Page 38 Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019
by Jenny
Johnston
T
ony Martin likes to visit
graveyards. He likes to study
the headstones, consider the
history and enjoy the silence.
Sometimes — ever the farmer
— he fumes at the overgrowth and has
a tidy-up. it has got him into trouble.
‘i don’t believe in God, but i’ve tidied up a
couple of churchyards around here,’ he says.
‘they looked a bloody mess. But they don’t like
it. the Vicar of Dibley comes out and tells me
they are going to get the police.’
the Vicar of Dibley? ‘it’s a woman vicar.’
Having witnessed him pottering in his own
garden — last time we met, he kindly sent me
home with cuttings — his penchant for guerrilla
gardening comes as no surprise.
What is odd, though, is that he can’t see the
irony in another landowner taking exception
to him going about his business on property
that isn’t his.
this is tony Martin, the farmer who killed a
burglar who had trespassed on his land, and
whose case still provokes heated debate about
how far we should be able to go to protect our-
selves and our property. it is 20 years since the
awful events of that night. it was august 20,
1999, when Martin awoke to realise there were
intruders in his home, the aptly named Bleak
House. the norfolk farmer, who had a history
of holding illegal firearms, had a gun to hand
and used it.
Both the burglars came from the travelling
community, whose members had long blighted
Martin’s life.
out of terror, or rage, he fired at them.
Brendon Fearon, 29, fled with his life. Sixteen-
year-old Fred Barras was not so lucky. Hit in
the back as he tried to run away, he died atthe scene. tony Martin was duly charged,
amid howls of protest about a homeowner’s
right to self-defence.
He was convicted of murder, but this was
later reduced to manslaughter on the grounds
of diminished responsibility. While he was in
custody, Martin, a complex character, was
diagnosed with asperger syndrome.
i first met tony in prison, where he served
three years of his five-year sentence. i shared
an extraordinary car journey with him on the
day of his release in 2003 and have visited
him several times over the years.
Each meeting has served only to further
muddy the waters about whether we should
regard him as a hero or a dangerous vigilante.
today, we have another strange encounter
as the conversation bounces from rural crime
to Donald trump via our new Prime Minister.
‘How is Boris Karloff?’ he asks.
they used to call him Mad Martin even
before he became infamous. He would sleep
fully clothed, with his boots on.
Extraordinarily, those boots still have not
been back inside Bleak House, the rambling
old farmhouse that he killed to defend.
He still owns it, but the once-proud redbrick
building, off the beaten track in the
hamlet of Emneth Hungate, always
hidden behind trees, is now invisible,
choked with ivy. Branches grow into
and out of the structure. these days,
it is bleaker than bleak.
a police cone still sits outside.
there are locks on the doors. others
have been in.
‘not with my permission,’ Martin
growls, when i tell him that a blogger
recently posted footage of the interior,
astounded that there were animal
carcasses strung from the ceiling.
But not Martin. although he still
tends the gardens and potters about
the barns and outbuildings, where he
has since installed CCtV cameras, he
can’t — won’t — set foot in the house
again. ‘Bleak House is no more. it’s
redundant. it just sits there. Everyone
has been in except me. When it all
happened, it was tainted. Violated.’
Last time we met, i suspected he
was sleeping in his car, judging by its
state, but now he sleeps ‘here for a bit
and there for a bit’, with friends.
Does he have many friends? ‘Well,
people have been very generous with
me, but, recently, i think people are
getting fed up with me.
‘People can get contaminated with
other people. they have their own
lives. relationships, they do run down
after a while. But i don’t fall out with
people — they fall out with me.’
When we last met, we stood on the
spot in the garden where Fred Barras
died, and Martin called him ‘vermin’.
today, however, he tells me he has
since visited Barras’s grave — which
is quite a revelation.
‘i was up in newark at the Midlands
Show and there is a huge cemetery
there. Well, Mr Barras is there, buried
up the far end. it’s quite hard to find.
‘there was a man there and i asked
where i’d find him [Barras] and he
showed me. and there he was. then
he left me there.’M
artin continues: ‘i
stood for a minute or
so, just looked at the
headstone. there was
a picture of him on it — the same one
i’d seen in the papers.’
He sips his coffee. there is no
emotion. What was he thinking as he
stood there? ‘i didn’t feel anything. i
just stood there, totally removed from
what i was looking at.
‘i did think about how everything is
of our own making, though. and that
applies to him.’
But why seek out the grave? out of
respect? His eyes harden. ‘it wasn’t
respect, no. it was curiosity.’
Did he never feel remorse at killing
a 16-year-old? ‘i’ve been called a
“kiddie killer”,’ he says, both baffled
and furious. But he still believes,
vehemently, that he did the right
thing. ‘i did nothing wrong,’ he insists.
‘i did what anyone would do.’
and he’d do it again? ‘if the
circumstances were the same, yes.
anyone would.’
We go over the events of that night.
He gets wound up describing how he
lay there, listening to the intruders. ‘i
thought: “right, tony. this is it. Whatdo you do now?” ’ it was dark. He
puts his hand to his chest and
describes the ‘boom, boom, boom’
his heart was making.
‘i don’t know if it was the adrenaline
— but i was terrified. But you know
what courage is? i didn’t until then.
it’s when you overcome your fear.’
He got out of bed, couldn’t at first
find his gun, and then he did. He
didn’t know who or what he was
firing at, but he fired and fired.
Fred Barras lost his life that night
and, in some ways, Martin lost
his, too.
His life became public property.
Elements that had been private were
suddenly public. to his horror, past
abuse he had suffered at the hands of
a schoolmaster was brought up in
court. His elderly mother gave an
interview in which she — his great
defender — questioned his temper.
‘Mother said something that didn’t
help. She said i could have a short
fuse. i don’t think that is true. i have
two fuses. Maybe one is short, if i’m
in an emergency. But one is long. i’d
had a lot of things to deal with in
my life. things that leave marks.
‘yes, i was abused at school. then i
lost someone, a woman. But all these
things, i’d coped with them. i’d got
on with my life. then, when some-
thing happens, like what did happen,
they all come out again.’
He is still wearing his beloved green
beret, i note, which was always either
on his head or in his hand.
‘it’s a different one,’ he says. ‘the
original is gone. Stolen.’
We are at the office of a friend
who takes him in from time to time,
where tony has prepared a folder of
evidence to show the police he is still
being targeted.
‘i have to go all the way to King’s
Lynn to actually get inside a police
station,’ he says. ‘round here, you’ll
be lucky to see a policeman.’
the folder contains photographsINTERVIEW