Murder defendant Rodney Marshall is pictured Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Douglas County District Court.

When police stopped Rodney Marshall on Kansas Highway 10 after a chase that reached 100 mph, prosecutor Eve Kemple said Thursday, “he immediately began spontaneously talking.”

He talked about having killed two men, Kemple said: Shelby McCoy and William D. O’Brien. He talked about his belief that they were “diaper-dippers, or child molesters,” she said, and told investigators where to find a list of molesters. He even talked about a colorful costume he allegedly wore, and how it was “making a statement.”

“When push came to shove, he did it for the children,” Kemple said of Marshall’s reasoning. “He was one of the good guys.”

That’s the state’s account of what Marshall said right after his arrest on suspicion of multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in 2022. But Marshall’s attorneys, at his trial on Thursday, said those were the words of a man who couldn’t tell between fact and fantasy.

“He didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t for days,” defense attorney Branden Bell said during his opening. Marshall was a heavy drug user, he said. “… He thinks he’s God. He thinks he’s the chosen one from ‘The Matrix.'”

He was “whacked out,” Bell said, and he was still that way when officers stopped him. The first thing he said upon getting out, Bell said, was blaming a country singer: “Charlie Daniels made me do it.”

The defense, in fact, says Marshall isn’t the only unreliable source of information in this murder case, and soon it will be up to the jury to weigh the evidence.

Testimony began Thursday in Marshall’s three-week trial, and the jury heard from three people who were there when the shootings took place and saw graphic photos of the victims and a brightly painted rifle allegedly connected to the crimes. Marshall is accused of two murders in the first degree, four counts of attempted capital murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of fleeing and eluding law enforcement — all stemming from an alleged crime spree on July 31, 2022.

The state’s version of events is that Marshall shot McCoy, 52, at 1115 Tennessee St. before riding across town on a moped in a costume to shoot O’Brien, 43, at 325 Northwood Lane. After the shootings, police staked out Marshall’s residence in central Lawrence, and when he tried to leave the home, he led multiple officers on a chase while allegedly firing a pistol out of his window. He was eventually arrested on Kansas Highway 10 near Eudora in a dramatic showdown involving around two dozen police vehicles in the middle of the highway.

The defense, on the other hand, says many things don’t add up.

During his opening statement, Bell said the state has “no eyewitness that has ever given an uncontradictory account.” He said that sometimes during trials, there are minor, irrelevant things that are unclear. He called this type of question “What happened to the dog?”

“These will not be dog questions,” he told the jury. “You will have real, legitimate questions about what to believe.”

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Chuck McCoy, Shelby McCoy’s brother, couldn’t clearly remember much of his interview with police when he took the stand. He couldn’t recall detectives’ names, or certain questions they asked him.

What he could remember was hearing the shots from an upstairs bedroom of the building where he, his wife Melanie and Shelby all lived; going downstairs, slowly, with his bad knees; opening the door to his brother’s apartment; and what he saw there.

“My brother’s laying there; half his head’s gone,” Chuck said.

He tried his best to help Shelby, he said. He asked Shelby, “Who did this to you? Who did this?” And Shelby made sounds, but Chuck couldn’t understand, he testified.

Someone eventually called 911, Chuck said; who it was or how much time had passed, “I had no idea.”

Some of the first pieces of evidence the jury saw on Thursday were graphic images from that apartment, captured on an officer’s body camera. In them, Chuck is holding Shelby, whose head is soaked with blood.

Another Lawrence Police officer who responded to the scene, Anthony Harvey Jr., testified that he couldn’t tell how many wounds Shelby had because of the amount of blood. He rode with Shelby in the ambulance to LMH Health, and he said Shelby “was screaming as if he was in great pain.”

From LMH, Shelby McCoy was taken to KU Med in Kansas City for emergency surgery, and Harvey followed them there. He was in the operating room during the procedure and saw the state the victim was in firsthand.

“As the surgery went on, his body was falling apart,” Harvey testified. Eventually, there was nothing more the doctors could do: “He was brain-dead.”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Officer Anthony Harvey Jr. testifies on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Douglas County District Court.

•••

When Shawn Tyler Demaline, another resident of the 1115 Tennessee building, heard the shots, he assumed that the place was being robbed. From upstairs, he could see “a figure” running near the stairwell, and then he ran after that person. “Adrenaline kicked in,” he said.

He said he went out the front door and saw a moped on the sidewalk, which he recognized as one that Shelby had been working on, and a person standing near it in an elaborate costume.

The person wore a wig and colored paint, Demaline testified, and what he described as a “Ninja Turtle” costume, with a mask-like cloth over part of the face.

