Man accused of raping, killing student says he’s innocent
A man accused of raping and murdering an Idaho college student ​and ​then fleeing to New York City insisted he was innocent Wednesday as authorities picked him up from a Manhattan courtroom for extradition.
“Are you a reporter?” asked Bruce Marchant, 61, as officials led him into an elevator.
“I’m not guilty of rape and kidnapping,” he declared, donning spectacles and sporting a bushy silver beard.
In December, Boise police tracked Marchant to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Kips Bay and arrested him for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sierra Bush, 18, in Boise, Idaho.
The Boise State University honors student disappeared Sept. 27, and a month later her nude body turned up in a creek about 30 miles north of the city, according to the Idaho Statesman.
Marchant said he didn’t flee to New York because he had committed the horrific crime — the timing was just a coincidence. “No one was pursuing me,” he said of when he decided to head to the Big Apple.
Sierra died of asphyxiation, according to the Boise County coroner’s office.
Sierra’s father, Phil Bush, rented the ex-con a property he owned a half mile from the duplex he shared with his daughter, the Statesman reported.
The grieving father previously said he suspected Marchant might be responsible, but he didn’t want to “wrongly accuse anyone.”
Marchant had spent 20 years in Idaho prisons for armed robbery, assault and arson.