SAND HILLS — As detectives tried to piece together the scene of an afternoon house fire in 1999, Janet Lay’s body lay smoldering among the ashes of her mobile home.
And authorities have yet to find the man who killed her.
The Skunk Valley Road house fire that started just after noon on April 9, 1999 was initially thought to be just an out-of control blaze that burned down a mobile home. That was until fire crews discovered the body of Lay under a section of collapsed wall in the living room. Lay, 45, had been stabbed multiple times and died moments before the house went up in flames, destroying any evidence that may have tied a suspect to her brutal murder.
Though BCSO charged a suspect with the murder of Lay, nobody was ever convicted in the case.
So what ever occurred in the investigation of Lay’s death?
Both the State Attorney’s Office and BCSO declined to comment on the status of investigations for this story. The murder remains an ongoing investigation.
Betty Mount, mother of Lay and the most vocal advocate of solving the murder, died about a year ago — never seeing justice for her daughter’s death. Attempts to contact Lay’s surviving family members were also unsuccessful.
However, defense attorney Walter Smith represented the man charged, and then dismissed of the charges, in connection with Lay’s murder.
“My theory was that whoever went in there went in there for drugs,” Smith said. “I was basically prosecuting someone else.”
Smith represented the now-also-deceased Robert Gene Marjenhoff, who was initially charged with murder and arson after Lay’s death. Investigators elicited a confession from Marjenhoff that he’d become angered when Lay disclosed a proposition of a three-way to Marjenhoff’s girlfriend. He went over to Lay’s residence to confront her on the matter before the confrontation escalated, and Marjenhoff set fire to the home to cover his tracks, investigators said at the time.
But Smith argued Marjenhoff’s alibi ruled their theory out. There was no way that Marjenhoff could have killed Lay at the time the medical examiner estimated she would have died, he said. Since there is no exact time of death, Smith made his argument on the basis of the most likely scenario.
According to her autopsy, there were no signs that Lay was alive when the fire started, because no signs of smoke inhalation existed. Smith said, coupled with the grease cooking on the stove that caused the fire, her death occurred about 40 minutes before the fire.
That time conflicted with phone records and receipts from purchases made by Marjenhoff across the county at around that time as Lay’s death. Smith said Marjenhoff only agreed with the investigators’ story because of his IQ, which was scored at levels associated with mental retardation.
“He was the type of guy who would grin and agree with you instead of looking stupid,” Smith said.
Smith also presented investigators with an alternate suspect. He was spotted leaving the scene as fire crews doused Lay’s smoldering home. He was also a known criminal with a penchant for prescription narcotics, which Lay had in abundance.
However, investigators never charged him with Lay’s murder. It is unclear why investigators never followed up on the lead, but Smith said the problem was likely inherent in the system.
“Once they focus in on their suspect, they put blinders on and don’t look anywhere else,” Smith said. “Competing theories take a lot of work to investigate. It’s a fault in our criminal justice system.”
Prosecutors abandoned the charges against Marjenhoff after Smith introduced evidence of an alibi in November of 2001. He spent nearly two years in jail, facing the murder and arson charges before his release. He died in 2006 at the age of 50.