photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Rodney Marshall, left, is pictured on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Douglas County District Court. Defense attorney Branden Bell is at right.

Updated at 12:40 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 13

Victims’ relatives and law enforcement officials hugged one another Thursday after a Douglas County judge sentenced a Lawrence man to consecutive life terms for murdering two men and attempting to murder several more, including police officers who were trying to apprehend him after his violent crime spree four years ago.

The murderer, 55-year-old Rodney Marshall, will almost certainly never know freedom again after Douglas County Judge Amy Hanley gave him two “Hard 50” terms to be served back to back, followed by multiple-year terms (totaling another 17 years) for seven other felonies, all to run consecutively.

Hanley, forestalling concerns — if any existed — that the sentence was overly punitive, told the packed courtroom that “there must be accountability for each life taken and each life put at risk.”

She noted that in addition to the two lives lost on July 31, 2022, in “completely senseless acts of violence” — Shelby McCoy, 52, and William D. O’Brien, 43 — Marshall had attempted to gun down a whole group of police officers who pursued him on Kansas Highway 10 after the killings.

photo by: Contributed

Shelby McCoy was shot to death on July 31, 2022.

photo by: Contributed

William D. O’Brien was shot to death on July 31, 2022.

In addition to the two convictions for first-degree murder, Marshall was also convicted by a jury in May of four counts of attempted intentional second-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and one count of felony fleeing and eluding.

Before handing down the sentence, Hanley heard from multiple relatives of the two slain men and from two police officers involved in the pursuit. Marshall himself declined to make a statement when given the opportunity, and no one spoke on his behalf.

The relatives of McCoy and O’Brien all described the void in countless lives after their loved ones were killed, and they urged Hanley to impose the maximum possible sentence.

Leslie O’Brien, O’Brien’s sister, spoke of the generosity of her brother, who had worked many years in the physically demanding field of concrete finishing, and of his intense love for his dogs, including Chopper, who was present when O’Brien was killed and who lives with her family now.

“In many ways he was like a big kid,” she said of O’Brien, “but you could always depend on him,” even when he developed a drug addiction that presumably led him into Marshall’s dangerous orbit.

O’Brien’s ex-wife, Kelly O’Brien, said that even though they were divorced he “always made sure I was taken care of.”

His loss will never go away, she said, adding that Marshall’s persistent lack of remorse “makes it even harder,” as do the malicious falsehoods that Marshall spread about O’Brien to cover up his own criminality.

Another sister of O’Brien’s, Stephanie O’Brien, approached the bench and gave Hanley a photo of her brother, which was not visible to spectators in the courtroom.

“He was a fun, sensitive person with a tough-guy exterior,” she said. “The only thing he was guilty of was being an addict and knowing Rodney Marshall.”

Lisa McCoy Smith, who spoke on behalf of several members of the McCoy family, described Marshall as “wicked” and “shockingly evil,” as she explained to Hanley the turmoil that the family had experienced in the last four years as Marshall’s case wound its way haltingly through the criminal justice system: nightmares, rage, anxiety, the desire for revenge, depression.

McCoy’s brother, Mitch McCoy, who stood next to Lisa at the lectern, raised his middle finger high in Marshall’s direction as he walked back to his seat in the gallery.

A niece of McCoy’s, Barbara McCoy, said in a letter read by prosecutor Eve Kemple that Marshall had killed not only the two men but also Shelby McCoy’s mother, whom she described as having died from the heartbreak of losing her son.

Two police officers victimized during Marshall’s attempted getaway told Hanley that the traumatic incident has stayed with them and has made them grateful to be alive.

Marshall, after he was apprehended in a dramatic showdown with about two dozen police cars on Kansas Highway 10, told the officers he shot at that it was nothing “personal.”

“People believe because I wear a badge that being shot at is simply part of the job, but it’s not,” said Eudora Police Officer Austin Kost, who laid spike strips on the highway to stop Marshall as Marshall fired a gun at him out of his truck window.

Marshall remained silent Thursday, often staring down at a legal pad, declining to apologize or acknowledge in any way what he had done. His defense attorney, Branden Bell, said little beyond asking Hanley to run the sentences concurrently instead of consecutively. As he had argued, unsuccessfully, at trial, he again said that Marshall had not been in “his right mind” during the crime spree due to heavy drug use.

Marshall rode a scooter to McCoy’s residence at 1115 Tennessee St., fatally shot him, then rode across town — in a wig and disguise frequently described as a ninja costume — to kill O’Brien at his residence at 325 Northwood Lane.

“He was not in touch with reality,” Bell said.

Hanley, addressing Marshall directly, said that Marshall’s violence was “not justified by drug use or by self-defense,” two claims that the jury had specifically rejected.

To the victims in the courtroom, Hanley said the court process had provided closure but not peace, and she urged them to seek peace where they could.

She thanked them for attending the long trial and summoning the courage to speak their hearts at the long-awaited end.

Their comments, she said, were “deeply affecting.”

photo by: Lawrence Police Department UAV Drone Image

The Lawrence Police Department on Monday, Aug. 22, 2022, showed video of a suspect in a July 2022 double homicide being arrested.