 His friends say accused hospital thief Marcos Marinoni is not how he's been portrayed.
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TORONTO - He's been painted as a monster, a heartless ghoul alleged to have slipped into the hospital rooms of the vulnerable and the dying to steal their worldly goods.
A grave robber, he's been called. A deathbed jewelry thief.
And according to a police source, Marcos Marinoni is about to face more than 100 new charges before his bail hearing on Friday.
But his friends insist there is a more human side to the 26-year-old Vaughan man charged with these heinous crimes. That behind the despicable allegations hides a troubled man with a heroin addiction who had been struggling to get his life back on track.
And he had been doing so well -- until his father died of cancer.
Marinoni had a drug addiction in his youth and later spent time in jail, but his friends say that, thanks to his dad, he had put all of that behind him.
"His father urged and supported him with the necessary training required to obtain his heavy machinery certificate, and guided him through, keeping him on the straight and narrow," says one friend, who didn't want his name used.
"His father was the biggest reason for his success, and became Marcos' biggest mentor which he completely loved and respected."
Marinoni got a seasonal job with Gottardo Construction, he says, bought himself a car and lived with his parents. He seemed a changed man.
A police source does confirm that Marinoni's lengthy criminal record went on abrupt hiatus from 2003 until 2009.
"My impression was that he was a hard-working, pretty good kid," says the friend.
And then Marinoni's dad got sick.
His father died while he was in Venezuela trying to secure an experimental drug for his dad's cancer. His friend remembers Marinoni still sobbing on his porch a month later. "I think it really played heavily on him; he was especially hurt because he didn't make it back in time."
Treated for depression, the Prozac wasn't enough, his friend says. And without his father's guidance, it seems Marinoni slipped back into the controlling arms of heroin.
"He remained distraught for a long time afterwards and slowly lost his job, his vehicle, his friends and most of his self-esteem. Eventually he fell into drugs of the unprescribed nature, found new friends, and became enslaved to a commodity that shows no mercy and should never be found on our streets.
"Marcos clearly needed help but nobody was there to provide it."
Another friend describes him as an "amazing person" who was great to everyone. "He was someone who wouldn't hurt a fly," she insists. "Marcos had a record but after he got out of jail he stayed straight for six years."
After his father died, she says, Marinoni began to change and distance himself from his friends. She hadn't heard from him in about a year and feared he was back on heroin again. There was word that he'd tried unsuccessfully to get into rehab, but instead, OHIP would only pay for visits to a methadone clinic.
Nothing about the friend she knew prepared her for seeing him on every TV and newspaper, one of two thieves accused of stealing from an 83-year-old woman dying of brain cancer at Toronto East General.
Their images captured by hospital surveillance cameras, they became the most wanted -- and reviled -- men in Toronto. Within days of tips pouring in, Marinoni and Isaac Lewkowitz, 29, were arrested for allegedly targeting the maternity and palliative-care wards of several GTA hospitals over a six-month period.
Marinoni's friends don't condone what he's accused of doing; they just want people to understand that there is more to the story than simply painting him with the black brush of evil.
"It's heartbreaking," she says. "He's a good person, he really is. I can tell you he never meant to harm anyone."
Adds another friend: "This was not the Marcos I knew." A dramatic change had obviously occurred. A change most likely fuelled by the unforgiving need for cash to buy the drugs that keep reality at bay.
The media might be making him out to be a monster, but according to Marinoni's friend: "He's just a lost kid who lost his mentor."
So do you feel sorry for him yet?
No, me neither.
