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Alleged rapist's veil of fantasies

Ex-fiancee: He said he was 'close' to Bush, Rumsfeld, & mimicked Elvis

Forrest Smith Marsalis exits store after leaving son's trial.
Forrest Smith Marsalis exits store after leaving son's trial.Read more

Jurors in the trial of Jeffrey Marsalis heard more about the macho fantasy world of the accused serial rapist when his former fiancee testified yesterday for the prosecution.

Not only did Marsalis claim to be a doctor, an astronaut and a CIA agent, but, she said, he also told her he had crawled "around caves in Afghanistan after September 11," had been entrusted by the Drug Enforcement Administration to go on trips to South America, was a "very close confidante" of President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and had "a helicopter on standby" if he needed to see the president ASAP.

Marsalis also allegedly imagined killing people as a CIA agent.

Jessika Rovell, 30, now a Philadelphia attorney and an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, testified yesterday to all this - and more - before a Common Pleas jury on the fourth day of Marsalis' trial on rape charges.

Marsalis, 34, had a handgun he named "Priscilla" and "talked to it as if he were Elvis," Rovell said. Prosecutors yesterday entered "Priscilla," a black 9 mm Beretta, into evidence.

Rovell had dated Marsalis, who lived in the Metropolitan Apartments, on 15th Street near Arch in Center City, from December 2001 to October 2004, and had become engaged to him.

That time overlapped with the period when prosecutors contend that Marsalis drugged and raped seven women from 2003 to 2005. He reportedly met six of those women on Match.com.

Rovell, who testified as a prosecution witness, is not one of the alleged rape victims.

The defense argues that the seven women consented to sex after drinking alcohol and that there is no evidence of their having been drugged.

Appearing strong and in control on the witness stand, Rovell testified that she "had no idea" Marsalis had been dating other women when she was with him.

Rovell met Marsalis through a friend while she was a second-year law student. He told her, she said, that he was an emergency- room resident at three hospitals - Hahnemann University Hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He also allegedly said he was a flight officer in the Navy Reserve.

Marsalis regularly took her to Hahnemann, she testified, where they would go to the cafeteria, the emergency-room medical-supply room, where he had sifted through supplies, and the cadaver lab.

A few days before Valentine's Day 2002, the couple spent about 30 minutes together in the cadaver lab, she testified. It was "his idea," she said under questioning by prosecutor Joseph Khan.

Marsalis was "never" denied entry, she testified. Among the exhibits prosecutors showed jurors on a projection screen was an ID badge with "M.D." after Marsalis' name and the words "Emergency Medicine" and "Hahnemann University."

Sometime in the early months of their relationship, Marsalis told her he was also a CIA agent, she said.

He did things that corroborated his story. He showed her various badges, including one purportedly belonging to the CIA.

In spring 2003, he showed her an official-looking document that he said was classified, she said. Prosecutors showed jurors the cover page on the projection screen. It read: "Proposal for Terrorism Grant" and "Jeffrey J. Marsalis, White House and CIA Special Operations Division." It was dated April 26, 1999.

Also in 2003, Marsalis introduced her to two people who appeared to know about his CIA work, she testified. One was his father, Forrest Smith Marsalis, whom she met at his house in Park City, Utah. While the father didn't say anything about his son's alleged CIA work, Marsalis "actually told me his father was aware of his association with the CIA," she said.

Forrest Marsalis has been in the courtroom each day of the trial.

Rovell also testified that Jeffrey Marsalis introduced her to a friend, Greg, who Marsalis said was being recruited into the CIA. A year later, Marsalis "told me," she testified, "he, not him personally, but he had had Greg killed."

Greg had failed some part of his CIA training, he allegedly told her, and just "knew too much."

Under questioning by defense attorney Kevin Hexstall, Rovell testified that she now knows that Greg was not killed.

Rovell testified under direct examination that around February 2002, Marsalis told her of his aspirations beyond the CIA. "He told me he was trying to get into astronaut-training school because he wanted to have something to do after he was done killing people in the CIA," she testified.

Marsalis also enjoyed a trip to Florida on Rovell's dime. After he told her he graduated from his medical-residency programs, he asked "for his graduation gift if I would take him on a Disney cruise," she said. Since she was working, she agreed.

As part of their August 2002 trip, they visited NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, where Marsalis got a photo taken of him in an orange astronaut suit, holding a white space helmet.

The photo was a "tourist thing to do," Rovell testified.

Shortly after the trip, Marsalis confided to her he wasn't actually a doctor, she testified.

"He told me that it was one of the covers given to him by the CIA," she said. *