ITS walls are wreathed in ivy, steel shutters shroud its windows – the home of killer farmer Tony Martin may be falling down, but he stands defiant.
The last time Martin, 74, was inside it he fired three shots, killing a 16-year-old burglar and badly wounding his accomplice.
The subsequent court case, 19 years ago, divided the nation. Had the oddball loner used excessive force to defend himself, or did the raiders get what they deserved?
At the end of Sunday night’s ground-breaking Channel 4 drama, The Interrogation Of Tony Martin, the man himself returns to his Norfolk home, nicknamed Bleak House.
And he has no remorse and still believes he was in the right.
Asked when was the last time he was in the house, Martin replies: “When I left on August 20, 1999.”
He says he could live there now “if I wanted to (but) I don’t want to get locked up.”
Expanding on that, he says: “Well, it’s simple. If I’m in the house and somebody comes in the house I’m going to look after myself.
“If you think I’m going to stand there and ask them what they’re doing . . . I’m not that stupid.
“When you start to run, you’ll be forever running, so you have to stand your ground.
“I’d been very fearful for a long time in that house and all of a sudden the fear went and I took my life back . . . for a while, for a few hours.”
When asked if the burden of killing the 16-year-old weighs heavily on him, Martin interrupts with: “He wasn’t a boy, he was a young man.
“No, I don’t even think about it.
“I obviously sympathise with the mother saying she only had one boy and now he is dead. But it’s no good blaming me. When I was his age I lived with my grandparents. I didn’t go breaking into bloody houses 60 miles down the road . . .
“And with the burglar, well, what goes round comes around.”
Martin’s murder conviction was later changed on appeal to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He spent three years in Highpoint Prison in Suffolk.
Chillingly, at the end of the TV drama, he says: “There was a young chap in prison . . . and I found out he was a burglar, breaking in people’s houses. And I said, ‘Erm . . . why do you break in people’s houses?’
“He said, ‘Well, that’s the way things are’ and when he walked away — I don’t know whether this is giving the game away, whether you think I’m mental or not — when he walked away I went, ‘BANG!’ like that.
“He said, ‘What’s all this?’ and I said, ‘That’s how things are, boy’.”
Since his release in July 2003, Martin has been either staying with friends or living in his car near his derelict home in Emneth Hungate.
His nomadic lifestyle made it hard for Bafta-winning film and documentary maker Dave Nath to track him down for the making of the revealing programme.
Nath, who needed Martin to ask the police to release the interview transcripts, which ran over three days after his arrest, said: “He has a phone, but seldom answers it.”
Every word in Nath’s experimental “verbatim drama”, which stars Steve Pemberton as Martin — except for those final scenes — is taken from those original interviews or statements made to the police. It took Nath nearly two years to complete.
It will certainly shed new light on the case.
Some people branded Martin a ruthless child killer. Others believed he was exercising his right to protect his property.
At the time, 55,000 Sun readers backed his actions. The public uproar was so loud that Tory leader William Hague vowed to “overhaul” the law to protect people forced to defend their homes against intruders.
At the time of the shooting, bachelor Martin had spent 20 years living in isolation at Bleak House, which had been left to him by his aunt.
He had complained about police inaction over at least ten burglaries — in which he lost £6,000 worth of furniture — before the fateful night of August 20, 1999, when he shot dead Fred Barras with a pump action shotgun, which was illegal and unlicensed.
Armed with a baseball bat and chisel, Barras and his mate Brendon Fearon, 29, had got in through a window. Martin fired three shots towards them. Both fled through the window, Barras dying in the grounds.
In Nath’s drama, the first interview with Martin takes place before the interrogating officers know that Barras’s body has been discovered, when Martin has been arrested just on suspicion of possessing an illegal firearm.
He tells DC Peters (played by Daniel Mays) and DS Newton (Stuart Graham) he was woken by noises at around 11pm.
Scared by previous intruders, Martin tells them he always sleeps in his clothes and boots, with a shotgun under his bed. He has also removed the top and bottom steps of his staircase as a booby-trap.
At first, Martin refuses to discuss what happened next, saying: “I just can’t handle it. I’d just rather go back to my cell and read Churchill.”
He repeats that he was “terrified” but refuses to explain why, saying: “I can’t tell you that now ’cos you will turn it and twist it.” Clearly agitated, he demands: “Take me to Norwich prison, get rid of me, out the way.
“I wish I was in China they’d put a bullet in my bloody head and I’d be finished, out the way.
“I’m finished. This conversation is finished.”
By the second day of his interrogation he has also been charged with murder and attempted murder.
He talks of having had “many threats” over the years and stopped “reporting them to police because I felt I was not being taken seriously”.
He also opens up about being allegedly abused as a child, saying: “I’ve never, ever discussed this, not even with my mother until four or five years ago. I do not want this to go public. We had a small cottage over at [the market town of] March. There was a man. He used to stay with us.
“As I got older, I don’t know what age, I can’t remember now . . . he used to try and molest me. And that’s had a great affect upon my life.
“It made me very self-conscious when I was a youngster and I really thought people thought I was queer. I’ve had that experience and it doesn’t leave you. It is a scar.
“This is why — one of the reasons why — I live on my own. Nobody ever comes into my house.”
Martin says he heard people coming up the stairs. He explains: “The only protection I had is that the top of the stairs is missing and the bottom of the stairs is missing. I did it like that.
“There’s no lights in my house. My bedroom, that night, was the only place there was a light. I was sure someone was coming up the stairs . . .
“I took the gun out, loaded it, waited and it seemed like for ever . . . I had no choice.”
He says he was creeping down the stairs when a torch light was flashed in his face and he fired.
Martin recalls: “What do I do? Who is it? All these things in a flash. I just couldn’t stand it much longer. I just let the gun off.”
He shot at the intruders three times before leaving the house and getting in his car. He is asked why he didn’t call the police straight away, instead driving to his mum’s house, hiding his gun in her toilet.
MOST READ IN SHOWBIZ
On the third day, Martin opens up about what happened and the police begin to pick holes in his evidence. He is asked why he did not fire a warning shot, and whether he gave the intruders a chance to surrender.
He replies: “That torch was put on me and nobody said a word. Nobody moved or did anything.”
DS Newton says: “So they didn’t come towards you? But you still fired the gun.”
Back in the present, an unrepentant Martin has vowed to overturn his manslaughter conviction. In a recent interview he said: “Your home is your castle, it’s about having the courage to be free.”
And talking about visiting Barras’s grave for the first time last year, he said he thought, “Well, boy, this is basically what you wanted.”
Additional reporting: Amy Jones
The Interrogation Of Tony Martin is on C4 on Sunday at 9pm.
Link
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/killer-farmer-tony-martin-returns-to-scene-of-shooting-that-left-one-burglar-dead-and-another-wounded-and-says-if-you-run-you-run-for-ever/
News Pictures Killer farmer Tony Martin returns to scene of shooting that left one burglar dead and another wounded and says ‘if you run, you run for ever’
You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!
TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st
To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.
Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”
Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”
kim cattrall
Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb
SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.
Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NINTCHDBPICT000449624813.jpg?strip=all&w=960
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий