Convicted sex criminal Jeffrey J. Marsalis got a 10-day tour of the United States on his way from prison in Pennsylvania to Blaine County where he faces a 2005 Sun Valley rape charge.
Marsalis, 35, arrived in Hailey on Tuesday morning following a cross-country prison bus trip that took him to Kentucky, Texas and California before he was flown to Idaho.
He was arraigned later Tuesday in Blaine County 5th District Court on a 2006 grand jury indictment that charges him with rape. Marsalis, a former Sun Valley Co. security officer, allegedly drugged and raped a then-21-year-old co-worker at his Sun Valley apartment on Oct. 9, 2005.
Judge Robert J. Elgee scheduled a jury trial, which is expected to last about five days, to begin on Jan. 5.
Marsalis is being held at the new jail at the Blaine County Public Safety Facility. Prisoners were transferred from the old jail to the new jail on Monday.
Marsalis' trip to Idaho started on about Aug. 9 at the Forest State Correctional Institution in Marienville, Pa., where he is serving a 21-year prison sentence for convictions in 2007 of two counts of felony sexual assault and one misdemeanor count of unlawful restraint. The convictions followed a trial in Philadelphia where Marsalis was accused of date raping seven women.
Trial testimony indicated that Marsalis posed at times as a doctor, an astronaut or a CIA agent when in reality he was a part-time nursing student.
Marsalis was transported to Idaho by US Extradition Service LLC, a nationwide prisoner transport company headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Gordon Brooks, US Extradition president and director of operations, said Marsalis was first transported from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. From there he was taken to Fort Worth, Texas. The next stop was Stockton, Calif.
"We drove him into California and flew him out of there," Brooks said.
Brooks said US. Extradition typically transports several prisoners at a time in 12-seat prison buses. For example, Brooks said, three other prisoners were picked up in Pennsylvania at the same time as Marsalis, while two others were added along the way in New York.
"It has to do with logistics," said Brooks. "We have other people on the buses being transported. "We don't have prisoners every day going to Idaho."
Brooks described Marsalis as a "tall white guy wearing a jump suit."
"He was a very intelligent guy," Brooks said. "He seemed like military."
Jeffrey J. Marsalis
