Marlene Major: A Life in Minor Key

A Mechanic Preys on His Kids and Makes His Wife Disappear
(‘A Daughter’s Journey,’ Forensic Files)

The Marlene Major case is a study in both the grimly expected and the pleasantly surprising.

After Marlene, a 25-year-old mother of two, went missing, Bill Major gave the classic Forensic Files “my wife just got in her car and drove away forever” explanation (Jack Boyle, Richard Nyhuis).

And sadly, a revelation toward the middle of the story isn’t out of the ordinary either: Bill was sexually abusing the couple’s kids (John Schneeberger, Fred Grabbe).

But two other aspects of the case were unusual and uplifting.

First of all, the stepmother whom LaLana and Donald Major acquired after Marlene disappeared was not only kind to them but also placed them ahead of her husband in importance.

Second, two decades after her mother vanished, LaLana began investigating the cold case herself and helped to solve it.

For this week, I looked into whatever happened to Bill Major.

So let’s get started on the recap of “A Daughter’s Journey,” along with extra information from online research:

Marlene and Bill Major lived in a trailer in the tiny Kentucky town of Verona and made a cute couple on the surface. She had shoulder-length blond hair and pert features. He had darkish hair and Marlboro Man eyes.

Bill, born on Jan. 6, 1944, worked as an auto repairer. His father, Jim Major, would later describe his son as a “charmer” who could “talk the pants off anybody” — but “you couldn’t believe a word he said,” according to South Coast Today.

Only a few bits of intelligence on Marlene surfaced. She came into the world in Lincoln County, Kentucky, on Dec. 7, 1955, the daughter of Willie “Billy” Craig Oakes and Lorraine Mildred McQueary, according to Find a Grave.

By 1980, whatever luster the Majors’ marriage once had was gone. Marlene became romantically involved with Glenn St. Hilaire, a former welder who lived in his camper on the Majors’ property and did some work for Bill’s business.

Glenn, who had French Canadian roots, told Cold Case Files that Bill actually encouraged the affair.

Apparently, it gave Bill more time alone with the children, yikes. Or perhaps Bill was planning to kill Marlene all along and wanted to set up Glenn as a suspect.

On October 15, 1980, Glenn overheard Marlene and Bill arguing. Glenn stepped out for coffee, and never saw Marlene again.

Like many other deadly Forensic Files spouses, Bill didn’t keep his story straight. He told Glenn that Marlene took the children and left — but told a neighbor that she had gallivanted away with Glenn, according to court papers.

Bill informed LaLana, 4, and Donald, 8, that their mother was a prostitute who ran off and didn’t care about them.

Glenn went to the Florence police department to report that he suspected foul play in Marlene’s sudden absence.

A newspaper article about her disappearance noted that Marlene had hazel eyes, wore glasses while driving, and was last seen in jeans and a blue-and-green plaid flannel shirt.

But there was no sign of her.

Meanwhile, Bill quickly got rid of his guns and sold his tractor, then scooped up his kids — but abandoned the family dog — and headed to Rhode Island to be closer to his parents, who lived in East Providence. Bill bought a trailer and settled with the kids in Pawtucket, a city known for having a high crime rate by Rhode Island standards.

One year after Marlene’s disappearance, Bill remarried.

The kids confided in their stepmother, identified only as Pauline in a media account, that their father had been beating and sexually abusing both of them. He also would coerce them into obedience by threatening one sibling that he would kill the other, they said.

Fortunately, Pauline was no evil stepmother. According to Cold Case Files, she confronted Bill and he promised to stop. When that didn’t work, she notified the authorities.

In 1985, LaLana and Donald got to witness law officers pull up in cars with flashing lights, handcuff Bill, and haul him away.

A court sentenced him to up to 15 years in a Rhode Island state prison for his sex crimes against his children. He served about 12 years before winning release.

Somewhere amid all this mess, Bill married at least once more. Claire Bailey, a bus monitor, reportedly believed Bill’s time in prison resulted from an armed robbery conviction, according to South Coast Today.

In the meantime, Donald and LaLana had moved in with their maternal grandmother, Lorraine Oakes, in Kentucky.

Marlene was still missing.

Lorraine told LaLana that Marlene was dead, that Bill did it. She had no proof, though, so LaLana, at 20 years old, decided to investigate.

She got her hands on the cold case file, including Marlene’s diary — Marlene had told her sister as well as Glenn to look at it in case anything happened to her.

LaLana found a passage Marlene wrote about the sexual abuse suffered by Donald.

“He tried to hide what they were doing, but I know what I saw,” Marlene wrote. “I guess I died inside.”

(Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but at some point during her marriage, Marlene learned that Bill had a 1975 conviction for molesting two boys, according to Cold Case Files.)

