Nobody knows for sure why Marcus Wesson’s tugboat
sank. Some think the boat simply went under in a heavy rain after taking
on water for years, but Sheriff’s deputies said its deck was sealed
tight against the storm that visited Marshall the night of Sunday, Dec.
18. David Harris, who can see the boat from his home on Tomales Bay,
said a tarp covering a hole in the deck might have blown off, letting
water fill the hull.
No one can say with certainty what happened. No one
saw the boat sink. At dusk it was there, raked by wind and rain. When
Harris awoke Monday morning, he said, the boat was gone.
In the absence of concrete answers, it might be tempting
for an outsider to see as poetic justice the fate of the Sudan,
the dilapidated tugboat where Wesson, who made weekly visits to Marshall
from his home in Fresno, kept below deck the incestuous family he was
convicted of murdering last summer.
But that’s not how Wesson’s former neighbors
on the east shore of Tomales Bay look at it. For those who saw Wesson
around Marshall or watched him being rowed to and from the Sudan
by his daughters, the boat’s mysterious descent is one more reminder
of events that they would rather forget.
"He’s in jail, he’s going to die,"
Marshall Boatworks manager Jeremy Fisher-Smith said of Wesson. "I
don’t see any purpose in delving any deeper into his private life."
Dressed head to foot in bright orange rain-gear, Fisher-Smith paused
from his work in the boatyard Tuesday afternoon and looked out over
the gray, choppy surface of Tomales Bay. "The fact is, the boat’s
on the bottom, the county’s responsible for it."
Boats haunt Marshall
Wesson’s three run-down boats – the Sudan,
a sailboat called the Raven, and the outlandish Abeja,
which with its ornate moldings and squat, reinforced cabin was described
by one Marshall resident as "some sort of survivalist, water-borne
RV" – never contributed much to the view enjoyed by tourists
passing up and down this famously scenic stretch of Highway 1. But after
Mar. 12, 2004, when Wesson, surrounded by police, exited the front door
of his Fresno home covered in blood, the boats became something more
than eyesores.
"They’ve just kind of become ghosts at this
point," said Bean Schulz, who works in the Marshall Store. "It’s
a bad memory. You’re in the middle of paradise and you see this
thing and have to remember why it’s there."
Terry Sawyer, an oyster farmer here, said that as
news of the sinking spread through tiny Marshall, some had spoken of
the boats’ "bad juju."
Nobody seems to suspect that the Sudan was
sabotaged, though many are impatient for all three boats to be removed,
as promised, by the county. "No one’s taken care of this stuff,"
Harris said. "It’s a shame the boat went down instead of just
being gotten rid of."
Family of 10 lived below deck
It was Harris who complained to the Sheriff’s
Marine Patrol about Wesson’s late-night comings and goings across
his property in the fall of 2003. The resulting investigation revealed
10 women and children living on board the Sudan, below deck.
Wesson was charged with illegal habitation of the tugboat, but the charges
were later dropped.
Two of his daughters, Sebhrenah, 25, and Elizabeth,
17, worked as maids at the Marconi Conference Center just down the road.
Both were among the nine dead discovered stacked in a back room of Wesson’s
Fresno house. The victims, the youngest of them only a year old, had
each been shot once through the eye. Ten white coffins were neatly stacked
against the wall.
Prosecutors would convince a jury that Wesson, who
was both father and grandfather to at least one of his children and
forced members of his family to exhaustively study the King James Bible,
had forced Sebhrenah to carry out the killings as part of a suicide
pact. Wesson’s standoff with police at his home on the day of the
murders came after two of his nieces, Sofina Solorio and Ruby Ortiz,
sought unsuccesfully to reclaim their children from him.
Wesson was found guilty in Fresno Superior Court of
nine counts of first-degree murder and 14 counts of molestation and
rape. He was sentenced to death.
Deputies won’t investigate
Since Wesson’s arrest more than a year ago, county
officials have been trying to figure out what to do with his boats.
The state Dept. of Boating and Waterways ultimately provided the Sheriff’s
Dept. $65,000 to remove the vessels.
Another two boats owned by Wesson are being stored
at the Marshall Boatworks. The county won’t do anything about those
boats, Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Anderson said, since they are on private
property. John Vilicich, owner of the Boatworks, said he is owed more
than $1,200 in storage costs. The bills he sent to Wesson were returned
in the mail, and he has little hope at this point of collecting.
Nevertheless, townspeople seem most eager for the
prompt removal of the Sudan, the Raven, and the Abeja,
all of which were, until the sinking of the Sudan, uncomfortably
visible. If all goes as planned, they will soon get their wish: the
Sheriff’s Dept. has hired a marine salvage company, Parker Dive
Service, that will begin scrapping the three boats next week.
The Sudan will see the light once more, rotted
from its weeks underwater, before it is destroyed. Parker Dive Service
plans to recover the vessel from its presumed resting place, 18 feet
deep, then take it apart.
Deputies won’t be taking a close look at the
boat when it resurfaces, Lt. Anderson said, and they won’t be asking
any questions about how it went down. There’s no need to open an
investigation, he said, into the sinking of a derelict boat.