Tony Martin, convicted of killing burglar at farmhouse, dies aged 80
2 February 2025, 17:21 | Updated: 2 February 2025, 17:26
Tony Martin, the farmer who was convicted of killing a teenage burglar in his home, has died aged 80.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
A family friend said he'd had a stroke.
Martin divided the nation after he shot a 16-year-old burglar who broke into his Norfolk farmhouse in 1999.
Martin was jailed in 2000 for the boy's murder, and for injuring 29-year-old Brendan Fearon in the incident.
The nation was divided over if his actions were pre-meditated, or he was simply defending his secluded property.
Martin's property was a near-derelict farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, near Wisbech, on the Norfolk-Cambridgeshire border.
He was released three years later when the conviction was reduced on appeal to manslaughter.
Martin's defence for the shooting of Barras was that he pulled the gun's trigger as a warning.
Read more: Six arrests made as thousands of Tommy Robinson supporters march through London
In an interview with The Sun, last year, Martin said he was "stitched up" by police, lawyers, prosecutors and judges in his trial.
The farmer said he hoped his name would be one day cleared.
He told the publication that he had visited Fred Barras's grave and "felt no remorse".
Martin said: “How can I feel for the criminals who brought all this on me?”
He argued that he "acted on instinct".
Martin added: “I tried to defend my home, my private space. I was just a man, asleep, for goodness sake. Not some roaming vigilante.
“I ask anyone, ‘What would you do in that situation?’. I eventually found my gun, which I hadn’t used for a long time, under the bed with some old newspapers. I don’t remember much after that."
He describes being asleep in his bed, when armed police barged in to handcuff him and arrest him for murder.
When he was freed from prison, he said he lived like a 'hermit'.