Marlene also noted in her journal that Donald said Bill had been molesting him for four to five years. She wrote that she planned to use the allegations to gain custody of the kids in a divorce.

A number of YouTube commenters criticized Marlene for not going to the police immediately. But if Forensic Files got its numbers right, Marlene married at age 16. She hadn’t lived much and, back in 1980, the societal framework for discussing and reporting sexual abuse of children hadn’t developed as it has today.

Glenn St. Hilaire told investigators Bill said that if Marlene ever tried to leave and take the kids, he would kill her — and that he knew how to commit the perfect crime.

Bill had even told people of how he would dismember Marlene’s body, remove her jaw, and destroy her teeth to prevent identification, Detective Tim Carnahan said during his Forensic Files interview.

LaLana learned that, on a farm in Boone County, Kentucky, about a mile from the Majors’ old homestead, a hunter had found a human skull with a bullet hole and missing jaw in November 1981.

After digging in the ground near the skull site, LaLana found nothing more. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Forensic scientists had developed mitochondrial DNA testing, so LaLana spearheaded a fundraising drive for the $20,000 lab fee. Her aunt offered to donate her retirement fund to the cause, but fortunately, the state of Kentucky decided to pay.

The DNA from the skull matched LaLana’s DNA, proving it came from Marlene.

LaLana said she wanted the whole world to know that her mother didn’t abandon her kids. Someone murdered her.

And in another action to restore some faith in humanity, Bill’s father, a retired trucker, began working with investigators.

They set up a secret recording on which Bill confided in dad Jim Major that he murdered Marlene, buried her body in a sinkhole, pushed her 1972 Ford Pinto into the Ohio River, and threw away the gun. Bill also said the homicide didn’t bother him one bit.

Investigators used an airplane to search for the blue car, but it never turned up, and Bill had only laughed at LaLana when she asked him what he did with the rest of Marlene’s body.

But Bill started talking soon enough.

After his arrest on June 25, 2001, he switched to blame-the-victim mode and told police that Marlene had threatened him with a gun, and he lost his temper and shot her twice in the face and four times in the torso.

By the time the case went to trial in Boone Circuit Court in July 2003, Bill, 59, was barely recognizable. He aged prematurely. He used a wheelchair because of a 1995 stroke.

Judge Jay Bamberger declined a request from Bill, who authorities extradited from his home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, to skip the trial because of ill health.

The children testified about their abuse, with LaLana describing how Bill pointed a gun at her and said he would kill her if she didn’t keep it a secret. Donald told the court that Bill’s sexual assaults on him took place “in the trailer, in the truck, in the warehouse, at work, wherever.”

As for Marlene’s death, defense attorney Edward Drennen argued that Bill’s earlier confession wasn’t entirely valid because the stroke scrambled his memory. Drennen suggested that Bill acted out of “extreme emotional distress” because of jealousy over Marlene.

The Cincinnati Enquirer described the courtroom scene in the trial’s final hours:

“After Drennen’s closing arguments, Major leaned to his attorney and complimented him on a job well done. Major then wheeled around in his wheelchair and smiled at his two children, who were in the gallery. As the guilty verdict was read a short time later, [Donald] Oakes leaned to his sister and said, ‘It’s finally over.'”

LaLana “pumped her brother’s hands, a satisfied smile on her face,” the Cincinnati Post reported.

“Good-bye, Dad. I hope you spend the rest of your life behind bars,” Lalana, 27, said. “You deserve it.”

Bill got a life sentence and went off to Kentucky State Reformatory in LaGrange in August 2003.

Meanwhile, although the balance of her body was never found, Marlene, whose full maiden name was Helen Marlene Oakes, got the burial she deserved. “You just couldn’t believe how hard it was for us to know our daughter’s skull was sitting in a forensic lab somewhere for all those years,” Lorraine Oakes told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

So where is Bill Major today? The Kentucky Department of Corrections no longer lists him as an inmate, and according to a reader comment — possibly written by Donald — on the Raving Queen blog, Bill died in prison on October 15, 2017.

Donald and LaLana have kept a low profile over the years. They both long ago jettisoned the “Major” from their personal identification. LaLana was last known as LaLana Bramble and her brother began using his mother’s maiden name, calling himself Donald Oakes.

A 2003 article mentions Donald was living in Washington state. A 2004 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer notes LaLana’s occupation as beauty shop manager.

It’s sad that their mother never got a chance to experience life on her own and away from Bill, but the diary she left behind helped make it possible for her children to escape him forever.

The Cold Case Files episode about the homicide, “Daddy Knows Best,” is no longer on YouTube, Daily Motion, or Amazon Prime. If anyone knows of another way to view it, please write in with a clue.

P.S. Thanks to reader Sean in Tampa who emailed with a tip that you can watch “Daddy Knows Best” on the Cold Case Files Presented by A&E channel on Pluto TV.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the episode on YouTube