He Said, They Said

She was unable to work because of the surgery she’d just had. When Marsalis called her back, she told him he would have to pay for the expensive shot she’d decided on — she’d learned of a medication that induces miscarriage — or she’d go to police. He agreed, she said, but only if he went with her. She refused. He was adamant. She relented.

Several weeks later — she’d had to wait for the fetus to develop further before the medication would work — Marsalis showed up in scrubs and a military-style bomber jacket with “Dr. Jeffrey J. Marsalis, Flight Surgeon” printed across his left breast. She met him on the front steps. She drove. He was outgoing and warm, she says. She felt nauseated and barely spoke.

At the clinic, he stayed in the waiting room while she received the shot. Still on crutches, she hobbled back to the waiting room, where Marsalis told her he’d only pay half. She pulled out her debit card, said nothing. On the ride home, she was silent. He was, once again, kind and caring. He informed her that the medication she’d just received was a chemotherapy agent “we use in the hospital.” It would be two years before authorities contacted her about Marsalis. “You know,” she says he told her in her car, “it’s pretty cool that you’re carrying something of me inside you.”

Several days later, Katie was sitting on the couch when she felt a violent sensation in her abdomen. She rushed to the bathroom. Scared and crying, she miscarried in the toilet.

She wasn’t the only one from Match.com to become pregnant by Marsalis. According to court documents, another woman who hasn’t accused him of raping her — a four-foot-11-inch disabled woman from Northeast Philadelphia — gave birth in 2005, despite his fierce protestations, to a child, whom he’s never met.


IN HIS CLOSING argument, Marsalis’s attorney, Kevin Hexstall, put the credibility of Marsalis’s many victims on trial. In language that clearly pandered to the primarily African-American jury, Hexstall, who is black, told the jurors the women “wanted to get down” with “Dr. Jeff.” “This is how she gets down,” he said, and added that the jurors “know how this goes down.” He called one accuser a “Match.com veteran. She’s been on Match.com seven years. This is her hustle. She does Match.com.”

Hexstall conceded that his client had told tall tales, that he might even seem unlikeable. But, he told the jurors, “He’s not a rapist. He’s a playboy. Everybody knows him, he might have taken it a little further with the stethoscope than you might expect. But he’s just a playboy.”

He said that Marsalis had been punished enough for the sins of his embellishment. He called the women liars. “You need to stop saying that a criminal courtroom is the forum for a woman who regrets having sex with you and who is upset because you lied about your profession,” he told the jury. “Throw a brick through his car window, slash his tires, get online and tell the rest of the world he’s a liar, not a doctor. But you don’t come up with this kind of nonsense and play with this man’s life.”