Victim's father in Marko case speaks out: 'My baby gets some justice'

A jury Thursday found Fort Carson soldier Robert Hull Marko guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault in the October 2008 death of Judilianna Lawrence.

Marko, 23, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced by 4th Judicial District Judge Larry E. Schwartz on Feb. 28.

The nine-woman, three-man jury reached its verdict after about 10 hours of deliberations over two days.

"We got him," said an emotional John Lawrence, Judilianna's father, moments after the verdict was announced.

Lawrence described his daughter as a loving child who overcame heart problems as an infant and struggled with learning disabilities as she grew into a young woman.

She was the kind of a kid who would be afraid of a moth, but unwilling to harm it, he said.

As for Marko, who had pleaded not guilty by reasonof insanity, he had only angry words.

"I'm not forgiving anything," he said.

Lawrence, a veteran, said he knows a lot of people who returned from war with post-traumatic stress disorder. None of them ever killed anyone, he said.

Although Marko will never be released from prison, Lawrence said, "if it was up to me, I'd have a whole nother thing in mind." 

During the more than three-week trial, Marko's public defenders had argued that he is severely mentally ill. They noted he had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder by the age of nine due to an abusive childhood in western Michigan.

His mental illness was made worse by an 11-month tour of combat duty in Iraq, they contended.

On the day of the murder, they claimed Marko retreated into his delusional alter ego "Rex 290" a savage black raptor dinosaur.

Prosecutors countered that Marko knew exactly what he was doing when he raped Lawrence, bound and gagged her, tied her to a tree and slit her throat.

They claim that afterward, he spun a web of deception, giving El Paso County sheriff's investigators several versions of what happened before leading them to where they found Lawrence's naked body, 2.7 miles up Old Stage Road southwest of Colorado Springs.

Marko remained unemotional - as he had through out the trial - as the judge read the jury's verdict.

The jury found him guilty of one count of first-degree murder after deliberation. They acquitted him on another count of felony murder.

They also found him guilty of two counts of sexual assault and two counts of attempted sexual assault.

Marko will also face an additional sentence that will be tagged onto his life in prison.

Prior to the trial, he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child.

The charge stemmed from a separate incident five days before the murder in which he was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl in the same area where he killed Lawrence.

According to Senior Deputy District Attorney Deb Pearson, that charge carries a penalty of between 10 to 32 years to life in prison. It must be served in addition to the sentence in the murder.

For video and more on this trial, visit "The Sidebar" blog at gazette.com