Possible answers in 11-year missing person investigation
On the 11th anniversary of her disappearance from a Bloomington domestic abuse center, the Bloomington Police Department announced that two people were charged with the murder of April Pease.
Pease, 30, was from Washington state and had been staying at the Cornerstone shelter for about five months when she disappeared in March 2009. Cedric Marks, a 45-year-old Belton, Texas, man and Kellee Sorensen, a 34-year-old Lynden, Washington, woman, were charged March 11 in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree murder, with intent, but without premeditation. The suspects face up to 40 years in prison if convicted.
The charges follow a long investigation by multiple detectives who were initially handicapped by the fact that it was approximately six months after her disappearance when they received the report. Pease disappeared without a clue as to where she was going. Her situation was complicated by the fact that she had a history of methamphetamine use, according to her mother Dottie, who discussed her daughter’s disappearance during a 2011 Sun Current interview.
Before her disappearance
April Pease and her 4-year-old son came to Cornerstone in part to distance them from Marks, her former boyfriend and the father of the child. Bloomington investigators learned that Marks had located Pease at a women’s shelter in Seattle on Sept. 3, 2008, called her and told her he would stab her in the face the next time he saw her. A witness heard the threat and the Seattle Police Department documented it with a report, according to the Hennepin County criminal complaint.
Police officers were called to the shelter the following day, as Marks had shown up at the shelter and refused to leave. He did depart before officers arrived, but he was arrested later that day, the complaint noted.
In an October 2008 filing for a restraining order, Pease wrote that Marks had demanded money from her in March 2006. When she refused, he pinned her to the ground and began to suffocate her. He strangled her again that summer, breaking blood vessels in her face, eyes and neck.
Pease claimed that he had strangled her at least 10 times. Her petition also noted that Marks physically and verbally abused her, sexually assaulted her on more than one occasion, threatened her with knives and guns and threatened to kill her weekly, noting how easy it would be to dispose of her body. He frequently cited that he knew of unpopulated land in Oklahoma where he could dump her body, the complaint detailed.
Although Marks had a son with Pease, he was married. In November 2008, Marks contacted his wife and Sorensen, who was his girlfriend at the time. Marks was in jail in Washington, and recorded calls show that Marks directed Sorensen and his wife to impersonate Pease and contact airlines and domestic abuse shelters in an effort to locate her. He also remarked that he understood why people involved in domestic situations end up killing their accusers, according to the complaint.
The disappearance
Pease had indicated to her mother and friends she spoke with before her disappearance that she wanted to return to Washington. Her mother had visited her in Minnesota on her 30th birthday in February 2009. Pease had expressed a desire to return home, but her mother encouraged her to stay and continue her treatment program, Dottie Pease recalled in 2011.
Pease also told her half-sister in Washington that she was trying to find a ride back to Washington, according to retired Detective Marty Earley – one of several Bloomington detectives who has worked on the case – during a 2011 interview.
The relationship between Pease and her mother was strained at the time of her disappearance. Cornerstone had called Dottie Pease after an unknown woman dropped off her grandson at Cornerstone on the evening of March 16, 2009. The woman said Pease was going to work and didn’t have time to drop off her son, Dottie Pease recalled in 2011.
Cornerstone tried to contact Pease by cellphone but only received text message responses suggesting she’d return that night or the next morning. Dottie Pease was also unable to reach her daughter, but she received text message responses, presumably from her daughter, saying she needed a break, Dottie Pease added.
Dottie Pease was convinced her daughter’s actions were the result of a relapse. Her final text message to her daughter was that she was done dealing with her. Dottie Pease had been paying her daughter’s cellphone bill and disconnected the service at the end of March, days after her daughter disappeared. At the time, Dottie Pease thought that paying the bill would continue to enable her daughter’s drug habit, she recalled.
Her mother began to worry about Pease in May 2009, when she learned that Pease’s half-sister hadn’t heard from Pease for more than a month. Dottie Pease learned that her daughter never returned to the shelter, leaving her son and personal belongings behind, she said in 2011.
Dottie Pease had already contacted Marks, however, to ensure that her grandson wouldn’t end up in foster care in Minnesota, she noted.
Bloomington investigators began their work at a disadvantage, as Pease wasn’t reported missing until September. The last confirmed sighting of Pease was approximately 1 p.m. March 16, when she left Cornerstone, the complaint noted.
Investigative breaks
A string of events, just prior to the 10th anniversary of Pease’s disappearance, appears to have played a major role in the investigation.
Earley had retired in 2017. The case had been transferred to detectives George Harms and Tracy Martin. On Jan. 16, 2019, Martin was contacted by a detective from Temple, Texas, who reported that two missing persons from Temple were found in a shallow grave in Clear View, Oklahoma, a day or two prior. One of the bodies was that of Jenna Scott, a 28-year-old former girlfriend of Marks, who had an order for protection against him. The bodies of Scott and Michael Swearingin, 32, were found on land adjacent to property owned by relatives of Marks, according to the complaint.
Marks had been a person of interest in the Pease investigation since 2009, according to Bloomington Deputy Chief Mike Hartley. “Marks was on the radar back then,” he said.
