Leader Of Spokane Gypsy Clan Grover Marks Dies At Age 69
Grover Marks, patriarch of the well-known Spokane Gypsy family, died Saturday night.
Marks was 69.
A Deaconess Medical Center nursing supervisor said Marks died of undisclosed natural causes at about 10 p.m.
Marks led the family through an as-yet unresolved $40 million lawsuit against the city of Spokane after police raided his home and the home of his son, Jimmy Marks, in 1986.
He became a celebrity. And the story kept going.
That lawsuit even made national news in 1994, when CBS News’ “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung” did a story on the dispute, and when Spokane police seized videotape of a Marks family argument from a CBS crew. Marks was accused of witness tampering in that incident but was cleared last summer.
The twists and turns of the case not only made Marks a well-known figure in Spokane, it also put his family in the local spotlight. The brouhaha also caused rifts in his family.
Marks walked with a cane, but could be as loud as a cannon. “They’ve ruined our family,” Marks once told a reporter in 1996 after being accused of witness tampering. “and now we get this - more cheese and baloney.”
, DataTimes