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ABC's Bad Romance: A Special Edition of 20/20 is all set to cover the brutal murder of Lyntell Washington, a beloved teacher whose death left behind a huge void in the community of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The case was also solved in one of the most shocking ways, as a 3-year-old child became the biggest clue to cracking it all open.
This case will be the subject of Bad Romance: A Special Edition of 20/20 season 2 episode 4, which premieres on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. The synopsis for the episode, as revealed by ABC News' Press Release, reads:
"When a passerby finds a 3-year-old girl with blood on her feet wandering alone in a parking lot, authorities embark on a multiday search for her missing mother: Lyntell Washington, a beloved Baton Rouge educator who was voted Teacher of the Year."
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It continues:
"When law enforcement finds the pregnant teacher shot in the head, they are also given a cryptic clue from her toddler. As investigators dig deeper, they learn Lyntell had a secret affair with a co-worker — a man whose own secrets and carefully constructed alibi raise even more disturbing questions."
Ahead of this episode on ABC, let us go over who Lyntell Washington was and what happened to her.
Who was Lyntell Washington and what happened to her?
Lyntell Washington was an instructional specialist at Brookstown Middle Magnet Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The 40-year-old was widely regarded as an exceptional teacher. About a year before she was murdered, she was also named the Teacher of the Year. Apart from her professional commitments, which she seemed to be very good at, she was also a caring and responsible mother to her three-year-old daughter.
At the time of this incident, she was reportedly seven months pregnant. It seemed like everything was going well for Washington until suddenly a defining tragedy struck.
In June 2016, Leslie Parms, a good Samaritan, found the 3-year-old girl abandoned in a parking lot near a car splattered with blood. Authorities arrived to find that Lyntell Washington was her mother and she was missing. The young girl told Leslie Parms that "Mr. Robbie" had put her there.
When she was taken to the police station, she said that the blood was made by Mr. Robbie as well. She also told a child forensic interviewer that Mr. Robbie had hurt her mother and that she had heard a "boom." She also claimed that her mother was asleep by a lake.
All the things that the 3-year-old had said made sense once Washington's body was found in a ditch in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, on June 14, 2016.
Who was behind the murder of Lyntell Washington?
Lyntell's daughter had already accurately named the person behind the murder. It took authorities a while more to determine that Mr. Robbie was Robert Jovantie Marks, the assistant principal in the school where Washington worked.
It was also revealed that Lyntell was having an affair with Robert and she was pregnant with his child. He had reportedly lied to Lyntell about getting a divorce from his wife and Lyntell was pressurizing him to tell his wife or sort something out with her.
Ultimately, thanks to Lyntell Washington's 3-year-old daughter, the case was cracked and Marks was sent to prison for life.
The upcoming episode of Bad Romance will cover this in more detail.
