Notorious killer Marsh dies in jail

Double killer Rufus Junior Marsh, a career criminal who spent just 18 months out of jail since he was 14, has died in prison.

Marsh, 53, died in Wanganui Prison on Tuesday last week despite attempts to revive him, the The Dominion Post reported.

The cause of death was unknown but was not thought to be suspicious.

Marsh had been serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of Justice Department clerk Diane Miller in 1986, which followed a lifetime of more than 25 convictions and nearly 40 years in jail.

In 1975, five days after being released from jail for robbery, Marsh, then 18, and a 16-year-old accomplice, Dennis Luke, kicked an elderly man to death in Hopper St in Wellington.

Marsh was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter. Luke was convicted of murder.

In jail, Marsh attacked two guards with a weapon he had made out of razor blades, earning another 15 months imprisonment, and five days out of jail in 1983, he tried to rape a woman at knifepoint in Auckland. He served one year of a two-year sentence.

After being freed again, Marsh earned convictions for theft, assault, assaulting a constable, and robbery. He was jailed for aggravated robbery in 1985.

After his release in February 1986, he had a job with a Wellington removal company, which he used to case addresses of women.

Ms Miller, 32, was home sick in bed when Marsh entered her Mt Victoria home through an unlocked back door. He beat her on the head with a brick then stabbed her at least 15 times with a carving knife.

Ms Miller's friend, Lyndsey Gilbert fought to keep Marsh behind bars as long as possible and said his death was the welcome end of a dark chapter.

"Each year, it's quite fearful to think, 'what if he gets out?'. I was always worried he would get out," she said.

- NZPA