Shivangi Sinha
In June 2016, Lyntell Washington went missing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When the police traced back her last movements, they discovered that she had gone to meet Robert Marks, an assistant principal at the school where she worked. Investigators also learned that the two of them had been having an affair, which intensified the suspicion surrounding Marks almost immediately. ABC’s ‘20/20: The Barefoot Witness’ presents the extensive evidence that investigators accumulated against Marks over the course of the investigation, ultimately leading to his arrest and conviction.
Robert Marks Was Married When He Started Dating Lyntell Washington
Robert Marks had grown up in Louisiana and by the mid-2010s, he was working as an assistant principal at Brookstown Middle School. He was married to Kala Marks and was widely known as a gentle and respectable person. Marks was also reportedly highly educated and was said to hold a PhD. It was at the school that he met Lyntell Washington for the first time after she joined as a teacher around the same period. The two eventually became close friends, and at first, there seemed to be nothing romantic between them. However, according to some of Lyntell’s friends, Marks allegedly told her that he and his wife were separated and living on different floors of the same house.
Lyntell and Marks eventually started seeing each other, but the relationship remained secretive. After some time, she confided in a few of her friends, though she and Marks reportedly wanted to keep the relationship hidden because they were coworkers. Lyntell was already the mother of a 3-year-old daughter. According to those close to her, she appeared genuinely happy to have found someone new after a long time. In April 2016, Lyntell discovered that she was pregnant and later shared the news with Marks. Her friends later claimed that she initially told them Marks seemed happy about the pregnancy. However, Lyntell also reportedly confided that at one point she felt that he allegedly suggested that she consider getting an abortion.
According to her friends, Lyntell became upset over the comment, after which Marks supposedly changed his stance and assured her that he was just trying to show her support for all choices. In early June 2016, Marks told Lyntell that he was leaving town for work. However, she later came across pictures on social media that revealed he had actually gone on a cruise with his wife, Kala. Realizing that something was not adding up, she went to check his house for herself and discovered that it was a single-story trailer, meaning Marks had lied about him and his wife living on separate floors. Feeling betrayed, Lyntell decided to confront him and sent him a message saying she planned to tell Kala the truth. On the evening of June 8, 2016, Lyntell received a message from Marks asking her to meet him in the parking lot of a Walmart. She took her daughter along to meet him.
Robert Marks Abandoned Lyntell Johnson’s Daughter in a Parking Lot
According to the cellphone data presented in court, Robert Marks and Lyntell Washington traveled together to an area near a sugarcane field in Iberville Parish, where Lyntell’s remains were later discovered. Investigators determined that she had been shot once in the head. The cellphone records then showed Marks traveling back alone while Lyntell’s phone suddenly switched off midway through the route. Prosecutors believed that this was the point at which he threw her phone into the lake to destroy evidence. Marks later went to a parking lot on Newcastle Avenue in Baton Rouge and contacted Tramica Jackson, another woman he was reportedly dating at the time. This was where he left Lyntell’s car with her 3-year-old daughter inside it. He asked her to come pick him up, after which she drove him back to the Walmart parking lot, where he had left his motorcycle.
On the morning of June 9, 2016, Leslie Parms found Lyntell’s three-year-old daughter alone in a Walmart parking lot. During the 911 call, the little girl told police that “Mr. Robbie” had left her there after hurting her mother. She had blood on her body and also stated that he was the one who had put the blood in the car. Marks was later called in for questioning, but he claimed that he had only met Lyntell briefly before leaving to meet friends at a restaurant called Twin Peaks. However, Lyntell’s daughter also spoke to authorities and said that Marks had hurt her mother. She further described hearing a loud “boom,” which investigators believed could have been the sound of the gunshot.
In the days that followed, the police recovered other evidence that strengthened their case. Investigators discovered that around the time Lyntell had informed him about her pregnancy, Marks had searched online for cases involving the murders of pregnant women and had also purchased a gun. The cellphone records for both Marks and Lyntell mapped their movements on the night of the crime and directly contradicted his claim that he had left the parking lot alone. Additionally, Tramica gave a statement to the police confirming that she had picked Marks up later that evening, and her account aligned closely with the prosecution’s timeline. CCTV footage from the restaurant Marks claimed to have visited, Twin Peaks, failed to show him arriving there at any point that night. Finally, the statements made by Lyntell’s young daughter matched the physical and digital evidence gathered by investigators.
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Robert Marks is Serving His Sentence in One of the Most Dangerous Louisiana Prisons Today
Robert Marks was charged in June 2016 with second-degree murder, first-degree feticide, aggravated kidnapping, second-degree kidnapping, four counts of illegal use of a weapon, and obstruction of justice. His bail was set at $80,000, which he posted to secure his release. At the time, his wife, Kala Marks, publicly spoke in his support and maintained that the allegations against him were untrue. Marks’ trial finally began in December 2021. During the proceedings, his defense team chose not to call any witnesses and argued that there was no murder weapon or direct forensic evidence tying him to the crime.
However, prosecutors relied heavily on cellphone records, witness statements, surveillance footage, and the testimony connected to Lyntell Washington’s daughter. After deliberating for only about 30 minutes, the jury found Marks guilty of all charges against him. In February 2022, Marks was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Kala divorced him soon after. According to records from the Louisiana Department of Corrections, he is currently incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, the maximum-security prison located in Angola. The facility is widely known for its harsh conditions and has often been referred to as one of the toughest prisons in America. Marks is expected to spend the remainder of his life behind bars for the killing of Lyntell Washington and the death of their unborn child.
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