They made eye contact, Demaline said. Then, the figure raised a hand, and then “I remember seeing a flash, and a really loud sound.”

Demaline said he dived back into the doorway. “I didn’t look back ever once I dove back in the door,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he had been hit or not at this point, he said, and he even asked the first person he saw whether he’d been shot.

Then, he testified, he heard Chuck screaming. “He just kept repeating, no, no, no, no, please no.”

Chuck was in the room with Shelby, crying and holding him, Demaline testified. Demaline took off his shirt, ripped it and gave it to them in hope of using it to stop the bleeding.

On the floor, he saw a handgun, he testified. Again, “adrenaline took over.” He said he grabbed it and, when he found Melanie McCoy, gave it to her.

•••

The defense had been talking about this handgun since opening statements. Bell referred to Demaline as “the gun grabber” and claimed that multiple people “worked together to hide that gun from police.”

Demaline said the gun was Shelby’s. Chuck said he didn’t know whose it was, and that he soon sold it to a man in Topeka for $50.

“Didn’t know who the gun belonged to,” Chuck said. “Wasn’t sure if it was Shelby’s. Wasn’t sure whose it was. Wanted it out of there.”

Both Demaline and Chuck admitted that they hadn’t been completely forthcoming with police in their interviews. Kemple asked Demaline if he could say why he didn’t tell police about the handgun, and he replied that he “didn’t want to get myself in trouble.”

Demaline testified that he had experience handling guns. In response to questions from the defense, he said he didn’t remember whether the safety was on, and he didn’t recognize that the weapon was jammed.

But when Kemple asked him if there were any signs that the handgun had recently been fired, he said “No.”

A different gun was shown in the courtroom: one found across town at 325 Northwood. It was an assault-style rifle, “custom painted, spray-painted with bright colors,” said Lawrence Police Detective George Baker, who held it up for the jury. “Typically they’re not painted like this,” he said.

Sgt. Ryan Robinson, who originally found the gun, said it had been in a pile of junk near the home’s garage. He said he thought it was a toy gun at first. “It was painted all sorts of different colors, pink and white and tan,” he said. But it was in fact a real rifle, with its safety “in the fire position.”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Detective George Baker holds up a painted gun to show to the jury on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Douglas County District Court. In the foreground is defense attorney Branden Bell.

•••

At the Northwood home, Rhonda Salvador and her “significant other,” O’Brien, were sick from heroin withdrawal about to go to bed in their upstairs bedroom when they heard a knock on the door, she testified.

O’Brien went down to answer it, and though Salvador couldn’t see the person down there, she testified that it was Marshall’s voice. But then she heard muffled noises and a thump. She got out of bed, went into the hall and looked down the stairs.

What did she see at the bottom? “Feet”; someone’s shoes.

Visibly emotional, she testified that she smelled gunsmoke first, then heard a shot. Then, “I just smashed myself against the wall and tried to keep from screaming.”

Salvador said she “waited what seemed like forever for him to leave.” When she heard a moped start, she called police, went downstairs and saw blood everywhere, she testified.

She thought O’Brien was already dead. “I was pretty sure he was gone already,” she testified.

Salvador said she told the 911 dispatcher, “Rodney did it.” Then she said she panicked and ran out of the home, because “I thought he was going to come back and kill me.” Eventually, she testified, she got the attention of a DoorDash driver who let her into the car.

Salvador’s account and the account of the driver, who also testified, seemed to differ. Salvador said the driver first took her to the home of one of her friends, but she couldn’t get hold of the friend. Then, she said, the driver dropped her off at an apartment complex.

The driver, though, testified that she thought something about Salvador’s story didn’t make sense that night. She said she drove to a trailer court near the hospital and told Salvador to get out, then “went straight home.”

On cross-examination, Salvador said she did eventually speak to police that night, but only after a friend had given her a shot of heroin to ease the withdrawal symptoms.

Kemple also started to ask Salvador about a list. Presumably, this was referring to a “hit list” targeting child molesters created by Marshall days before the shooting, which Salvador testified about in 2023 at Marshall’s preliminary hearing. (Law enforcement officials have stated that they had no reason to suspect O’Brien or Shelby McCoy of such crimes.)

However, the defense objected to allowing her to testify about the document’s contents. Judge Amy Hanley then met with the attorneys in chambers, and no further questions were asked about a list on Thursday.

Marshall’s trial – which began on Monday after numerous delays – will continue on Friday in Douglas County District Court. Kemple and Deputy District Attorney David Melton are representing the state, and Bell and Jennifer Amyx represent Marshall.

Marshall, 55, has been held on a bond of $1.5 million since his arrest in 2022.