State settles with woman’s family for $1.75 million over murder

The Wenatchee World Online, WA - 23 Jan 2009

Marcille Robbins was 70 years old, but fought back when Todd Marsh broke into her Omak home on June 6, 2000, and beat her to death with a bathroom scale and coffee pot, according to police reports.

Three days earlier, Okanogan County mental health workers worried Marsh would hurt someone, and committed him at Eastern State Hospital, said Mark Leemon, a Seattle lawyer who represented the Robbins family.

"This fellow, when he was talking to mental health workers, told them he was going to kill someone, that he was hearing voices that he couldn't control, and that he knew he was going to hurt someone," Leemon said.

The state hospital released Marsh before the end of a 72-hour evaluation and brought him back to Omak with no plans for follow-up treatment, Leemon said. That night he killed Robbins.

Hearing Voices? Maybe Cut Back On Coffee

A new study by a British university links high caffeine intake with hallucinatory experiences like hearing voices and seeing things that are not there.

The study out of Durham University quizzed 219 students about their consumption of coffee, tea, energy drinks and chocolate. The students were then asked about hallucinatory experiences and their stress levels. The survey is available online here. These finding were published Wednesday in the academic journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Full article here