Life in prison for Beaufort man convicted in ‘senseless’ murder of NJ gas station clerk
A Beaufort native with a prolific criminal history across the east coast will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of a New Jersey gas station attendant just days before Christmas 2018. The man and his accomplice were arrested in Beaufort County following a nearly two-week manhunt after the fatal armed robbery.
Marcus A. Wright, 27, was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole for the first-degree murder charge, according to Middlesex County prosecutors. He was found guilty of the killing in September, while his accomplice — Beaufort resident Olya Quinnam, 26 — pleaded guilty in 2019 to armed robbery, receiving 15 years in prison.
Police in Edison, N.J. responded to a Speedway gas station the morning of Dec. 20, 2018, finding a 38-year-old clerk shot dead inside. Later investigation revealed Quinnam waited outside while a masked Wright entered the store, holding the employee at gunpoint and demanding the cash register drawer.
The attendant handed over the money, security footage indicated, but Wright still fired a single fatal bullet at the man. Quinnam drove the duo’s getaway car before they traveled south in an attempt to evade authorities. Eight days after the murder, the cash register drawer was found discarded on a nearby road.
Loved ones said the 38-year-old murder victim, John Bertram, was an “extremely loyal,” hardworking man who took the overnight shift at the store to help pay property taxes on the home he inherited after his father’s death.
“It’s such a senseless thing what happened that night,” Bertram’s lifelong friend told CBS News following a court proceeding in September. “It’s just unbelievable.”
A long history of offenses in S.C.
Awaiting extradition to New Jersey after his arrest in South Carolina, Wright battered his cellmate to death during a dispute at Ridgeville’s Lieber Correctional Institution in September 2019. Officials suspected he “used personal weapons to cause severe injuries to the victim’s face and head,” killing him from blunt force trauma.
Wright pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the slaying in late 2021, earning a five-year sentence at the S.C. Department of Corrections, court records show. He served about two years of that term before receiving his life sentence for the New Jersey murder.
Prior to his two homicides, Wright garnered a list of lesser convictions in Beaufort County. In 2013, while still a minor, he pleaded guilty to two third-degree burglary charges and received five years probation under the Youthful Offender Act.
Over the next two years, he pleaded guilty to larceny, contraband in prison and a second-degree burglary charge, which totaled to an 11-year sentence. He was released under parole in June 2019 — just six months before the fatal armed robbery up the coast.
It was not immediately clear where Wright would serve his life sentence.
