Warga/News Markoff at a college party while he was attending SUNY Albany, in 2005. He reportedly told family members to 'forget about me.'
Marino for News Markoff's fiancee Megan McAllister has dinner with family and visitors in her Little Silver, N.J. home this week following his arrest
A day after trying to hang himself in jail, accused Craigslist killer Philip Markoff reportedly told relatives to "forget about me" - and suggested they haven't heard the worst.
"There is more coming out," the med student-turned-murder suspect told his brother Jonathan and sister-in-law Deanna at the Boston lockup, the Boston Herald reported Saturday.
"Move to California," Markoff advised the couple during the emotional sit-down Friday afternoon, a jail source told the paper.
The encounter came a day after Markoff, 23, was put on suicide watch because jail officers found shoelace marks around his neck.
He's now in the jail's psychiatric unit, constantly monitored by video camera and checked on by three guards, sources told the Daily News.
He also traded in his jail jumpsuit for a heavy smock called a Ferguson that is designed to stop inmates and mental patients from hurting themselves.
His parents, Richard Markoff and Susan Haynes, came to Boston from upstate New York to visit him Friday, followed by Jonathan Markoff and his wife.
"Philip's brother and sister-in-law both are very happy they had a chance to see him," defense lawyer John Salsberg said. "They love him dearly. They continue to remain very supportive to him."
A SUNY-Albany grad who was attending Boston University medical school, Markoff is charged with murdering Manhattan masseuse Julissa Brisman in a Boston hotel.
He's also accused of robbing hooker Trisha Leffler and is expected to be charged in the botched stickup of a stripper in a Warwick, R.I., hotel.
"He didn't look like he had any other tendencies, other than just spend a little time and leave," Leffler said.
But as soon as they entered the room, Markoff pounced, she said.
"I had closed the door, I had turned around, and he was standing just inside the door. ... That's when he pulled out the gun," Leffler said.
She said she had agreed to meet Markoff and arranged a $200 payment after he contacted her through a number she listed on a Craigslist ad.
Their meeting took place just days before he allegedly killed Brisman in another Boston hotel.
The 29-year-old said he told her to get on the floor, where he put a knee in the middle of her back and tied her hands.
"I was basically saying, "You don't have to do all this. You don't have to tie me up. ... You know, I'll give you anything you want."
He grabbed her purse and went straight for the cash. He then rifled through it, pulling out credit cards and demanding their PIN numbers.
She said he also fumbled around with her cell phone, trying to delete his phone number from the call record.
"I actually was asking him if I could do it for him, because I just wanted him to leave. But he was like, 'No., I'll take care of it. I got it,'" she said.
Then as he was ready to leave, he started glancing around the room.
"And he picked up a pair of my underwear that were on the floor and put them in his pocket," she said.
tconnor@nydailynews.com
With Tanyanika Samuels
Published: April 28, 2009
This article was reported by Abby Goodnough, Nate Schweber and Javier C. Hernandez, and written by Ms. Goodnough.
BOSTON — An eviction notice hangs on Philip
Markoff’s door at the apartment complex where he lived with his fiancée, and the medical school where he took the Hippocratic oath has suspended him indefinitely.
Mr. Markoff’s wedding is now officially delayed, too: his fiancée’s family canceled the B-Street Band, hired to play Bruce Springsteen hits at the beachfront reception on Aug. 14, its lead singer said Monday.
But while Mr. Markoff’s seemingly normal life has crumbled in the week since his arrest on charges of killing one woman and robbing another at gunpoint after meeting them through Craigslist, hints have been slow to emerge as to why he might have committed the crimes.
“What has been portrayed and leaked to the media is not the Philip Markoff that I know,” said Megan McAllister, his fiancée, in a statement released Monday through her lawyer. “To me and my family, he is a loving and caring person.”
But contrary to statements she made last week, Ms. McAllister did not assert that Mr. Markoff had been “set up.”
Pressed for details of his character, friends and acquaintances have described a young man who was competitive but not cutthroat, politically opinionated but not confrontational, nerdy but not painfully so.
