NEW ORLEANS, May 31 (UPI) -- A non-commissioned Navy officer wanted in the stabbing death of his wife in Louisiana was arrested in Virginia, police said.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service arrested David Hugh Marx, 43, a chief petty officer, in Norfolk hours after the body of Mary Lou Marx, 51, was discovered in the Marx family's New Orleans home. He was expected to be charged with first-degree murder, The (New Orleans) Time-Picayune reported Monday.
"The perpetrator stabbed the victim, possibly with an ink pen, in the chest and nose," and there was no evidence of a forced entry, police records indicated.
The victim died of those puncture wounds, New Orleans police officer Hilal Williams said.
Navy spokeswoman Terry Davis said she didn't know what Marx, who formerly had been stationed in New Orleans, was doing in the city Wednesday when the body was discovered.
Marx's wife and 12-year-old son had been waiting for Marx's upcoming retirement from the Navy and were anticipating a "perfect new life together," said Edith McDonald-Loose, a next-door neighbor and friend of Mary Lou Marx.
"If he didn't want to be with her then he should have just gotten a divorce. She had no idea. I don't think anyone was more surprised that this happened to her than she," the neighbor said.
The couple's son was placed in the care of the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services, the newspaper reported.
Mary Lou Marx did not seem to have close family members other than a stepmother in Texas, the neighbor said.
The boy "is pretty much an orphan," she said, adding he had an "excellent" relationship with his father.
