Arrest 'was like a movie'

A man released from prison in April is locked up after a six-hour crime wave, police say. He was caught hiding in a tree house.

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 4, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Opening the miniblinds so her cats could bask in the morning sunlight, Denise Richardson saw a stranger crouched behind the bushes in a neighbor's back yard.

The neighbor was on vacation, and the man by the bushes had "a kind of a spooked look on his face," so she called 911. In minutes, several police cruisers came roaring up with dogs and guns. Officers caught the man hiding in a tree house near 46th Avenue N and 21st Street N.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Richardson, a customer service representative at an environmental company. "It was like a movie."

The man in the tree house was Charles Edward Marks Jr., 28, of 616 42nd Ave. N. Police said his arrest early Monday ended a six-hour series of crimes that crossed Tampa Bay and included sexual assault and armed robbery. He even knocked out an off-duty Manatee County deputy.

This is not Marks' first tangle with the law. He was released from prison in April after serving eight years on charges of burglary and arson in connection with a fire that burned down a McDonald's restaurant on Fourth Street N where he had once worked.

Marks' one-man crime wave began about 2 a.m. at a Dunkin' Donuts shop on Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street N in St. Petersburg, according to Officer Chip Wells. Marks robbed the shop at gunpoint and sexually assaulted a woman on duty there, Wells said.

Two hours later, Marks walked into a coin laundry on 62nd Ave. N, pointed a pistol at the head of a customer and demanded the keys to her 1990 Corvette parked outside, according to Deputy Cal Dennie of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

The woman refused to hand over her keys. Instead she told Marks who she was: Sgt. Susan Jones, a seven-year veteran of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.

Marks did not back down, Dennie said. Instead, he threatened to shoot Jones. Jones reached in her purse, but instead of car keys she pulled out a pair of scissors. Startled, Marks stepped back, and Jones ran out to call for help. But Marks chased her, knocked her out with a pellet gun and took her Corvette, Dennie said.

A short time later, Tampa police saw the Corvette in the Gandy Boulevard area. They pursued the car back across the bridge but lost it near Derby Lane, Wells said.

St. Petersburg police caught sight of the Corvette again around 83rd Avenue N and Fourth Street N. As they started following it, the car took off "at a high rate of speed," Wells said. "Then he dumped the car at 46th Avenue N and 22nd Street N."

Officers had driven through Richardson's neighborhood looking for the fugitive before Richardson opened her blinds and saw the stranger.

The neighborhood is usually a quiet one, she said, so the tree house capture has set everyone to talking: "This is the biggest deal ever."

As for Marks, the recently freed prison inmate was slated to spend Independence Day in the Pinellas County Jail, charged with armed robbery, armed sexual battery, aggravated fleeing and eluding and reckless driving. He was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

- Staff researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

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