Tony Martin, the farmer who killed a teenage burglar and shot his accomplice in 1999, never expressed remorse for his actions, according to a journalist who lived with him for two weeks. The journalist, Aidan McGurran, said in a BBC interview that Martin never mentioned regret over killing 16-year-old Fred Barras, instead speaking about his paranoia of being burgled and attacked. McGurran worked for the Daily Mirror, which signed an exclusive interview agreement with Martin that led to the two men living together for a time after Martin was released from prison. Martin died on Sunday aged 80.
Barras and Brendan Fearon broke into Martin’s home in Emneth Hungate on the Norfolk-Cambridgeshire border and were shot by Martin. At his trial, Martin claimed he had acted in self-defence while prosecutors argued he had anticipated the intruders and lay in wait for them. Martin was convicted of murder in 2000 but this was reduced on appeal to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to a diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder. He was released from prison in 2003. His case helped prompt a change in the law on self-defence.
Sir Henry Bellingham, who was Martin’s local MP for 30 years, said the farmer had become increasingly paranoid about the lack of police response to burglaries and was convinced he was going to get burgled and injured. Bellingham pointed out that the law had subsequently changed from an objective test of what a reasonable person would do in certain circumstances to a subjective one, based on what someone in a given situation would have done and whether their response was reasonable. He added that if the law had been the same as it was after Martin’s trial, Martin might not have been charged.
The Mirror’s decision to pay for an exclusive interview with Martin was an unpopular one at the time with some of McGurran’s colleagues, but proved popular with readers, who were largely sympathetic to the farmer. McGurran said he initially had doubts, but that his boss was right and the Mirror’s readers loved the series of interviews he conducted
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More