Police raid fugitive's home

Seattle police yesterday again raided the family home of fugitive Aristotle Marr, carting off thousands of dollars of stockpiled merchandise, box upon box of brand-new appliances. Building materials. Lawn mowers. Power tools. Washers, dryers, bicycles and barbecue grills.

As they used a moving van to haul away what they said was about $20,000 worth of stolen loot, authorities say they also seized one more piece of the puzzle that is Aristotle Marr.

For while Seattle police have been looking for a bank robber, they say they've instead stumbled onto a complex dual life.

Marr, the man wanted in the June 22 Wells Fargo bank holdup in North Seattle, is a 24-year-old former honor student, a handsome star athlete, a loving father and a mama's boy, family and friends say. He's a trusty landlord who fixed his little green rental house with zeal, an eager entrepreneur who passed out cards advertising his new towing business.

Yet Marr, a man authorities say also has a taste for violence and crime, is now the target of an international manhunt. And police and prosecutors paint another portrait: A savvy young man who used his smarts and deep international family ties to become the CEO of a sophisticated, lucrative, outlaw enterprise in stolen goods, chopped-up cars and cash.

They think the June bank heist, which left Marr's friend dead and sent him into hiding, was a foiled attempt to get rich quick and retire in style.

"What I think is he got impatient," said deputy King County Prosecutor Steve Fogg. "And this was going to be the big score."

Marr's attorneys and family strongly deny that he had anything to do with such crimes. He is charged with six felony counts stemming from the holdup, a subsequent attempted carjacking and an attack on an elderly couple at their home near the bank. If convicted as charged, he could face 46 years in prison.

Interviews with friends, family and acquaintances, and decades worth of court files and other records tell a story of a man who has been living two lives.

"That's the tragedy of this," said former high-school teacher and coach Benjamin Wright. "We knew him, but we didn't know him."

Jamaican roots

Aristotle Marr was born Jan. 23, 1976, the third child of hardworking parents, Jamaican immigrants putting down roots in Seattle.

Two years earlier, Marr's father, Hayton Marr, bought a little grocery store, the Yesler Way Tom Boy Market. Everyone knew Hayton Marr as Cecil Cooke, the name he used in America. But everyone called him by his nickname, "Bossy."

Cooke and his wife, Loraine Harris, ran the store successfully into the 1980s as their family grew to five children.

Neighbors said the Marrs were a welcome part of the quasi-rural neighborhood along Beacon Avenue South near Boeing Field. Young Aristotle and his siblings mowed lawns, played with the neighbors, waved hello to the many elderly neighbors who had lived there for decades.

In 1982, Cooke was indicted by a federal grand jury for food-stamp fraud. Agents had snared him in a scheme to buy thousands of dollars worth of government vouchers at half the face value, then cash them in at full price.

Rather than face prison, Cooke slipped away to Jamaica, leaving his family behind.

Cooke stayed in hiding two years, then returned to the U.S. and was sentenced to five years at a federal prison camp on the New Mexico-Texas border.

"(The) children have depended upon Mr. Cooke for emotional support and are experiencing his loss," Cooke's lawyer wrote in September 1985, in an unsuccessful bid for early parole. "His family attempted to take over the Cookes' grocery store, but to no avail."

His children remember it differently.

"We were so young," Aristotle's brother, 26-year-old Lorenzo Marr, said yesterday. "So it didn't have a particular effect on us."

But the family sold the store soon after.

Cooke got out of prison in 1987 and moved home. His wife filed for divorce a few months later, alleging he was frequently drunk and wouldn't get a job, the court record says.

Within a year, Cooke moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he now goes by Hayton Marr. He has declined repeated interview requests.

Yet even while Cooke was on the run, his wife was dating a married Seattle police officer who also owned a Central District grocery.

"His cruiser was there in the driveway much of the time, day and night," a neighbor recalled. Many neighbors had the impression that the officer's presence gave the boys a kind of immunity from the law.

The officer, now retired, absolutely denies that, saying he stopped having frequent contact with the Marrs in 1989, before any trouble started.

Instead, he said, he was something of a father figure.

"For a while there, it was perfect," he said. "We were just a big family. We had our meetings once a week, talked about school, problems that they had."

The officer asked that his name not be published, saying he has tried to put those years behind and reclaim his marriage.

He kept occasional contact with Aristotle and his brothers, though. "I was real proud of that kid," he said.

