Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Accomplice in Cross-Country Spree Gets Life in Nevada Slaying

Prosecutors said Carolyn King was with the accused triggerman, Bradley Martin, when they kidnapped Donna Mae Martz from a Bismarck, N.D., hotel parking lot in September 1993, then murdered her in the desert near here the following month.

Martin, 23, was sentenced Jan. 11 to two consecutive life sentences without parole by Elko District Judge Jack Ames, who also sentenced King on Tuesday.

King, 30, from Hershey, Pa., was ordered to serve her sentence consecutive to any other sentence she has to serve.

Both she and Martin were found guilty in Pennsylvania on Oct. 12 of the torture and suffocation of retired Palmyra, Pa., florist Guy Goodman, 70, and were sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Goodman's murder on Sept. 17, 1993, was the start of a 12-state flight that passed through Elko before ending with the couple's arrest in Yuma, Ariz., on Oct. 5, 1993.

Martin, who had a string of 20 felony convictions, was released on a four-hour furlough from a Lebanon County, Pa., penitentiary for a conjugal visit with King. Instead, they went to Goodman's home, murdered him, and took his car and credit cards.

The pair resurfaced in Bismarck where they abducted Martz, 50, forced her into the trunk of her own car and drove to Elko, where Martin and King went shopping Oct. 3, 1993.

They then drove into the desert, where Martin forced Martz to disrobe and lie down in a ditch where he shot her once in the head with a .357 magnum revolver, Deputy District Attorney Rob Lowe told the Elko Daily Free Press.

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