Mason said Washington had been involved with Marks for about a year and from what she could tell, he was exactly what the single mother was looking for. It was her understanding that Marks was unhappy in his marriage and going through a divorce, details Washington overlooked because she believed he was such a great person. 

 Assistant principal Robert Marks now arrested on murder in death of educator Lyntell Washington 
 
 Assistant principal Robert Marks now arrested on murder in death of educator Lyntell Washington 
 
 The attorney for the educator arrested Friday in the killing of a pregnant colleague whose decomposed body was found in a ditch earlier this week said his client had nothing to do with the woman’s disappearance or death. 
 
 Baton Rouge police, however, have said an apparent affair between Robert Marks and Lyntell Washington could have soured recently, possibly giving Marks a motive in the slaying. 
 
 Marks, 39, was booked Friday on counts of first-degree murder and first-degree feticide in the killing of Washington, a 40-year-old coworker at a Baton Rouge middle school. Washington was seven months pregnant with a child believed fathered by Marks. 
 
 Marks, an assistant principal at Brookstown Middle Magnet School, initially was arrested last week in the kidnapping and desertion of Washington’s 3-year-old daughter, who was found wandering alone in a parking lot. The discovery — along with statements the girl later made in interviews with investigators — led police to search for Washington, whose body was located Tuesday in a sugar cane field ditch in Iberville Parish. 
 
 Police are still investigating a motive because Marks has not been cooperating in the investigation, telling detectives little more than admitting he knew Washington, said Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, a Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman. 
 
 More On This Topic Baton Rouge coroner: Body found Tuesday in sugar cane field is missing school administrator 
 
 Marks made no comment Friday as police escorted him to the car that took him to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison despite a number of questions from reporters. 
 
 “We continue to press him for information and still no answer and still no emotion,” McKneely said. “This is a heinous and senseless crime.” 
 
 Lionel Lon Burns, Marks’ attorney, said his client has asserted his right to remain silent and to speak with a lawyer. But the police apparently kept trying to elicit statements from the defendant, revealing in a police report Marks’ alleged admission of an affair with Washington, Burns said. 
 
 Asked whether Marks and Washington had an affair, Burns said he is not addressing “any of the sensationalism as alleged by the Baton Rouge Police Department.” 
 
 “(Marks’) wife firmly stands behind (him), and she asserts his innocence, as does his entire family,” Burns said. 
 
 Police have speculated a motive could be that Marks did not want anyone to know that Washington was pregnant with his child. Investigators believe Washington wanted Marks to accept responsibility for the child, but he wanted to keep it in the dark. 
 
 “He didn’t want anyone to know,” McKneely said. 
 
 In a text message to Marks, Washington asks if he was trying to avoid his responsibility for “our unborn child,” according to a police affidavit. Police said this shows Marks was aware that Washington was pregnant. 
 
 Burns also criticized the Baton Rouge Police Department, saying it was “reckless” for authorities to publish the statements of a young child. Washington’s 3-year-old daughter, who was found on June 9 near her mother’s car in a parking lot, told police “Mr. Robbie” hurt her mother, who was “in the lake” and now “sleeping,” according to a police report. 
 
 The car had blood inside, and the search for Washington began soon after. 
 
 A woman’s badly decomposed body was found Tuesday in a sugar cane field ditch between Roseland and Ramah, an area police searched to no avail on June 10. Cellphone records show Marks and Washington were in that area about 9:45 p.m. on the night she went missing and 15 minutes later traveled to Newcastle Avenue in Baton Rouge, where the toddler was found roaming, police have said. 
 
 Dr. William “Beau” Clark, the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner, said Thursday that dental records confirmed the body is Washington’s. The affidavit also says a sandal found on the body matched a sandal found in the abandoned car. 
 
 An autopsy conducted Wednesday showed Washington was shot in the head, but McKneely said police are still not sure where the shooting may have taken place. No gun has been recovered. 
 
