A father was killed in a Missouri bar fight. His twin daughters’ podcast contributed to the suspect’s arrest 35 years later

() – On the night of October 13, 1989, Jimmie Wade Martin went for a drink at a tavern in his hometown of Bonne Terre, Missouri. He never returned home.

Martin’s bloodied body was discovered on a nearby street in the early hours of the morning. He had suffered a fatal blow to the head during a bar fight that spilled outside, authorities said at the time.

Their 11-year-old twin daughters, Angela Williams and Andrea Lynn, learned the terrible news when they woke up while sleeping in a family friend’s caravan. Their father had promised to take them to a garage sale that day.

For weeks, the twins rode their pink bicycles around local newsstands to read articles about their father’s death. In his town of 6,000 inhabitants, once famous for its enormous lead mines, murders were so rare that they grabbed many headlines.

A man was arrested in connection with Martin’s death, but was later released when charges were dropped days before his trial, the twins said.

Months turned into years with no more arrests. Some witnesses died, while others moved out of town. The case was forgotten.

And the sisters asked themselves: Why did it take so long for justice to take charge of a crime that occurred near a popular bar and had several witnesses?

In 2007, the twins turned 29, the same age their father was when he died. And his desperation for answers took on new meaning and urgency.

“That’s when I realized how young I really was at that time,” Lynn said. “Because when you’re 11, 29 seems really old. And then when you get to 29, you realize I was really young.”

They contacted local authorities to reopen the case, but said they never received a response. So, armed with the autopsy and police and coroner’s reports, they put together a folder, labeled it “Jimmie’s Bible,” and began knocking on doors. They pleaded with local residents who knew something to come forward.

“If we saw a name in the report, heard a name mentioned, or heard a rumor about something that happened that night, we would just show up at someone’s house and say, ‘Would you please talk to us?’” Williams said.

In late 2020, 31 years after their father’s murder, the twins and their two cousins, Shawn Lee Martin and Chris Hulsey, launched a podcast, “Small Town Forgotten,” with all the information they were gathering.

A few months later, in early 2021, the St. Francois County Prosecutor’s Office announced it would reopen the case.

And this month, police finally arrested a man. The suspect, Wesley Paul Marler, 69, has been charged with first-degree assault and has pleaded not guilty.

Bonne Terre is a small town about 60 miles south of St. Louis. At the time of the murder, it was a quiet place with only one traffic light. Everyone knew each other and loyalty among the locals ran deep, the sisters said.

Their father was murdered on Friday the 13th, cementing the twins’ belief in bad luck and conspiracy theories associated with that day.

“Ever since then, I’ve been very superstitious about Friday the 13th,” Williams said. “I try not to do too much that day.”

Marler, the new suspect, is being held on bail of US$500,000. His lawyer told that the case is unique because so many years have passed.

“Many of the witnesses to the incident are now deceased, memories are not as clear or reliable after 35 years, and any physical evidence that was gathered has been stored for 35 years,” attorney Christopher G. Hartmann said in an email. electronic.

“We believe that when all the evidence has been presented and analyzed, Mr. Marler will be exonerated of this charge and his innocence will be revealed.”

But the twins believe the evidence points to Marler, who was at the Coal Bin Tavern that night, they said. While speaking with Bonne Terre residents, they learned that Marler had accused his father of having an affair with his wife. Their parents were going through a difficult time in their relationship and had separated at the time, they said.

The twins, now 46 and living in the nearby town of Farmington, initially believed that the man arrested in 1989 and released before trial had murdered their father and evaded prosecution. But that belief began to crumble after they talked to residents and learned of their father’s tense history with Marler, they said. A few weeks before the fatal fight, the two men had gotten into a fistfight, Lynn said.

In November 2020, the sisters issued a plea on their podcast.

“Please, if you know anything… It’s not like he got sick and died in the hospital,” Lynn said with a trembling voice. “He was left lying on the side of the street and bled to death. If it were me, I don’t think I could live with myself if I knew anything.”

Hartmann declined to comment on his client’s alleged tense history with Martin or an alleged motive.