A bad reputation

Nonetheless, some neighbors report that Aristotle and his brothers were developing a bad reputation at an early age.

"They would just bully my kids for no reason," said a neighbor who asked not to be named for fear of the Marrs. "My sons had a little paper route, and they would just hit them for no reason, steal their money, and on collection day it was even worse."

At school, however, Aristotle was a bright, well-liked child. When he entered Rainier Beach High School in 1990, he was an immediate hit.

"They must have kept (trouble) up the hill, because they never brought it down the hill," said Wright, now principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Seattle. He taught Marr at Rainier Beach and coached him on the football team.

"Ari was a child who had it all together. He liked being around positive adults - he liked pleasing them."

Marr graduated in June 1994 with a 4.0 grade-point average.

"He's a sharp kid," Wright said. "No question about that. What he's doing with those smarts is a different story. My impression is he was going to go the other way. All the way."

But others said Marr had an affinity for tricked-out cars and stylish clothes. And he ran with friends many remember as the local toughs and gangsters.

One of them was Daniel DelFierro, who on June 22 was shot dead by police in the bank robbery authorities say Marr helped commit.

"He hung around that kind of crowd," said Frank Reyes, who played football with Marr on the Rainier Beach squad. "He could have gone either way. Being as smart as he was, he could have made something of himself . . . unfortunately he chose the wrong crowd."

With a full scholarship in the bag, Marr packed up for Pullman to attend Washington State University.

It didn't last a year.

Acquaintances said Marr perhaps held some hope of playing Cougar football, but at 5-feet-5 and 130 pounds, the former high school standout wide receiver wasn't Pac-10 material. Football officials at WSU say they don't recall meeting him.

Brother Lorenzo said Aristotle just got homesick.

"He was a mama's boy," Lorenzo said. "He liked going to school, but every weekend he was back home."

So Marr came home for good in early 1995. He told some friends he was going to enroll at the University of Washington the next school year.

Instead, Marr and his brother started fixing cars in their backyard.

Soon after, Marr bought a big flat-bed tow truck. He got a business license for "J.P. Quick Tow."

"He said he had his own way of making his own money," said Wright, who kept in touch and saw Marr as recently as May. "It seemed like a great business."

With her children now grown, Loraine Harris spent more and more time in her native Montego Bay, Jamaica, where relatives say her family owns a coffee farm, several homes, a grocery store and a nightclub.

Soon she was all but living there. The Marrs, now young adults with children of their own, were ruling the roost - and drawing more and more trouble.

Trouble on Beacon Avenue

Residents along Beacon Avenue accuse the family of being a constant nuisance, from letting their large dogs run loose and bite people to attracting thefts, fights and gunplay.

"Oh, there were drive-by shootings, fire bombs, loud cars," said Becky Keene, a former neighbor who, before she gave up and moved, headed a neighborhood group that tried to get the city to do something about the Marrs.

"We had to move our bedroom from the front of the house to the back for fear of flying bullets," Keene said. "Our grandkids could not play. It was not uncommon at all to hear gunfire in the middle of the night."

Police reports bear out the complaints.

In early 1995, a 17-year-old girl told police that Marr, his two brothers and another of his relatives forced their way into her home and gang-raped her. No charges were filed for lack of evidence.

Also that year, Marr and his older brother were arrested after they tussled with police outside the home. Charges were dismissed.

Many of the reports depict the Marrs as victims.

In early 1996, two men fired a pistol at the home when Aristotle and Lorenzo Marr caught them trying to steal a car parked in the back yard, reports said. The Marrs returned fire, but the men sped away.

Two weeks later, reports say, someone detonated a makeshift bomb under the same car.

A month afterward, reports say, Marr was shot in the ankle by two men who opened fire outside his home.

Later that year, Aristotle Marr and his brothers chased a group of men they had seen trying to break into a car outside the house. One may have fired a shotgun at the fleeing men. Aristotle was questioned and released.

Through it all, Marr was never convicted of a crime. All charges over the years have been dismissed for lack of evidence or because witnesses wouldn't testify.

For the last three years, police calls to the Marr house dwindled.

Aristotle has a 2-year-old son, called Little Ari. His girlfriend lives with the family.