 Burns, the attorney for Marks, noted the child told police her mother was “in the lake,” but Washington’s body was found in a field. 
 
 “Who was present with that child when any statement was made to law enforcement, and where is the memorialization of that statement?” Burns asked, calling on authorities to produce a video of the child’s interview. 
 
 Burns said Marks is now being kept for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. 
 
 “The victim’s body was just discovered almost two days ago,” Burns said. “We express our sympathy for her and her child, who is now without her mother.” 
 
 Washington, whose friends have described her as a generous, devoted colleague, was an instructional specialist at Brookstown. Marks, assistant principal of the same school, was placed on administrative leave last week after his initial arrest. 
 
 “Ms. Washington was a treasured member of our team and will be remembered for the impact she had on the many lives she touched through her work in our district,” Warren Drake, superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish schools, wrote in a statement released Thursday. “We will continue to offer support to Ms. Washington’s coworkers and students during this difficult time.” 
 
 Burns described Washington’s slaying as a “tragedy” that also is affecting students at Brookstown. 
 
 “The children are following this case, and the children are also victimized because they lost two leaders in that school,” he said. 

 A badly decomposed woman’s body was found Tuesday in an Iberville Parsh sugarcane field near where authorities had been searching for 40-year-old Baton Rouge school administrator missing since Thursday. 
 
 But authorities say DNA testing and an autopsy will need to be done to determine if the body is Lyntell Washington, the woman they’ve been seeking. 
 
 “I don’t want to be premature and say that it is her. We know it’s a female. That’s all I can say at this time,” Baton Rouge Police spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely told reporters at noon Tuesday approximately a mile from where the body was found. 
 
 The search for Washington began Thursday after her 3-year-old daughter was found wandering alone in a parking lot near her mother’s abandoned car in Baton Rouge. Blood was found inside the vehicle. 
 
 The next day, Baton Rouge Police arrested Robert Marks, a 39-year-old assistant principal at the Baton Rouge school where Washington worked. Marks was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail on counts of aggravated kidnapping and desertion of the child. 
 
 He was accused of driving Washington’s child around Wednesday night and leaving the girl before she was discovered alone Thursday morning in a parking lot. 
 
 Marks, who is married to another woman, and Washington, who is seven months pregnant, were believed to have been romantically involved, police have said. They both work at Brookstown Magnet Honors Academy, a middle school, although Marks was put on administrative leave after his arrest. 
 
 The body was discovered around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday by sugarcane workers spraying pesticide near a ditch neighboring a sprawling sugarcane field off La. 76 in Iberville Parish, police said. 
 
 The area is approximately four miles from the swamps and secluded forests near Ramah where the Baton Rouge Police Department led an extensive search for Washington on Friday with the help of law enforcement from East Baton Rouge and Iberville parishes. Law enforcement officers combed through the area on boats, ATVs and a helicopter. 
 
 Not seeing the video below? Click here. 
 
 Authorities targeted the area after Marks’ and Washington’s cellphone records indicated they were both in Ramah at 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday before returning to Baton Rouge fifteen minutes later. The records also showed Marks then traveled to the Newcastle Avenue area, where Washington lives and her car was found. 
 
 “We had some 60 deputies and State Police out here working (but) this area had a cover of trees which created a canopy that blocked some of the view from the top,” Iberville Sheriff Brett Stassi said Tuesday. 
 
 The ditch where the body was found sits behind the sugarcane field beneath a canopy of lofty trees. McKneely said it had already started to decompose due to the extreme heat, humidity and rain the region has experienced over the past week. 
 
 McKneely provided no other details about how the body was left and would not say whether the woman was pregnant. 
 
 Not seeing the news conference video below? Click here. 
 
 The body was transported back to East Baton Rouge Parish around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday after it was released from the Iberville Parish Coroner’s Office. 
 
