 Floyd Marsh Jr. (Photo: Pamplin Media Group)
Trnkova would later testify that when she opened the door, the man quickly zapped her with an electronic stun gun, bound her with zip ties, and placed her in a closet. She heard another male voice in the house, as the men went through the residence. They located a safe, which was bolted to the floor. The men ransacked the house, used tools to remove the safe, and then left.
Trnkova called the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, which investigated the home invasion and burglary. Trnkova said she never really saw the second man and that she had been hit with the stun gun before she got a good look at the first man, whom she described as between 25-35 years old with a large frame. She said the safe contained several items, including some American Silver Eagles, coins that each contain an ounce of silver.
Trnkova lived at the house with her boyfriend, Arnold Kachlik. Both had immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia.
More than two years later, on February 13, 2014, a sheriff’s deputy in Kane County, Illinois, west of Chicago, stopped 56-year-old Floyd Marsh Jr. for an alleged speeding violation in a work zone. According to the Kane County Sheriff’s Office, the deputy became suspicious of Marsh, eventually bringing in a drug dog to help in the search of Marsh’s pickup.
Inside the bed toolboxes, the department said, deputies found $80,000 in cash. A subsequent investigation led authorities to two storage facilities in the Chicago area, where they found 55 pounds of marijuana and $2,185 in cash. Marsh, a retired sheriff’s deputy from Clackamas County, Oregon, was charged with 20 counts of drug trafficking and related offenses. He was held in the Kane County Jail, with his bond set at $1.5 million.
Five days later, authorities in Clackamas County arrested Gerald Wiese after they said Wiese had broken into a storage unit in Oregon linked to Marsh and removed several pounds of methamphetamine and heroin, along with a smaller amount of cocaine. Wiese, then 46 years old, was charged with six drug offenses.
Wiese and Marsh had been long-time friends and business associates. After Marsh’s retirement from law-enforcement, he had started a construction company, where Wiese had worked for several years. Marsh also had a connection with Kachlik; his girlfriend, Connie Loop, had dated Kachlik for several years, and she and Kachlik had a son together.
In May 2014, Wiese made two proffers to law enforcement in Clackamas County, as he attempted to negotiate a deal for himself on the drug charges. In these statements, Wiese described a sprawling drug operation directed by Marsh. Despite those statements, Marsh was not charged with any drug offenses in Oregon.
On September 5, 2014, Wiese gave a third proffer. In this statement, Wiese said that he and Marsh had been the men who burglarized Kachlik’s house. Nobody was supposed to be home, Wiese said, but Marsh hit Trnkova with the stun gun when she answered the door. Wiese said Marsh used an axe to chop out the safe. Later, Wiese said, they used a grinder to open the safe and remove its contents, including silver coins that Floyd sold at a store in Washington State. Wiese said they put the safe in a hole being dug for a foundation and then covered it with cement.
Marsh was charged with robbery, burglary, kidnapping, assault, and money laundering on September 23, 2014. At the time, he was still in the Kane County Jail. Those charges in Illinois were dismissed after a judge suppressed the evidence seized in the traffic stop and storage units, ruling that the deputy lacked probable cause. (Marsh later sued Kane County and received a $50,000 settlement in 2016.)
Wiese agreed to testify against Marsh and was never charged in the home invasion.
Marsh’s trial in Clackamas County Circuit Court began in August 2017. There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Marsh to the crime. He was excluded as a contributor to a fingerprint found at Trnkova’s house.
Trnkova testified about the home invasion and her inability to make an identification. “I saw this person one, two, three seconds,” she said. “And he shocked me by stun gun, so after that, I was—I faint. I didn’t see anything.”
Wiese testified about the cooperation agreement he had entered into with the government on his drug charges in exchange for his testimony. He said that in the fall of 2011, the construction business was not doing well, and money was tight. He also said that Marsh, Loop, and Kachlik had a complicated and fraught relationship, in part because Loop had briefly dated Kachlik during the time she was also dating Marsh. Wiese testified that Marsh was familiar with the house, because he used to bring Loop’s son, Erik, there to see Kachlik, the boy’s father.
