God! And I thought we over here were nuts

[Mouse]

It's not a problem to rehash old topics for a new audience. However, in this case, as the topic was so recently dissected, it's worth reading the thread that Groj linked to get new participants up to speed

[Grendal]

I am from Canada and I know absolutely nothing of this particular case but Ill tell ya something, I dont care if its 40 below and some poor saps car is broke down in the middle o nowhere and his wife is giving birth to triplets in the back seat of the car. If I wake up to find someone sneakin through my house you can be damn sure Im gonna hit him square in the head with the biggest object I can get my hands on and Ill worry about checkin to see if hes still alive after I make sure my kids are all right.

[Stormymystic]

If someone breaks into your home you no longer have the right to protect your home and family? Why must burgalurs be proteced if they chose to live a life of crime hey should also live with the knowledge that some day may be their last if they break into the wrong home

[Mouse]

Originally posted by Grendal: I am from Canada and I know absolutely nothing of this particular case but Ill tell ya something, I dont care if its 40 below and some poor saps car is broke down in the middle o nowhere and his wife is giving birth to triplets in the back seat of the car. If I wake up to find someone sneakin through my house you can be damn sure Im gonna hit him square in the head with the biggest object I can get my hands on and Ill worry about checkin to see if hes still alive after I make sure my kids are all right.

Welcome to the Forum. Grendal

I sincerely hope that you never find yourself in a sub-zero weather system with a seriously gravid partner

Have fun.

[Arvon]

Originally posted by Grojlach: 1) The situation sketched above is a rather simplified version of what really happened; it's a bit more complicated than all that. It fails to mention that, for instance, Tony Martin had been shooting at people who he thought were stealing his apples (!) a few years before the killed a burglar; and lost his gun license in the process. He's got a "history" of being trigger-happy, and there are some doubts about his mental state just the same (also see below). 2) We've discussed this case before; see this topic for more information. Read and learn.

I am sorry if I have bothered some of you but I don't read every post in this or any other forum. I was not aware this is a repeated item.

[ 06-20-2003, 08:59 PM: Message edited by: Arvon ]

[Mouse]

No problem. If it captures enough member's imagination to revive an old topic, all well and good.

Just so long as it isn't "If Ziroc is member no.2, who is no.1...??"

[Boutte]

I've read some of the posts in here and the one thing I keep thinking about is something Epona said regarding what is and what isn't self defense. Maybe in this case the old man got what he deserved but this is an isolated case. Self defense is a pretty broad term when you think about it. Aside from the percieved threat aspect of the argument there is the question of what level of force are you allowed to use to defend yourself.

What if you were playing a friendly game of pool with your pals down at the local bar when suddendly the drunk across the room charges you. He has no weaons but is obviously intent on causing you serious bodily harm. Can you whack him in the head with your pool stick? (all ways use the thick end)Some people would argue no, because he didn't have a weapon you should have fought him with your bare hands. I think most would feel that you were justified in using the stick because you were stopping his assault and not malisciosly trying injure him. But what if he died as a result of his injury? Can you say manslaughter?

This might sound far fetched but it happens all the time. It's an extreme example so I'll give you another one. When was about 12yr's old mind friend Danny and were walking home from school when a much larger kid decided to beat up on Danny who was a skinny little dude. Being quite wise for our years we decided to flee. Unfortunately Danny was small AND slow. The guy catches up with Danny and they both go down. When Danny gets up he's swinging a Coke bottle (the old glass kind) which didn't break but did enough to cause our new friend to run off crying like a girl. Danny was very upset, I don't think he had ever hit anyone before in his life. He spent eight weeks in juvenile detention for that! There were people who testified that Danny had been attacked and tried to run away. Every one knew the other kid was bad news but I guess if you're not able to beatup the person who attacks you with his fist you just have hope he doesn't hurt you too bad. Nahh, that can't be right.

If some one attacks you with a Coke bottle do you have to look for a Coke bottle and duel it out or can you just shoot him? If some one breaks into your home do you have to wait until he tries to harm you or your family before you shoot them?

I don't own a gun but I should. Every home should have a gun in it just for such an occasion, as long as there is a responsible adult in charge. It can get pretty hairy out here in the wild wild West.

And to sum it all up...If you break into somebodies house and they shoot you, TOUGH S***!

