At 6:20 a.m. on June 13, a text went from Howard’s phone to Chuck, his supervisor at the pump supply company where he was a manager: “Sorry man won’t be in today I am in the emergency room.”
Chuck asked what for. “My breathing,” came the reply. “This heat is killing me.”
That afternoon “Howard” texted one son about the new Justice League movie and asked another how he was doing. “Good just trying to survive,” he wrote. “This heat is kicking my ass.” The next morning he texted Howie, who was living under the same roof: “Morning buddy. Have a great day. Love you.”
Howie wrote back, “Love you too.”
On June 16, a text went from Howard’s phone to Marcia’s: he was leaving with a friend he’d met in rehab, heading to Texas, and would be “taking money out of the bank.” Three minutes later Marcia replied to her own message: “Seriously not surprised Don’t ever come back to this house. Ever!!”
That same day, Howard’s last paycheck, $687.72, landed in his account. Within hours, $694 was withdrawn in cash. The account was drained and overdrawn.
On June 18, Father’s Day, each of the sons got the same message from their father’s phone: he had made it safely to Houston and was staying with a friend’s brother. Happy Father’s Day.
“Hell yea,” one son wrote back. “Thanks dad and happy fathers day to you as well.”
The same morning, “Howard” texted Chuck that he had left with a buddy from rehab and was quitting. And from Marcia’s email account, an order went to Amazon for soap-making lye. It cost $12.90.
In his report, Detective Kline noted that lye is used to break down animal carcasses and human remains, and that the brown, coffee-coloured sludge found on the remains in the blue tote looked much the same. Two air purifiers were ordered in the following two weeks.
Six months of goodbyes
The texts kept coming through June. It was “hotter than balls” in Texas. He was picking up painting work to make some money. Between late June and early July, Marcia’s phone received a message from Howard’s phone saying her husband had been arrested for drunk driving and needed bail. She answered it herself: “He can rot in there for all I care. I’m not bailing him out.”
After July 7, the phone went silent.
On July 31, a new post appeared on Howard’s Facebook page. “I will reach out to people when I am ready to,” it read. “Please don’t try to contact me I need some time for myself. I have changed my phone number and will give it out when I am ready.”
One of his sons replied the next day. His father had skipped his wedding. “So whatever soul searching mission you’re on I hope it’s worth it,” he wrote, “because it’s costed you whatever piece of me was hanging on to my father.”
It was the last thing he ever said to his dad, and his dad never read it.
When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in late August, the family got word that Howard was safe. Months later Marcia posted that she was “finally getting a divorce.”
The insurance policy and the gun
The more detectives dug, the less Marcia’s “snap decision” held up.
On May 15, 2017, four weeks before the killing, someone applied online for a $30,000 Globe Life insurance policy on Howard Eubank. It took effect two days later. The beneficiary was Marcia.
On June 3, she ordered a .22 caliber handgun and ammunition online. The gun was cancelled and refunded, but the ammunition shipped and was delivered to the house on June 8. In her interview, Marcia told detectives she had then gone and bought a gun to match it.
On June 9, four days before the shooting, she withdrew $500 at an ATM and paid $143.17 in cash for a Heritage Rough Rider .22 at a gun store in North Canton. That same morning Howard texted her asking why his bank card had been declined.
And on June 13, the morning she shot him, Marcia had an appointment of her own. Two and a half hours after the time she gave detectives for the shooting, she sat down at Landmark Plastics to sign her paperwork for a new job. The HR manager told a detective that Marcia arrived on time and did not seem upset or dishevelled in any way. The meeting lasted 30 minutes.
That afternoon, someone using Howard’s phone texted the man who had replaced the windows on the house. One of his sons had used his bank card without permission, the message said, so please hold off cashing the check.
In July, an email from Howard’s account asked his retirement fund to cash out his account. The pension paperwork came to Linda Street, and in November it went back with Howard’s signature on it, five months after he died. It was clearly not his handwriting. When the case broke, the payout was already being processed. It was frozen.
“He didn’t deserve this”
The texts between Howard and Marcia in the weeks before his death did not read like a marriage in crisis. “Almost every text message sent by Howard to Marcia ends with how he loves her,” the detective wrote.
His family described a man who had been hard to live with for years. “An a**hole for sure,” Howie said of his father growing up, a heavy drinker who was rough with his sons. But after a DUI arrest and a stint in rehab, they said, he had changed. He was drinking less and was easier to be around, and he and Marcia seemed to be getting along better than they had in years.
None of the sons detectives interviewed backed her account of 24 years of physical abuse. Howie told detectives he had never seen his father lay a hand on his mother, and that he knew of times she had been the aggressor. Another son said the verbal abuse went both ways. A stepson remembered her hitting his father with a picture frame hard enough that he needed stitches.
“He was an a**hole,” the stepson said, “but he didn’t deserve this.”
Where she is now
Marcia Eubank was charged with murder that night. On December 21, 2018, she pleaded guilty to murder with a firearm specification, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse. Her defence attorney said she had been physically and mentally abused by her husband.
On February 8, 2019, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Kelly McLaughlin sentenced her to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 20 years.
“This was a very difficult situation,” Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said. “My heart goes out to the family.”
Walsh noted that Marcia had lied for six months about what happened to her husband, and that if Howie hadn’t climbed through that window, the truth might never have come out.
