The Extreme Life And Dramatic Death Of Michael Marin

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By MICHAEL KIEF

The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX -- Michael Marin was on top of the world in May 2009.

He was standing on top of Mount Everest, a place only an elite group of climbers have ever reached.

Two and a half months later, he was in jail in Phoenix. His Biltmore Estates mansion had been gutted by fire, and Marin faced an arson charge that could lead to decades in prison.

The two extremes framed Marin's life.

He had traveled the world and lived in foreign countries, flown planes, traded in complex investments, charmed beautiful women, bought and created art. He could sing and play the piano like a professional musician. He doted on his children and had close friends all over the world.

In short, Marin seemed to have everything and to be capable of anything.

But there was a dark spot inside of him, an insecurity that few people saw. The drive and ego that pushed him to be an overachiever could also lead him into petty and destructive fights and a fixation on perceived slights.

He mounted a vigorous legal defense against a traffic citation. He spent two years fighting a paternity claim. In 2009, a few months after summiting Everest and after authorities smashed his plan to raffle off the house that had him deeply in debt, he took another defiant step: A jury believed he lit a fire that tore through the home on Biltmore Estates Drive.

But even that would not be his most dramatic act.

The blaze, which he denied setting, drew media attention not so much for its ritzy location but for Marin's unlikely escape. He told investigators he had awakened to find the house in flames, donned scuba gear stored in a bedroom closet, and escaped by breathing compressed air before making his way down a rope ladder.

Maybe he was telling the truth -- or maybe he was just trying to stage a dramatic scene. He had a flair for appearing understated when he was being grandiose.</p>

But instead, he became a comic figure -- that guy who climbed out the window wearing scuba gear -- and that is who he was to the jury that found him guilty of arson on June 28. He was to be taken into custody immediately after the hearing.

The verdict led to the final act of his life. As a live TV camera focused on his face, he slipped something into his mouth -- an autopsy would reveal it was cyanide. Fifteen minutes later, he lay dead on the courtroom floor.

What Marin left behind helps define the highs and lows of a storybook life:

A stack of writings, unpublished or self-published, record an inner dialogue and an outsized biography.

A family of four grown children refuses to speak about him except to say that he was innocent. His friends and lovers say the same.

And if they were shocked by his suicide, they were not all surprised.

"He killed himself because he's Michael Marin," said his former attorney Richard Gierloff. "It's because he didn't set that fire. And if people misunderstand him so badly they thought he did this crime then he's through with people."

"From Everest to jail is just him," said Marin's ex-wife, Tammy Gunderson. "He's not one who did things anywhere in the middle."

"An adventurer's life(AT)

Michael Marin was born in December 1958 and was raised in Oak Harbor, Wash., a Navy town on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. As a faithful member of the Mormon Church, he attended Brigham Young University and served a mission.

It took him to Japan, where he learned Japanese. After college, he attended Yale Law School, and after being admitted to the New York State Bar in 1987, he went to work in the legal department of banks, which sent him back to Japan. He put made a fortune trading in complex investments for Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers.

He traveled extensively in Asia. A book he wrote about investment banking in Asia purports hair-raising adventures in Papua, New Guinea, firefights in Cambodia, a trumped-up drug bust and torture by Malaysian police officers.

His kids were raised in Asia and in Chicago; his wife, Tammy, left him in 1992, after 12 years of marriage, and she moved to the Phoenix area. Then, in the late 1990s, Marin returned to the United States, eventually landing in Gilbert

.

"Michael definitely lived his life to the fullest," said Kristin Martin, who dated Marin in 2004. As for his personality, she said, "There's a level of arrogance when you're that smart."

Marin could be heroic: After his death, a woman wrote on his Facebook wall, recounting a visit to Yosemite'sEl Capitan, a destination for big-wall rock climbers: "I can still hear your calming voice talking me down the final rappel when I was injured, and I will never forget how you carried me up the steep path back to the road that day."

He climbed the highest peaks on six of the continents. When he went hiking he sometimes wore a jacket with the names of the summits on it and a check mark next to the ones he had climbed. All that remained unchecked was Vinson Massif in Antarctica, but he intended to take that peak next year.

