I grew up with the Marshall family. We went to elementary school, middle school, high school east and mass at St.Joe's every Sunday. I knew John pretty well and he was always a sweetie and really funny. My older siblings new the older boys better then I. The movie was good. I feel bad for John, Chris and Roby though. The father was a very mean man and Mrs. Marshall was never nice to us either. God rest her soul. I think Joanna Kerns is a great actress but I cannot remember Maria being so nice. She was very rude to my Mother on one occasion and my Mother cried for days. I will never forget that. I hope the boys do not read this but it is true. They where in fact the richest family in my school and back in the 70's and 80's they seemed to be very well off. I remember there home and it was beautiful. To bad the parents looked down on people that where not on there social status.

This is a well-acted and absorbing drama, with appealing and talented actors. The piano soundtrack by Laurence Rosenthal was absolutely beautiful -- poignant and evocative. Robert Urich was very good as the weak and self-absorbed husband, and everybody in the movie was watchable, really. To me, the most tragic thing about the aftermath of Maria Marshall's murder was that her sons couldn't even look back on happy memories for comfort. In one scene, the boys are watching some old home movies of their parents and themselves when they were just toddlers. Their mother is laughing and playing with them in the swimming pool, while the father is roughhousing with them and laughing into the camera. But these sweet scenes are fractured by the knowledge that the mother they loved so much was murdered by their father, and they can no longer watch them with a normal feeling of nostalgia, or look back in sentimental memory at their family life.

This mini-series is one of my personal favorites. It was one of the first to show New Jersey not as gang-related or as urban but suburban Ocean County in Toms River, New Jersey. Joanna Kerns does a beautiful job playing the mother and the late Robert Urich does an equally superb job playing the father. The boys were played exceptionally well in despite of the growing suspicion of the father's involvement and his obvious guilt. He is still on New Jersey's death row and will never get executed in the state. I remember when I first watched this mini-series on television and later I watched it on lifetime. The mini-series depicts the story of a family who should have had it all only to blow up in the face of Mr. Marshall who arranged his wife's murder to collect insurance money. You can't forget Dennis Farina as the prosecutor in the role, Doris Roberts who plays the loving blinded older woman who helps with the boys, and Robin Strasser does a superb job playing the mistress who finally helps bring down Marshall. I am not saying that she wasn't guilty but you know that you can't judge somebody.

I have seen this TV movie twice - and even though it seemed a little dragged out - I thought that the three sons were wonderful - not just as the sons and their reactions to their father - but all of CD) whatever, and he starts mouthing the words, and then recalls being in a car with his (now dead) mother, and she joins in the song and they spend a special time together. I loved the song, but I do not know who sings it or who wrote it, and would like get it. It's "hook" is 'Its a long way home". Can anyone help me on this? It is by a group I think and is on an album, but I couldn't catch the name from the TV movie.Thanks.