The Murder of Marlene Oakes

The story of Marlene Oakes, is a deeply unsettling one. It involves a young twenty-five-year-old woman, a mother of two young children, who found out a terrible secret about her husband. After trying to leave with her two young kids, Marlene Oakes’ husband decided it was better to murder her, and dismember his wife, than lose custody of the children in a nasty divorce.

Marlene Oakes was considered missing for decades, and not properly laid to rest, because her husband, Bill Major, had disposed of her body. The only piece that was discovered was part of her skull. Although her family mourned her, presumed that she was dead after she’d been gone for so long, it wasn’t identified as Marlene Oakes’ skull until 2001, by using mitochondrial DNA. Her identity eventually became known, and Bill Major ended up going to prison, after Marlene’s daughter spent a great deal of her adult years trying to solve her mother’s murder.

In October 1980, Marlene and Bill Major lived in the rural town of Verona, Kentucky, in a small trailer with their two young children — Donald, and LaLana. The couple had been married for nine years, and Marlene had only been sixteen years old when they’d gotten married.

Helen Marlene Oakes was born on December 7, 1955. Marlene was the daughter of Willie ‘Billy’ Craig Oakes, and Lorraine Mildred McQueary. She went by her middle name, and also by her married name of ‘Marlene Major’.

William Alexander ‘Bill’ Major was born on January 6, 1944. He worked as a mechanic, and fixed…