A former assistant freshman basketball coach at Platte County High School has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his girlfriend, and next faces a murder charge in the death of a fellow inmate at the Clay County Detention Center.
The life without parole sentence for Marcus J. Simms, 36, of Lee’s Summit, was announced on Dec. 5 in Clay County.
In October, Simms was found guilty in the 2014 killing of his girlfriend, Michelle Boldridge, in Kansas City in Clay County. Judge Janet Sutton ordered the sentences to run consecutively.
Simms had worked as an assistant coach at Platte County High School, coaching freshmen from October of 2011 to February of 2014, just two months before his girlfriend’s murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for Boldridge’s death and 100 years for armed criminal action in that matter, and to seven years for tampering with a motor vehicle arising from a subsequent car theft.
Now, Simms still faces a charge that he murdered a fellow inmate in the Clay County Detention Center on May 29, 2017.
A Clay County grand jury in early 2018 indicted Simms in the jailhouse strangulation of 26-year-old Brian Parsi at the jail in Clay County. Jury trial in that case is scheduled for June 15, according to court documents.
Authorities have not released details of what prompted the confrontation between the two inmates. Parsi was being held on a drug charge.
According to court documents after killing his girlfriend Boldridge, age 31, in her apartment in the 7900 block of North Hickory Street Simms drove 11 miles to the Liberty Public School Bus Barn at 801 Kent St. at 7:30 a.m. on April 30, 2014.
Authorities say Simms roamed the parking lot naked and encountered a bus driver. The female driver observed blood on Simms’s left hand and a cell phone in his right hand. When she told him to leave the premises, Simms said: “You don’t understand, someone just killed my girlfriend.”
Authorities say Simms tried to enter a building located on the grounds of the school bus barn. Unable to gain access into the building, he jumped up and down several times.
Court documents allege Simms located a silver 2003 Chrysler Town and Country minivan unlocked with the keys on the floorboard in the front parking lot of the bus barn.
The owner of the vehicle told authorities she left keys in the vehicle while she drove a school bus so her daughter could drive the minivan to Maple Woods Community College.
Police says Simms left the area leaving behind a 2005 Ford Focus that he parked near the Probation and Parole Office in Liberty. Authorities say the steering column and gear shift were covered with dried blood.
Minutes later, police responded to a car having left the roadway along Hwy. 152 near I-435 inside the city limits of Parkville. Police said Simms was outside the vehicle and distraught. He was taken to a nearby hospital, though he had no visible physical injuries, and was later taken to jail.
Officers located a human eyeball in the car Simms had driven. Simms’s DNA was found in that car, authorities said.
Authorities said Boldridge had died from a snapped neck and multiple stab wounds and was missing an eye.