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Taylor Marks Accused of Hiring Two Men to Kill Her Mom

By Pete Kotz in Stupid Criminals, homicide
Tuesday, Oct. 27 2009 @ 2:13PM
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Taylor is accused of offering $5,000 to have her mom clipped
​UPDATE: Taylor Marks was a spoiled rich girl suddenly living in public housing. See update after the jump...

On Saturday night, police arrived at an Akron, Ohio parking lot to find Kristie E. Marks bleeding from multiple stab wounds. The 58-year-old woman was moved to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.

Her daughter Taylor, 20, is now in jail, accused by detectives of offering two men $5,000 to murder her mom. Also charged in the case are Troy A. Purdie, 19, Brian S. Smith, 20...


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Taylor's boyfriend Brian Smith helped her plot the hit for weeks
​UPDATE: Taylor Marks conspired for weeks to kill her mother, hoping to collect a big inheritance.

So say Akron police, who found the wounded Kristie Marks in an apartment building parking lot. Taylor summoned them by calling 911 to say her mom had been attacked. ''My mother has been stabbed in the parking lot,'' she told the dispatcher. ''...Someone just ran up behind my mom and stabbed her.''

She claimed that her boyfriend, Brian Smith, and his buddy, Troy Purdie, then chased the mysterious attacker. So police took them all downtown for statements.

But our conspirators weren't too bright. Cops say there were inconsistencies in their stories. Within hours, all three had confessed to plotting the murder for weeks.

Under their pact, Taylor was hoping to collect a big inheritance, with which she'd pay Purdie $5,000 for helping with the hit. Her father died in 2002, and her mother operated a home health-care franchise. Detective James Pasheilich says the girl believed the murder would leave her sitting pretty:

''Marks admitted that she was upset with her mother [and] wanted her mother dead,'' Pasheilich told the Akron Beacon-Journal. ''[Taylor] mentioned that her mom has money and has a will and that she believes that her name's on the will because she saw it. More or less, it comes down to money.''

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Taylor moved from affluence to Akron's ghettos -- then preyed on mom when the going got tough
​UPDATE II: Kristie Marks was a wealthy and doting mother. Unfortunately, her daughter Taylor was a spoiled ingrate.

Police say Kristie Marks arrived at the apartment building where she was murdered intent on helping her 20-year-old daughter out of yet another jam. She was a wealthy women -- at least by the impoverished standards of Northeast Ohio. 

She'd inherited money after the death of her husband in 2002, and owned a Visiting Angels home health-care franchise. Her suburban Akron home was worth $300,000, which put her well into the upper-middle class in this area south of Cleveland.

Friends and family say she lavished love and money on her daughter, who graduated from Copley High School last year. "She overly loved her daughter,'' her brother Jeffrey Buckholder told the Akron Beacon Journal. ''I'm not going to say she smothered her, but Taylor, I'm sure, lived well. I never would have dreamt this.''

The family drove expensive cars and owned horses. Taylor briefly took classes at the University of Akron. She says on her MySpace page that Mom planned to give Taylor her business "after I graduate from college."

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Troy Purdie: Accused of stabbing Kristie Marks for a $5,000 payday
​But sometime in the past few months mom and daughter had a falling out. Taylor began dating Brian Smith, and eventually moved in with him and his mom Tammy in a public housing project in Akron. Tammy Smith found the girl ''a little bit whiny and spoiled.'' Meanwhile, friends were warning Kristie that her daughter was using her.

Jeff Sigle thought Taylor held a suburban girl's attraction to Akron's ghetto life, which meant mom was traveling the city's worst neighborhoods whenever Taylor needed bailing out. 

''I kept telling Kristie to think the worst in every situation, you're being conned, you're being duped,'' says Sigle, Kristie's friend. ''I told her to watch out for them, don't tread down there by yourself, don't go looking, don't get lured. For a girl who went from having everything she wants to living in that kind of situation, there's got to be a reason. It just doesn't happen and it doesn't happen overnight.''

But Kristie apparently couldn't think the worst of her daughter. Now she's dead because of it.


Tags: Ohio