets of rundown cottages.

Though he owned a white Lincoln -- "Economize! Eat Money!" said the bumper sticker -- he sometimes rode a motorcycle to work or drove a battered pickup that he and his kids had painted wild colors. He wore white socks, another small show of rebellion in a pin-striped world.

``I keep reading that he was strange, but he wasn`t strange,`` said Kathy Thomas, a family friend and the mother of Amy`s friend Woody.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-11-22/news/8703270882_1_stephens-shot-three-times-mother
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"She's one of them! She's nuthin but a railroad tramp, not fit to live among decent people! I say string 'em all up, the Dancing Kid and Vienna! They both cast the same shadow!"

McCambridge is unforgettable in that role!

I guess she wasn't such a great mom, though...not a lot of stars from that generation were. Someone has to be pretty self-centered to become a star, and that quality doesn't lend itself very easily to parenthood.

The son had a lot to say to McCambridge in letters in the weeks preceding the murders. It got pretty ugly. I wish I could find what he said, somewhere...but most of it was along the lines of, "Once again, you put yourself first...as you always have."

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EDIT:

Here's some of it:

In a 12-page letter written before the murder-suicide, Markle recorded his relationship with his mother from 1949 until his death and detailed things she did that angered him.

He charged McCambridge, a reformed alcoholic who discussed her disease with members of a U.S. Senate subcommittee in 1969, was 'incurably angry' and manipulative.

He told her that if she had agreed to a settlement offer from Stephens, he could have resigned and gotten another job.

'You were never around much when I needed you, so now I and my whole family are dead -- so you can have the money -- funny how things work out, isn't it?' Markle wrote.

'Initially you said, well, we can work it out,' Markle wrote. 'You called me a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a bum. You said I have ruined your life.'

Markle wrote that he never thought his mother loved him and that he had tried to win her love through gifts, academic achievement and the 'enormous personal risk' he took to make her money.
What would have been so funny is if La Crawford had been alive, and taken over all the funeral arrangements in grand style, officiating the event in one of her shellacked, matchy-matchy get ups.

I can see her saying from the podium, "Those of us in The Industry knew our dear Mercy wasn't the easiest of mothers to have...Her son John was cheap, an exhibitionist. He was never a professional, and that irritated the hell out of people. But for God's sake, he needed help!"

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First of all, the tragedy of McCambridge's son has nothing to do with Joan Crawford. Second, I'm surprised to find out McCambridge was heterosexual.