The frontrunner in Colorado’s GOP primary for governor said he killed someone when he was 7 years old and then refused to answer how many more lives he may have taken in a jaw-dropping interview.
Victor Marx, who is leading the polls in the state’s GOP primary, freewheeled through a series of bonkers claims about his past during an interview with local 9News anchor Kyle Clark over the weekend.
Clark asked Marx about his previous claim that his abusive stepfather forced him to kill a man at age 7. “Is that the only person you’ve ever killed?” Clark pressed.
Marx, 60, fell silent for more than 10 seconds, taking a deep breath and looking upward as if searching his memory.
“Well, I would say, as a—as a child, yes. Without question,” he finally replied.
“But I’ve been in other situations where, you know, possibly people or persons died as a result of me defending myself in other countries. I—there’s no count on that,” he added, before trailing off: “There’s no photos...”
Marx, a Marine Corps veteran, runs a Colorado Springs nonprofit called All Things Possible Ministries, which claims to lead dangerous missions into foreign nations to deliver aid and “restore victims of trauma.”
The nonprofit’s website says Marx founded the ministry to “focus his attention on hunting predators as well as rescuing, restoring and empowering women and children who have been held captive by traffickers and other abusers.”
“Do you think that you’ve killed people as an adult?” Clark asked.
“Does it matter?” replied Marx, who is married and has five children, as well as grandchildren.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Clark said, leading Marx to ask, “Why?”
“Killing somebody’s a pretty weighty thing,” Clark replied.
“If someone’s trying to kill you or you’re in combat?” Marx said.
“It’s still … a weighty thing to take somebody else’s life,” Clark pushed back. “I mean, it could be self-defense. It can be justified, but it’s still a weighty thing. So I’m just asking you: How many people have you killed?”
“Well, if I did, I wouldn’t be telling a reporter sitting here in my training center,” Marx said.
“How about voters?” Clark pressed.
Marx replied, “There’s no need. I don’t think that’s important. It’s actually kind of—it’s an odd question to me.”
Clark noted that Marx had talked about “the idea of killing people with some frequency,” pointing to Marx’s interview on Jeff Lerner’s podcast last year in which he said, “Granted, some people have to get killed, some people have to die.”
The anchor then asked, “You claim that you once called in a U.S. military airstrike that killed 70 ISIS fighters. I didn’t realize that civilians could essentially facilitate military airstrikes. Could you walk me through how that works?”
“No,” Marx replied.
At another point in the interview, Clark noted that Marx’s campaign website previously claimed that his nonprofit had rescued more than 45,000 women and children, a claim that was later taken down.
“How many women and children have you rescued?” Clark asked.
“I would say it’s more than one, and less than a bunch,” Marx said.
Marx is facing off against State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and State Rep. Scott Bottoms in the gubernatorial primary. By early May, Marx had raised more campaign funds than both of his rivals combined, according to Colorado Public Radio.