[Grendal]

TY for the welcome Mouse! I as well sincerely hope I never find myself in a subzero weather system with a seriously gravid partner

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Stormymystic: If someone breaks into your home you no longer have the right to protect your home and family? Why must burgalurs be proteced if they chose to live a life of crime hey should also live with the knowledge that some day may be their last if they break into the wrong home

True, and those filthy apple thieves deserved a bullet as well.
Do people actually even bother to read all of the info available before they reply? "Boohoo, let's come to the defense of that poor mister Martin for this grave injustice done to him, even though we ignore that the guy was a triggerhappy psychopath who shoots at people who try to steal apples and who wasn't even supposed to have a gun in the first place, and who was convicted before for using excessive violence against thieves". There's a lot more to this case than just the article posted by Arvon. [img]graemlins/1disgust.gif[/img]

[ 06-21-2003, 07:00 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Grojlach]

Bleak world of the loner who killed

Even Tony Martin's best friend describes him as 'weird'. Along with his apples, he nurtured deep-seated hatreds.

Audrey Gillan
Thursday April 20, 2000
The Guardian

Eccentric, outspoken, lonely, loony and highly strung: all words used by friends and neighbours to describe Tony Martin, the farmer convicted yesterday of the murder of a 16-year-old boy who broke into his isolated farmhouse one night last August.
Many people in the Fen villages near Emneth in Norfolk believed the "weird" farmer to be harmless. But others, who had heard him espouse his hatred for burglars and what he would do with them if he caught them, had taken to giving Martin a wide berth.
Apart from thieves, Martin's pet hate was Gypsies. Norwich crown court heard that the farmer had talked of putting Gypsies in the middle of a field, surrounding it with barbed wire and machine gunning them. Fred Barras, the boy he killed, was both of these things: a Gypsy and a thief.
Martin - said to wear only navy blue - lived alone, nurturing apples along with his deep hatreds. One look at his bizarre home, appropriately named Bleak House, gives a fair insight into the character of the man.
The house, like something from a Grimms' fairy tale, is covered in creepers and ivy. Doors are hanging off, a broken lavatory sits outside the front door, beside it is a moss-covered Rover 2000 and a long-discarded washing machine.

Rottweilers
When the jury visited the house police were forced to clear sackloads of rubble from the floor, point out booby traps on the landing and cut back swaths of the dangerous hogweed plant just to make it safe. Martin and his three rottweilers, Otto, Bruno and Daniel, lived in the middle of this chaos.
Upstairs, antiques were locked away in two rooms while Martin fixed up a TV and a small lamp that burned 24 hours a day in another. It was here that he slept fully clothed, with his boots on and his well-oiled pump-action shotgun by his bedside. Waiting.
Tony Martin was born in 1944 in the Cambridgeshire village of Wisbech, just a few miles from Bleak House. His father Walter was a wealthy fruit farmer who married Hilary Mitcham, also from a farming family.
Their son was privately educated but not too bright academically. He attended Glebe House, Hunstanton, where he won a prize for sports, and Copethorpe Park in Oxfordshire.
A loner from an early age, Martin preferred quieter pursuits such as making models. Even now, he collects teddy bears, bringing one with him to court every day.
Guns were always around the house: cartridges were kept in pots and drawers and every other place but young Tony, his mother claims, did not take to shooting like his father and brother Robin.
"He didn't really like the idea of killing. He didn't like animals to be killed. When he got his own place, which is now a bit of a mess admittedly, he wanted it to be a bird sanctuary," she said.
After leaving school at 17, Martin travelled the globe working on cruise liners. He spent time in Australia, working on sheep farms, and New Zealand, where he was jailed for being an illegal alien.
After a spell on the Scottish oil rigs, the death of his grandfather brought him back to the Emneth area where he ran a pig farm on his parents' property.
It was not until he was 35 that Martin got a place of his own: he inherited Bleak House from his aunt Gladys and uncle Arthur. At first he had grand plans for the red-brick Victorian property but a lack of money, then will, allowed it to become dilapidated and almost uninhabitable.
Martin did, however, buy more of the surrounding land over time and now has a valuable 350 acres with an orchard of low trees growing apples, pears and plums.
Martin had a few friends and struck up a friendship with Helen Lilley, the owner of the nearby Marmion House hotel he fled to after the killing. His best friend, Terry Howard, says Martin became lonely in later life.
"He would never admit to that, but I think he was. He would turn up at all times, a stone would rattle at my window at 7.30am and he would say, 'Are you going to let me in for a coffee?' "
Howard said his friend was "weird" and at times could be "hard work". He said: "I would not call him a rebel, but he's always been his own man. At times it could make him a pain in the arse."

