Victor Marx’s effort to become Colorado’s next governor may now depend on a recount, but a larger question continues to follow his campaign: how much of the extraordinary personal history he has described can be independently verified.
The Republican’s rise to a presumptive nomination has been fueled in part by a life story so dramatic it often reads less like a political résumé than the plot of a dark thriller or action film.
Marx, 61, has said, without offering detailed evidence, that his childhood included being forced by a sadistic stepfather to behead a cat when he was three, being molested and left for dead in a restaurant cooler at five, and being made to kill a man in rural Mississippi at the age of seven.
The self-described “high-risk missionary” has also claimed that he called in a U.S. military strike that killed 70 ISIS fighters, confronted human smugglers along the Mexico border, became the first American permitted into Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas, and helped rescue 45,000 women and children from captivity around the world.
He has additionally asserted that he holds a world record for disarming a gunman in just 0.08 seconds.
“Everything that we’ve done has been documented,” Marx has said. However, his campaign did not provide such documentation when asked and did not make the candidate available to the Daily Mail to answer questions about the claims.
That reluctance to engage with fact-checking has already led to a pointed exchange on television.
During a debate last month, Kyle Clark of Denver’s 9News KUSA put the issue directly to him: “How should voters decide whether you’ve lived one of the most extraordinary lives in human history, or whether you’re a liar and a fraud?”
Victor Marx’s bizarre life story has become a talking point in the 61-year-old’s campaign to become Colorado’s next governor. Among the Republican’s claim to fame is holding the world record for disarming a gunman – in just 0.08 seconds
The self-described ‘high-risk missionary’ professes to have rescued 45,000 women and children from trafficking worldwide
The candidate offered little clarification, then threatened to sic his dog on the anchorman.
Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican chairman, said in his 50 years in state politics he has never seen a candidate who seems to have ’embellished their background so clearly’.
‘His stories go on and on and on. They just don’t appear to be very believable.’
Marx spent his early life as Vaughn Victor Kennedy, bearing the last name of an allegedly abusive stepfather before taking the name of his biological father, Karl Marx, whom he has called ‘a drug dealer and pimp.’ He claims to have gone to 14 different schools and lived in 17 different homes while growing up in the rural South.
Public records link him to 36 different addresses nationwide in his adulthood, including his most recent home in Colorado Springs. His cell phone number has an area code in California, not Colorado, the state he’s seeking to govern.
Marx has no experience in politics or elected office, and most Republican operatives the Daily Mail spoke with say they’d never heard of him before last year.
He claims to be a ‘reluctant exorcist’ who practices what he calls ‘spiritual warfare’ against demonic spirits that he believes to be real. And he speaks as often about deliverance as about public policy.
‘I’m there to be a leader called by God,’ he said during his campaign launch last September.
Marx’s military records show he was a Marine radio communications specialist who served stateside in the 1980s. He claims to have called in an American military strike that killed 70 ISIS fighters and been the first American allowed into Gaza during Israel ’s war with Hamas
Marx, who spent his early life as Vaughn Victor Kennedy, alleges he was abused as a child by his stepdad, who, he said, forced him to fatally shoot a man in Mississippi at age seven and behead a cat at three
Marx later took the name of his biological father, Karl Marx, whom he has called ‘a drug dealer and pimp’. Marx said he reconnected with his biological father later in life
That event doubled as a chance to promote his book, The Dangerous Gentleman: A Call For Men to be Courageous in a Culture of Fear, and as a vigil for Charlie Kirk, who wrote the book’s foreword and had been assassinated four days earlier. Marx has described his wife, Eileen, as ‘like a second mother’ to Kirk’s widow, Erika.
Republican Cori Kennedy attended that vigil for Kirk last September and admits she was impressed by Marx’s charisma.
‘But when I walked out, I realized, whoa, that was really tacky,’ said the Denver-area marketer who eventually came to see the candidate as ‘a snake oil salesman’.
Marx claims to have gone to 14 different schools and lived in 17 different homes by the time he was just 17
Fast forward ten months and Marx is awaiting word on whether he squeaked past state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, the establishment frontrunner, in Colorado’s Republican primary for governor.
Currently, tallies from the June 30 nail-biter show he won 206,477 votes compared to 204,527 for Kirkmeyer, who has called him ‘unfit’ and ‘corrupt’.
By the accounts of several Republican insiders, Marx’s current lead seems enough to avoid a recount and is likely to snag him the GOP nomination to face off against Democrat Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, in November.
Marx’s expected primary win will likely trigger more questions about his biography.
Scrutiny has centered largely on the work of his nonprofit, All Things Possible Ministries (ATP), which he founded in 2003 after working for James Dobson, head of the Christian conservative group Focus on the Family.
ATP describes its mission as anti-trafficking work, humanitarian aid and outreach – including running a home for sexually abused women in Cambodia, offering support for veterans with PTSD, providing feminine hygiene products in refugee camps, funding surgeries for children with deformities and giving stuffed animals to kids in war-torn areas.
Experts say Marx seems to have overstated ATP’s accomplishments, claiming it has rescued more than 45,000 women and children from sex trafficking in places like Cambodia, Syria and Iraq as part of what he calls his ‘high-risk’ missionary and humanitarian work.
Buddy Jericho, his campaign manager and spokesman, said he couldn’t comment on those missions because he ‘wasn’t there.’
Three human trafficking and human rights experts said Marx’s claim, if true, would make ATP one of the largest global anti-trafficking efforts ever to have operated. All three said that’s unlikely, given that they’d never heard of it.