In 1998, at age 22, Marr bought a $160,000 house - the one directly behind his family's home, the one searched yesterday. And late last year, he bought a $250,000, old green farmhouse a few blocks down the street. He spoke of subdividing the former chicken farm and building houses. Meanwhile, though, he rented it to a single mother.

"He couldn't have been a better landlord," said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. She said Marr mowed the lawn religiously and fixed things before she even knew they needed fixing.

"He was very friendly," she said. "He was always nice to my kids."

Illegal businesses alleged

But while Marr was apparently building legitimate businesses, authorities now think he was building complex illegal ones, too.

When police searched the Marr "compound" days after the June 22 bank robbery in North Seattle, they discovered the goods confiscated yesterday.

It took a month for them to confirm that the merchandise was stolen. Police said they believe Marr had developed a network of insiders, perhaps employees at local home-improvement stores or other thieves, who intercepted shipments before they got to store loading docks and diverted them to Marr.

Authorities said they believe the enterprise was fencing the items or moving them overseas.

But the bread-and-butter operation remained stolen, and then altered, vehicles, hauled with Marr's tow truck to various chop shops, police allege.

Marr, authorities say, is suspected of enlisting friends who recruited other young people, usually women, to open bank accounts and deposit Marr's money. The accomplices got a cut, but thousands, they suspect, went to Marr.

So successful was the venture, authorities said this week, that Marr would frequently reward his henchmen with trips to his family's homes in sunny Jamaica. During one search of the Marr home in July, police found airline ticket records showing that family members and friends flew there at least every other month.

But becoming a kingpin of sorts apparently wasn't enough, police sources speculate. And things changed fast for Marr when Daniel DelFierro got out of prison May 10, prosecutors charge.

DelFierro and Marr had been friends since childhood, hanging out together at the Yesler Market.

Marr, his mother and brother had testified on DelFierro's behalf when he was fighting a murder charge for a 1993 drive-by shooting. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and went to prison.

Robbing banks was probably DelFierro's idea, prosecutors surmise. But the suggestion, they say, may have made Marr re-evaluate a life selling stolen cars and dishwashers for a few hundred bucks a pop.

"That's not how Ari Marr saw himself," deputy prosecutor Fogg said. "And that's not how other people perceived Ari Marr. He saw (the bank robbery) as a way to make the big score and then he wouldn't have to do this any more. It was a very, very well-planned robbery."

Their first three armed bank robberies netted $330,000, prosecutors allege.

And the last was flawless, they say. Except for one, fatal mistake.

As the robbers left the Wells Fargo bank on June 22 toting a satchel stuffed with $150,000, they couldn't start the stolen get-away motorcycle.

"If that motorcycle had started right off the bat, they would have gotten away clean," Fogg said.

Police arrived. DelFierro fired several rounds at Officer Wesley Buxton, wounding him in the shoulder and arm. Another officer returned fire, and shot DelFierro dead. Marr, prosecutors say, ran off, later kidnapping an elderly couple and hiding in their home until someone picked him up.

But where is he now?

Seattle police spokeswoman Pam McCammon said yesterday the department can't divulge details for fear of tipping off their prey.

"I can tell you that there is an incredible amount of work being done," McCammon said. "Of course it's frustrating that we don't have him yet. But he will be caught. It's just really a matter of time."

Late last month, FBI agents searched a cousin's home in South Seattle after a tipster said Marr sent Internet messages from a computer there. They found a computer, but no Marr.

Investigators have contacted international law enforcement officials - including in Jamaica - assuming that Marr has fled the country.

Yet police in both New York City and Jamaica said they haven't heard of Aristotle Marr. "The name doesn't even ring a bell," said Detective Sgt. Roofe of the Interpol division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

"If he's here, we'd certainly like to go after him," she said.

McCammon said that response doesn't surprise her. "They're not going to tell a newspaper" they're looking for the man, she said.

Meanwhile, the Marr family scoffs at the elaborate search.

"He's probably right up under their noses," Lorenzo Marr said.

If so, prosecutors say the longer Aristotle Marr stays in hiding, the worse it will look for him at trial.

"Our interest right now is that he is quickly arrested, or taken into custody however that happens," Fogg said. "If he's as innocent as his attorneys claim he is, then I think he'd have as much interest as I do in him facing these charges."

Seattle Times staff reporter Eli Sanders contributed to this report.

Ian Ith's phone message number is 206-464-2109. His e-mail address is iith@seattletimes.com