Deputy Chief Mike Hartley of the Bloomington Police Department announced the news Monday, on what was the 11-year anniversary of Pease’s disappearance. This new charge sees Marks on the hook for 2nd degree murder after abducting Pease, with whom he had a child, from a women’s shelter in Minnesota, alongside accomplice Kellee Kristine Sorensen. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office alleges that Marks and Sorensen drove from Washington state to Minnnesota, tracking Pease down after she had fled the abusive Marks.  Pease was abducted, then driven to an undisclosed location along the I-35, where she was killed by Marks while Sorenson remained in the vehicle.

Pease’s body has never been found. She had been moved to the Bloomington shelter after Marks had located her at a separate women’s shelter in Washington State. The couple’s child was left at the facility.

Cedric Marks is listed as residing in Belton, Texas while Kellee Kristine Sorensen hails from Lynden, Washington. Marks was already in custody in regards to the previous capital murder charges, while Sorensen has been apprehended in her home state. She is also charged with 2nd degree murder.

Investigators put the spotlight on Marks as a suspect in the Pease case after he was arrested for the deaths of Scott and Swearingin.

Cedric Marks was initially arrested in Michigan in January 2019 on charges of breaking into Jenna Scott’s home, to demand she drop assault charges against him. While being extradited to Texas, he would escape custody, only to be apprehended following a manhunt involving multiple law enforcement bodies, including the Conroe, Texas PD. With the bodies of Scott and Swearingin discovered in a shallow grave in Clearview, Oklahoma in mid-January, Marks was already a prime suspect. The murders were alleged to have taken place in nearby Killeen, Texas on January 3, 2019 — roughly two weeks prior to their bodies being found. By the time Marks had been nabbed fleeing his prison transport on February 3, 2019, charges of murder had been filed against him.

Per records, Jenna Scott had taken a restraining order out against Marks. She claimed the former fighter had boasted that he had “gotten away with murder before.” That, most likely, was in reference to the Pease case.

Marks, nicknamed “Spider-Man,” ran up a journeyman’s record of 31-27, 1NC in a career that lasted from 1998 to his final recorded fight in 2018. He shared the cage with the likes of Drew Fickett, Bobby Voelker, Shannon Ritch, Yves Edwards, Travis Lutter, and Thomas Gifford. His final run in the sport saw him go 1-6 from 2012 onward.

Marks competed for Shamrock FC and Bellator MMA, among a host of other promotions. Speaking to Shamrock FC Radio in 2014, he explained that he got into the sport “very much by accident” after watching the original UFC tournament. “I wanted to fight and I saw the first UFC and it juiced me up and started me on that path.”

That was ahead of his fight with Bobby Voelker. Five years removed from allegedly having murdered April Pease.

In one of the more bizarre angles of the case, Marks has apparently had no shortage of accomplices willing to aide in his crimes. His current wife, Ginell McDonough, plead guilty last month to harboring a felon. Yet another accomplice, Maya Maxwell, led police to the bodies of Scott and Swearingin, and gave birth to the former fighter’s child last year, while behind bars. Maxwell was charged with evidence tampering in the 2019 murders.

The post Ex-MMA Fighter Cedric Marks Hit With Another Murder Charge, Accomplice In Custody appeared first on Cageside Press.

Marks was a regional professional fighter with almost 60 fights to his credit, including some big-name opponents like Yves Edwards and Travis Lutter. Marks even held victories over Josh Haynes and Thomas Gifford, who are now veterans of the UFC.

His career ended unceremoniously after posting a 1-6 record across six years. He finally called it quits in September of 2018 after competing for 20 years. When a journeyman fighter walks away from the sport of MMA, they are seldom seen or heard from again – that is, unless the body of their ex-girlfriend and her friend are found dead.

After their disappearance, Marks was the prime suspect for a number of reasons, one being a restraining order that forbade him from all contact with one of the murder victims, Jenna Scott. Scott and her friend, Michael Swearingin went missing on January 3, 2019 and their deceased bodies were found just days later after an accomplice of Marks, Maya Maxwell, told authorities where the bodies were buried. Maxwell confessed to moving one of the victim’s vehicles from the crime scene in an attempt to evade police detection and may have helped dispose of the bodies in Clearview, OK.

The spouse of Cedric Marks, Ginell McDonough, was accused of helping Marks and Maxwell evade capture by letting the pair stay at her Michigan home just days after the murder. She has finally pleaded guilty to ‘harboring a felon’ according to KCEN (NBC 6 in Temple, TX). She will be sentenced in November and faces up to 9 months in prison. According to her attorney, Michael Oaks, her defense team is seeking probation as punishment for her part in covering up the murders of two innocent people.