"An unreliable narrator(AT)

But there were other facets of Michael Marin's personality, and they led to his unraveling.

And for all his adventure and showmanship, Marin was an unreliable narrator of his own life.

He claimed his Picasso etchings were worth millions of dollars. But a girlfriend who was with Marin when he bought them in Las Vegas said he was sincerely moved by their beauty, but had only paid a few hundred thousand dollars for them.

His self-published book "Fluctuations," which told of his adventures and close calls in Southeast Asia, also carried this note on the copyright page: "This book is a complicated hybrid of fact and fiction. Virtually all of the stories and incidents are true, but in many instances, names, places, and other details have been changed or fictionalized to protect the privacy, anonymity, and safety of the individuals to whom they refer."

He wrote "Fluctuations" after he left Asia and investment banking. Marin described the book's tone as humorous and ironic. It also is full of animus, and at times seems a rant

.

One former female friend said he could be a bully.

He could not let go of his defeats, however trivial, and instead lashed out self-destructively.

In 2000, Marin got a traffic citation in Gilbert for running his motorcycle into a car. He went over the handlebars and ended up in the hospital, and was issued a citation for failure to control a vehicle to avoid collision.

One might think that the rich man and world adventurer would pay the fine and go on with life. But Marin appealed, acting as his own attorney, and lost the case. He wrote a self-aggrandizing and condescending brief to the court, detailing the charity work he had done right before the accident, and his driving expertise for having attended a world-famous driving school.

He got a new trial -- but only because the audio recording of his first trial was garbled. He lost the second trial as well, but he didn't let it go. In 2002, he self-published another book, this time about "moron drivers."

And one might think a man who doted on family would own up to fathering a child.

Marin lived with a woman for three months in 2003. In 2004, she filed a paternity suit, seeking support for her newborn daughter. Marin spent two years fighting her, until a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that he was indeed the child's father and needed to pay child support.

Finally he softened: He accepted the child as his own. He introduced her to his four children by his ex-wife, Tammy. He called every Sunday night at 7 p.m.

Tragically, the child's mother died of natural causes just six days before Marin's death.

"An unbelievable escape(AT)

How Marin ended up with a multimillion-dollar mansion in the Biltmore Estates is as fuzzy as everything else in his life story.

He bought the house in September 2008, after a friend and business partner lost it to foreclosure, and he paid for it through a complex series of transactions. It came with a monthly mortgage payment of $17,250 and an imminent $2.3 million balloon payment.

The next spring, Marin devised a lottery to sell the house. He would sell 176,000 lottery tickets at $25 each. Then, in the end, the mortgage would be paid off, Marin would make a profit, and the rest would go to a worthy charity he had chosen, a crisis center for children.

But then state authorities determined that the lottery was illegal and shut it down.

The lottery drawing was supposed to be on July 4, 2009.

On July 5, Marin called 911 to report that his house was on fire and that he was going to escape using a rope ladder. He claimed he was asleep inside the house when he heard the smoke alarm. As he struggled through the thick smoke, he remembered that he had a scuba tank in his bedroom closet. He said he put on the tank and mask, climbed out a window and descended a rope ladder to escape.

Media responded to his incredible escape. That evening he did interviews from his hospital bed.

Arson investigators -- and the insurance company that held Marin's home-insurance policy -- took a closer look. Marin's prized paintings were not in the house when it burned, nor was his pet macaw. They found boxes full of old telephone books stacked end to end, as if to fuel the fire. And they claimed the fire had been intentionally started in four separate spots in the home.

Prosecutors charged Marin with arson of an occupied structure, a crime with penalties as severe as second-degree murder -- even though the "occupant" was Marin himself. He was arrested on Aug. 19, 2009, and spent 10 days in jail, before being released on bond.

His former attorney, Richard Gierloff, claimed that the fire had started in an electrical box, and that the boxes of phone books were in such a position because Marin was only moving in, and the newsprint in the books was to be used in Marin's decoupage artwork. Marin worked with resins, which could explain the open containers of acetone that the arson investigators suggested were accelerants.

But Marin was out of money. Prosecutors later showed that his bank account had dwindled from about $900,000 in 2008 to $42,700 just before the fire. His 401(k) only had $50 in it. And he was facing new legal expenses.

