“It does not get easier. Honestly, if anything, it gets worse the longer this drags out,” said Chris Knox, the son of Clyde and Sally Knox. “They say, ‘time heals all wounds,’ but not with this — it just scabs over only to be ripped back open when we’re back in court every six months.”
Stephen Marlow, the now 42-year-old accused in the killings, has not faced a jury. Instead, his case has been delayed by questions over whether he is mentally able to aid in his own defense, resulting in repeated competency court hearings but no trial.
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
This news outlet’s reporting found excessive trial delays can negatively impact both victims and the accused by eroding evidence and memories, imposing financial and emotional hardship, and undermining public trust in the legal system.
But in cases where a defendant’s mental status is called into question, forensic experts say there’s a fine line between delivering justice and ensuring a fair trial — and it’s imperative the system gets it right.
State v. Stephen Marlow
On Aug. 5, 2022, Stephen A. Marlow, of Butler Twp., is accused of shooting and killing 41-year-old Sarah Anderson and her 15-year-old daughter Kayla, along with 82-year-old Clyde Knox and his 78-year-old wife Sally, at their respective Hardwicke Place homes.
The Knox and Anderson families were neighbors of Marlow, who lived with his parents on nearby Haverstraw Avenue.
Marlow fled the state immediately after the shootings. He was captured the following day in Kansas, extradited back to Ohio, and is under indictment for a litany of charges, including aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, and having weapons under disability.
Marlow pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in December 2022. He was jailed for a year before being committed to Summit Behavioral Health in late 2023 where he has been hospitalized since.
He has undergone repeated evaluations to determine whether he is competent to stand trial.
Multiple forensic psychologists have found Marlow is able to appropriately communicate with his attorneys and conduct himself properly in a courtroom. He understands the evidence against him.
But he expresses concrete delusional beliefs that psychologists say would likely inhibit his ability to aid in his own defense, court records show.
While one psychologist noted Marlow is “very determined” to go to trial, despite the mountain of evidence against him, she said it’s because he’s eager to testify to his belief that he is a victim of mind control.
“(The defendant’s) desire to go to trial in this case is motivated by his need to testify about these matters and make the public aware of what he believes to be terroristic mind control, and he is not focused on the legal process or outcome of the trial itself,” court records state.
At one point, a doctor evaluating Marlow said she felt his delusions were severe enough to affect his reasoning to “an extreme degree.”
“Defendant cannot separate his delusions from what is factually occurring in his case,” the records state.
Who is Stephen Marlow?
The Marlow family moved to the quiet Haverstraw Avenue neighborhood in 1999, according to property records, when Marlow would have been 17 years old.
He graduated from Vandalia-Butler High School in 2001 before attending the University of Kentucky, where he earned a marketing degree in 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Marlow then pursued a career in financial trading at several Chicago firms over the next decade, his profile shows.
In a lengthy manifesto written by Marlow in the months prior to the August 2022 shootings, he asserts he is the victim of a global terror network that attacks using “telepathic ventriloquism,” even implicating neighbors near his parent’s Haverstraw Avenue home as being in on the conspiracy.
He describes hearing voices and experiencing a manipulation of his emotions over a prolonged period, beginning sometime around 2016.
“It’s a constant stream of abuse ... Why not just ignore the voices, you might ask? It’s not possible,” Marlow wrote. “There is no defense, there is no stopping it.”
Marlow said these experiences eventually led to the end of his financial trading career, strained relationships, social isolation, and a 2019 felony criminal conviction.
Marlow was indicted in the summer of 2019 by a Montgomery County grand jury on charges of aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon and aggravated menacing.
In his manifesto, he said the incident took place days after he’d confided in a friend about the voices he’s plagued by, only for the voices to then implicate that friend in the alleged terror cell conspiracy.
Marlow said, and court records support, he drove to the friend’s house, entered his home and threatened him with a gun.
Marlow pleaded guilty to burglary and aggravated menacing in February 2020, records show, and he was placed on community control for a period of up to five years.
Marlow’s community control was terminated after just two years, in February 2022.
Six months later, he would be accused of quadruple homicide.
Competency and the insanity defense
After pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to the 2022 murders, Marlow was initially ruled incompetent but restorable by Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Dennis Adkins. This means experts saw a probability that he could be restored to competency within a one-year period.
But when that year was up and Marlow was still exhibiting symptoms of delusional disorder, a diagnosis he received while receiving court-ordered treatment at Summit Behavioral Health in Cincinnati, the judge ruled him incompetent and unrestorable.
