Men Who Murder Their Families

It happens at an alarming rate - men who kill multiple members of their family.  It's happened again, this time in Modesto California.  Modesto has had it's share of high profile murder cases during the last twenty years.  There was the murder of Laci and Conner Peterson, the murders of 3 tourists in Yosemite that Cary Stayner was convicted of (although he was NOT related to those he killed).  

Martin Martinez will soon be facing two murder trials in Stanislaus County.  In one case alone he has been charged with 5 counts of first degree murder with special circumstances of lying in wait and using a knife in the commission of two of the killings.  The other case involves the death of a 2 year old boy named Christopher Ridley who suffered a severe head injury while in the care of Martinez.  He is charged with first degree murder and aggravated child abuse.

In the mass murder case, the state has announced their intention to seek the death penalty.  The 5 murders were discovered on July 18, 2015 and the victims were all well known to Martinez.  Among the deceased:  Martinez's girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend) Dr. Amanda Crews, Crews' 6 year old daughter Elizabeth (with her ex husband Timothy Ridley), Martinez and Crews' 6 month old daughter Rachel, Martinez's own mother and his niece.  It doesn't get more personal than that.  As mentioned in prior posts not many details have been released about evidence discovered at the crime scene, how the 5 were killed or a potential motive for the extreme violence that occurred in the house on Nob Hill Court in Modesto.

Through court documents I can see special circumstances of using a knife against the two adult victims, Amanda and his mother.  I can only imagine how terrifying this event was for everyone in that home as the madness unfolded.  It takes a special kind of coward to kill a 6 month old child, let alone a 5 and 6 year old.  This is something that is too difficult for most of us to comprehend.  If Martinez is truly guilty, he deserves the death penalty.  Or maybe rotting away for the rest of his days in San Quentin is punishment enough?  Potentially facing the death penalty, I thought I'd see what I could find out about who his defense attorney is.  Court documents list his name as Sandip Sandhu, and he is listed as the "Chief Deputy Public Defender".  He must be death penalty qualified although I am not able to locate much information on his courtroom record.

Depending on the strength of the State's evidence, Sandhu's main focus here may be to convince a jury to spare Martinez's life.  That will be a tall order, given the number of people he allegedly murdered, their ages and relation to him.  I can't think of a single reason why murder was the answer to any problem he may have been having.  I'm sure they will have a psychiatric evaluation of Martinez, or many evaluations - as we witnessed in the Jodi Arias trial they can take just about any event and try to turn it into a mental illness to explain away their clients' actions.  I hate the idea of "expert witnesses".  The problem with these type of witnesses is for the most part they are getting a paycheck for their testimony.  I believe if that were not the case, their testimony might be more credible in my eyes.

I understand people need to get paid, and these types of cases can take a lot of time away from the "experts" normal clientele. However it seems that each side is able to find an expert willing to testify in a way that benefits their theory of the crime.  The "he/she simply snapped" excuse isn't good enough in a case like this.  You can have a momentary lapse of conscious and lash out in a violent way that you may immediately regret - but to act out violently and kill a person and do it again, and again, and again and again....that isn't snapping.  That is purposeful and intentional murder.  Did he want to ensure he left no witnesses behind after killing the first victim?  Again, I have no details on the case but it would seem logical that the target of his violence was Amanda Crews.  Everyone else in the house knew "Marty", so did he kill them to eliminate witnesses?  That explanation works for everyone with the exception of the 6 month old child.  Unless she knows how to say "da da" or "daddy", how would she identify him as the killer?  Was she in a crib when this all happened or was she being shielded by her mother or grandmother?

I simply can't imagine the horror of this crime and the scene law enforcement must have walked into.  How do you forget about a scene like that?  This reminds me of the Chris Coleman case where he killed his entire family as they slept in their own beds.  Coleman was found to be having an affair with his wife's best friend from high school and was allegedly pressing Coleman to get a divorce.  Coleman worked for Joyce Meyer Ministries, and if it came out that he was having an adulterous affair he would have lost his six figure a year job.  His solution?  His wife Sherri and his two young sons Gavin and Garrett had to go.  He strangled them all, then left for the gym early in the morning in a lame attempt to establish an alibi.  