Though he grew up middle class and had planned a costly wedding, Mr. Markoff, 23, was poor enough to have the court appoint him a lawyer after his arrest, according to a court document. A probation officer who signed the document reported that Mr. Markoff, who has pleaded not guilty, said he received no financial support from his parents and was “essentially living off” $130,000 in student loans.
The tuition at Boston University Medical School, where he was in his second year, is $45,000.
Mr. Markoff grew up outside Syracuse, in Sherrill, population 3,150. A welcome sign boasts it is “the smallest city in New York State.”
He was a child of divorce who lived with his mother, Susan, after the breakup while his older brother, Jon, eventually went to live with their father, Richard, a dentist. Both parents remarried; Mr. Markoff’s mother had a baby girl with her new husband in 1991, when Mr. Markoff was 5.
Mr. Markoff’s stepfather, Gary Carroll, worked as a banker, said a neighbor, Dorothy Guider. Mr. Carroll once worked at a toy store over the Christmas holidays, Mrs. Guider said.
Mr. Markoff’s mother, a doll collector, did not work during his childhood, but later worked in the gift store of the Turning Stone casino outside town.
“Every little bit helped,” Mrs. Guider said, adding that she had no idea that the mother’s second marriage had broken up until she saw her selling off her doll collection at her own garage sale.
Several former teachers said Mr. Markoff had shown no signs of emotional turmoil. He was a model student, said Sonja Hluska, a former teacher.
A bowling alley was the biggest draw for teenagers, and Mr. Markoff was avid enough to practice there daily. He was so intent on being a good bowler that, unsatisfied with the grip, he had his bowling ball redrilled.
“Everything had to be just so,” said one childhood friend.
Ms. Hluska said that high school students in Sherrill looked forward to turning 18 so they could gamble at the nearby casino. Mr. Markoff, whom several friends remembered as an exuberant poker player, would round up members of his bowling team after a match and say, “ ‘Let’s go to the casino,’ ” said Jessica Scheuerman, 22, who was a year behind Mr. Markoff at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High School.
Later, at the University at Albany, Mr. Markoff was a member of the College Republicans, and traveled to Washington in 2004 to hear speeches by Ann Coulter and Karl Rove.
“We were surrounded by such a left-wing student body, and he was more like me: he didn’t really share those sentiments,” said one classmate, Jonathan Zierler, who said he had accompanied Mr. Markoff on the trip. “He was a traditionalist as far as things like men and women’s roles in society. He was a throwback from a more conservative era.”
Mr. Zierler could not remember Mr. Markoff’s ever having a girlfriend until he met Ms. McAllister in his sophomore year at Albany, when they volunteered in an emergency room.
Mr. Markoff graduated summa cum laude in 2007 with a degree in biology. His hard work in college paid off, and he was accepted at the Boston University School of Medicine, where 11,000 applicants compete for 150 slots.
On a handsome brick campus in Boston’s trendy South End, Mr. Markoff more or less blended in, several classmates said.
“He seemed like the rest of us in med school,” Shanna Rone, a classmate, wrote in an e-mail message, “making ends meet with some skeletons in the closet ... nothing out of the ordinary.”
Another classmate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Markoff “was pretty passive.” The classmate added: “He seemed a pretty chill guy. He seemed to be definitely smarter than other students.”
In Quincy, Mass., Mr. Markoff and Ms. McAllister paid $1,400 a month for a one-bedroom apartment at Highpoint, an upscale complex with a pool and a clubhouse for social gatherings.
But Mr. Markoff apparently did not spend much time socializing; several neighbors said he was rarely home and when he was, he would say a quick hello before locking the door behind him.
In Ms. McAllister’s statement Monday, which her lawyer, Robert Honecker Jr., read outside her parents’ home in Little Silver, N.J., she said she would continue to support Mr. Markoff, emphasizing that he was innocent until proven guilty.
“I just can only hope that the criminal justice system will not be overwhelmed and persuaded by what is being put forth in the media,” she said. “My fiancé’s fate should not rest in the court of public opinion, but rather in a court of law.”
Abby Goodnough and Javier C.. Hernandez reported from Boston, and Nate Schweber from Sherrill, N.Y. Coleen Dee Berry and Caren Chesler contributed reporting from Little Silver, N.J., and Katie Zezima from Boston.
Senne/AP 
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