Marlow’s status is categorized as Incompetent to Stand Trial, Unrestorable, and under Criminal Court Jurisdiction, or ISTU-CJ, a legal term that means there was clear and convincing evidence to indicate he committed the crime, warranting his case to remain under the authority and continued monitoring of the court system.
According to Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, the Phillip J. Resnick Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western University, this means Marlow could still stand trial for the murders if he is restored to competency.
“The point is not to prevent people with mental illness from having trials, the point is to make sure that it’s fair,” she said. “Plenty of people go to trial with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, delusional disorder and depression, but they have to have a level of understanding the nature and objectives of the proceedings to cooperate with their lawyer.”
Hatters Friedman referred to the landmark court case Dusky v. United States, which outlines the standards for determining competency.
Defendants must be able to understand the charges and evidence against them, and what could happen if they’re found guilty.
“They must also be able to make rational decisions about their defense (and) have the ability to focus and think logically,” Hatters Friedman said. “Are they hearing voices so much that they can’t focus? Things like that could be a fatal flaw in ruling an individual as competent.”
The process of restoring competency can take years, and some defendants categorized under ISTU-CJ may never stand trial.
But this does not necessarily mean the defendant will be released back into society, either.
“The length of time of hospital treatment can last from a few months up to many years,” according to the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. “If the person is found to be competent to stand trial at any time during the commitment (either inpatient or on conditional release), the person may then return to court and face the charges.”
A defendant’s eligibility for any conditional release depends on several factors, including the severity of the alleged crime, Hatters Friedman stressed.
“We can’t just release these individuals back into the community whenever,” she said. “There are a lot of checks and balances, including internal checks within the hospital and external checks with the judge to determine if someone qualifies for conditional release,” she said.
Credit: Aimee Hancock
Credit: Aimee Hancock
The standards for determining a defendant’s competency differ from those that establish their sanity at the time a crime was committed. One is determined prior to a trial, while the other is determined during a trial by jurors.
“Insanity is not a psychiatric or psychological term, rather it’s a legal term that means to have a mental disorder that causes defective reason,” said Louis Schlesinger, professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Schlesinger points to the M’Naghten rule, a legal theory to determine legal insanity, which requires that a defendant either didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t know it was wrong when they did it.
“Did he know what he was doing when he killed four people? The answer is probably yes,” Schlesinger said. “But did he know what he was doing was wrong, or did he think what he was doing was right because of these delusions? That’s for a jury to decide.”
The long road to closure
Chris Knox, the son of Clyde and Sally, described his parents as “fantastic people” who were devoted to their family and their community.
“They genuinely never did anything wrong; I think my dad got a speeding ticket once,” Knox said. “Other than that, they were just your stereotypical American middle class couple, raising a family, paying taxes and living the dream.”
Brett Anderson spoke about his wife Sarah and their daughter Kayla on what should have been a day of celebration.
“Sarah and I were high school sweethearts,” he said. “We met freshman year of high school and we married young; today is our 25th wedding anniversary, and this is certainly not how I envisioned spending it.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Anderson recalled how much Sarah loved being a mother to their two daughters, Kayla and Olivia.
“All she wanted was to be a mom, and she was great at it. Sarah was a kind, compassionate person who loved her family and her friends,” Anderson said. “And Kayla was a carbon copy — very spunky and so silly. She didn’t care what anyone thought and could really make you laugh."
The families anticipated a swift conclusion to the case against Marlow. But 37 months on, a just ending seems further away than ever.
“From the outside looking in, this case is cut and dry. There’s irrefutable proof that this happened and who did it,” Anderson said. “I just keep thinking, ‘How are we still here?’”
They described the frustration of attending Marlow’s competency hearings, only to hear updates about the defendant’s day-to-day routine at Summit, including his tendency to choose playing checkers or volleyball over going to therapy sessions.
“How can he be afforded the choice to play games instead of participate in therapy sessions just because he doesn’t want to go?” Sarah’s dad, Kelly Brockman, said.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Judge Adkins has since ordered that Marlow must participate in mental illness management groups and be held to a more restrictive medication intake regimen in response to concerns from his treatment team that he may have been discreetly disposing of medication meant to treat his delusional disorder.
In his recent ruling, Adkins also ordered doctors at Summit to collaborate with the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to “explore all treatment options” to restore Marlow to competency, while acknowledging this is not standard practice in similar cases.
“That is due in large part to (Marlow’s) high intelligence and ability to manipulate,” Adkins wrote.
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