Marx’s wife Eileen, who he has been married to for 37 years, has been a constant fixture by his side
Marx and his wife, pictured early on in their relationship, have five children and several grandchildren
Marx’s campaign has balked at allegations his biography doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, saying those who doubt Marx minimize not only his trauma but also that of everyone who suffered as a child
‘Sounds like a bulls**t to me,’ a human trafficking consultant to the United Nations told the Daily Mail.
The ‘45,000 women and children rescued’ assertion initially appeared on Marx’s campaign website but has been removed, with Marx blaming his web master for mistakenly posting that figure. Since then, he has refused to give an exact number of people he claims to have rescued, saying he avoids specifics so as not to put them ‘in danger’.
Jericho, for his part, estimated that ATP has ‘saved’ far more than 45,000 people, factoring in spiritual and emotional rescues, not just physical ones.
Marx is also likely to face more questions about the human lives he may have taken.
His military records show he was a Marine radio communications specialist who served stateside in the 1980s. Still, he said in an interview with KUSA’s Clark that he has been in situations ‘where, you know, possibly people or persons died as a result of me defending myself in other countries.
‘There’s no count on that. There’s no photos,’ he added.
When pressed for details, he wouldn’t give a body count, asking, ‘Does it matter?’ and ‘I don’t think that’s important.’
The Denver Post called that interview ‘easily one of the oddest exchanges in the history of Colorado politics’.
Perhaps the most curious of Marx’s claims is that his stepfather forced him to fatally shoot a man in Mississippi at age 7. He wrote in his memoir that his mother’s husband slipped his finger over his on the trigger, then pressed it until the revolver fired, smeared the dead man’s blood on him and buried the man in a hole.
When asked for specifics, Marx has said he doesn’t know the exact location of the shooting, nor the identity of the victim. He has said he called the sheriff’s department in Simpson County decades later to report the incident.
Through his nonprofit, All Things Possible Ministries (ATP), which he founded in 2003, Marx says he supports children who have been severely injured at the hands of terrorists. He posted this photo on Facebook of a child who was given a prosthetic leg
Marx, who was friends with Charlie Kirk prior to his assassination, has boasted about speaking at multiple Turning Point and Turning Point Faith events in recent years
Marx’s nonprofit claims to have rescued 45,000 women and children from sex trafficking in countries including Cambodia, Syria and Iraq as part of what he calls his ‘high-risk’ missionary and humanitarian work
When contacted, Simpson County Sheriff Paul Mullins cast doubt on Marx’s story, noting there were no unsolved homicides from that period.
‘We have no record or report of that,’ he wrote in an email.
The Daily Mail and several other media outlets have tried but have been unable to verify Marx’s stories about severe abuse at the hands of his stepfather, whom Marx identified in his memoir and documentary only as Mr. K. One of his brothers is dead and his other siblings either weren’t reachable or refused to comment for this article.
Kennedy – who, after supporting Marx, went on to spend five months investigating his background – has reported that his abusive stepfather was Gloyce Dean Kennedy (no relation), a now-deceased convicted international drug smuggler.
An accusation of international smuggling has also emerged against Marx himself.
Corby Hall, who manufactures guns in Texas, claimed on Candace Owens’s podcast that in 2024 Marx sought to buy rifles to smuggle into Haiti, allegedly for the purposes of capturing or executing a notorious Haitian gang leader named Jimmy Chérizier, aka ‘Barbecue.’
Marx has denied those allegations, calling Hall ‘homicidal’.
His campaign also would not provide any details backing up his claims about his involvements in a US strike on ISIS militants and stopping human traffickers at the US-Mexico border, nor about having a special invitation into Gaza soon after Israel’s war with Hamas began in 2023.
‘There are lots of witnesses’ Jericho said.
Meanwhile, a source in the Israeli Defense Forces’ press office shot holes in Marx’s Gaza story.
‘There’s no way that happened, not even a possibility,’ they told the Daily Mail.
Several Colorado Republicans said they are convinced Marx’s backstory leans less toward fact than fiction.
By the accounts of several Republican insiders, Marx’s current lead seems enough to avoid a recount and is likely to snag him the GOP nomination to face off against Democrat Phil Weiser, Colorado’s popular attorney general, in November
Marx is awaiting word on whether he squeaked past state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer in Colorado’s Republican primary for governor
A third candidate, Colorado state Rep. Scott Bottoms is trailing the frontrunners, Marx and Kirkmeyer
‘There may be small kernels of truth in his claims but he is so consumed by his own image that he can’t contain himself,’ Wadhams said.
‘He might even believe all the stuff he’s saying, which makes it even more entertaining yet scary,’ added Jon Caldara, a conservative think tank director and talk show host in Colorado.
Kennedy is convinced Marx culled his personal myths from the 1980s blockbusters of his youth.
‘He has fashioned for himself a version of An Officer and a Gentlemen, The Prince of Tides and The Karate Kid. When it comes down to it, the dots around him just don’t connect,’ she said.
But perhaps the most direct rejection of Marx’s biography came from Candace Owens when she had him on her show in May and challenged his story about his stepfather forcing him to cut off the head of a dead cat, then putting the carcass on his head with the blood dripping down on him.
‘Like I said, I also don’t believe that you beheaded a cat when you were three because kids are not that strong and that’s a hard thing to do. I don’t believe you wore a cat head because there’s a lot of things that you say that I don’t believe,’ she told him.
Jericho, Marx’s campaign chief, balked at allegations that his boss’s biography doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, saying those who doubt Marx minimize not only his trauma but also that of everyone who suffered as a child.
‘He experienced those things and wanted to grow up to be the man and mentor he didn’t have,’ he said.
‘To those types of people, they get it. People who don’t come from extraordinary backgrounds, they don’t get it.’
