BLOOD MONEY
SEX WORKER ‘PAID $25,000 FOR BRUTAL ATTACK’
A SEX WORKER told police she was paid $25,000 for her role in a brutal attack in which a man was stabbed in the eye, bashed and left for dead.
Jessica Honey Fallon is on trial accused of attempted murder after the attack on Murwillumbah man Michael Anthony Martin. She denies the charges.
Mr Martin was later killed in a separate attack for which his son, Michael Phillip Martin, was convicted of murder.
AN ice-addicted prostitute was offered $25,000 to “beat” a man to “give him a warning” as she drank in a small Murwillumbah pub, a court has heard.
Jessica Honey Fallon, 23, is on trial in Lismore District Court for the attempted murder of Murwillumbah man Michael Anthony Martin and the reckless grievous bodily harm of Martin’s flatmate, Edmund Andrew Manning. She has pleaded not guilty.
Martin, then 46, was stabbed in the eye, bashed and left for dead in a home invasion on April 7, 2014.
The alleged attack was part of a plot hatched by Martin’s son Michael Phillip Martin to kill his alcoholic father and claim three life insurance policies, taken out in his name, worth $2.5 million
Fallon, aged 20 at the time, earned $2000 a week working at a Tweed Heads brothel.
She told police she carried out the bashing with two men referred to as “Blue” and “White”.
In a three-hour police interview, played in Lismore District Court yesterday, Fallon said she met “Blue” at the Murwillumbah Round House Tavern three weeks before the alleged attack.
She said while she was at the bar she was offered $25,000 to “beat (Martin) up (to) give him a warning”.
By the time of the alleged home invasion she told police she had been on the drug ice for about three weeks and had spent at least $8000 on the drug, which she was injecting “five times a day”.
On Sunday April 6, Fallon said she collected knives, guns, and balaclavas with “Blue” from her home in Brisbane and drove to Murwillumbah, picking up “White” on the way from Palm Beach.
When they arrived at Martin
Snr’s unit, in the early hours of April 7, Fallon said she entered the home first and stabbed Martin Snr “in the neck and in the eye” when he came to the door.
After he fell to the ground, she said they tied him up and
“the boys took off Martin’s pants (and) continued to bash him”. She told police she could hear “bones snapping” as well as “popping noises” from the stabbing.
“I thought he was dead,” she said.
Fallon told police when flatmate Manning woke up, “I could just see it was getting way out of hand ... that’s when I was told to go downstairs”.
Fallon said the trio dumped the knives in the Tweed River and drove to a nearby home, where they showered, burnt their clothes, and later dumped the guns.
She later told police she was paid $25,000 for the crime, in two cash instalments, which she claimed she stashed in the roof of her mother’s Byron Bay home.
The court heard police were unable to find the money.
Martin Snr survived the attack but was subsequently murdered two months later on June 13 – the first night he returned to the unit, following his release from hospital.
In October last year, his son Michael Phillip Martin was found guilty of his father’s murder as well as his attempted murder in the April 7 attack. He will be sentenced next Wednesday.
Fallon’s trial continues.