Despite the guilty plea and confession, the Shoen clan remained unhappy over the conclusion — perhaps the only thing they'd agreed upon during the past six years. But their unanimity ended there. L.S. still remained convinced that someone else was involved in the murder. "It's a miscarriage of justice. I'm outraged," L.S. told the Rocky Mountain News, adding that he won't be paying the reward money. "It's possible that Frank Marquis pulled the trigger, but he wasn't the only person there. This thing stinks to high heaven."
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| Frank Marquis confesses to police |
Mark Shoen criticized the brevity of Marquis' sentence, given that he would be eligible for parole in 12 years. Mark told the newspaper that the smear campaign he had endured likely had weakened the prosecution's confidence in their ability to obtain a guilty verdict, resulting in the plea bargain. "When a person makes the type of statements like my dad has made, it carries a lot of credibility," he told the Phoenix Business Journal.
The following year, Joe and Mark's libel case against L.S. went to trial, and the brothers lost. Among the statements litigated was L.S.'s claim to a reporter that Joe and Mark were sick, mentally ill, and "either did [the killing] or hired the killers themselves," according to the Phoenix Business Journal.
The family then faded into obscurity for five years, until Oct. 5, 1999, when The Associated Press and other news agencies reported L.S.' death in Las Vegas. The old man had been driving down a highway at noon when his car struck a wooden utility pole. The weather was clear and no other cars were around, leaving authorities to speculate that the accident had been intentional. His death was classified a suicide. He was 83.
By the time he died, L.S. had been married a total of five times and had 13 children. He lived in Las Vegas during his final years, purchasing a hotel and wishing for the good old days. His tortured tale would live on in a book he co-authored titled, Birthright: Murder, Greed and Power in the U-Haul Dynasty.
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