2 murderers of beloved Tri-Cities area coach up for early prison release
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- Bob Mars' killers seek early release from prison 21 years after murder
- Mars' widow urges community to write letters opposing release
- Mars was a well-liked Benton City coach and teacher
Nearly 21 years after beloved Benton City coach and teacher Bob Mars was stabbed to death at the town’s middle school, the men guilty of his murder are seeking early release from prison.
His widow, Kris Mars, is asking the greater Tri-Cities community for help in fighting their release. A community hearing is scheduled for June.
Bob Mars was an assistant football coach at Ki-Be High School, a sixth-grade teacher at Ki-Be Middle School and a wrestling coach at Kennewick High. He was 44 when he was killed.
He lived in Richland with wife Kris and sons Kyler and Kody, while older son Bobby was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Bob Mars was on his way home Sept. 4 after his football team won its season opener when he stopped at the middle school.
Robert A. Suarez, then 16, told sheriff’s detectives he and Jordan Castillo, then 14, had been stranded in Benton City without a ride back to Kennewick. They had already planned to use their knives to steal someone’s car when they saw Mars pull into the parking lot.
The teens asked Mars for 50 cents to make a call, but instead he allowed them to use the phone in his portable classroom.
Suarez said he told Castillo they were to back down if the coach helped them, so Suarez was surprised to hear a gasp behind him as they were leaving the portable. He turned to see Mars with a military-style knife buried to the hilt in his stomach.
Mars’ body was found the next day in the hall of the school’s main building, where it’s believed he collapsed while trying to reach a phone in the teachers lounge.
Suarez told detectives in 2004 that he and Castillo briefly hid out across the street, before they returned to the school and used a rock to break into Mars’ truck, taking $474 in concession stand money, a cell phone and a bag of crackers.
Then-Benton County Prosecutor Andy Miller said at one hearing that “the sad thing is that everyone knows that if they needed money, Bob Mars, bless his heart, would have given it to him. ... (He) would have driven Mr. Suarez and Mr. Castillo to his grandmother’s home in Kennewick.”
Early prison release hearings
Suarez was convicted March 11, 2005, of first-degree murder by a Benton County jury and was given the maximum sentence of nearly 27 years in prison.
Castillo was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison after a jury found he was the person who stabbed Bob Mars.
Now both Suarez and Castillo are petitioning for early release, Kris Mars posted on her Facebook page.
Suarez’s request for a hearing before the Department of Correction’s Indeterminate Sentence Review Board has been approved and tentatively scheduled for July 16.
In preparation for that, a community concern hearing is set for June 23 in Lacey, Wash., according to Kris Mars. Family and friends may share concerns then about the potential release of Suarez. Written comments also may be submitted.
The Indeterminate Sentence Review Board has jurisdiction over cases in which crimes were committed by people not yet 18 but were sentenced as adults.
The family also has been notified that hearings for Castillo are expected in early winter 2026, Kris Mars posted online.
“This nightmare NEVER ends!” she said.
In 2022, Judge Jacqueline Stam upheld Castillo’s Benton County Superior Court sentence, which called for him to be released in March 2031, but eligible for parole this year.
That hearing on reducing the sentence was the result of a change in Washington state law that caused lengthy sentences to be reconsidered based on the young age of people when they committed crimes.
At the hearing Kris Mars placed her husband’s ashes to the courtroom podium as she spoke.
“Time does not indeed heal all wounds. It merely dulls the edges,” she said then. “That is until the scab is once again ripped wide open. It is unfathomable to me that I would again have to stand in a courtroom after all this time. This resentencing hearing has again ripped open the 18-year-old wound.”
Help for the Mars family
Kris Mars has repeatedly thanked community members for their decades-long support in the case.
Now she asks people to consider writing a letter to the board. Only victims, survivors or witnesses may attend the community concern hearing.
Letters may be mailed to P.O. Box 40907, Olympia, WA 98504-0907, or emailed to isrb@DOC1.WA.GOV.
This story was originally published May 30, 2025 at 12:34 PM.