The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin Read Online Free Page B

law-breakers, Martin’s criminal career commenced during his formative years. He first appeared at North London Juvenile Court on 19 April 1963 where, for unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle and associated offences, he was fined a total of £4 and was disqualified from driving for twelve months. Less than three months later he was back at the same court, for stealing petrol from a car. On this occasion, he was fined £5 and his father was bound over in the sum of £15 for twelve months to ensure his son’s good behaviour. And it appeared to work. Two years went by and the twelve months, both for Martin’s disqualification from driving and his father’s recognisance, passed without incident.
    But this changed in June 1965 when he appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. For threatening behaviour and assaulting a police officer outside a club ‘without realising who he was’, as he would later say, he was sentenced to three months in a detention centre.
    Martin was not well educated but he was highly intelligent and he had a natural ability to turn his hand to anything electrical or mechanical; following his release from detention in September 1965, he trained as a motor mechanic. It did not last long; within five months he appeared at Highgate Magistrates’ Court, where for stealing items from his employer, he was placed on probation for two years. And that was the end of any pretence of honest work for a thoroughly dishonest employee; he ignored the counsel of his probation officer and from then on, Martin would channel his expertise into matters purely criminal, especially stealing cars.
    It caught up with him in July 1967 when at the Middlesex Area Sessions, for obtaining property by false pretences, three cases of larceny, two cases of storebreaking and stealing a car – and requesting twenty-one other cases to be taken into consideration – he was sentenced to Borstal Training and disqualified from driving for five years.
    During 1968, 1,425 inmates escaped from Borstal; Martin was one of them. He sprang a lock, scaled the boundary wall and was away. It was some time before he was caught and during his unofficial parole, he had been busy. He had taken a car without the owner’s consent and that, plus dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and stealing items, including a .22 starting pistol which he put to good use by producing it with intent to resist arrest, resulted in him being returned to Borstal Training when he appeared at the Inner London Quarter Sessions in November 1968. He also asked for a further twelve other offences to be taken into consideration from while he was on the run.
    To those unaware of the term, the now redundant Borstal Training was a period of incarceration of between six months to two years awarded to young offenders in the often forlorn hope that they would receive reformative training. Martin was one of that forsaken number; he served the full two years.
    As soon as he was released, Martin plunged once more into criminality. Appearing at West London Magistrates’ Court, he was committed to the Inner London Quarter Sessions for sentence in December 1969 and, for two cases of obtaining goods by means of a forged instrument, handling stolen goods, theft from a vehicle, unauthorised taking of a vehicle and driving while disqualified, he was sentenced to a total of twenty-one months’ imprisonment and disqualified from driving for a further twelve months.
    Released on 27 January 1971, that was the last occasion that Martin would plead guilty to anything; in fact, as will be seen, he wouldn’t plead not guilty either. His ego was going into orbit. His passionate loathing for those in authority, particularly the police, was developing and in addition, a life-long fascination for locks and security devices began to evolve.
    He gathered associates around him and his future criminal enterprises would display enormous cunning and sophistication for a young man, still in his