Marvin Gabrion

In 2013, the sentence appeal was overturned and the death penalty was reinstated. He is currently on death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

During the trial, Gabrion's defense argued that she may have been killed outside Manistee National Forest before being transported into the park to be disposed of, and therefore the murder occurred on state property instead of federal property. The jury found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Gabrion killed Timmerman inside the national forest. In 2011, Gabrion appealed both the conviction and the sentence. The defense maintained that jurors should have been told that had Gabrion been tried in state court, he would not have faced the death penalty. In his appeal, Gabrion defense argued that under the Eighth Amendment and the Federal Death Penalty Act, Gabrion was entitled to argue to the jury during the penalty phase of his trial that they should consider any "residual doubt" that he killed Timmerman inside the national forest. The conviction was upheld, but the sentence overturned.

Gabrion was tried in 2002 for the murder of Rachel Timmerman. The prosecution presented testimony from multiple witnesses describing Gabrion's propensity for violence and threatening behaviors, including accusations of other physical and sexual assaults. Two witnesses testified that their homes had been set on fire following altercations with Gabrion. Another woman described how Gabrion trained a rifle on her and her two-year-old child as she walked to her car one day. He then climbed into his own car and followed them for several miles. The disappearances of the other men surrounding the case were also admitted.

On June 3, 1997, two days before Gabrion's trial on the charge of rape, Timmerman left the house with her 11-month-old daughter Shannon, telling her family she was going on a date with a man she met at work. Her father soon received a letter stating that she planned to leave town and elope. The prosecutor and the judge presiding over the case also received letters in Timmerman's handwriting stating that the rape allegations were fabricated and that she wished to drop the charges against Gabrion.

On July 5, 1997, two fishermen found Rachel's body in Oxford Lake chained to cinder blocks and her face wrapped copiously with duct tape. According to the coroner, she was alive when she entered the lake and died from drowning.

Wayne Davis, the family friend who invited Timmerman the night she was raped, disappeared in February 1997. Davis was set to testify against Gabrion at the upcoming rape trial. Davis' residence was largely undisturbed when the disappearance was discovered aside from a stolen stereo system. It was later uncovered that Gabrion was in possession of the stereo equipment and attempted to pawn it. In July 2002, canoeists found Davis' body in Twinwood lake, another body of water in the same national park where Rachel's body was found.

John Weeks' whereabouts are also unknown. Gabrion was the last known person to see him alive in June 1997.

On August 7, 1996, Rachel Timmerman reported to Newaygo County Sheriff's department that she had been raped by Marvin Gabrion. The previous evening, she had been invited to a card game by a family friend named Wayne Davis and a classmate of Rachel's named Mikey Gabrion. Davis and Mikey Gabrion arrived to pick up Timmerman along with Gabrion's uncle Marvin. On the way to the card game, Marvin Gabrion allegedly forced Davis and Mikey Gabrion out of the car before driving off and raping Rachel. Gabrion was arrested and charged with the crime.

Gabrion is a suspect in the disappearances of several other people. The house where he was living when Rachel's body was found was owned by a man named Robert Allen. Allen was a mentally disabled transient and had been receiving social security when he went missing in 1995. Gabrion cashed Allen's checks and lived in his home until 1997. His impersonation of Allen led authorities to him following Rachel's murder when he opened a post office box in Allen's name and directed that his social security check be sent there. Gabrion was convicted of social security fraud in July 1998 for his use of Allen's checks and sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Marvin Charles Gabrion (born October 18, 1953) is an American murderer convicted of the 1997 kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman, of Cedar Springs, Michigan. Timmerman and her 18-month-old daughter, Shannon, disappeared two days before Gabrion was set to stand trial on rape charges filed by Rachel the previous summer. Rachel's body was found in Oxford Lake, weighted down by cinder blocks. Shannon remains missing, but is presumed deceased. Gabrion is also the prime suspect in the disappearances and murders of several other people, including a witness who was set to testify against him in the trial for rape, his handyman, another potential witness and family friend and an unknown man. The bodies of these people, who were witnesses to his case, are yet to be found, but various items belonging to them were recovered from his home.

The case received national attention both for the brutality of the crime and for the controversial sentence. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846, but the body of Timmerman was found within the Huron–Manistee National Forests, a federally-maintained forest, which is not within the legal jurisdiction of the State of Michigan, but is directly subject to U.S. federal law – which does authorize the death penalty. Gabrion, who was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, thus is the first person sentenced to death by a federal court located in a non-death penalty state since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988.

United States v. Gabrion is considered a landmark case for its use of the death penalty in a non-death penalty state. Capital punishment has been abolished in Michigan since 1846. Michigan was the first English-speaking jurisdiction to eliminate the death penalty. Federal jurisdiction allowed prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the case. Rachel's body was found on federal land in Manistee National Forest, allowing prosecutors to try Gabrion in federal court and seek the death penalty on federal charges, a sentence that is not provided for under Michigan law. Gabrion was the first person in the United States to receive the death penalty for a crime committed in a non-death penalty state since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 as well as the first person to be sentenced to death in the state of Michigan since 1937.