Pillowcases that match the bedspread wrapped around a dead woman link a 36-year-old Wrightsville man to the July slaying, a Pulaski County sheriff’s deputy testified Tuesday.
Also, James Clyde Martin Jr. confessed to strangling 47-year-old Robbin Lynn Carr Gore with his belt, telling deputies that he had covered her body with tree limbs to shield it from animals, sheriff’s investigator Kevin Collie told Circuit Judge Leon Johnson at Martin’s bail hearing. The defendant was arrested two days after the body of the mother of one was found.
Gore had a belt around her neck when her remains were discovered, Collie testified. Questioned by deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones, the deputy said Gore had to be identified by her fingerprints, and an autopsy showed that she had been strangled. Martin is charged with capital murder, abuse of corpse and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Martin had a shotgun and a rifle in the recreational vehicle he was living in on his father’s property, Collie told the judge.
Collie said fishermen had found the woman’s decomposed corpse on July 12 wrapped in a maroon- and green-patterned bedspread and covered with branches next to a pond in woods in the 1700 block of West Dixon Road.
Tips from two people that Gore had not been seen since Independence Day led deputies to the Martins’ Wrightsville property, where Martin told investigators that he had not seen Gore since she left after an argument on July 4, Collie said.
But her truck was still at his house, and her overnight bag with personal items was in Martin’s recreational vehicle, the investigator said. Deputies also couldn’t help but notice the bedding in the recreational vehicle, the investigator said.
“The one thing that really stood out was that there were some pillowcases that matched the bedspread” that Gore’s body had been found wrapped in, he said.
Martin admitted killing the woman after deputies showed him two photographs, one of them a couple of years old that showed Gore sitting on the bedspread and the second with her body wrapped in the same bedding, Collie testified.
After seeing the photo of Gore’s body, Martin told deputies that the couple had quarreled over her texting other men, according to investigators. At some point, Martin said, Gore awakened him from sleep with a pistol pointed at his chest and pulled the trigger twice, according to Collie’s testimony. After she put the gun down, Martin said, he punched her, then strangled her with his belt, the investigator said.
Deputies searched for the pistol that Martin said Gore had, but could not find it, even after a dive team searched the pond where the woman’s body was found, the deputy said. Martin said he took Gore’s body to the pond area, then called her cellphone a couple of times after she was dead to throw suspicion off himself, Collie testified.
Two weeks after Martin’s arrest, a prostitute approached an off-duty Little Rock police officer working security at the Wal-Mart on Base Line Road in Little Rock and said that a man she knew as J.C. had told her he had killed a woman and dumped her body, Collie said. She identified Martin in a photographic lineup.
With the trial set in March, defense attorney Bill James asked the judge to reduce Martin’s bail from $1 million to a more-affordable $50,000 to $75,000 but the judge declined, siding with prosecutors who predicted that Martin has a high likelihood of conviction.
Court records show that in March Martin was evicted from his previous residence, Indian Springs Park in Bryant, where he had lived since December 2009. He had not paid his $180-a-month rent since October 2012 and also owed late fees, for a total of $930, by the time eviction proceedings were initiated in March.
Martin has a 1996 conviction for residential burglary for breaking into a Little Rock home with another man, for which he was sentenced to three years of probation. He also has convictions from 2003 for possession of marijuana and methamphetamine.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 10/30/2013