John Laurence Markle (December 25, 1941 — November 16, 1987) was an American murderer. Born to actress Mercedes McCambridge and novelist William Fifield, Markle took the surname of McCambridge's second husband, film and television director Fletcher Markle, who adopted the boy.
Markle, said to be brilliant, had an uneven home life as a young person. He earned a master’s from UCLA in 1968, and married Christina Mull in July of that year. He continued graduate studies in economics at UCLA, ultimately earning a PhD in 1973. By that time, he had joined Salomon Brothers’ Dallas, TX, office, starting in 1972.
Markle and his wife had two daughters, and the family moved to Little Rock in 1979 after he went to work for Stephens, Inc., as essentially a one-man futures-trading department. Markle became a vice president after only eight months (faster than any previous associate), and the early performances of his accounts were exceptional. Friends called him a devoted family man, although ...