Trinkets
During his years at Bleak House, Martin became more and more convinced that he was a target for burglars. He told the court that not long after moving in he had arrived home one night to catch a burglar stuffing a pillowcase with trinkets, which he dropped when Martin chased him.
He said that over the years electrical items, tools and tractor batteries had been stolen. In March last year, a grandfather clock was taken and in May he lost a table, a bureau and two chests of drawers.
Martin claims he became more and more frustrated by police inaction over the burglaries but police sources say they are not even sure that all the incidents took place.
Despite claims by Martin's friends and his mother that he hated shooting, he was involved in a number of incidents with guns. In June 1976, the farmer is alleged to have gone to a friend's house in some distress and brandished a first world war revolver: a shot was fired and a pigeon killed. In December 1987 he had an argument at his brother's house over some property. Martin is said to have got very upset and used a shotgun to smash windows.
In 1994 he had his shotgun certificate revoked after he found a man scrumping for apples in his orchard and shot a hole in the back of his vehicle. After the shooting of Fred Barras and Brendan Fearon, police recovered an old rusty shotgun from Martin's garage: another gun he should not have had without a shotgun certificate. The guns, Martin said, were for shooting pigeons.
Guns are part of the culture in the Norfolk area. Farmers use them every day and many local people keep them not just for hunting but protection. As one woman put it: "They wouldn't hesitate to use it." Here, there is an air of paranoia, a fear of the intruder.
Walk around the villages of Emneth and Emneth Hungate and that fear is more than palpable. Signs on lamp-posts and fences warn that "guard dogs are loose", "this is a homewatch area", that "this is private property" and that "scrap dealers are not welcome".
NFU Mutual figures show Norfolk as having the highest incidence of rural crime, particularly burglaries and the theft of tractors and trailers. Emneth has policing difficulties because of its situation on the borders of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, making it a target for the travelling criminal. Consequently, most people keep dogs, positioning their kennels right in front of their homes.
Farms in Norfolk have long attracted travelling people, who come to pick the different fruits of the season. As work became less certain elsewhere, they began to settle. To Martin, they were nothing but "light-fingered pykies" and "bastards". A committal hearing heard that he believed "Hitler was right" in his policies towards Gypsies. His views would have pleased his uncle by marriage, Andrew Fountaine, a founder of the National Front.
Martin was a regular visitor to Fountaine's home, at Narford Hall, near Swaffham, Norfolk, not far from Bleak House. It was here that the fascist leader organised regular Aryan summer camps, which prompted the Home Office on one occasion to refuse entry permission to a number of continental fascists.
Fountaine had warned: "Within a generation, the Norfolkman, his culture, purpose, and ethnic succession will be biologically extinguished."
Views such as these are not just the preserve of the wider Martin family; they still prevail on the Fens today. Speak to some local people and there seems to be a deep-seated hatred for the travelling community. A number of pubs have put up signs saying "members only".
Here there is a great deal of resentment towards travelling people. One person said: "They used to know their place but don't now." Another man said: "Like all ethnic minorities, the travelling community have a chip on their shoulder." He added that the council "bent over backwards for them" and gave them "all the benefits".
"They have always come here but in the past it was just to pick fruit and they would move on to pick brussels sprouts somewhere else. But now they have settled here and there's no work and they steal lawnmowers from sheds," said one woman who did not want to be named.
"There were a few coloured people here but they were hounded out. The locals burgled their houses and abused them."
In the villages, mention Martin and the reaction is mixed. Some will not talk about the murder but say: "Crime here is not as bad as it is being made out to be."
Walking his dog near Bleak House, Malcolm Quince, the neighbourhood watch representative for Emneth Hungate, said he was horrified by what Martin had done.
"Obviously the man shouldn't have done what he done. If they knew him they wouldn't have gone near his house cos he's a loony. He's got funny ideas," he said.
"He doesn't like caravan people - or Gypsies and diddies as he calls them. There's something about him. He's never been married and I reckon he's just a strange boy.
"He wouldn't treat you civil if you went over there. People were just wary of him. I don't know anybody round here who was friends with him or spoke to him."

Outraged
But many are firmly behind the farmer. Outside the Emneth Spar, a pensioner said: "All Fen people would have done the same thing. Fen people are independent people.
"I would have blown them away myself. We all wanted him to get off because they got what they deserved. Fen people would have blasted them away."
After the incident last August, more than 300 people crammed in to Emneth village hall and shouted and jeered at police, complaining about response times. This feeling that a man should be allowed to protect himself in his own home reverberated around the country.
A defence fund set up for Martin received cheques for as little as a pound from outraged old women and the farmer has received hundreds of letters of support.
But among all this there was no sympathy for the dead Barras. And from Martin there has been no remorse. His mother said: "He does realise a terrible thing has occurred and he is very upset about it.
"But let me express again, it is not his fault. They should not have been there. He was not going out to shoot anybody, was he?
"I think it is the most terrible thing for him because it has ruined his life. His life can never be the same again. He will never feel free.
"These are the people who caused this problem. They should be standing in the place he is standing in now. They are the ones who caused it."
And Martin himself? In an interview with the BBC, he said only: "We are supposed to live in a civilised society. It's not the way I have been treated.
"People are not aware of what it's like in the countryside. Criminals prevail. It can't be right." He never mentioned Barras once.

Source: Guardian

[ 06-21-2003, 05:53 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]