The post Wife of Cedric Marks, MMA Fighter Accused of Murder, Pleads Guilty to Harboring a Felon appeared first on Cageside Press.

In July of 1998, Cedric Marks fought four times in an evening for Power Ring Warriors. He won three of those bouts, before being submitted by Anthony Macias in the fourth. It was the start of a mixed martial arts career that lasted two decades — and ended with a pair of murder charges, an escape attempt, and a host of unanswered questions.

On Sunday, Marks, now 44 years old, escaped a privately operated prison transport while being extradited to Bell County, Texas. He’d been picked up in Michigan, wanted on charges of breaking into ex-girlfriend Jenna Scott’s home, where he demanded she drop assault charges against him. That was back in August 2018.

Nine hours after his escape, Marks was back in custody. He’d been caught after an extensive search involving K-9 units, and was eventually found hiding in a trash can, according to Conroe Police, who handled media for the case. The saga, however, was far from over. During his time on the run, it was revealed that warrants had been issued for Marks on two charges of murder.

In January, Jenna Scott, 28, along with friend Michael Swearingin, 32, were found dead in Clearview, Oklahoma days after being reported missing. Marks was the prime suspect, but was not linked to the case until Mark’s wife, Ginell McDonough, and acquaintance Maya Maxwell entered the picture. Maxwell told authorities working the case that she had helped move the deceased Swearingin’s vehicle in order to prevent police from finding it, according to a report from NBC affiliate K-CEN TV. McDonough was charged with Harboring Marks, who was already wanted for the burglary warrant.

Scott had requested a protective order against Marks in July, and a temporary order was eventually granted. One that had been violated no fewer than three times. The fighter was arrested August 15, 2018, for a violation, and posted $10,000 bond. Due to the most serious violation, the home invasion, an arrest warrant was issued on November 9, 2018 by Bell County Justice of the Peace David Barfield. Most disturbingly, Marks had threatened Scott by telling her that “your entire family and all of your friends will need witness protection if you call the police.”

Scott also claimed the fighter had at times choked her unconscious. Jenna’s brother Talon Scott told reporters in January that his sister had been harassed and blackmailed. Sadly, it was soon learned that she had been murdered, allegedly by Marks.

The deaths of Jenna Scott and Michael Swearingin are far from Mark’s first brush with the law, and even, possibly, murder. In 2007, Marks was found not guilty of assault, stemming from a 2004 altercation at a Copperas Cove City Park pool. There, he wound up striking a man Marks claimed had used a racial slur against him, calling him a “black motherf*cker.” The dispute started when the victim asked Marks to turn off the ignition of his vehicle, which was idling in a parking lot outside the park pool. Marks had refused, and claimed victim Steven Doyle began banging on his window. Things quickly escalated. Marks insisted Doyle swung first.

“When I grabbed him after he swung at me, I was not trying to hurt him, I was trying to restrain him, but he just kept fighting me. At that point I realized I was going to have to do something,” Marks was reported as having said by the Killeen Daily Herald in 2007, when the case wrapped up.

If that had been an isolated incident, it might have been overlooked. Yet Marks is also a person of interest in the disappearance of April Pease in 2009. Pease mothered one of Mark’s children, and like Scott, had accused him of physical violence. While in the midst of a custody dispute with Marks, Pease vanished, and has not been heard from since.

Marks, nicknamed ‘Spider-Man,’ never made it to the big leagues, though he flirted with it. The closest he came was an appearance at Bellator 20 in 2010, part of the preliminary card. Marks was submitted by Andrew Chappelle. As they do today, however, Bellator often booked regional fighters on the preliminary cards of their events. Cedric Marks, therefore, was never really a Bellator MMA fighter. Just a one-and-done in the promotion, never to be brought back. Yet it’s an eerie coincidence, given the promotion also saw Alexis Vila and War Machine fight under its banner.

Cedric Marks would finish out his MMA run going 0-6, with his last official fight coming last March. Bobby Voelker, Travis Lutter, Shannon Ritch, Pete Spratt, and Dennis Hallman are among the notable names that pepper his record. At 31-27, 1NC, he fought a lot, but never made waves. Until now.

The post Fugitive MMA Fighter Cedric Marks Captured, Facing Murder Charges appeared first on Cageside Press.