Ron Welch
Muskingum County Prosecutor
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, June 5, 2026
Columbus Human and Drug Trafficker Will be 99 If Released
Zanesville – Convicted human trafficker Cottrell Marshall Jr. stood before Judge Kelly Cottrill Friday as Assistant Prosecutor Lucas Howard read out the facts in a peculiar case of drug distribution directed in real-time from prison.
Cottrill sentenced Marshall immediately to sixteen (16) years of prison consecutive (one after the other) to the sentence he is already serving out of a prostitution and human trafficking conviction. In that case, Judge Colleen O’Donnell sentenced Marshall to forty (40) mandatory years in prison.
Marshall will be over 99 years old if he survives to the end of his term.
The Facts:
Agents with the Zanesville / Muskingum County Joint Drug Unit and the CODE Task Force began working a case earlier this year involving a man from Columbus transporting and delivering fentanyl to local Zanesville drug dealers.
During the course of their investigation, they were able to prove that man, Mark Baylor, conducted drug transactions in the vicinity of schools in the city of Zanesville.
When Baylor was arrested, he was on the phone. Following up on their investigation, the detectives learned that Baylor was speaking with a prisoner on a recorded prison phone line.
Detectives spent hours listening to calls and identifying a pattern of Marshall directing Baylor on how much, and to whom he should serve drugs in the Zanesville area.
As a result, Marshall was convicted of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a felony of the first degree, money laundering in two counts, felonies of the third degree, and trafficking in drugs, a felony of the third degree.
“The reason our drug unit is so frustrating to career criminals is that they are never satisfied with just catching the first guy,” according to Assistant Prosecutor John Litle who handled the matter along with APA Howard. “They always work the case up the ladder to find the sources and directors of criminal conduct. Marshall’s first time in Muskingum County was this week, when he was ultimately convicted and sentenced.”
According to Litle, “He won’t be back.”
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