A history of violence for one dysfunctional couple has come to a brutal end.
Thursday night Marnie Stark, 38, was pronounced dead in McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah after suffering lacerations to the liver believed to be the result of forced trauma at the hand of her boyfriend Jeffrey Dean White, 43, who was arrested at the time for first degree felony murder.
While White confirmed there had been a nasty fight between the two that night, both of them throwing household items, and White even choking Stark while the two had sex a midst the turmoil, neighbors told Ogden Police this was certainly not an isolated incident.
Stark’s angry, grieving family added to this, admitting they knew of the violence White inflicted on Stark for their year-and-a-half relationship, but “couldn’t make her leave.”
“We want people to know how totally, totally unnecessary it was,” Jessie Franich, Stark’s mother, told The Standard Examiner. “If a man says he’s going to stop hitting, he’s not.”
Rana Franich Aguirre, Stark’s sister, recalls stories that Stark had told her, and can only imagine what she didn’t hear was worse. “He broke her ribs, knocked her out, threw her in the closet and left her there and tried to gouge her eyes out.”
The victim’s family regrets not being more aggressive about removing Stark from the situation, and only hope other women facing the same issues will learn from this tragedy.