He then called his across the street neighbor who happened to be in law enforcement to check on Sherri after his calls to her went unanswered.  He had fabricated threatening letters and email messages to himself and his family to make it seem as if someone was out to get Joyce Meyer herself, but they said they would go after Chris and his family if they couldn't reach Joyce.  This was as lame as it comes.  Chris was the head of security at Joyce Meyer Ministries, and he created the fake email account and sent the threatening emails from his own work computer.  Amateur hour Chris!  Back to the story - Chris set up his poor neighbor to discover the bodies of his wife and children.  What a coward.  Chris left his home early in the morning (5 or 6AM?) and began calling his wife Sherry "to make sure she was up" at 7AM.  Why would he panic if she didn't answer the phone?  People take showers, or maybe she was in the restroom or helping one of the kids.  Chris sounded the alarm bell even though he had only been gone for around 2 hours.

Did he really think the police would believe that in that 2 hour window of time, some unknown person would break into his house, kill everyone inside and then have the time to spray paint nasty Manson style messages in red spray paint on the walls?  Not to mention the coroner was able to definitely say Sherri, Gavin and Garrett had been dead for hours by the time they were discovered.  They were dead while Chris was still in the house.  The Colemans installed security cameras after receiving the threatening messages, however the recorder was conveniently missing from the crime scene and has never been recovered.  Who knew there was security cameras and who knew where the recorder was?  Chris Coleman did.

In addition to these boneheaded mistakes he made, it appears that Sherry put up a heck of a fight before Chris overpowered her and she left scratch marks all over his arms.  Good for you Sherri.  It didn't take long for law enforcement to untangle this and arrest Christopher Coleman.  Not too bright for the head of security of a major figure in the world of ministries.  There was no evidence or indication at all that the woman Coleman was having an affair with had any knowledge of Coleman's evil plans.  Sherri and her boys were murdered on Mother's Day.  Coleman told his lover he was serving Sherri with divorce papers on the same day she was found dead.

Husbands who kill their entire families are a rare breed of evil, yet it seems to happen at an alarming rate. Coleman's motive seemed to be his desire to be with the other woman and the need to keep his high paying job.  His father was also a minister, and murder seemed to be a better option to him than divorce.  

And in a class of his own we all know about Drew Peterson, who didn't kill his entire family - just two of his wives.  It's quite possible he tried to kill a third by cutting her brake lines.  Peterson's motives appear to be different than the other family/wife killers.  He didn't want to lose half of his assets or pension.  

Prosecutors in the Scott Peterson murder trial believed his motive for murdering his wife Laci and unborn (near full term) son Conner was that he didn't want to be that tied-down family man. He wanted to be free to frolic with Amber Frey and wanted out of the family man responsibilities.  I'm not sure I buy that as the motive.  After seeing the Peterson special I'm not even 100% sure about anything in the case except someone killed Laci and Conner.  It seems likely that Scott did, however if those numerous witnesses who say they saw Laci walking MacKenzie are to be believed, he couldn't have.  The only thing that really tied him to the deaths were the fact that their bodies washed up where he was "fishing".  Hard to overcome such a coincidence.

Then you have a spoiled greedy man who had parents who adored him and gave him whatever he wanted - yet he tried to have them all killed. Bart Whitaker planned the murders with his friends, but only managed to kill his brother and mother.  Both Bart and his father were shot but survived. Bart had his friend shoot him to make it look like more of a legitimate robbery gone bad.  Is that always the setup to foil the police?  Bart and his brother would have inherited their parents wealth eventually, but he couldn't wait.  He flunked out of college while his parents believed he was graduating and he wanted them dead before they found out.  That's cold.

In my book, Christopher Coleman stands out as the most despicable of the family killers I've heard about.  His wife Sherry loved him, his children idolized him and he betrayed each and every one of them - all for the "love" (...sex) with Sherry's high school buddy.  Classy Chris.  He's lucky the death penalty was abolished or he'd be on death row in his state right now.

When will the murdering of spouses/families end?  Has it always been this bad?