Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I want to clear my name before I die
Killer Martin plans to launch legal fight He visited grave of raider, 16, last year
Newark. He said: “I stayed there for a couple of minutes. It’s got a photo of Barras on it, the same one used in the papers.
“That was the only photo I’d ever seen of him – I couldn’t see him at the time [of the shooting].
“I ran into a guy in the graveyard and asked him if he knew where Barras’s grave was. He said he did. I told him, ‘It’s a strange thing to say but I’m the one who put him there’.
“I looked at the grave and said, ‘Well, boy, this is basically what you wanted. You’ve made your mark’. I suppose I made my mark too but my mark came about simply because I happened to live in a house. Barras did what he wanted to do. He had a short life. Seeing the photo and reading about him, he seemed a happy sort of lad.”
In August 1999, Mr Martin was charged with murder, attempted murder, wounding with intent to cause injury and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
He did not hold a valid shotgun certificate – or the more restrictive firearms certificate needed for the Winchester pump-action shotgun he used. In his trial, the prosecution accused him of lying in wait and opening fire without warning, after previous break-ins. A shot was fired towards the raiders in his stairwell and two as they fled. Both suffered leg wounds and Barras was hit in the back, dying at the scene.
Fearon and getaway driver Darren Bark, 33, admitted conspiring to burgle the house. Fearon got three years’ jail and Bark received 30 months. In 2001, Mr Martin’s life term was cut to five years on grounds of diminished responsibility, after he was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder exacerbated by depression.
Mr Martin still works the 300 acres of land at his farm but has not set foot in Bleak House since Barras’s death. He said: “I’ve no end of jobs. I’ve never caught up with the four years I lost.”
Of the recent break-in, he said: “I put a ladder out the other day, up a tree. Later, they’d put it against the house. They’d tried to get in.”
The Interrogation, Sunday, C4, 9pm.