Michael Martin denies he confessed to his father’s Samurai sword murder in a letter he sent to wife
MICHAEL Martin, accused of murdering his father using a Samurai sword, yesterday took the stand for the first time during his trial, denying a letter he wrote to his wife was a confession.
NSW
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WHEN homicide detectives arrested Michael Martin and charged him with murdering his father using a Samurai sword, he sat back in a chair, crossed his arms and said, “Really ... oh f--- off”.
Moments later he was explaining to police how he had been the victim of a violent home invasion and heard his father being killed by intruders wearing balaclavas.
“I got striked [sic] like hit. I got dragged by the feet out into the kitchen area, that’s where I got bound by tape,” he said in a small interview room at Tweed Heads police station.
“I got told, ‘Shut up or you die’….and I heard Dad’s throat being cut,” he said.
Hours of Martin’s police interview was played to a jury in the past week during his NSW Supreme Court murder trial at Lismore.
Martin, 28, is accused of taking out three life insurance policies worth $2.5 million just months before he tried to murder his father — Michael Martin Senior — at his Murwillumbah unit on the state’s north coast in April 2014.
But after his unsuccessful attempt, he is accused of carrying out the murder properly in June — using a Samurai sword from a collection of weapons he had as an experienced martial arts fighter.
Today, Martin stepped into the witness box and repeatedly denied he had tried to kill his father in April and then finished the job in June, in order to cash in on the life insurance.
He also denied a nine-page letter written to his wife Candace Martin, was a confession to the attempted murder and subsequent murder.
“This is how I express my emotions — I know how its sounds — it sounds terribly like a confession,” Martin said.
He also said he was mentally unwell at the time and hardly remembers writing it.
In the note — found inside his desk at Somerset Regional Council — the Crown alleges Martin was referring to the plan to kill his father and cash in on his life insurance when he spoke about a “bright idea”.
Part of the letter penned by Martin to his wife said: “Money got tighter and we had another bright idea to free our lives up more. You and I would finally be able to have the things in life we ever wanted.”
Later he wrote: “25 years of torture from these people led me to do the unthinkable. I let myself lose control and it scared me. Not at what I did but the mere fact that the animal side got the better of me.”
The letter allegedly refers to a time when Martin went to visit his father in hospital after his first attempt to murder.
“I was guilty because every time I entered that room, I saw what I had done. What my raw emotion had done and it hurt me so much. I guess it was the main reason I tried so hard to finish it then,” he wrote.
The Crown alleged Martin knew he was planning to kill his father in June when he wrote: “It wasn’t your fear but mine that caused me to come up with the solution I did. In that trip down to NSW, I knew what was coming but spoke to Dad as if everything were fine.”
The Crown also alleges Martin confessed to the attempted murder when he wrote: “But he was too strong. A pig-headed bastard like me.”
Throughout the course of the trial, the jury has also been presented with a Bunnings receipt which shows Martin purchased gaffa tape, gloves, cleaning products and ropes the day before his father was killed.
The trial also heard Martin pretended to be his father when he called up three insurance companies to take out life insurance policies.
The jury were played one phone call which the Crown alleged Martin Jnr asked a OnePath insurance employee about whether “deliberate” acts were covered by the life insurance.
“So that’s not deliberate from someone else, that’s deliberate from you. Is that right?” he asked pretending to be his father who had taken the policy out.
The trial continues before Justice Peter Hamill.
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