A mother’s story of triple tragedy to be aired
At the start of Domestic Violence Month
WEST HAVEN — Corrinna Martin confronts a Mount Everest of grief every day and said she can’t go over or around it, but, “You can tunnel through the mountain and come out the other end.”
“I’m still tunneling,” said Martin, who confronts unfathomable pain daily after losing two of her four daughters and a granddaughter, 9, to domestic violence in two separate cases, one of them in a high-profile 2013 case and another in 2017.
“It still takes my breath away, I’m liquefied,” Martin said. “There are moments when the emotion gets the better of me. There are times when it’s unbearable, but I was told by God in 2013 that this is bigger than me, it’s for the greater good.”
That greater good was in creating the nonprofit M.O.V.E. Inc. — Mothers of Victim Equality — an organization that provides education, advocacy and engagement as a proactive approach to ending domestic violence, especially in communities of color.
On Thursday, the first day of Domestic Violence Awareness month, her tragic case and the organization helping other women every day will get a national spotlight on the season two finale of “Impact of Murder,” on Investigation Discovery at 9 p.m.
The episode is titled, “There’s No Winning In Murder.”
Martin founded the organization the year of the first killing. It was a way to honor the legacy of Alyssiah Marie Wiley, 20, a “vibrant, vivacious” college student, Martin said, who was killed by a longtime boyfriend as she tried to break up with him. Wiley, who aspired to become a psychiatrist, was the “peacemaker in the family and had a heart of gold.”
Four years later, another daughter, Chaquinequea Brodie, who helped Martin launch and run the organization in memory of her sister, was killed by a partner at age 29. Also killed was Martin’s beloved granddaughter, My’Jaeaha Richardson, whom she helped raise from infancy. They had been shot. Martin said Brodie was the oldest of her four daughters and “the strong one” in the family. “She had that smile that would light up a room.”
“They’re in my heart — every breath
I take is for them,” Martin said of the three. “They’re in me.”
Martin said the enormity of her pain is difficult to put into words — the “grief, anguish, anxiety” — but helping others and possibly saving lives helps to keep her going and her daughters’ memories alive.
M.O.V.E. puts a special focus on warning women of color about the dangers and warning signs of domestic violence because they disproportionately fall victim to it. She said that according to the Blackburn Institute, Black women are 2.5 times more likely to be murdered than white women, she said.
After Wiley’s killing, when Martin learned about some of the details of her daughter’s abusive relationship, she delved into learning about domestic violence and started the organization.
“This is what makes me put my feet on the ground each morning — this is my life,” Martin said.
These days Martin spends all her waking time educating, empowering woman at churches, colleges and other venues, and pursuing legislation that would create a national registry of violent offenders. The registry would allow people to access information on violent offenders that is public anyway, free and in a straightforward way so it can be accessed by all. It turned out in Brodie’s case, the boyfriend who killed her had convictions for violence in other states. The men in both cases were convicted in the killings.
Martin said she does lots of engaging and listening when speaking to women and doesn’t use a lot of the details of her own case, as they are so “heinous and horrific.”
“How do you talk about murder and dismemberment and losing a daughter and granddaughter who were tortured?” she said.
Her organization also has helped women in practical ways to escape, relocate.
In Wiley’s case, she was a sophomore at Eastern Connecticut State University who disappeared sometime after April 19, when she was seen leaving the Willimantic campus in her boyfriend’s car.
Twenty-seven days later, after a statewide search and public appeals by Martin, Wiley’s partial remains were found in a wooded area at the end of Quarry Road in Trumbull, a mile-anda-half from her longtime boyfriend’s Bridgeport home.
Her boyfriend since high school, Jermaine Richards, a licensed practical nurse, 35, eventually would be sentenced to 60 years in prison with no parole after a third trial. The first two trials resulted in a hung jury. Martin said every time the news announces that remains are found, she gasps, wondering if it will be more of her daughter.
In August 2017, just before the third trial in Wiley’s killing was to begin, the unthinkable happened. Brodie, 29, and My’Jaeaha were killed in Waterbury by Brodie’s live-in boyfriend. They were found dead in their apartment and Brodie’s 2-year-old daughter was found screaming outside, but was physically uninjured.
Anthony Rutherford, 28, at the time, is serving 80 years in the killings through a plea bargain. Martin would learn her daughter and granddaughter were tortured before they were killed, adding to the pain. Martin collapsed in the courtroom following Rutherford’s arraignment. The judge at Rutherford’s sentencing said the killings were by a “sociopath with absolutely no conscience.”
In Wiley’s case, it came out during Richards’ trial that he allegedly told a friend he was going to “get rid” of Wiley after she tried to break up with him
There was no physical evidence in the case — no blood residue or anything to show where or when Wiley was killed. There were no eyewitnesses and no confession.
One of the aims of M.O.V.E. is to help mediate ongoing domestic situations before it boils over into violence.
Martin has said the organization strives to be like a “pressure cooker.”
“We want to be the valve that lets the steam out,” she has said.
They also want to get rid of the stigma of domestic violence.
“Once everyone starts talking about it and becomes aware of it you start seeing the cure for it, you stop living under the scrutiny,” Martin has said.