CHRIS BISHOP reports on the bizarre batchelor lifestyle of a brooding loner

October 30, 2001

Tony Martin slept fully clothed, on top of his bed, in a squalid farmhouse that looked like a bomb had hit it. His bizarre bachelor lifestyle was used to undermine him during the original trial.

The prosecution portrayed him as a brooding loner, hiding with his shotgun - waiting to let fly at the next bunch of burglars fool enough to set foot on his property - Bleak House. But burglars weren’t the reason why Martin had boarded all his windows up and let the hogweed riot so high up the walls you could barely even see the house. He hadn’t just reached for the hammer and the Miracle Grow the first time he’d been broken into.

Childhood abuse had left him feeling vulnerable and paranoid, it was revealed at the appeal. He had always feared being violated and attacked, so he turned his home into a fortress. And his siege mentality meant that when the thieves did start targetting his remote farm, it affected him more than the average person.

BLEAK HOUSE: Martin used his home as a refuge.

Consultant pyschiatrist Dr Philip Joseph told the three appeal court judges that the experience of being burgled in May, nearly four months before the fatal shootings, had left Martin “in shock”. “His reaction would be more extreme than an ordinary person, he would feel more violated, more put-upon, less able to say these things happen,” he went on. “It’s going to rock him to the core more than the average person.”

Dr Joseph said Martin used his home as a refuge from what he saw as a hostile outside world. “That house represents some sort of haven for him that must be untouched by time,” he said.

In earlier evidence, Dr Joseph said Martin was mentally disordered and had suffered bouts of depression throughout his adult life. “In the weeks and months leading up to the event he was depressed and his responsibility was substantially-impaired as a result of these factors affecting his mind,” he added.

You could be forgiven for wondering why none of this evidence was put before the jury at the original trial. Or whether a jury would have dished out a murder conviction to anyone with Martin’s complex mental history in any case. More

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The Tony Martin File