“He told me that he had gotten a key from Connie, snuck it away from her and made a copy of it,” Wiese said. “The times that he has taken Erik to the door, he has figured out the alarm code to get into the house. So basically he was saying the plan was pretty simple. He needed somebody to drive and look out for anybody coming into the place. He needed me to ask anybody if I could borrow a little van.”
Wiese also testified about the burglary itself, the disposal of the safe, and Marsh’s visit to a silver store in Tacoma, Washington, where Marsh sold some coins for nearly $10,000 and deposited the check in the account of his ex-wife.
The details of Wiese’s testimony were frequently at odds with what he had said in his proffers. He testified that Marsh wore a bandana on his face, disguising his appearance, when he went to the front door. In his proffer, he had said Marsh only wore sunglasses. Wiese testified that Marsh drove the van away from the crime. Wiese said in his proffer that he drove the van. He also said in the proffer that he watched while Marsh used an axe to chop the safe free from its floor bolts. At trial, he testified that the two men worked together.
Marsh testified in his own defense. He admitted he did not like Kachlik, but he said he was not involved in the home invasion. He said on the day of the crime, he was on a construction job site. He admitted to selling some silver coins, but said they were part of a legitimate transaction. He had bought the coins from a third party, who wasn’t identified during the trial, and he said he wouldn’t have received a check and deposited the funds in a bank if he wanted to cover his tracks.
He also said that his chronic back injury would have made it impossible for him to dislodge a safe in the manner that Wiese testified, much less drag it through a house and carry it to a van.
At the time, Oregon allowed non-unanimous verdicts. On August 18, 2017, the jury acquitted Marsh of four of the eight charges, but convicted him on a 10-2 vote of second-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, aggravated theft, and money laundering. He received a sentence of six years and 10 months in prison.
In a statement to the court, Marsh said he was innocent, a victim of Wiese’s lies and a prosecution more interested in securing a conviction than seeking justice.
“Zdenka Trnkova knows me well,” he said. “The idea that I could knock on her door and rob her is ridiculous. She would recognize my voice. She would recognize my face.”
Marsh said he bought the coins from a woman named Olympia. “Because of my age or whatever problem, I can’t think of her last name,” he said. “But I know how to find her. She is a real person; Connie knows about her. This is not something that I made up.”
Wiese had pled guilty to two of the six drug charges in 2014. The other charges were dismissed. After Marsh’s conviction, Wiese received a sentence of 37 months in prison, with credit for time served.
On April 5, 2021, Marsh filed a pro se motion for a new trial. He claimed that his trial attorney had been ineffective because he failed to properly impeach Wiese about inconsistencies between his testimony and his proffers and because he failed to locate evidence that would have undermined Wiese’s testimony. For example, Wiese testified that the safe was buried in the foundation of a house addition 3-5 days after the robbery, but a county inspector didn’t approve pouring the foundation until October 24, 2011, three weeks after the robbery.
Marsh and Connie Loop had married after the trial. She helped prepare a lengthy investigative report on weaknesses in the state’s case and inconsistencies in Wiese’s testimony. This report was included in the motion for new trial, which also claimed the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Russell Amos, committed misconduct through witness tampering and suborning Wiese’s alleged perjury.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the use of non-unanimous verdicts in cases that involve serious crimes. The ruling only applied to Oregon and Louisiana, the two states that still allowed these verdicts. On February 7, 2022, the state and an attorney for Marsh moved jointly to vacate his conviction based on the Supreme Court ruling. The motion was granted on February 9, and Marsh was released from custody on April 8, 2022.
On November 30, 2023, the state police’s forensic laboratory performed DNA testing on genetic material found on the zip ties used to restrain Trnkova. Marsh was excluded as a contributor.
The state moved to dismiss the charges on January 4, 2024. Amos said in a court filing, “The State has been unable to locate a material and necessary witness, Gerald Matthew Wiese, and therefore cannot proceed with this criminal prosecution.” A judge granted the motion that same day.
“Yes, it’s great to be rescued, but it’s never going to be the same,” Marsh told Pamplin Media Group. Marsh said that he got COVID and suffered a series of strokes while in prison. He also said that his incarceration cost him the friendship of people he had served with in law enforcement. “No one's inviting me for coffee anymore, and I’ve lost touch with so many of my police friends,” he said. “I never thought that I would feel severe anxiety around police officers that I wouldn’t go near them.”
– Ken Otterbourg
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