"I lost my child, and then right after that, he threw me out of my own house," she says, fighting back tears. "I really feel violated."
In a city full of accusations against Wallace, the most serious of all might be his own sister's tale of betrayal.
City of Homestead
Former Homestead mayor Roscoe Warren (left), an unnamed youth, and Mayor Otis Wallace at a Martin Luther King Day ceremony.
Michael E. Miller
South Dade High School teacher Israel Andrews in front of city hall last month.
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Marshall and Wallace were never close growing up. He was 13 years older and raised mostly by his grandparents. By the time Marshall was born, their mother had remarried and found more comfortable work as a city clerk. "I think that he resented that my mother raised me," Marshall says. "He was always away at school. I had to be reminded sometimes that I had a brother."
She was 20 and pregnant when Wallace won his first mayoral election. "We were proud of him," she remembers. "People thought that he was a good man back then."
Marshall gave birth to a son, Isiah. But her club foot hurt too much to return to her job as a nurse's aide. She went to her newly empowered brother for help. Instead of giving her a desk job, Wallace assigned his crippled sister to feeding the ducks in Fasulo Park. Twice every day she had to hose avian shit out of the park's pavilion. "It was just something to push me off," she says. She was eventually transferred to another job, but by then her health was failing, so she raised her son on her disability check.
While Wallace grew rich and accrued power, Marshall struggled to get by, and her son began getting into trouble. Isiah Marshall was arrested more than a dozen times and convicted of grand theft auto and obstructing an investigation in 2007.
On July 10, 2008, Gayle picked up Isiah's son for the day to watch her grandchild. Isiah was distracted and worried. "I'm a target," he told her. "If anything happens to me, it'll be the police."
It was the last time she saw him. Two days later, Isiah was shot and killed outside a local nightclub by Fabian Owens, an off-duty Florida City cop who had been fired from the Miami-Dade Police Department the previous year.
A police report says Isiah hit Owens twice with his car, leaving the officer afraid for his life. But internal affairs records show Owens had another potential motive: Isiah had just stolen his car speakers. Owens unloaded five bullets into Isiah at close range — but prosecutors later cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.
At the funeral, Wallace said Isiah was a "good man" and "the apple of Gayle's eye." But Marshall believes that her brother stonewalled her requests for an investigation. "What was [Owens] doing getting hired right after he was suspended from Metro-Dade?" she asks. Marshall thinks Florida City Police Chief Pedro Taylor — Wallace's godson — was doing someone a favor. "But he killed my child," she says.
Marshall didn't initially blame her brother for Isiah's death. But when Wallace suddenly evicted her from her childhood home last August 14, she began to rethink things.
According to police reports, Wallace was the one to call the cops on his sister. He said he had power of attorney over the residence, even though he had never lived there. Marshall says if their ailing mother gave Wallace power of attorney, it was to take care of family properties in Georgia, not to dispossess his own sister.
Marshall was distraught by the eviction, but she has now put her faith in God — and the current FBI investigation.
(Wallace says he has no sympathy for his sister. "I can't believe that Gayle would stoop so low as to talk to you. My sister felt that we should just give her a free house. That's nice work if you can get it.")
As Marshall finishes her tale, there's a knock on her door. A young girl with dirty hair comes in to buy one of Marshall's pickled eggs for 50 cents. Marshall's cousin, Isaac Booker, fishes it out with a slotted spoon.
"He has everything," Marshall says, returning to the subject of her brother and the eviction. "Why did he need my house?"
Even now, she is conflicted over what should happen to Wallace. "I could forgive him," she admits. "But if he's done wrong, then he should be punished. I just want justice. He ain't above the law."
"Yeah, he is," Booker snarls.