Marks and his current girlfriend, Maya Maxwell, were charged with capital murder in April 2019. Maxwell told detectives that she was present and assisted with the kidnapping of Scott and Swearingin, that Marks strangled them to death and that they drove the bodies to Oklahoma, where Marks buried them, the complaint explained. Both Marks and Maxwell remain in custody in Texas.
“Based upon the modus operandi of the Texas murders, detectives believed that Marks was the primary suspect in the disappearance of A.P. (Pease),” according to the complaint.
Bloomington detectives flew to Seattle in late January 2019 for a new round of interviews with several people, including Sorensen, who was located at her place of employment. She agreed to speak with the detectives about the case on Jan. 30, waving her Miranda rights. Sorensen’s interview was disjointed and confusing, and at times contradictory. She met with the detectives again the following day and gave subsequent interviews through the summer of 2019, the complaint noted.
The complaint summarizes events Sorensen reported during those interviews:
Sorensen said that she came to Minnesota with Marks in 2009. They located Pease and confronted her as she was exiting her vehicle with her son outside of Cornerstone. She screamed for help, Marks punched her in the face and put her in his vehicle. Sorensen took the child to Cornerstone before the trio drove off, initially southbound on Interstate 35W.
They would eventually exit the freeway and drive down a gravel road. Sorensen recalled seeing a river and a few casinos. They stopped near an abandoned shack on the gravel road. Marks told Sorensen to remain in the vehicle and not to look. Pease was crying and screaming, and she forcibly removed from the vehicle by Marks. He put her in a choke hold with his arm around her neck, then lifted her off the ground.
Marks dragged Pease to the other side of the shack. Approximately 30 minutes later, he returned to the vehicle without Pease. He did not have blood on him, although he did wash his hands prior to entering the vehicle. Sorensen saw him place Pease’s shoes in the back of the vehicle. Marks was crying, telling Sorensen that he killed Pease and removed her teeth and hands to prevent any identification of her body.
Sorensen’s story would appear to be the break that investigators needed, but there’s still the burden of proof that the story is accurate, Hartley explained.
With new information, detectives met with Marks’ longtime wife, Ginell McDonough, in Michigan on Feb. 13. McDonough had recently been charged with harboring a fugitive for allowing Marks and Maxwell to stay with her despite knowing Marks was wanted in Texas. With his ex-girlfriend Scott and Swearingin missing at the time, Marks was arrested on a burglary warrant for a previous incident involving Scott, according to a report by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.
During a multi-hour interview in which McDonough waived her Miranda rights, she claimed that Marks had never assaulted her during their 19-year relationship. She recalled receiving calls from Marks while he was in jail in 2008, instructing her to locate Pease by impersonating her. She said she determined Pease had flown to Minnesota and informed Marks of her discovery, according to the complaint.
McDonough said she was aware Marks and Sorensen were trying to determine where in Minnesota Pease was staying. She was in contact with Marks regularly, who said he hated Pease and that no one would miss her if she went missing. At one point, Marks told her he was going to kill Pease, the complaint noted.
McDonough said that Marks and Sorensen went to Minnesota and had determined Pease was staying at Cornerstone. She gave details that were corroborated by other interviews the detectives had conducted. Upon his return to Washington, Marks told McDonough that Pease instructed him to leave Minnesota and that they would resolve their custody dispute in court, the complaint added.
While living with McDonough in Killeen, Texas, several years prior to the 2019 interview, Marks told her that he had to kill Pease in order to gain custody of his son. McDonough provided details of the incident that were consistent with the details Sorensen had reported, the complaint explained.
Confession?
McDonough noted that Marks had a compact disc containing a video recording that he wanted his son to watch when he turned 18, saying his son should know why he killed Pease. McDonough retrieved the disc from a crate of Marks’ items she had collected. Labeled with his son’s name, it contained two videos. The first was Marks talking to the camera, reporting it was March 7, 2009. Noting the video was for his three sons, he talked about the fact he might not be able to watch them grow up. He said he was about to do something that could either get him locked up for the rest of his life, or get him killed, adding that he did not mind either of those things happening, according to the complaint
Speaking directly to Pease’s son, he said the boy will either hate Marks or understand why he had to do “this.” Marks then talks about going on a road trip to save his son’s life, claiming Pease had kidnapped his son, the complaint noted.
Marks also spoke about how he was going to do something “horrible,” and that there was no other way to save his son’s life, because the courts were siding with Pease, the complaint added.
Although Marks and Sorensen have been charged with murder, Pease’s body has not been recovered, according to Hartley. Marks remains in custody in Texas while Sorensen has been arrested and remains jailed in Washington.
It’s not uncommon to bring new investigators onto longtime cases, and the Texas case from 2019 provided incentive to do so in Bloomington, Hartley noted.
Harms joined Martin in the investigation, providing a fresh perspective in looking at connections between the Texas case and Pease’s disappearance, Harms explained.
Marks was considered a suspect in 2009, but other suspects and considerations, including Pease’s past drug addiction, could not be ruled out through the years as reasons for Pease’s disappearance, Hartley said.
Follow Bloomington community editor Mike Hanks on Twitter at @suncurrent and on Facebook at suncurrentcentral.
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