Phyllius Marks was a professional criminal that was known for the "Aldera Stranglings" and for his prominent role in the opening battle of the Great Galactic War. He was presumed to be Alderaanian, but his birth records containing his home planet and birth year were destroyed. He was a arrested in Aldera for strangling and killing ten Alderaanians, including a member of the Royal Court of Alderaan. He took part in the Battle over Telos IV as the Rear Commander and second-in-Command to Zell Coo-Neo (the person the Crisis on Telos IV and Dontamo was named after). In the heat of the battle, he betrayed his commander and destroyed Zell's flagship. Zell made it out alive long enough to tell Scott Borek who Phyllius Marks was. Marks was captured after the battle and was sentenced to life in prison, but only after aiding Borek in finding the person behind the attacks that opened the Galactic War.
Biography[]
Crime spree[]
Phyllius Marks traveled to the capital city of Alderaan named Aldera, when he was said to be in his early thirties. He tried to find work as an ironsmith, but could not find a job as an apprentice or master smith. He quickly ran through all his credits and was forced to live on the street after an eviction.
He turned to crime after a local nobleman offered him a chance to destroy a "mutual enemy." The enemy turned out to be an ironsmith who turned done his application. He accepted the offer and decided to use a method that was harder to trace, he strangled the man with an iron electrical coil that was from the store and took the coil with him, this prevented the authorities from tracing the weapon back to a living witness and from finding any residual evidence, like fingerprints or a slug shell. He attacked seven other smiths in Aldera without a complication.
The last smith that remained alive in Aldera, was the smith located a few kilometers off of the Royal Palace of Alderaan. He killed the smith quickly, but before he could steal away into the shadows, a customer came back into the main chamber from the refresher. She saw the dead ironsmith and Marks and yelled for help.
Marks was able to suffocate the shocked civilian to death before she could run out into the street. When he checked her identification, it showed that she was of the Royal Court. He decided not to run, because of the evidence against him would deny an alibi (fingerprints) and he knew the manhunt for him would find him before he could get away from the system. He hoped that voluntary surrender would lessen his sentence. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Alderaanian courts, since they did not believe in loss of life, with the option for the death penalty from the Federal Court decision.
The Federal Courts upheld the Alderaanian's decision, and Marks was transferred to the prison on the Dontamo system.