 East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III said Tuesday Marks likely would face charges of first- or second-degree murder, as well as feticide, if the evidence ultimately concludes Washington died and he is responsible. 
 
 “The investigation into this crime will continue,” Moore said Tuesday. 
 
 Friends spoke fondly about Washington this week. 
 
 Lana Williams, who taught with Washington at her previous school, Eden Park Superintendent’s Academy, described her as a devoted teacher, whose students were always engaged in the lessons Washington put together. 
 
 “She was one of the most generous people I knew. When she was actually teaching, even when she was low on money, she was doing everything she could for her students, buying materials and bringing them in,” Williams said. 
 
 Another friend who also met Washington at Eden Park, LaTafta Spivey, said she last spoke to Washington in March. Her friend had called her with big news. 
 
 “You’re going to be an aunt!” Washington told her happily. 
 
 Spivey was not so happy to hear that her friend was pregnant. 
 
 “I knew she was struggling financially as a single mother,” Spivey recalled. 
 
 Washington lived in a one-bedroom apartment, needed a new car and didn’t even have a working computer, prompting her to come to visit Spivey on occasion while Washington pursued a master’s degree in education from Southern University. 
 
 Spivey was even less happy when she found out about the father, whom Washington described only as “Robert.” Spivey said she asked if the two were going to get married and her friend’s tone of voice changed. 
 
 “There’s a lot of things going on,” is all Washington would say, but she was certain that she and Marks would be together. 
 
 “My words verbatim: ‘I don’t get a good feeling from this, I just don’t,’ Spivey recalled, prompting Washington to tease her that she worried too much. Spivey worried her friend could be too trusting. 
 
 “She wanted a family. She wanted a relationship. She wanted that fairy tale life. She never stopped working for that,” Spivey said. 
 
 On Friday, their mutual friend, Erica Courtney, who’d also taught at Eden Park, called Spivey to tell her Washington had gone missing. 
 
 Courtney knew that Washington had a boyfriend but didn’t know much about him, or that her friend was pregnant. She said the police’s allegation that Washington’s daughter was in a car alone with Marks raised alarm bells, as she knew her friend and former coworker to be a protective mother. 
 
 “That would never happen. That would not happen,” Courtney said. “She never took her eye off that baby.” 
 
 Both Courtney and Spivey have been distraught since their friend’s disappearance. 
 
 “We’re really devastated about it,” Courtney said. “She’s one of us.” 
 
 Spivey said she hasn’t been able to sleep. 
 
 “I can’t express to you how beautiful her spirit was,” Spivey said. “I’m very sad.” 
 
 Follow Terry Jones on Twitter @tjonesreporter.
– A married middle school assistant principal has been arrested in the murder of a pregnant teacher with whom he was allegedly carrying on an affair in a case that's shaken Baton Rouge, La. Instructional specialist Lyntell Washington, 40, was seven months pregnant and the single mom to a 3-year-old daughter, reports the Advocate. Washington's body was found badly decomposed in an irrigation ditch last week after her daughter prompted investigators to search for her "sleeping" mother, who she said was "in the lake" after "Mr. Robbie" hurt her. Robert Marks, 39, the assistant principal at Brookstown Middle Magnet School, was originally charged with kidnapping and abandoning Washington's daughter in a parking lot the night of the murder, but he's now charged with murder and infanticide. He has yet to talk. In a recent text message to Marks, Washington asked if he was trying to get out of his responsibility for "our unborn child," according to a police affidavit. One of Washington's friends tells WAFB that no one missed any clues: "It's just that he was just who he was and we had no way of seeing that or knowing that. Some people are masterminds at deception." The school, meanwhile, is reeling, with Superintendent Warren Drake releasing a statement that Washington "will be remembered for the impact she had on the many lives she touched through her work in our district." The Advocate notes that Washington, whom friends call generous with her students even if she was struggling, lived in a one-bedroom apartment, needed a new car, had no working computer, and was pursuing a master's degree in education.