Dale Leigh Patterson (1956-2010) was murdered by her ex-husband in Lake Mary, Florida.

GrandfatherEdit

• Leif Jensen (1886-1955)

MarriagesEdit

• John Marshall (1951-2010), aka Marhum Mohamed Karim Allarakhia, in Tanzania
• Orval Dale Burkhart (1950-2010)

MurderEdit

• May 6, 2010. 3 Dead In Double Murder-Suicide. Lake Mary, Florida. Three people are dead after a double murder-suicide in Seminole County on Thursday, police said. Investigators said the gunman shot himself after killing a woman and a man. The shots were fired at the intersection of North Sundance Drive and Holbrook Circle in the Lakewood subdivision at The Crossings near Lake Mary. The subdivision is near Lake Mary High School and Greenwood Middle School. Authorities said the schools were not involved and classes continued as normal.The bullet holes in the front door of the home only told part of the story. "Shots are fired into the residence, several through the front door, some through the side of the house," Seminole County Sheriff's Office Lt. James Clark said. People were on their way to work and to school at about 7:30 a.m., when silence was shattered by gunfire. John Marshall (1951-2010), 59, rode a scooter to the home of his ex-wife. He was going after her husband of seven years. "He obviously came here and was intent on carrying out this act," Clark said. The first victim was Orval "Dale" Burkhart, 59, who fled up the street in an attempt to save his life. Marshall overtook him on the scooter and shot him in the middle of the roadway. Marshall's ex-wife, Dale Marshall Burkhart, had left for work but was apparently called back home and drove right into the middle of the murder scene. "She comes home, we believe, turns the corner right as he's firing upon her now current husband. She immediately sees what's going on, and he runs up to her and fires several rounds into her car, striking her and killing her instantaneously, and she was attempting to reverse and back out, and the car literally drifted back in reverse and hit a tree," Clark said. When neighbors tried to go after John Marshall, he turned the gun on himself. Investigators said the couple had lived in the home for years, with only one issue involving the ex-husband. John Marshall had been arrested a couple of years ago for violating an injunction. "He had apparently abused the children, and that's why the ex-wife in the case had divorced him," Clark said. The Marshalls had five children during their marriage. Only one of the children is still of school age and had left the home before the incident. A neighbor said John Marshall had recently lost a legal battle over unpaid child support.^[1]

• May 7, 2010. Child Support May Be Motive For Triple Murder. WFTV found a possible motive for Thursday’s murders in the Lake Mary area and it has to do with child support. John Marshall killed his ex-wife, her husband, and himself in a Lake Mary area neighborhood.WFTV learned Marshall owed more than $200,000 in child support. So, to make up the difference, the judge took something away from Marshall and gave it to his ex-wife. What the judge gave her made her a millionaire. Court documents related to the victim's 1997 divorce from the shooter describe big money and judgments related to properties in London. It may shed light on why Marshall started shooting through his ex-wife's front door Thursday morning. The family home remained an active scene some 33 hours after Marshall murdered his ex-wife and her current husband on the sidewalks of a Lake Mary area subdivision. “I got gunshots being fired outside the house,” a caller told the 911 dispatcher. Now, WFTV uncovered more recent signs of stress between Marshall and his ex, Dale Burkhart, even though they'd been divorced 12 years. Court documents from 2005 show Marshall was nearly $201,000 behind on his child support payments, so a judge gave all the former husband's interest in a London rental property to the former wife. The document read: "All of the former husband's interest in the party’s real property located in London, England is hereby awarded to the former wife." Documents then show that property was sold in June 2007 for $1.1 million. All that cash went straight to Dale Burkhart. Investigators acknowledge they are investigating finances as a possible motive and say there was trouble even when the two were married. Burkhart wrote, "My husband became very upset with our son and hit, slapped, and kicked him. When I intervened, he slapped me cross the face three times." Burkhart also accused Marshall of trying to lure the family to his native Kenya, so he could abandon them. WFTV stopped by Marshall’s last known address. The Lake Mary home is a gathering spot for the area's Muslim community, of which Marshall was a well-known part of, but the residents said he hasn't lived there in at least four years. Documents show Marshall was supposed to pay more than $2,000 a month in child support for the couple’s five kids, but fell behind almost immediately after the divorce. Part of the problem was that he was such a drifter that no one could ever nail down where the payments should have been coming from.

• May 13, 2010. Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel. Lake Mary shooting: Questions remain, funerals Thursday. The man who shot his ex-wife, her husband and himself to death on a neighborhood street near Lake Mary last week had five children, but once his wife filed for divorce, he wouldn't support them financially. John Marshall, 59, went to jail twice because of it but as soon as he was released, he would disappear, often leaving the country and never making his child support payments. Five years ago, his ex-wife, Dale Leigh Marshall-Burkhart, 54, got aggressive: She had him arrested and went to court in Sanford and London and won a $1 million judgment. "We all thought it'd be a bit of a long shot that they'd ever collect anything," said her Orlando attorney, Barry Rigby. But collect they did. In 2008, she received the last of the money. A short time later, she quit her job, and she and her new husband built a backyard swimming pool and an addition to their home. That's the house near Lake Mary where the shooting started May 6. Funeral services are scheduled today for the Burkharts, Orval "Dale" Burkhart, 59, who tried to outrun Marshall but was gunned down on a sidewalk a few hundred feet away, and his wife, Marshall-Burkhart, who died behind the wheel of her SUV nearby. After killing them, Marshall turned the gun on himself and died on the sidewalk near them. His funeral was Saturday. He was buried at an Orlando cemetery. Seminole County deputies are still investigating the shootings. They don't yet know why Marshall went after his ex-wife and her husband, said agency spokeswoman Kim Cannaday. As of early this week, they'd turned up no evidence the Burkharts had been threatened, she said. Rigby, the Burkharts' lawyer, said the couple thought Marshall was "an odd duck" but not a danger. Couple married in Tanzania: Marshall was born in India. The woman he would marry, Dale Patterson, had grown up in Indiana. They got married in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1980 and lived for several years in London, where three of their children were born, according to divorce records. They moved to Central Florida in 1988, a condo in Altamonte Springs, then to a series of houses in the Orlando suburbs. In 1997, though, Dale Marshall filed for divorce and asked a judge to keep her husband away from her and the children. He had been in Kenya for two months with their 13-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter and wouldn't bring them home, she wrote in divorce paperwork. "He has a very bad temper, and I just don't know what he will do," she wrote. He fought, for a short time, for custody of the children, according to court records, then he simply disappeared. He refused to say where he lived or what he earned. He refused to pay the $2,065-a-month in child support that a judge had ordered. He would slip into and out of the country, Dale Marshall told friends. She was now a single mother with five children to support. They were on Medicaid. She went back to work, first as a substitute teacher then into an office job at a Sanford bakery that specializes in cheesecake. "She was a very good worker," said Dan Gilardi, director of human resources at the bakery, The Father's Table. "She was a very kind, sweet person," said Rufiange, the former neighbor. In 2003, Dale Marshall married Orval "Dale" Burkhart, and he moved in with she and her children. Two years later, the Burkharts decided to go after what Dale Marshall-Burkhart was due, $230,000 in child support plus her half of a commercial building in London, near the River Thames, one that the Marshalls had bought while they were still married. By law, half of it was hers, as was half the rent money it had produced over the years. She wound up with just over $1 million. If that peeved Marshall, he didn't show it in court. He never appeared. He behaved, according to a circuit judge and general master, as if the law did not apply to him.^[2]

ReferencesEdit