By Chris Parker

tneditor@tnonline.com

Michael D. Marchalk told a Schuylkill County jury Wednesday he sat in his father’s truck in the Walmart parking lot in Hometown on June 18, 2017, smoking crack, before driving to his father’s Barnesville home and beating him to death with an aluminum baseball bat.

He would tell jurors he spent his childhood trying in vain to please his father and get him to love him. The bad situation worsened after the suicide of his mother when he was 17, and he started using drugs and alcohol to numb the emotional pain.

The jury is expected to decide Thursday whether Marchalk, 38, is guilty of first, second, and third degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, theft, theft of a motor vehicle, access device fraud and recklessly endangering another person in the death of well-known defense lawyer Gary D. Marchalk, 60.

He is represented by Public Defender Andrea L. Thompson. Deputy Attorney General Rebecca A. Elo and Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher P. Phillips are prosecuting the case.

Marchalk testifies

Marchalk testified in his own defense Wednesday, the third day of his trial before Schuylkill County President Judge William E. Baldwin.

He recalled in detail the events of that weekend, when he stayed with his father with plans to entering drug rehab that Monday morning.

The two had always been at odds. Marchalk told jurors he could never please his father, who was emotionally distant and verbally — although not physically — abusive.

On June 18, 2017, Father’s Day, Marchalk had earlier asked his father for money to buy some heroin to prevent him from getting sick from withdrawal before enter rehab.

His father tossed about $38 at him, saying it was all he had. Gary Marchalk told his son he could use his truck.

Michael Marchalk took the money, texted his drug dealer in Hazleton, and drove there. The dealer, called “Rabbit,” gave him crack instead of the heroin he wanted.

He called his brother, Matthew Marchalk, also a drug addict, and asked him if he could trade him the crack for Suboxone, a drug used to replace opioids for addicts in recovery.

But Matthew said no. Michael told him he was afraid to go back to their father’s house for fear there would be a “big argument.”

He drove to the Walmart parking lot and smoked the crack, and eventually decided to go back to his father’s house.

There, Gary Marchalk was in the attached garage, the garage door open.

Michael Marchalk told him about being given the wrong drug.

“Get the (expletive) out. You’re (expletive) dead to me,” his father told him.

Michael Marchalk got back in the truck, but saw the garage door open again, so he figured it was an invitation to stay.

He and his father sat in the living room for a while, talking, and Gary gave him back the truck keys and went upstairs to his bedroom.

After awhile, Michael went upstairs, planning to ask his father for more money.

Gary, clad only in jeans and socks, was lying on his bed, the baseball bat he always kept next to him was at his side.

“He sat up real quick,” Michael said. “I don’t know what sparked the whole thing.”

Gary grabbed the bat and swung it at his son, who put up his arms to block it.

Gary hit him twice with the bat, he said.

“It stung a little bit. I didn’t feel anything at the time,” he said.

Michael grabbed a nearby iron from an ironing board and threw it at his father. It missed, landing on the bed.

The two struggled, and Michael wrested the bat from his father.

“I hit him maybe five times, maybe. Maybe six. One of those,” he testified.

On Tuesday, a forensic pathologist testified Gary Marchalk’s head was crushed by the blows.

“When he swung at me, I couldn’t believe it. I was so mad that he did it, kind of like a disbelief over the whole thing,” Michael said.

The whole incident took about 30 seconds, he said.

His father rolled off the bed onto the floor.

“It seemed like he was dead. I’m not 100 percent sure,” he told the jury. “I was scared.”

He said he took his father’s wallet and car keys, and drove the car to Philadelphia, where he bought heroin, and then took a bus to Atlantic City.

State police tracked his journey via his father’s credit and debit cards, and he was taken into custody by Atlantic City police on June 22.

Michael said he got rid of the cards in Atlantic City, and flushed the car keys down a toilet.

Losing his mother

Michael described his mother’s suicide, saying he was awakened by his father on Labor Day morning in 1997. His father said his mother, Mary Ann Marchalk, had left the house and he was going to look for her.

Michael went to look, too, and found her, slumped on a concrete pier of the High Bridge just outside Tamaqua. He ran to a nearby house and called 911.

He then called his father, whom he said yelled at him for calling 911.

Gary Marchalk arrived at the bridge, and gave his wife CPR until Michael told him to stop. Emergency crews took her to a Coaldale hospital, where she died.

Michael said he screamed, overcome with emotion. His father told him to stop because it was embarrassing him.

His mother, he said was a buffer between him and his father.

“When my Mom died, it was like I died,” he said.

His father blamed him for her death, and he began using heroin and drinking alcohol.

“I didn’t care if I lived or died,” he said.

Troubled past

He got in trouble: for stealing a car, robbing a bank, for drug offenses, for fighting with his girlfriend and with his younger brother, Matthew.

He moved to Pittsburgh, living in a house paid for by his father and his father’s second wife, Linda Marchalk, until November 2016, when he moved back to Schuylkill County after he and his girlfriend broke up.

He lived off and on with Matthew in Frackville, until he kicked him out.

Michael denied his brother Matthew’s earlier testimony that Michael told him he had stood at the foot of his father’s bed in early May with a knife, contemplating whether to kill him.

Michael described his father as never saying he loved him, never hugged him; as being a constant competitor.

Others testify

That testimony was bolstered by that of defense witness Ann Marie Calabrese, Mary Ann Marchalk’s younger sister.

Her testimony included statements that her parents made her sister marry Gary because she was pregnant, and that Gary Marchalk resented both Mary Ann and Michael, treating them both poorly.

He failed to get his sons counseling after her sister’s suicide, and he paid for their housing and other things as a way to control them, she said.

She recalled an incident when she was a child and Michael was a toddler. They were at their grandmother’s house and Gary tripped Michael, who cried. He told the boy to stop crying or he would give him something to cry about, she said.

The Marchalk’s neighbor, Deborah Tamagini, testified that Gary Marchalk used to yell at Michael so loudly he could be heard a block away. He was hard on Michael, never satisfied with the boy’s accomplishments.

Days before the killing, she sat with Michael outside her house, talking.

“Michael cried about his life, and how he wished it could have been different,” she said.

He asked to stay with her, but she had to say no because members of her own family were struggling with drug addiction.

Jurors also listened to testimony from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Larry A. Rotenberg, who said Michael Marchalk meets the criteria for a classification of diminished capacity because for the past 20 years, he was always either high, withdrawing from drugs, and seeking drugs, and so did not have the capacity to form the intent to kill.

“Drug-seeking behavior informed everything he did,” Rotenberg said.

The jury also heard from Pottsville psychologist Dr. David F. O’Connell, who said Michael Marchalk’s drug addiction caused mental, emotional and behavioral deterioration that affected his decision making abilities.’

Drug withdrawal such as Michael experienced as he craved heroin that night causes irritability, and suppressed emotions to boil to the surface.