“Once all the evidence is presented in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion, my client’s innocence will be proven,” he said.

In their search for justice, the twins sent a Facebook message to the initial suspect in the case and his daughter, requesting a meeting. He agreed to talk to them. is not identifying the man because the charges against him were dropped.

Although most of the documents in the case were sealed because it was an unsolved murder, the man provided the twins with a large amount of documents. Because he was a previous suspect, he had the case file and could share details that were previously unknown, Lynn said.

With his help, the twins reconstructed their father’s last moments. They learned that the fight had started in the bar and then escalated outside.

“They chased each other… went through some people’s yard and ended up on the next street,” Williams said. “It was such a big bar fight… I feel like there were multiple fights that night.”

The initial suspect was a stranger who was visiting his family at the time. He told the twins that he saw a fight and grabbed a piece of landscaping wood that was lying in the street. He swung it around to try to stop the fight, hitting an unidentified person.

The man later reported the incident to the police and confessed that he had hit someone. The man was arrested even though witnesses’ description of the killer did not match, the twins said.

When investigators showed him a photo of Martin at the preliminary hearing, he told them that was not the man he had hit, the sisters said.

But he was an outsider who had a record of drug possession and other minor crimes, and had confessed to hitting someone, making him an ideal suspect.

“They said, yes, he confessed. He did it,” Williams said. “He was from another city. You could see the tunnel vision in the police reports. “It was an election year and it was more convenient to blame him.”

The twins also visited the bar’s former location and the spot where their father’s body was found. It was surrounded by houses, but none of the neighbors intervened that night.

“According to witness statements, residents were watching from the windows and never turned on any lights,” Lynn said.

“It was strange knowing that was the last place I was,” she added, fighting back tears.

The autopsy revealed that Martin suffered several blows that fractured his skull, but he had no defensive wounds. In the podcast, the coroner who performed the autopsy said he was probably hit from behind and lost consciousness.

“It was very hard for me knowing that he had been hit from behind and that he had no chance to defend himself,” Lynn said.

The sisters said that their father did not usually start confrontations, but he was not one to let himself be defeated without a fight. They recalled an incident in which someone said something inappropriate to their mother while he was present.

“My father knocked those two guys unconscious and said, ‘Come on, baby, get in the truck. Let’s go,’” Lynn said. “The people who killed him probably hit him from behind because they didn’t want to face him face to face. “They knew he could defend himself.”

After three decades, the sisters finally received the call they had been waiting for.
After years of uncertainty, the sisters received a call in February 2021 informing them that the case would be reopened. The St. Francois County prosecutor at the time, Melissa Gilliam, told local media that the sisters’ podcast “was a vehicle that allowed us to learn about the case.”

“New leads have emerged in the case and investigators continue to work diligently to uncover information that may lead to charging the person responsible for Martin’s death,” Gilliam said in a 2021 statement.

The county elected a new prosecutor in 2022. has reached out to the county to determine what role the podcast played in the arrest.

Earlier this month, the sisters received a call they had dreamed about for years: Authorities had arrested Marler and charged him with assaulting their father.

“Thank God I wasn’t working, because I couldn’t control all the emotions that came over me,” Lynn said. “I laughed. I cried. I screamed. There were emotions everywhere.”

Williams said his hands and legs shook for hours after receiving the news. “One second I was on cloud nine and the next I was crying,” he said.

It is unclear why prosecutors did not charge Marler with murder. They did not respond to ‘s requests for comment.

The sisters say they hope justice will finally be served after years of feeling defeated. They still regret that their father was not with them to see them grow up and get married, or to meet his four grandchildren. They want the person who took it from them to be held accountable for their actions.

The fondest memories they have of their father are the activities they shared. He was thin and athletic and did random cartwheels in his backyard, they said. He would dive into the public pool with such bravado that strangers would line up to see him and applaud, Lynn said.

For the sisters, justice means finally knowing the truth about what happened that night. They believe their podcast has played an important role in getting the case reopened.

“We weren’t afraid of anyone just because our father was killed,” Williams said. “They should be afraid of us.”