BALDWIN COUNTY, Ga. — A grand jury has moved to re-indict a man charged with killing his girlfriend, a University of Georgia professor, more than a year after the original indictment.
The new indictment released last week changes one of Marcus Lillard’s charges, adding aggravated assault and dropping the charge of concealing a death.
“After we reviewed the case, we felt like we needed to make some adjustments and we will leave it at that,” said Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit DA, T. Wright Barksdale III.
The other three charges from the original indictment remain: felony murder, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless conduct.
All the charges are the result of an incident that happened in the early morning hours of Mother's Day 2019.
CASE HISTORY
Deputies were called to a home on Watson Reynolds Road on May 12, 2019, after property owner Clark Heindel called 911 to report an unresponsive woman in a hot tub.
When they got to the driveway, they found out what happened was more sinister than a possible drowning.
An incident report says deputies saw Heindel and Lillard performing CPR on UGA professor Marianne Shockley. Detectives spoke to the two men before separating them to be interviewed separately.
Heindel then left the porch to go back inside the home, where he shot and killed himself in the master bathroom.
Autopsy results later confirmed what investigators suspected -- Shockley’s cause of death was not drowning. They suggested murder by strangulation, meaning she was choked to death.
"It’s one of the strangest cases that we've ever worked," said Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee.
During a commitment hearing in June 2019, a GBI special agent said Lillard told them he was in the woods getting firewood when he came back to find Shockley unconscious.
Lillard also said he thought she hit her head trying to get out of the hot tub, and then dropped her trying to pull her out onto the pool deck.
The GBI agent said Lillard’s explanation for what happen didn’t track with Shockley’s autopsy results, which also showed bruising and fractured ribs.
Shockley was an entomology professor at UGA. A former student remembered her as one of the most personable professors he ever had.
According to her LinkedIn page, she had been teaching at the university for 17 years at the time of her death, receiving her masters and doctorate there.
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