In September 2009, he sent an email to his friends, asking if they could help him financially.

"Alternatively, perhaps you (or someone you know) might like to take advantage of my situation and purchase one or more of my remaining assets from me at rock-bottom, fire sale prices (if you will pardon the unfortunate metaphor)," he wrote. "How would you (...) like to buy a Picasso on the cheap? Or an airplane?"

"I've exhausted all of my other options. I am literally at the end of my rope."

He needed somewhere to live while awaiting trial, so Jana Bru, Marin's best friend of 12 years, former girlfriend and business partner, took him into her Chandler home.

By April 2011, he had to let Gierloff go and request a court-appointed attorney. At the end of the required financial statement, he penned a note explaining that he no longer had any assets.

A month later, in May 2011, he bought a canister of cyanide from a California mail-order chemical supplier for $93.77 including shipping.

"Outwardly upbeat(AT)

On May 20, Michael Marin made this post to Facebook:

"Three years ago today, I was on top of the world. Tomorrow my trial begins. ... One ceases to recognize the significance of mountain peaks if they are not viewed occasionally from the deepest valleys."

The opening arguments in Marin's arson trial were on the morning of May 21.

At trial, forensic accountants detailed Marin's finances and arson investigators went through their findings. Marin did not testify.

To his friends, Marin seemed optimistic and controlled despite the pressure. He made Facebook posts with quotations by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Will Smith and others: "In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends." And "If you're absent during my struggle, don't expect to be present during my success."

He was outwardly upbeat.

Susie Spicer, Marin's last girlfriend, was with him during the trial.

"In the last weeks, Michael was very much at peace and very focused on actively working toward feeling happy despite his life circumstances," Spicer said in an email. "He was very spiritual. He meditated daily and spent weekends mountain climbing and canyoneering."

Marin, however, fought with his court-appointed attorneys. He especially felt they didn't understand relevant fire science that would exonerate him.

In a note that his family and closest friends received after his death, he said, "I wrote lengthy memoranda to help my lawyers, but it was like I was playing piano for ducks. They just didn't get it."

"A man in despair(AT)

The verdict was reached on the morning of June 28. It was to be read at 1:00 p.m

.

The hearing began late. Marin sat at the defense table; Spicer sat behind him in the gallery. The jury entered, the clerk read the verdict.

Marin closed his eyes in despair when he heard the word "guilty," and that the jurors found it to be a dangerous crime, which meant he would not be eligible for parole and instead would be taken immediately into custody to await sentencing.

He rubbed his hands up his face, with one hand cupped, and as he brought them back down, it appeared as if he opened his mouth and swallowed something.

The jury left the courtroom, and Judge Bruce Cohen was speaking to the attorneys about how they would argue the next phase of the trial, when the jury would decide if Marin was eligible for a harsher than average prison sentence. Cohen would make the final decision: the usual, or "presumptive," sentence was 10 and a half years in prison, but Cohen could have given Marin up to 21 years.

About seven minutes had passed since the clerk read the verdict. Marin looked to Spicer and nodded. He mouthed the words "I love you," and she said the same back to him.

He reached out as his attorneys' paralegal offered him a box of tissues, then put his head down. Spicer heard him say, "I can't do this." He began shaking.

Suddenly Marin gasped like a man who had been holding his breath underwater and had finally breached the surface. He started to collapse forward, making a loud snoring noise as if his trachea were a balloon releasing air.

Lindsay Abramson, his attorney, caught him as he buckled toward the floor. Nearly everyone in the courtroom froze, but Spicer rushed forward and she and Abramson laid Marin on his back and tore off his tie and opened his shirt collar.

The judge stayed on the bench, watching in shock. The prosecutor stared blankly. Marin's other attorney paced anxiously. Two dozen spectators sat numbly in the gallery, and a few laughed nervously.

Sheriff's deputies and even the fire captain who had investigated the arson attempted to administer first aid. When clear liquid began flowing from Marin's mouth, they turned him on his side to keep him from choking. Spicer laid Marin's cheek on her thigh and stroked his hair.

Paramedics arrived and started administering chest pressure. Minutes later, they wheeled Marin out of the courtroom on a stretcher. His cheeks were blue, and he was already dead.