Court documents point to suspect’s plethora of firearms
Prosecutors say the cache should keepmaninjail
A Los Gatos man arrested last month with a cache of firearms and personally inscribed bullets — with messages including “Cop Killer” — should not be released from jail because of his proficiency with weapons, combined with journal writings describing elaborate robbery and kidnapping plots at specific South Bay locations, prosecutors argued in a bail motion filed this week.
The motion reveals new details about what was found in Wesley Charles Martines’ pickup truck after he was stopped July 9 by Campbell police, including armor-piercing rifle rounds and a handwritten journal, which was one of two manifestos recovered by authorities that contained detailed plans for violently robbing banks, armored trucks, liquor stores, gas stations, sporting goods stores and other businesses in a region stretching from Los Gatos to Monterey.
Some of the journal entries were written under the heading of “ideas for a book/movie,” and they included hand-drawn maps related to assorted robbery schemes, according to images of the journal included with the bail-denial motion. Martines also wrote Islamophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, his desire to stop “intermingling” of different races, and described himself as a psychopath and an acolyte of the Antichrist.
“The journals contain plans to commit various shootings, robberies, burglaries, thefts, kidnappings, blackmail, and false imprisonment,” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Olivia Mendoza wrote in the motion. “These plans often include specific locations throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, hand-drawn maps depicting locations and escape routes, lists of possible accomplices that could be recruited, step-by-step plans to commit various crimes, and plans to use high-powered firearms, ammunition, and explosives in the commission of these crimes.”
Mendoza concludes in the filing that “there is clear and convincing evidence that if released there is a substantial likelihood Martines will inflict great bodily harm and death on the people of this community.”
Martines’ defense attorneys Elliot Silver and Marshall Hammons refuted prosecutors’ characterization and accused them of using the specter of the May 26 VTA mass shooting to overcharge their client, also of trying to skew public opinion on the case.
“Wesley Martines is not a violent person, let alone the person the District Attorney and law enforcement make him out to be,” reads a statement from the attorneys. “The District Attorney’s office is in violation of its ethical duties by disclosing their bail motion and included discovery to the media.”
The bail motion filed by prosecutors is publicly accessible through the county Superior Court.
Martines, 32, has been held on $300,000 bail in the Elmwood men’s jail since his arrest, and he was initially charged with seven felonies encompassing possession of assault weapons, a silencer, illegal drugs and the makings of a pipe bomb. In the motion submitted Monday to the Superior Court — ahead of Martines’ scheduled Aug. 11 bail hearing — the District Attorney’s Office announced intentions to add an eighth felony count alleging possession of a short-barreled rifle.
Campbell police say Martines attracted suspicion just after midnight July 9 after a business owner on East Sunnyoaks Avenue saw a man peering into vehicles at a car lot and looking inside a storage shed. Officers stopped Martines’ white Ford F-250 pickup truck in the area.
One of the officers who conducted the vehicle stop soon spotted what looked like a rifle in the backseat, and Martines claimed it was an Airsoft rifle, according to a police report, which added that Martines was ordered out of his truck and a pat down search turned up a loaded handgun magazine in his pants pocket.
Besides two rifles outfitted with silencers and advanced scopes and sights, a search of the truck turned up body armor with rifleresistant plating and pockets stuffed with loaded rifle magazines and throwing knives, and several high-capacity rifle magazines, according to the motion and a police report. Police obtained a gun-violence restraining order to temporarily seize Martines’ guns and also searched his home, where a short-barreled rifle was recovered. A fourth rifle registered to him was not found, authorities said.
In journal entries detailing robbery plots, Martines also described a “death pact” in which he and his crew “will go out shooting, either kill any cops in their way or die trying. F— prison. No surrender.” He also described casing locations and studying police patrol patterns, and how certain cities in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey area were “ideal locations to commit these crimes because they are small towns with small police departments.”