One year ago this week, after years of fighting in Cobb County courts with his ex-wife, Mark Anthony Edge won back court-ordered visits with his children. According to his lawyer, within two weeks his ex-wife, Marilyn, had moved the children to Arizona.
This Sunday, after a year of working across state lines to get Marilyn back in court, Mark Edge was scheduled to receive full custody of his children, said the lawyer, Marian Weeks. Instead, he was awoken at dawn by a police officer with the news that his children were dead.
As Mark Edge lies hospitalized here with grief, Marilyn Edge is jailed on suicide watch on the West Coast. She is charged by authorities in Orange County, Calif., with murdering their children, Jaelen, 13, and his sister Faith, 10, by poison. Their bodies were found this weekend in a hotel room in Santa Ana, Calif.
Police say that after leaving the children, Edge crashed her car into an electrical box outside a shopping center. Then she tried to choke herself with a belt or rope as rescuers worked to free her from the car. There was propane in the car, police said, but it did not explode in the crash.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of death; officials of the Orange County district attorney’s office said they have not yet determined what penalty they will seek.
The lawyer who represented Marilyn Edge from 2006 through much of the divorce and custody dispute did not expect to hear such news about her former client.
“Never,” said the lawyer, Elizabeth Kuhn. “Not in a million years. I’m absolutely shocked.
“I have always known her to be a very caring and kind person,” Kuhn said. “They were both just going through a nasty divorce and nasty custody cases.”
Marilyn Edge’s most recent lawyer, Mary Ann Korre, only knew her client briefly but was also shocked at the allegations against her. Korre said she spoke to Marilyn Edge by phone Wednesday, soon after Mark Edge won primary custody of the children.
“Surprisingly, she appeared to be fine,” Korre said. “She said she was on the way to pick up her children. She was supposed to have picked them up and bring them back to Georgia.”
One point of contention between the couple was how to deal with Jaelen’s autism, Weeks said. Three months after Mark and Marilyn separated in 2004, according to Georgia and federal court records, Marilyn sued the federal government. Her suit cited a body of law that seeks to deal with claims of a link between vaccines and autism. Edge’s suit was dismissed last year, though she won $7,700 for attorney’s fees.
Mark’s lawyer said the father believed Jaelen could function more independently, and became deeply involved in the issue, working with autistic and mentally challenged young adults.
Regardless of whether Marilyn Edge is found culpable in the children’s deaths, Kuhn said the case is “tragic, absolutely tragic.” If there’s one lesson to be learned she said, it’s that “people maybe need to look very closely at themselves when they are in highly contested child custody cases and maybe seek help from professionals rather than helping themselves.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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